Living Through a Self-Fulfilling Parody

I'm going to attempt a fresh approach to this next one; let's call it part journal entry, part zoomed-out take on our subject's current cultural standing. And I say fresh in the hopes that I might add something to the mix other than yet another reheated argument around a specific issue forced through a predictable lens. You could go almost anywhere else for that, and it's not a tack that I could take if I wanted to. And because you deserve better. I hope that I've been vague enough so far. Let's get into it.

Imagine if you will: a near-future humanist enlightenment where a large part of the goal, maybe aside from election cycles, is that everyone ditches their political affiliations and admits them to be the interpersonal poison that they really are. Is this too much to hope for?

It's not like I am 15 years old, larping as an anarchist anymore. I understand that politics are (probably at best) a necessity, and that in a fundamental sense they are just the tools with which to rule, while the people poorly wielding them are the ones to blame when things go south. But that distinction feels so far beyond quaint in 2024. At this point it would take someone coming along who wielded those tools in a genuinely radical and genuinely constructive way to break my cynicism, and even then I would still have zero interest in politics as a subject. Because this runs deeper.

Before having a fully-articulated opinion on anything, the younger me had a strong aversion to politics in what you could call an aesthetic sense. I remember my mom listening to conservative talk radio - whether it was Jason Lewis or Rush Limbaugh - and her dutifully whinging along in agreement. And I remember how the whole thing always felt cringey and lame to me as a kid, and in fact still does, more than ever. Maybe because it's objectively obnoxious. Or maybe it's the dumb certainty that you (both mom and the host) have every answer to all of the world’s problems figured out (if only everyone else could see.) Or maybe it's that it makes you look less like an autonomous individual and more like a creepy mouthpiece for someone else's political project. I dunno. Sorry mom. (And randomly, I guess because life is poetic sometimes, it happens that one of my co-workers has come to fill the role for me of my mom's perfect liberal counterpart. Their only differences are that where she parrots Fox News, he parrots NPR, and where she complains, he condescends. Two ends of a spectrum.)

I've always had a similar reaction when hearing overtly political lyrics in music as well. Pick any Rage Against the Machine song as an example of this. Or better yet, a band that I was actually into when I was younger, the Dead Kennedys. Jello Biafra's brand of satire was always pretty heavy-handed, but tracks like "Stars and Stripes of Corruption" are especially embarrassing:

"Our land, I love it too

I think I love it more than you

I care enough enough to fight

The stars and stripes of corruption"

Oy. Not an ounce of poetry or subtlety to be found. It's more like a campaign speech set to music, which is fitting considering Biafra's bid for mayor of San Francisco six years prior to releasing this song. He came fourth in the race. But the takeaway is that it's hard to find the art or emotional impact in strident political speeches set to music. If you happen to think that a song's highest purpose is to be able to temporarily draw you out of reality and into its orbit, ones like this work precisely to prevent that moment from ever happening. And while you could argue against this being the highest purpose of music, that would be for a different essay.

Obviously this lifelong aversion has little to do with whatever the specific political message on display is. Biafra on the left is just as off-putting as Limbaugh on the right, whether or not I agree with either on any given point. And I could go on to speculate over the reasons for the distaste forming so early in life, but the self-indulgence has to end somewhere. The point is that I’ve got no love for today's topic. In academic terms, I have no interest in it as a subject. In societal terms, there seems to be an inverse relationship between how strongly a person identifies with a political ideology versus that person's ability or desire to come to their own conclusions about the world (which seems on its face to be unhealthy and dangerous). And in aesthetic terms, for whatever reason, I find it cringey and embarrassing to listen to people get worked up about. So there you are. It should go without saying here that I do have opinions about most things that American politics touch, but the difference is that they are actually my opinions. Not an arbitrary collection of ones that other people have compiled for me over a long period of time.

And all of this is why the cultural alienation is so real right now. It's strange to feel like your perspective is fairly pedestrian, while at the same time being the thing that separates you from so many other people. Although I can't say for sure that it actually is so many people. Maybe between my very curated information diet and the non-representative, small number of relationships in my life, I'm getting a skewed impression of how much more politically-minded everyone is than myself. There are probably some polls I could consult to clear this up. What I do know is that politics have come to infect almost every corner of popular culture for some time now. And maybe because it's the next logical step after becoming a cliche, or just because the trend has nowhere else to go, it’s starting to look to me like (fingers crossed) we might be creeping towards self-parody.

But prior to this current moment came a long and continuing period of good old-fashioned, politically-driven absurdity. One of my favorite examples is the ongoing state of the entertainment industry. On one side, you have the Hollywood machine creating straight-up racial quotas to determine which films are eligible for the Best Picture nomination while simultaneously pumping out such gems as the 100th Willy Wonka reboot, starring Hugh Grant as an Oompa Loompa. Because why not, I guess. This machine runs on the most cutting-edge “progressive” political trends, but somehow also on creatively risk-averse autopilot. And then on the other side (because there has to be the other side), you have right-wing media juggernaut The Daily Wire pulling a Fubu (I am officially coining the phrase “pulling a Fubu” here), and starting their own production company for pissy conservatives who just can’t take it anymore. For them, by them. Please enjoy this trailer for one of the many fine offerings from their collection. It’s amazing. But clearly none of this is about making great films or even just great entertainment anymore. It’s about pandering, and playing it safe, and sticking it to your cultural opponents. It weirdly almost sounds like politics, doesn’t it?

While the long list of other examples I could give run the gamut from depressing to hilarious, they have all been topped by a more recent meltdown. I am of course talking about the CoComelon Lane trans baby debacle of 2023. This one kicked off when a certain episode of the popular children's spin-off show aired featuring two gay dads cheering on their little boy while he sang and danced in a dress. And so entered the self-parody. Notice how many of the right-wing-triggering boxes this example checks off: using a popular kids show to achieve maximum levels of “they're coming for our children” panic - check. Interracial gay couple - check. Gay parents - check. Possibly trans toddler - check. You get the picture. It goes so hard that it feels like someone is impersonating the most woke person possible writing an episode of a children's show. Or maybe it's like the most raging conservatives’s idealized arch-enemy come to life, Weird Science style. I don't necessarily doubt the convictions of whoever wrote the musical number in question, but the point is that there is an unreal quality to this one like none before it. And it's kind of brilliant. 

Suddenly all of my depression about the sad, dying state of culture melted away after realizing this, and in its place was laughter. Laughter at the angry conservative who gets duped by this shit time and time again. Laughter at how seriously the writers probably took their self-given mission of spreading the good word. And laughter at just how absurd of a watch the episode actually is, and how it so transparently has nothing to do with children's education or entertainment anymore despite what the people involved might say and actually believe. It made me feel like we must be close to the end point of a culture so bloated with its own political bullshit that it's forgotten why and who it exists for. And then for a split second, some glimmer of hope for the future and for meaningful expression in general came into view. Maybe it actually can’t go on like this forever and still be taken seriously. All I know is that until it implodes, I'll be anxiously awaiting whatever the other team’s equivalent of Cocomelon Lane is going to be. It's gonna be good. See you next time.