The religion of the Spectacle is the Spectacle itself.

We live in a supposedly secular, post-modern culture.  You wil be told this in some quarters.

We live in a Judeo-Christian culture.  You will be told this in other quarters.

Neither of these things are quite correct.

Our so-called postmodern, secular culture is really the”pre-modern” “ghost-filled” world dressed up in sci-fi garb for our technocratic panopticon.  All the old pagan gods are back, archetypes overlaid onto the celebrities of the day.  The global church/temple/synagogue of the Spectacle is the integrated mass media of TV, internet, cinema, text-messaging and corporate print: this is where we “tele-commune” whilst remaining isolated.  And when we speak after “church,” we do so through the “buffers” created by it.

The images of the celebrities become the gods of the Spectacle, which merely promote a culture where everything is mediated by images, technocratic myths simulating life.

The Religion of the Spectacle is the Spectacle itself and it is its own God, presented to we, the public, the lonely consumer, for adulation and veneration.  Its parts seen everywhere, but nowhere can anyone point to one thing and say, that is the Spectacle/God.  Truly, the Spectacle has been seen by no man.  And to look upon its face is death within its cult-sure.  (However, this Death is a death of the false.)

And this is just a prelude.  But please take it lightly.  It’s not a weight for you to carry.

Around these parts, we honor the dead  by consuming their image and their artifacts.

Just like Biggie, Tupac, Kurt Cobain, John Lennon, Elvis, his death has led to a massive uptick in record sales.  Thus, he has been granted a sort of Spectacular Immortality.

And just like so many celebrity totems, in death all his sins, real or alleged, seem to have been forgiven.  For many people out there, I think it’s the impact of the death of a symbol they grew up with that has caused them to genuinely question the things they did or did not believe about him in the years since the living person behind the media-mirage of Michael Jackson (whatever and whoever he really was) was cast into popular exile and disrepute.

Some feel genuine remorse and sadness, whether they should or not is another question.

What is not in question, to me,  is the fact that the media-priesthood  are simply selling more product.

Tragedy, like sex and violence, sells.

And so the Spectacle’s priests shed crocodile tears for victims they helped to create such as Anna Nicole Smith. They do this as quickly and easily as they cry for scoundrels like Nixon.   Michael Jackson the innocent Christ child, Michael Jackson the Dionysian, connected with the body and the dance, Michael Jackson the demonic eater of the young, connected with pedophilia:  these were all images conjured by our Spectacular culture and its image makers, sometimes with, without and against Jackson’s participation. (Michael as  magician-priest, king and sacrifice.)  What his image will be in death is yet to be seen.  But one hint lies here.  And another here.

It’s kind of like when Bob dies in Fight Club, Tyler Durden’s SpaceMonkeys turn ”his name was Robert Paulson” into a mantra, snapping into realization that he did have a name, an identity.

Suddenly in death, for the Spectacle, Michael Jackson has his humanity back , and some semblance (or simulation?) of life.

On my way back.  Give it a few weeks.  In the meantime, here’s one of the most arresting segments from Richard Kelly’s ambitiously uneven, much-maligned and little-seen Southland Tales.  Those of the rabbit hole persuasion and well-read arch-ironists alike should appreciate the movie immensely, what with its multiple layers of symbolism and the use of the Eye-in-the-Pyramid as symbol of the happless, delusional, neo-Marxist revolutionaries who fight against the crass, neo-conservative technocrats who run the State.  In the movie, that is.  There’s also some of that ol’ time apocalyptic religion to boot.

Watch this clip closely.  You might miss something:

Skidoo.

Just got tipped off by regular reader, Costumeoff, about the latest episode of South Park. Imagine my surprise to hear about Matt Stone and Trey Parker touching upon Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus and…ritual sacrifice. Maybe, this insight is simply in the air now, having penetrating the veil. With satire and cartoon kids, South Park can bring the point home to so many more people than me and my humble rabbit hole diving can.

For those coming here just recently, my thesis is that the very public melt-downs and/or deaths of various Spectacle-created media starlets is simply the continuation of the ancient practice of ritualing sacrificing representatives of gods and goddesses. In our Cult-Sure, the practice has simply been rebranded, nominally secularized, and thus made harder to see, even though it’s now all right there out in the open and many of us participate in it unknowingly.

You can check out the South Park episode right here.

Here are the main pieces I’ve written on this site so far about our Cult-Sure’s debased rites of psychic human sacrifice. Compare this to what South Park’s saying and get back to me:

http://cadeveo.wordpress.com/2007/02/16/anna-nicole-smith-human-sacrifice-the-other-goddess-worship/

http://cadeveo.wordpress.com/2007/02/20/britney-the-bald-call-from-isht-to-isht/

http://cadeveo.wordpress.com/2007/10/02/meet-the-new-sacrificial-goddess-same-as-the-old-one/

Submitted for your analysis: the hottest, hippest, young people and a moving, cinematic montage fit for an Oscar-winning film’s promotional package or a Gap ad; versus the Whitest and Dorkiest of white and non-white people with lower producution values, less sex appeal, and inspirational power of the 1985 New England Patriot’s answer to the Super Bowl Shuffle.

Absorb these competing bits of Spectacle and then discuss:

The “Yes We Can” beautiful people orgy:

The Hilary Clinton dork-fest, which more than anything else says, “Jay Leno-watching Republican,” despite its awkward gay-friendly subtext:

If you’re hoping there’s something a little more flattering, you could watch this Hilary ad, seemingly tailored especially for the middle-aged, middle-of-the-road, middle class:

I don’t believe either of these entertainers of the industrial State are for real, so if you think I’m advocating Obama over Hilary, you stand corrected. I’m merely pointing out the huge difference between how their respective promotions are being handled. I’m also suggesting this might tell us a whole lot about how the script has already been written/re-written with regards to this empty presidential election ritual.

And by no means do I advocate wasting any more of your attentional/intentional energy on this stuff than you have to. If anything, it just serves as a great reminder of the difference between actual life in the real world and the parade of appearances crapped out non-stop around it. What I do advocate, is detaching from the pageant of bad theatre masquerading as serious choice and focusing on the business of really living.

I’m walking down the street with a friend last night in Manhattan.  As we do the slow stroll from just below Times Square down the length of the island, we stumble into a conversation about how New York City used to be.  It’s a conversation that probably emerges about a million times a day here.  It’s a conversation that always seems twinged by nostalgia, only we’re both transplants to the Dirty Apple.  So our version of the discussion is a little bit different.

“I watch movies, documentaries about New York in the seventies and eighties and I find myself missing a New York I never experienced,” she says.

And it’s the same with me.  I watched The Warriors for the first time this past summer and just seeing all the graffiti on the subway trains, the grime,  the grittiness, sparked the strange wistfulness of vicarious memories.  I get the same feeling watching Summer of Sam.  Same thing happens when I see Jacob’s Ladder or Wild Style, two films in which the New York of the 80’s is an uncredited star. It’s a New York where you had to really have your wits about you, have a different sort of daily consciousness, a sharpness that you just don’t really need anymore in large swaths of the city, with their flashing marquee McDonald’s (Time Squares) or hundred Starbucks.

Not that I mind not getting held up or mugged or any of the other things that, in my vicarious memory, are connected to the New York that got replaced.

“I’m standing inside of Petland yesterday and I realize, ‘This used to be Studio 54.’  How ridiculous is that?” she says.

“Right?”

It’s that weird, self-aware exasperation that comes with a sense of a history that is not, was not yours, although you wish you had something concrete–a plaque, a marker, something, through which to connect physically with it.  Not that either of us would’ve enjoyed ourselves in a sea of coked out assholes in tight-crotch pants.  All the same, to walk through that space and be able to viscerally connect with the fact that certain cultural moments and figures once occupied the same space–David Bowie, Debbie Harry, Pattie Smith, et. al.–would be easier if you weren’t slow-strolling through an aisle of chew toys, catnip and Kibble.

These are not our memories, though.

But these aren’t the only vicarious memories out there, are they.  I remember growing up in corn country with a whole lot of tie-dyed kids nostalgic for the sixties, all the peace, the love, the honest sex they missed.  Hell, I remember missing the high school my sister went to; once I got to the same building I really sensed I’d missed all the good stuff by quite a few years.

I also think about that other vicarious memory, the memories of tragedies and injustices and the like which implant themselves in so many groups, so many people who have never been through it.  Not content with settling for holding grudges against the dead, whom they never knew, mourning for the sufferings of relatives that they only vaguely remember, if at all, they end up laying their vicarious anger and scorn on other living individuals who were likewise never present for the events and whose vicarious memories are probably quite different from theirs.

Hell, history is vicarious memory, isn’t it.  And plenty of us, not just rabbit hole explorers and parapolitical researchers, are immersed deeply in it.  It’s not useless or purposeless.  It’s just a strange thing, that’s all, these borrowed memories we pick up, use and carry.

I didn’t want to write about this stuff again because I’m not sure that it’s helpful. But, as far as I see it, it’s a reality that is going on.

At least Ty Brown is beginning to see this, albeit from his own somewhat different angle.

Britney has been propped up as a representation of a goddess and, like all goddess representations in this kind of ritual cult-sure, she’s just as quickly being sacrificed–for our entertainment and for our debasement.

As I wrote almost a year ago in Britney and the Bald Call:

Our culture seems to be entranced by a particulary debased form of bhakti, based on coercive, psychic human sacrifice. I talked about it in regards to Anna Nicole Smith, set up as a representative of a god/dess, a temple idol to be worshipped by the masses and then sacrificed when the time came.

And elsewhere:

But no matter how beloved a temple goddess may be, she will only ever be a representation for the masses and even then, only for a season. And when her youth and tenderness threaten to leave her, then the sacrifice comes.

Our Cult-Sure has made only one real innovation. In earlier cultures and times, a known priest publicly performed the rite of ritual human sacrifice. Later, the priest’s role was taken over by a more suitable proxy, an anonymous hooded man–the faceless executioner. In both those cases, the ritual act still took place at the hands of one whose identity was known or, being an individual act, could be known. Now, our Spectacular Cult-Sure utilizes hundreds and hundreds of proxy executioners, employees of the Spectacle and its Spectacular State (TV pundits, gossip columnists, media-promoted head shrinkers–a.k.a. witch doctors), full of cynical careerist agendas, fake concern and compassion. These agents, mostly unknowingly, push and cajole indirectly so that it’s as likely these days for the ritual sacrificial subject, the god/dess stand-in, to perform the final act of murder upon hirself. And all the while, through design, stupidity or willed repression of awareness and culpability, victims and executioners alike remain in the dark.

Forgive them, for they know not what they do.

This Cult-Sure’s innovation is that the executioner cannot be scapegoated because the executioner is everywhere and is everyone.

The priests and the magicians, now called cultural planners and technocrats, remain unidentifiable and interchangeable to all those playing the roles below them.

When a pop god/dess is sacrificed to the masses, they are fed the energies of that image upon which they have thrown their hopes, dreams, time and energy. Simultaneously, through feeding them in this way, a massive amount of psychic energy is released via the catharsis of millions of enthralled consumers. This energy is unwittingly fed back into the Spectacle and harnessed to the next elected sacrifice, as well as, I’d suggest, for the furtherance of other goals…

Can anyone remember what else happened in the world on the day when Britney was put in the hospital?

***

Related Articles:

Anna Nicole Smith and the Other Goddess Worship

Britney and the Bald Call: From Isht to ISht

Meet the New Sacrificial Goddess? Same as the Old One?

Cult-Sure

First, Robert Anton Wilson died.  Now, Norman Mailer has joined him in the great beyond.  You may not necessarily see the connection between the two men on the face of it, aside from them both having been writers and old white guys.  It would seem that their style and the focus of their writing were different, but both of them were erudite and concerned with deeper matters that touch upon what it is to be human, what is of value, and the nature of our mysterious selves and the mysterious world in which we live, two things utterly non-reducible to anyone’s reductionist creed, be it the narrow-minded religionist or the narrow-minded true believer of scientism.

No less a tricksterish navigator of rabbit holes than Peter Levenda, has written a very fine  memorial to Mailer.

Go here to read it. 

We’ve gone from tazering seemingly conspiracy-oriented college students while the “audience” of fellow students and administrators do nothing, to having audiences cheer at a live taping of Real Time when Bill Maher helps remove “9-11 Truthers” from his studio.

Amazing how quickly the (short-) attention economy of Spectacle moves.

What’s telling are two remarks Maher made during the confrontation on his recent show. The last comment, to security in the aftermath of the fracas, that “ass-kicking is what’s called for,” speaks volumes, as did the cheers from Maher’s audience. But Maher’s statement is illuminated by an earlier remark, which reveals pretty much everything we need to know here.

After, returning to the glass triangle over which he presides during his discussion-tainments, Maher barks back at the hecklers: “This is not a debate. It’s a debate between us [the people on the stage]. You’re the audience.”

In that instant, Maher gives the game away. See, the great sin of these hecklers is not so much the sin of having unpopular reality maps or minority opinions. (Well,  their only minority insofar as the manufactured consent of T.V. reality is concerned). No, their real sin was the offense of disrupting the show, breaking the illusion of Real Time’s usual faux-debates. The hecklers committed the great sin of messing with the entertainment expectations of the other viewers, at home and in the studio, and of momentarily messing with Maher and company’s ability to cater to those expectations.

Deep down, what the expectations of Real Time viewers are, I believe, boil down to the following. They want to hear Bill make some witty jokes. They want to see him ask leading questions (which he does quite often). They want to hear establishment talking heads and celebrities say whatever it is that establishment talking heads and celebrities ((of the left and right) are expected to say on any given topic. That isn’t to say that the parties are pretending to believe the things they say, though, now and again that’s probably the case. Rather, it’s to say that if you’re on Maher’s show, or any “round-table discussion” show, whether of the so-called serious news or of the comedy-hybrid variety, you’ve been vetted in advance. You are there because you represent a certain narrow type that will play off certain other narrow types in a way that, hopefully, will make for “good television.” And what “good television” means is “entertainment spectacle.” And what is allowed as entertainment is itself quite narrow. It has to be. There’s money to be made and the investments of advertisers and corporate backers to safeguard.

Bill Maher acting tough guy, though, shows that he’s a great improviser. This beats his usual studied sneers and eye-rolls (the stock and trade of his breed of stand-up) six-ways to Tuesday. Too bad, it not only puts him in the camp with Bush (as he says his views on 9/11 conspiracy talk do); it also puts him in the camp with out of control cops quick to tazer first and ask questions later. After all, he believes those who make themselves a nuisance during a performance deserve “ass-kickings”.

Garish, faux-serious entertainments are the souls’ blood of the Spectacle, its religion. Bill Maher kicking irritating 9/11 Truthers off his set becomes like Jesus kicking the money changers out of the temple. Only Maher’s is not a righteous act.  It’s simply an act, even if he believes in it. It can be no more and no less, because it takes place on Their stage (whoever “They” are).

Not to let the hecklers off too easy. They, like the tazered student (who went from victim to activist hero to punchline for the talking heads of VH1’s vapid Best Week Ever in the span of only a week), do a disservice to the truth and to any real, positive change. First, they aim for confrontation, which just shows that they have accepted the rules of the Spectacle. And that acceptance means they cannot possibly win.

The heckling 9-11 Truthers accepted that in order to win their cause they must cross over as a legitimate, respected presence in the artificial mass consciousness of the mainstream media. But to believe that they need that kind of exposure and that it could lead to anything but a hollowing out of whatever they think they stand for, is to already be a controlled element: just another part of the show. Likewise, they seem to believe that Maher is actually important simply for representing (as opposed to actually being) a voice of brave dissent. They set themselves up to need him far more than he will ever need them.

Perhaps the greatest problem with Bill Maher’s hecklers was their poorly thought-out tactics. The powers at work in the Spectacle got smart after the 60’s. (Or. Perhaps, their need for certain images simply changed.) Whereas in the 60’s peaceful protesters were routinely and unjustly assaulted by the forces of the State, thus winning public sympathy via the media, this is no longer the case. In this day and age, those same kinds of peaceful protests will simply be ignored by the media altogether or given a mere five seconds between other news items. What this has led to has been a need by certain activist groups who believe that media penetration and Spectacular coverage will achieve their objective, to increasingly press for low-level confrontation of some sort; and if not low-level confrontation, then they believe their cause requires some sort of sexy theater, i.e. self-exploitation. Alex Jones with a megaphone, naked PETA girls making out for the animals: they’re all trapped inside the same Spectacular theater. And what are the results of this grasping for media attention as a means to seemingly noble ends? Aside from lining the pockets of certain leaders or granting them status as media stars/whores, these grasping tactics tend to create cynicism and derision in the very people these activists aim to reach. Few people enjoy public exhibitionists or those with bad manners unless they have already agreed to pay to see them.

Also, these flawed, media-dependent tactics, I suspect, lead to the sort of bumper-sticker activism–the activism of soundbites–that is encouraged and represented within our Spectacular culture. Trouble with soundbite activism is that it tends toward reductionism and the kind of arguments that are thin, full of holes and easily shot down. This is really no different than the quality of arguments offered by establishment propaganda except for one tiny thing. The establishment ain’t gonna expose the holes in its own reality tunnels, but it sure as hell will expose the ones in yours–and ruthlessly.

Don’t forget that the propaganda of the dominant power structure has a much larger fan base than you or any activist, a huge audience eager to cheer and applaud more of the same stuff they’ve come to expect and accept. (And passively commenting and waxing ironic on this fact is simply the form applauding the show takes for the jaded set.)
Even as infiltrators, the hecklers were “the audience” just as Bill Maher said. Problem is, if you begin from within the audience of Spectacle, you’re bound to be looked at as little more than an irritating intrusion, a wanna-be and a hack actor, by both the audience and the real actors in the bright lights. That’s exactly what happened in real media-time on Real Time. And when you post replies on YouTube where you force laughs after your own smug, self-congratulatory non-jokes, you’re likely to look even more like a hack to anyone who’s not already part of your choir.

It’s better to forgo the show altogether. Don’t sit in the audience, don’t disrupt it. Leave it or ignore it. Create your own show. Or better yet, simply act within the world with others, whether or not you ever make it on the networks, cable, YouTube or the mass-stream press– and whether or not you’ve got an audience.

***

Entrain to better frequencies.

I recently found an old Rolling Stone interview from 1974 between William S. Burroughs and David Bowie and some befuddled rock journalist who comes off as a total third wheel. At the time that this rock journalist set up the meeting, the two weren’t all too familiar with each other’s work. Bowie had never read Burroughs before the meeting got planned; and he’d only read Nova Express by the time of the encounter. Burroughs, for his part, read Bowie’s lyrics, but had not listened to much of his music.

Nevertheless, as the totally-getting-in-the-way rock-journalist guy tells us, each party was very keen on meeting the other. I’d hazard to guess that the reason may have been, aside from their roles as artists, that both men knew they shared magickal affinities. Burroughs experimented with and utilized magick quite frequently (see the cut-up method, for instance). And according to Peter-R. Koenig’s research, the same goes for Bowie, who was apparently quite heavily into Crowleyan practices as far back as the sixties. But alas, that’s just a guess and it’s your hazard if you choose to entertain it. So do with my hunch what you will.

Anywhats, the interview is quite the read, for what it does and doesn’t say about the two men. The rock star and the writer chat about Bowie’s work, about a civilization crash (nothing new under the sun, eh, Daniel Pinchbeck?), make some pretty ridiculous and possibly racist conjecture about the “soul” of Chinese people, banter about sexual liberation and predict an impending backlash, which has since come to pass if “abstinence education,” virginity vows and the Christian Coalition mean anything, and then–?

The two men talk about Andy Warhol.

And for its brevity, this is the most rabbit-holesque aspect of the conversation because both men seem to say that Warhol wasn’t human. And with years of wacky David Icke cribbings from V behind (and within some of) us, it’s hard for rabbit hole burrowers not to read certain meanings and jump to certain conclusions based on what Bowie and Burroughs say.

Sans drum roll, here it is(emphasis added):

Burroughs: Have you ever met Warhol?

Bowie: Yes, about two years ago I was invited up to The Factory. We got in the lift and went up and when it opened there was a brick wall in front of us. We rapped on the wall and they didn’t believe who we were. So we went back down and back up again till finally they opened the wall and everybody was peering around at each other. That was shortly after the gun incident. I met this man who was the living dead. Yellow in complexion, a wig on that was the wrong colour, little glasses. I extended my hand and the guy retired, so I thought, ‘The guy doesn’t like flesh, obviously he’s reptilian.’ He produced a camera and took a picture of me. And I tried to make small talk with him, and it wasn’t getting anywhere.

But then he saw my shoes. I was wearing a pair of gold-and-yellow shoes, and he says, ‘I adore those shoes, tell me where you got those shoes.’ He then started a whole rap about shoe design and that broke the ice. My yellow shoes broke the ice with Andy Warhol.

I adore what he was doing. I think his importance was very heavy, it’s becoming a big thing to like him now. But Warhol wanted to be cliche, he wanted to be available in Woolworth’s, and be talked about in that glib type of manner. I hear he wants to make real films now, which is very sad because the films he was making were the things that should be happening. I left knowing as little about him as a person as when I went in.

Burroughs: I don’t think that there is any person there. It’s a very alien thing, completely and totally unemotional. He’s really a science fiction character. He’s got a strange green colour.

Bowie: That’s what struck me. He’s the wrong colour, this man is the wrong colour to be a human being. Especially under the stark neon lighting in The Factory. Apparently it is a real experience to behold him in the daylight.

Burroughs: I’ve seen him in all light and still have no idea as to what is going on, except that it is something quite purposeful. It’s not energetic, but quite insidious, completely asexual. His films will be the late-night movies of the future.

Now cue spooky, oogy, 1950’s horror movie music.

Before you take what Bowie and Burroughs say too literally–or too reductionist–keep in mind these are artists and adepts of the mighty metaphor. And as they both say earlier in the interview, they’re both fond of a good lie.  Plus, let’s not forget their speculations about the Chinese (once you read the interview, anyway).

Take in all that information and do with it what you will.

To read the full interview, go here.

***

I’m not a prophet or a partisan. I’m just a poet of realities.