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AFFLER Number Three Three Number
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SulJversive Stars oud the
ConsutJIers Who Love Them!
"The Journal That Blunts the Cutting Edge"
Once again we are pleased to denounce the sordid art establishment of anti-establishment poseurs that burdens the American life of the mind; the talentless collection of would-be rock stars; the tired, ossified institutional avant-garde for whom image is in fact everything. Their blue jeans are far too expensive; their affected homeless-person fashions are a nausea-inducing parody of art's traditional role, a whimsical nod at our society's ethical collapse. their sycophantic big-money openings, their (bad) poeby their ever-more conspicuous attempts to outshock one another but still retain the patronage of their capitalist friends. TIlE BAFFlER calls for secession from this sordid, bloated culture of institutionalized rebellion All down the line our professional vanguardists are in league with the cultural project of Madison Avenue, providing image and credibility to the machinety that would reduce the people of the world to brainless organization men. They are rebels in capital's cause; pretentious pwveyors of packaged dissent; the cutting edge of a corpulent business culture, helping to establish the consumerism of pseudo-rebellion and to enforce the iron law of planned obsolescence. They are the cultural storm-troops of The New, savagtng "master narratives" so that the manipulation of the consumer can continue without interference from troublesome t:hf.ngs like ethics and tradition. For artists -- espedally the brand name kind who appear in advertising for liquor and cars and clothes -- are the model dtizens of the new consumer ideology. And meanwhUe the whole consumerist project itself, the central motive force and organizing cultural theme of our age, has become unjudgeable amidst the fogs of "undecidability" our baffled inteligentsia have called down upon themselves. Impotent, powerless, fearful of forthright speech lest they privilege one discourse over another, they have left the world open to exploitation, manipulation, and control by those who know what they want: Wall Street and 1HE BAFFlER In a time when the "cutting edge" has become a powerful tool for mediocratlzation, we proudly rededicate ourselves to its blunting. In an age when the Hollywood glamor of the "avant garde" has long since overtaken its aesthetic usefulness, we happily devise new tactics to send it scurrying in disarray.
aWl
Are you SHOCKED?
Winter/Spring 1992
Thomas Frank, Keith White editors Thanks to Diamonds Dave Mulcahey. Mark C. Meachem. lloyd
Frank, the University of Chicago. and the Illinois Arts Council for its
generous support.
We laid out this Issue of 1HE BAFFlER in a marathon session of four days in the garret of a sprawling ranch/tudor house in suburban Kansas City. We like the Midwest. The whole thing was printed on a Macintosh laser printer. Apologies to everyone whose stuff was not included. All materials e copyright 1992 The Baffier. All rights reselVed. ISSN # 1059-9789
Write to us. Send us your poetry. your money. SubSCriptions (2 issues) are $8/year for individuals; $l0/year for institutions. 1HEBAFFLER P.O. Box 378293
Chicago. Ilinois 60637
Number Three T. C. Frank Keith White A Plantageonette Rick Perlstein Greg Delanty Dagfinn von Bretzel John White Eric Iversen Jake Baxter David Berman Gaston de Beam Sean Francis Julia Clinger Alec Dinwoodie Seth Sanders Rick Wojcik Bill Holmes Eric Forst Keith A White A Plantageonette Thady Quill
Up Against the Wall, Deadheadl Gedney Gets the Girl sick Scooby Dooby Doo Alone in Vermont Do I Wake? Remembering the 80s Ben Franklin, Uar Cutrescence Revisited New Centuxy Century poems Profession Centrifuge Places I Hid Rock Music Reviews Architecture Reviews Goddess poems 路 Continental DMde City Book Reviews
Z Z Quest Que s t 路
5 7 12 15 20 21 22 27 34 35 42 44 45 50 52 53 79 83 99 100 101
65 65
ENEMY OF THE STARS All neologisms are printed in boldface.
Contributors Tom Frank is a starving graduate student of American History at the University of Chicago. where he also manages the insufferably avantgarde radio station WHPK. His writings appear everywhere. Keith White makes a living as an honest-to-god editor at a major national magazine. On weekends he looks for buried treasure and Valley. traps squirrels throughout the Hudson valley. Gaston de is a real live French count. No lie. Dave Berman is presently boring from within at one of the great institutions of the Institutional Avant-Garde. We won't say which one. one, but it's in Manhattan. He's been published in Caliban as well as BajJler 1& 2. Clinger and Dagfinn Dagflnn von Bretzel attended the Iowa Both Julia Cllnger Writers' workshop. which was savagely denounced in Bqffler BajJler#1. # 1. Julia. describes herself who contributed to that watershed publication. now deSCribes as a "creepy experimentalist" and hides from civilization in Vermont. The poetry of Greg Delanty. Irishman. has appeared in a great number of journals. including the Times Literary Supplement, Supplement. the L. A. Times. and Southern Review. He has been poet-in-residence at NYU and taught at St. Michael's College. His book Southward (LSU Press) will appear later this year. Dinwoodle. he of the Sideburns. is a Marshall scholar and ediAlec Dinwoodie. tor of the Chicago Literary Review. Gurmn. whose Eric Forst edits Row Boat and plays bass for Frances Gumm. first 7-inch record was recently released by Sweet Portable You. Intellectual-at-Iarge Eric Iversen's latest home is Chapel Hill. N.C. Baffier # 1 and will soon be published in His stuff has appeared in Bqffler the comparatively obscure Lectura Dante. Rick Perl(stein) is a text that always and already inscribes itself in figures of overdetermination. discursively re-producing the condition ofits (un)writing. of its own (un)writmg. Colonel Aloyisius Plantageonette. whose Straussian piece on subBaffier #2 caused such a stir. returned from the Gulf conflict urbia in Ba.ffler just in time to turn his latest literary gems Baffier. over to The Ba.ffler. Seth Sanders. rock 'n' roll Jacobin. is a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University and editor of Nest of Ninnies. Qulll is a stock broker. radiThe bold Thady Quill cal agitator. and masscult mOnitor monitor in Chicago. city of slumped shoulders. John White is known to friends as the "SWinburne "Swinburne of Rye (N.Y.)" for his free-spirited. sOirees. alcohol-fueled soirees. 4
The American Nonconformist In the Age of the
Commercialization of Dissent T. C. Frank \\e saw 1hJs trend approaching a millim. cmsum.er-mJles away. It was inev1table: the Protest Generatlcn ames of age as the Genemt1cn ofSuper-Consume:rs.
Faith Popcorn. 1991
Thirty-five years ago, Norman Mailer first gave voice to the idea that the "hipster," the young art-appreciating free-spirit alienated from an increasingly repressive society' was the existential hero of the day. In an America terrified by the bomb, grown stagnant from over-organization, cowed into homogeneity and conformity by red scares and the depersonalization of the computer age, the "hipster" was supposed to represent liberty and the affrrmation of life. "The only life-giving answer" to the deathly drag of American civilization, Mailer wrote, was to tear oneself from the security of physical and spiritual certainty, to embrace rebellion, particularly rebellion associated with the black American subculture of jazz and drugs. The distinction between those who resisted mass society and those who collaborated was a clear and obvi0us one, Mailer insisted: "one is Hip or one is Square ... , one is a rebel or one conforms, ... trapped in the totalitarian tissues of American society, doomed willy-nilly to conform if one is to succeed." Today the opposite is true. In advertising, television, and all the other organs of offiCial culture, the hipster is now a figure to be revered. He has become a central symbol of the technocratic system he is supposed to be subverting: a model consumer, a good citizen in a society which demands moral indifference and a perpetual patronage of the new in order to keep its gigantic wheels 5
turning. Rather than resisting the enormous cultural machinery of mediocrity, impoverishment, and stupidity, in 1992 the hipster is its star player.
•••••
Spike Lee has made his reputation as a film innovator by posturing as a free-floating radical, as a spokesman without portfolio for the nation's outsiders and oppressed, as a fulminator against convention and bourgeois morality. He is also a spokesman for the Nike corporation, and you can regularly see this daring and revolutionary young filmmaker on prime-time 1V, selling an extraordinarily expensive athletic shoe. On another channel the Burger King corporation confides that "Sometimes You Gotta Break the Rules." A brand of perfume named '1ribe" calls upon consumers to "Join the Uprising." A new variety of chewing gum is cast as the embodiment of hip teen resistance to the puritanical, antifun ways of police and old people. Rock radio stations routinely promote themselves as rule-breakers of the most defiant sort while Mazda introduces us to their new models by ridiculing "Mom" and "apple pie" images and telling us that if "You're not John Doe, why drive his car?" Bizarre and cynical anomalies? On the contrary, these incidents are perfectly representative of our contemporary consumer culture, which for some time now has utilized images of rebellion to encourage a mindset of endless dissatisfaction with the old and a never-ending compulsion to buy, buy, buy. In 1992 the transformation of rebellion into money is the fundamental operation of our pop-cultural machinery. The commercialization of deviance is fast becoming the universal theme of American culture, the preeminent motif of the age. And not simply because of its value in reaching the kids. The simulation of dissent we see all around us has 6
become the preeminent image of mass culture because it reinforces an ideology focused on the eternal new and the identification of individuality with product chOice. The beautiful hipsters we see in ads, movies, and malls are always celebrating their liberation, their differance, their emancipation precisely because these aspects of rebellion, American-style, make them model consumers. They have embraced a worldview of bourgeois antinomianism, an automatic scorn for anything even vaguely established, permanent, or conventional (except, of course, their own incomes), because this is the attitude they must adopt to do their part in keeping the great machine racing at fever pitch. Our young pseudo-radicals buy, eat, and discard freely and unrestrainedly, unencumbered by the repressive moral baggage of their square, tightwad elders, who didn't buy a lot of things they didn't need, who saved money and didn't purchase on credit, whose dull, unliberated lives centered on producing goods rather than consuming them. So commercial rock 'n' roll music, the veritable incarnation of commerCialized deviance, becomes the inescapable soundtrack of daily life, and millions of products are peddled in its wake. So American youth and its young-thinking parents fall over one another rushing to patronize the latest consumer expression of rebellion, whether it's acid-washed jeans, leather
Gedney Market felt like a new man. Even his walk was lighter, bouncier, more selfconfident. As he strode down Lexington Avenue with his chartreuse fanny pack riding jauntily on his hips, everything seemed to interest him. The little musical Peruvians, desperately seeking riches in the United States, the old men and women huddled together in darlc coats, even the drunks he stepped over as he boarded the subway. The whole world was shining with a glossy new patina, and there was simply too much to do, too much to spend. And he knew he could top everything that had come before, that he would soon be living in a great big way. Once every year, as the earth tilted solemnly in its orbit, rolling down the temperature as well as the sleeves of most New Yorkers, Gedney prepared himself for the grand expedition. In early August he obtained from a friend the early proofs 7
oflnterview,G. Q.. Esquire and the Village Voice. in which he
carefully studied the "looks" the fashion cognosceti had decreed were available to him. Gedney would then whittle down his choices, usuallyarriving at two or three that allowed him to convey his own, personal sense of himself as the new Urban American Hipster, both coolly confident and calculatingly hip. And this year was particularly excit-
ing. because he had decided to go for something utterly new and different: the updated James Dean look. All summer he had allowed his forelock to grow, carefully hidden by his "X" cap. Now his hair hung casually from his brow, ready to be slicked back or to remain true to the 8
motorcycle Jackets, or multiple-pierced ears. We let our hair grow. cut it short. tie it in a ponytail. dye it, cut lines and words into it. We wear all black (no one on the Baffler staff has done this since 1985 - ed.) or don ..X" caps and wait anxiously for the next hip dispensation from the East. We make sure our bandit garb has labels conspicuously displayed because we want there to be no question whether we have bought the real hot article or a cheap knock-off. We purchase every product, visit every nightclub we think will set us apart from the crowd and exemplify our daring disdain for tradition. And then a few weeks later we do it again. and again. and again. Commercialized dissent is a condition of perpetual youth, because our identities are more flexible when young, and we can experiment with the (external markings) of many. many different "lifestyles." It is a condition that has thrown off the restraints of tradition and values, because without these we are truly free to buy any product, appropriate any motif, obsolete it quickly thereafter, and go on to the next. And the art world, with its traditional reverence -for a hyper-alienated avant-garde, has served as a prominent model for the development of commercialized devi-ance.'. Arty hipsters appear regularly in ads and sitcoms as icons of consumer perfection. And this is hardly a media distortion:
on the contrary, every movement in the institutional avant-garde scene during the last 25 years has served to reinforce the new ideology of consumption being fOisted on the world by Madison Avenue. Nor is this complicity a new problem. Malcolm Cowley wrote of his G"eenwich Village experiences in the Q-eenwich 1920s that To keep the factory wheels turning. tUrning. a new domestic market had to be created. Industry and thrift were no longer adequate. There must be a new ethic that encouraged people to CCRlSumptiDn ethic. buy. a CCRlSumptian It happened that many of the Greenwich Village ideas proved useful in the altered situation. Thus.
Keanu-esque revitalization of the familiar teen rebel. With the addition of sideburns Gedney's Fonz-ification fantasy was about to come to fruition. Emerging from the subway, Gedney barely avoided a splash of blood as he bounded past two young men stabbing a tourist tourist. Gedney noticed the green bandanas the young toughs wore, and made a mental note to himself to pick up something similar, if not slightly more
9
expensive and menacing. Soon he was pressing through the shiny, gilded doors of a wellknown department store, leaving behind the sounds and smells of the street. Gedney proceeded deliberately towards the the bank of elevators, gently repulsing the advances of the flirtatious and aggressive perfume girls. On the fifth floor he was greeted by Moschino, his personal guru, who was obsequiously pleased to see him. Mter a few words, both men were grinning broadly and stepping smartly towards the racks and racks of carefully pressed Razzy jeans. The pants had been broken in by a genuine Marlboro Man on a Brazilian ranch, and stood as a swank affIrmation of Gedney's astute evaluation of this year's vogue. Gedney then pored over a cornucopia of black leather jackets, finally selecting an Italian clothier's model replete with skid marks designed to mimic those from real motorcycle accidents on the great highways of California. Already 10
self-expression and paganism encouraged a demand for all sorts of products -- modern furniture, beach pajamas. cosmetics. colored bathrooms with toilet paper to match. Living Jor the moment meant buying an automobile. radio or house. using it now and paying for it tomorrow.
Today the story is the same, but the inversion of values we are faced with is a trifle more complex. Artists are given to strutting their pseudo-dissent like no other group except rock stars. Take for example Interview magazine, the preposterous Andy Warhol's greatest contribution to American life, a showplace of commercialized deviance which is actually taken seriously south of Houston street. Warhol himself was, of course, the model consumer of his day, playing with maximum effectiveness the role of artist/nonconformist as hyper-consumer and celebrity-worshiper. His magazine carries on this legacy, whether it's railing against the imaginary bogeyman of moral repressiveness, slavering over the institution of celebrity, or tantalizing us with visions of our purchase-lust unfettered. A lucrative testimony to all in the art/fashion/ad world that is unfailingly superficial and aggresively stupid, Interview puts forward a consistent ideal of the alienated, vaguely artistic (and always handsome) outsider as ideal consumer. The non -advertising text of Interview has one reliable qUality: the
artist/ celebrities which it incessantly praises are "unconventional" people. We are told again and again and again in words and pictures that they resist conformity, that they do their own thing. The ads hammer away at the same point: the rebels who appear in DKNY or Cavartcci clothing are always distinguishing themselves from the crowd, being their ineluctable selves. "Resound," reads the caption for a recent Interview ad featuring saxophonist Maceo Parker. "It's the thunder you create, the way that everything you choose [to buy] adds to the roar. For individuals it starts with the Gap." What is it about the celebrity rebel hipster that makes him/her such an Imagine Rimbaud effective corporate as a dancing pitch- symbol? These ads man for Coca- Cola, are the key to grasping with his famous the whole sneer and a little thing, to undergel in his hair_ standing why this juxtaposition of alienation with advertising, the central pillar of the consumerist establishment, seems so appropriate and yet rings so false. It's the same point THE BAFFLER has squawked about for three years. Not only is big art big money in this image-obsessed age, but its most characteristic poses -- the alienation, the
ensconced in a regal pair of Reebok pumps (the choice of JDs everywhere), Gedney headed towards the cash register, tripping briefly from the overabundance of fabric in his trousers but quickly recovering and snapping his Platinum card deftly on the counter. Moschino nodded approvingly as Gedney signed the imprint without even bothering to notice the four figure amount that was to be debited against his account. Later that day Gedney stopped by his apartment to collect his mail and his landlady invited him in for some herbal tea. Pringle Pypkin, the owner of the East Village walkup our hero inhabited as well as a mid-size advertising company, served as a sometimes mentor for young Gedney. Today she responded immediately to his new look. "Oh, chills. Gedney, chills!" she exclaimed, managing somehow to pronounce the "s" as both a "th" and a hard "s" at the same time. She fawned (see page 70)
(continued on page 70)
11
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Reviewer Reviewer Bill Bill Katz Katz praises THE THE BAFFLER BAFFLER as "a pleasant reminder reminder that that the old-fashioned give-'em-hell give-'em-hell literary review lives lives on on as as a marauder marauder of talent among among the the conglomerates." conglomerates."
,....,.,.*,,,,,, ./",,,,,,,, .. AAnumber numberof ofcopies copies of ofthis this now-important now-important magazine magazine are still
available availablefor for$3 $3 ++$1 $1 for for postage. postage. BAFFLER BAFFLER #2 features the famous Baffler manifesto on postmodemism, famous Baffler manifesto on postmodemism, fiction by Frederic FredericWakeman Wakeman (The (The Hucksters), Hucksters), poetry poetry by John Huss, and andthe theesssays esssayson on suburbia suburbiain in which which the the concept concept of "cutrescence" was first first introduced introduced into into American American discourse. "cutrescence"was Copies Copies of ofBAFFLER BAFFLER #1, #1, which was even better, are which was even better, are ...' I I:::'/) so so rare rare that thatitit isis now now ...... ... eR unavailable. unavailable. ItIt featured featured fiction fiction by byJulia JuliaClinger, Clinger, the the ground ground breaking breaking essay essay on on Mark MarkTrail, Trail, Iversen's Iversen's "Letter "Letter . to to Wordsworth," Wordsworth," and and lots lots of of . '>., charming channingpoetry poetry and and art art and anffd ... ,.....,,,.â&#x20AC;˘......."....'", . ...... stuff. stu .
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by Rick Perlstein I
When public television aired Ken Burns's ninetypart series on the Civil War, eggheads tripped over each other to proclaim this soft-spoken young writer as the American Homer, the architect of a Yankee national epic. The series was more than just good television; it was the narrative repository of all of our most cherished cultural values born Phoenix-like out of the fiery chaos of war. It extemporized for millions of viewers across the fruited plain the glorious sweep of heroic struggle and self- and national-transcendence that distinguished such classic texts as the book of Exodus, France's Song of Roland, Iceland's Edda, India's Baghavad Ghita. All at once, it seemed to these intellectuals, the Colonies' eternally crippling cultural anxiety, that collective penis envy of the American intelligentsia, had been lifted: culturally speaking, we'd finally Made It. We had found our Bildungsroman. Hardly. What was far more impressive about the show was that it got the American public to actually watch a show on PBS and that it got intellectuals to admit to having watched 'IV at all. And yet while millions of snobs came out of the closet and admitted that, yes, they actually owned television sets, our cognoscenti were still too ashamed to own up to the obvious: that the truest aesthetic embodiment of the American sublime was not to be found in the cathartic saga of brother fighting brother, but in the weekly chronicle of the spiritual journey of a vessel called the "Mystery Machine" sqUiring Shaggy, Scooby, Velma, Daphne, and Fred to an eternal youth spent Fighting of the Good Fight. As national myth, the Iliad doesn't have anything over "Scooby Dooby Doo, Where Are You?" 15