Home  New Features A walk through validation street
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A walk through validation street |
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Written by Mertle White
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Tuesday, 07 August 2007 |
Complicity is ubiquitous. How I coped without my daily fix of PeteandKate, PeteandKate PeteandKate before the likes of the London Shite and the London Raper quite literally littered my train back from work I don't know. I now know that if for some inexplicable reason neither of these hapless narcos - one I believe is a model, the other a mate of Rimbaud's - make it into these daily vectors of fame, I will be compensated with the latest from Callum Best's Bymoronic mission to do a fat line off every available media dependante in the West before he dies of floods or bioinsecurity. This noble pursuit, along with the entertainmentals of a troupe of others, is thoroughly monitored and relayed in easy journalese. But I still don't know what a Lindsay Lohan is. Why am I ‘reading' this? Because I'm too tired to read anything with substance but I want to hold a paper in my hands.
Ever slavish to the recorded spectacle, I see that things aren't much different in the real world. Men and women are like the buildings, carving new identity out of tired frames. The local drink and puke bars are easing post-smoking ban fears that women will be easier targets for drug-induced date rape by providing glass covers for unwitting ladies who like to step outside for a fag. Stopping the cause at result rather than root the only way of dealing with the sexually aggressive culture, where young men and ladies are encouraged to exhibit as much of their bodies as possible, or if not at least their boxers or brasiers, while still for some staying as an object of desire. It's like a sneak preview for the lucky, with confirmation that follows when a picture text is received again a tantalising insinuation. It's the culture of the new and the young, but anyone can get enfranchised. Don't worry, it won't make it onto Youth Tube, but there are plenty of sites as well as mainstream organisations or viral agencies that will take it. We like to see our live in pixellated replay now. Fights, fucks, fuck-ups, rows. We may need to get a life, but at least we are all l!ve on one platform or another.
On Big Brother, Charley (I don't know what she ‘does' either), epitomises this predatory culture. I haven't watched this already-tired TV format (or ‘pioneeering sociological experiment' as those in the business like to call it), but tales of her ruthless pulling prowess abound in diverse media. In fact, I was naïve to suggest that they needed a bona fide career when their self-representation is clearly such a full-time job for these avatars of instant gratification.
She'll happily say she's a sex-obsessed bitch to her self, but don't try saying that to her face. Like the high street honeys in the Surrey bars, the double-standard has been erased. In girl power, such strong-willed self-effacement is seen as a good thing. "We is calling da shots now, ya get me?" Nah, it makes me feel uneasy. So uneasy that I would never suggest that the fetishising of the female looks runs all the way down to the even youngers and the obscenely young - because I'll be told the only people who justify child abduction are pederasts themselves.
Real libidinal spaces do exist, but suggestive frissons turn up in
surprising areas, On TV, all the passion and the debate are on
property shows, budding nuclear family mothers touring houses doing
their best to come across all yummy (and if they don't they'll turn up
on a personal makeover programme). Allsop phones up the agents with an
offer in a heightened state of expectation, the potential of arousal
apparent as her pursed lips mouth sweet nothings about housing stocks
down the cell line. Stop it at once. No seriously do. When this much is
invested in the wiles of the property latter, something is awry.
There's nothing to do round here, the kids cry. Except prepare for a
life of getting an erection over a detached house, it seems. Certainly,
there seems to be a paucity of public space in some areas. Back in
Sutton, sitting on the smoke-free train platform to eat lunch seems to
be taking off. Take it in, appreciate your surroundings. In Lewisham,
when the people's day gives the local youth something to attend,
there's an unusually high number of arrests of young black men.
Lewisham Police couldn't possibly say whether this was provoked by the
stop and search tactics at the entrances to the park. Another day of
derisive division between the classes. And why were five Babylon
meatwagons needed to deal with a small-scale argument between a few
guys in our street the other week? Does this reassure the neighbours -
no it makes them think there is more of a problem than there actually
is.
In the public meeting places such as franchised coffee houses and even
the very streets, the notion that if you pay for something it will be a
positive experience out of obligation is omnipresent. If Best, Doherty,
Frost, Geldof jnr and the indie bands are portrayed as having a great
time, then so should Jo and Joe Public. I think again of those daily
freesheets whose excitable listings cover a cornucopia of restaurants,
bars, pubs and clubs with glowing reviews every day. You cannot be
morose in a pub now - that is not their key demographic. Parks are no
longer parks, they are green spaces ready to be reviewed by citizen
journalists and able to host their own mini-Glastonburys, sponsored by
the BNP. This is for the best - they will tell us how to drink coffee
given that every activity is now an experience. Every advertisement
abounds in imperatives to transport you into a ‘fun' zone - at Riley's
snooker they major on Eat Drink Play as if somehow just hitting these
buttons will make the evening a fun day out. In return, you will be
blasé and join in with the whole absolutist coding - "it was good," "I
didn't like it" - as if these were valid critiques. Can you sum it up
in a sentence? No, even less.
Priorities are skewed in the infotech space too. At work I suffer the
indignity of being told how to address people on emails when we could
be thrashing out mission critical issues, things relevant to the job,
not a pointless ways and means lecture on how to send a fucking
message. This is not reflective of any new paradigm but the traditional
problem of people letting their prejudices get in way of fair
treatment of individuals for unspecified reasons.
Award-winning online newspaper Guardian Unlimited uses its bright new revamp to
make it look like a magazine, the news much less prominent than it used
to be in the viewer-friendly scroll down version. But you can order a
vinyl-to-mp3 turntable/digital system for the special person in your
life. On a newspaper, you are a consumer too, just like at the
supermarket where you are apologised to. "Thanks for waiting" they tell
us, even though I was in the ‘queue' for about 30 seconds.
It gets no better in print. Recreational pastimes, chiefly sport and
music, drive and indeed dictate the frivolity of the news agenda. Does
the Sun really need comprehensive festival coverage or to report that
Arctics' Turner is going into the studio with an unknown band? Does the
fact that United have ensnared an Australian wunderkind (with a You
Tube file, natch) need to be on pages 4 and 5? And when they get
serious, they get it wrong. The Mirror and Sun run ‘journalists on the
frontline' features. No, not McClintock recounting how he was 24 hours
from Mostar, but wizened old hacks in Iraq and Afghanistan dispatching
back the ‘reality' of these wars on error, not forgetting to include a
dose of ‘who dares win" militant jingoism. Also, Fran Healy reported
from Darfur about the dastardly ‘janjaweeds'. Every little helps. No it
doesn't, not when it's inconsistent and selective.
I put the papers down. "That's how I'm living," we claim, some
half-memorising Ice-T's tune from way back. And what better correlation
for the minnows than the life of an OG? And why everything is justified
as ‘authentic' as a way of going with this flow. We are authentically brutalised, oversexualised and stimulated, leaving no room for any
self-determination or escape. It's easy to commute complicity into
validation and that's where we are right now.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 07 August 2007 )
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