That Is, Like, So Deep.

Hello again everyone. I know it’s been awhile. I’ve been busy. Thanks for waiting on me to return. It’s so appreciated. :P

Anyway today I want to talk about the difference between perceived and actual depth of subject in popular culture. That is, in popular culture, I find that merely stating the obvious, if it aligns with a certain point of view, is perceived as “deep,” while the other view is “shallow,” when this may or may not actually be the case.

First case in point: Most of society has been trained since we were young to be regretful of our “consumer-based” tendencies, and big corporations and the like. Maybe this is just me, but this sort of thing, has been around since I was a small child. And who doesn’t prefer to shop at Mom-and-Pop Bookstore than Barnes and Noble, when we can? But of course Barnes and Noble is usually cheaper, so we tend to end up just going there and then feeling bad about it. Of course today I’m not going to go into whether or not that’s justified, but certainly the anti-corporate point of view is sort of knee-jerk whenever you really think about it. To end up pro-corporate you have to seriously go into economics and how corporations help third-world countries go through industrial revolutions to become first world countries, and practically no one thinks about it that long. So isn’t that the “deep” point? Anyway, that’s not the point.

I want to talk about Fight Club. Mostly the movie; I haven’t read the book and have no intention to do so.

Yay Fair Use!

Fight Club is an excellent movie. But that’s all it is. I don’t know if Chuck Palahniuk intended on it just being a good book/film, or if he really believed the drivel he is touting in the movie. And it’s not even that it’s necessarily wrong, it’s just that it’s obvious.

For those unfamiliar, in the film Tyler Durden starts a project called “Project Mayhem,” whose ultimate goal is to end the existence of corporations and financial institutions through their overthrow by their workers who have all become part of Project Mayhem.

This is a thinly veiled Communist Revolution, with the workers overthrowing their dirty Capitalist masters. But I can’t tell you how many people I’ve seen watch this film and talk about their “eyes being opened.” And I’m like, “About what?” Most of these people were left-leaning and believed in the evil of corporations, true or not, to begin with. So does “deep” just mean “I agreed with it from the get-go and it pointed it out?” Maybe.

The same seems to be true in Handlebars By Flobots. This is a song I’ve seen pass around, and it’s another that people keep telling me is, like, so deep.

This one basically has the same message. Do you have few aspirations for yourself? Do you like “the community?” Then you’re peace-loving! Do you want to make money and run a company? Then you must be a warmonger! How dare you choose the path of moneymaking? You killed “the community!”

The whole song is rubbish, but I get a lot of people telling me how wonderful the song is because it’s “so deep.” And really its not. Especially when you have the video in front of you, the message is thinly veiled and the song itself is musically forgettable. And after all that, its message is again the belief that many of those people had before.

Apparently depth in popular culture merely means pointing out the beliefs of the consumer through analogy.

This brings me to works like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which lives in the delicate balance between utter nonsense and depth. Of course on the one side you have songs like I Am The Walrus by the Beatles, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show nears that boundary, and might even cross it. I might be even more duped than those who think it has a single-layered meaning. But that’s not the point.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show lives in cult-following-world, constantly misinterpreted or not interpreted at all. But the reason it is relevant to this discussion is because it is a satire of everything that I have been talking about. By merely bringing up the topic of taboo sexual fetishes and not cringing at them, those who see it immediately jump to the conclusion that it is a deep commentary on sexual repression in our society. But the joke is on them. The movie is ridiculous and has no real commentary on sexual taboo, it just makes a big show of it all. And in doing so it not only laughs at societal norms and sexual repression, but those who think that merely bringing up the topic is “deep.” Think about that next time you go to a live show.

Actually don’t. The live shows aren’t about that at all. They are about stress relief. (Which is also partially what Fight Club is about). But I digress. Take it away, Lips!