I have gone off on this before, but it's worth saying again...
We just finished watching Pretty in Pink and now I have one more movie to add to
the list of Hollywood flicks with the message that you need to compromise who
you are to be happy. Here I would be thinking of where Annie Potts character
abandons her pseudo punk attire in order to get laid.
Also on the list of similar flicks with the same shit message, Beatlejuice
(maybe spelled correctly, not willing to Google it to find out, it doesn't
deserve it) SLC Punk, Breakfast Club (Don't be gloomy, if you stop being so
bleak the popular boys will want to fuck you, and you can fuck your way to
happiness and inner contentment!) and pretty much every movie that has someone
who is goth or otherwise engaged in the counterculture that has been produced in
the last few decades. They spend 7/8th of the movie being cute and quirky,
because that's all individuality is you know, comic relief for people who are
secretly pining for the approval of the masses, then at the very end they
realize that they were sorely misguided cretins for EVER being so damned wacky,
repent, and start looking and acting normal because everyone looks better when
they look like a store bought mannequin.
Fuck this whole message. Fuck the idea that you can be happy if you just let
someone else screw you to happiness because you dressed pretty enough to make
them notice the REAL you.
Parents worry that rap music and video games are sending the wrong message to
our kids, that's the least of their problems. The REAL issue is shit like this,
the subversive shit you never see unless you actually pay attention. It's the
nepenthe you never tasted, slipped into your entertainment to disguise the shit
taste of it's true nature. Don’t look inside yourself, don’t spend time being
introspective and engaging in self discovery, just let someone else come along
and fuck your insecurities away. This is why the self help sections are
overflowing at shit retailers like Barnes and Noble, because no one has a
fucking clue who they are so they have to balance it between who they THINK they
are and what everyone else wants. People need instruction books to tell them
what they want. That is just sad and alarming.
Spend a few years being outlandish as a teenager, but when you hit your twenties
sell it all the fuck out for a respectable job because your employment is going
to be you. You don’t work as a stockbroker, you ARE a stockbroker. You don’t
work for an insurance agency, you ARE an insurance agent.
Be good. Be placid. Be remedial in everything you do and you will be rewarded.
Choke on your own ideals you assholes. I won’t be taken. I watch as people I
know sell themselves off, piece by piece like farmland giving way to Texaco
stations. I see people I know who I actually thought had the stamina to
withstand the torrential downpour of pressure to do what everyone else finds
acceptable give way because it’s easier than to fight it.
“I’m not selling out, I’m buying in…”
That truly resonating sentiment brought to you by SLC Punk… I am sure the people
who joined the Nazi party had similar justifications. Not that I am saying dying
your hair back to brown to get a job and Wang, Bitchass and Shaftlicker Inc. is
on par with joining the Third Reich, I am just saying that humans have this
knack for finding ways to validate anything they do to soothe themselves into
thinking that it is what they really want. It’s easier to alter your personal
perception of how fucked up a situation is, rather than alter the situation.
Live with it but learn to love it because it’s easier.
I feel sick…I think I’ll go outside and blow something up now…how far is
California from here?