James Dean’s unrivetted seams
October 8, 2008
Oh seriously, just put the cigarette in the picture. We’re all adults here. We all know smoking isn’t cool - unless, perhaps, if you’re are a very particular type of actual bone fide rock star. And even then no rock mythology is adequate prtoection from the cancers and other life-destroying diseases and conditions with which it kicks out the jams. Those jams are so very far from cool that, even upon the most narcisstic reflection, it’s an absolutely tragically bad idea. And not even tragic in a cool way, kids. I wouldn’t do it, no matter how many pointy shoes you indie me with. But, terrifyingly gravitous medical ramifactions aside, these guys just look silly. And that’s no good when you’re young and undiseased and are endeavoring to connote this information through the cut of your jib and jeans.
If the point of this 50s-themed catalogue that plopped through my letterbox was to reprise imagery from back in the day - and it is a fashion shoot, after all - then what does self-consciously deploying cigarette cool without the cigarette connote? Like the imagined narrative is interupted by a pesky postmodern carcinogen. Like the cigarette is a phantom, but the vestige of cool is still there in the actions of smoking. ‘Hey guys, we can’t use cigarettes cos it’ll make us look like dafties, and it’s probably, like, against the law or sommat, you know. But, God, isn’t it just so cool, and so, like, now. So I’m thinking we’ll just stage the photos without the cigarettes. It’ll be, like, pretend smoking. Like this is the pretend 50s. And like I’m a pretend Visual Director pretending to have any visual litr’acy at all.’ If you’re enamoured by that imagery enough to want to wear it or sell it, then just smoke. Or don’t smoke. But do it emphatically. A jejune third way of charade smoking surely undermines the founding principle of that sort of rebellious, smooth, gutsy, knowing, cool. As well as being tragic - in an emphatically uncool way, kids - one must also laugh. Paddington Bear is even pursing his lips to blow imaginary smoke like James Dean in an NHS TV commercial. ‘Look kids, this way you can still look classically signifier stupid, but be unadorned with the associated tumours and the palaver of carting dialysis paraphernalia around with your Fred Perry.’ It’s the spirit of rebellion captured, gagged, and packaged up in rolled up trousers with non-chafing and unrivetted seams. Brilliant.
I’m too bored to disillusioned to remember what my point was or look up and see whether that satisfies it. I think I’m sated now though. Or just distracted by something else. Ooh, look…
can you say des’prud?
October 8, 2008
For reasons that will become apparent once I conclude what is likely to be a typically droll preamble, this post was going to rely on RealPlayer for its cogency. Clearly, nobody should ever rely on RealPlayer for anything, least of all cogency. More times than not it just doesn’t work. And now is perfectly indicative of most times. ‘RealPlayer is unable to connect to the server to play your selection - would you like RealPlayer to try other ways to connect?’ it says after draining the sands of my hope through the jaws of its eggtimer. Oh, how thoughtful of you, yes please do. Excellent, what a helpful little RealPlayer you are. More jaws pinching hope, and it announces triumphantly: ’Auto-Configure completed successfully. Your RealPlayer is now configured to playback using UDP protocol’. Yes, please, thank you. Good old UDP protocol! But then, seconds later: ‘RealPlayer is unable to connect to the server to play your selection - would you like RealPlayer to try other ways to connect?’ Oh dear, it seems I’m trapped in the spokes of a wheel. Why don’t you try Meccano, I think. Meccano never let anyone down. It’s from a time of greater certainty when men connected things in an honest and visible way using steel and muscle and hope and spirit. Meccano doesn’t rely on the interminable motherboard. It’s at the behest of man, we use it to build things. Like a computer, it’s literally stupid, but it doesn’t pretend to be sentient and speak to us like Peter Rabbit. It hasn’t been given a character and a will by some programmers in an office by a riverside. It doesn’t use it’s pseudo-character to trade in hubris and whim and spite and hudwink and New Updates. RealPLayer is a terrifying, heartless, dishonest, hope-pinching soul-stealer. Imagine being caught in its nightmarish clutches, tied to its wheel, doomed to forever listen to its triumphant pronouncements and its ingratiating simpering and its faux-humanism, ever more lachrymose sands draning in front of your eyes as a false representation of progress. Oh, glottal stop.
And so, preamble over, I was only going to mention this little piece from the Guardian of a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t get round to posting it until now, but I think the main point of the story is that David Miliband is an unctuous pillock. And that is as true now as it was two weeks ago. So I may just leave it at that. If RealPlayer’ll allow, you can hear how he’s even changed his voice to be even more repulsive and Franken. But whatever way he says it though, remember: he’s ‘working for a fairer society’. Good work Dave.
I can’t bring myself to continue this post. It’s unbecoming. I’m feeling alienated by this desperate world. But it’s music time, Lassitudinous readers. This’ll cheer us up. I just read that watching Laura Marling is like spying a young woman bare her soul for her cat. That’s the kind of soul-baring you can rely on. That’s the Meccano of soul-baring. Given that she lives in a liquorice cottage with a cat called Hansel, I suspect that some of her other songs may be slightly twee and etiolated, but, to furnish my ever-smug back-reference thread with a smothering comfort blanky of punnery, she makes a pretty good fist of hitting it out of the park here. Oh, glottal stop!
‘How do I keep finding myself here?’ I dunno, Laura. I find I’m quite alienated and terrified by it all. If I were a taxi driver I’d say: Well, it’s an ongoing project innit Marling, the project of the self, the project of the world.
