Get Bitter, and cling to guns or religion or award shows...
de Carl Gunhouse
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In Kanye West’s recent radio appearance on New York City’s legendary Funkmaster Flex show, he addressed his ever-swirling celebrity controversies. In keeping with his healthy ego, West said that his interrupting Taylor Swift’s MTV award-acceptance speech was a more important cultural moment than when he accused George Bush during a post-Katrina telethon on NBC, of not caring about black people. As odd as it might sound, insulting the President of the United States on network TV holds less cultural relevance than insulting a pop star on basic cable. In all likelihood, people indifferent to popular music know West only as the guy who ruined Taylor Swift’s moment and not the person former President George W. Bush blamed for the lowest point of his presidency.
Even Barack Obama’s historic election night with his stirring acceptance speech drew only 13.1million viewers, whereas three months later, 92 million tuned in to watch the Super Bowl. Not only is insulting a pop star more of a transgression than insulting the president, but in any given year, seven times more Americans show greater interest in who is crowned the champion of the National Football League than who is going to run the country.
Of course even in the best of times, award shows, football games and celebrities are going to be a welcome distraction from everyday drudgery. The creation of much needed diversion and the effect it has on how we live is at the heart of Calvin Lee’s eloquent photographs of images and image-makers in Los Angeles. His seductive pictures invite you to lose yourself in a carefree world of decadent superficiality: a world that is very enticing in times like these when unemployment is nearing ten percent, housing prices are slumping and there are no foreseeable solutions.
What is so paradoxical is that so many of our distractions have brought about our current situation. Distractions like the ever-present luxury car ads, the constant upgrades of phone technology, and the just-out-of-reach dream that we might be able to live a life similar to those celebrities, who US Weekly reveals, are just like us! If only we work hard enough, we too might end up with an MTV Cribs-like home with a two-story atrium on a golf course. This desire to be connected to the rewards that come with celebrity are lived out in Gina Dawson’s hand carved award trophies created while watching the award shows. These rough amalgams of celebrity accolades become both an act of defiance and contrition towards those desiring to be in the upper strata of our society.
These Hollywood dreams of comfort and luxury have spurred loans and financial risks that we couldn’t imagine going wrong. Getting laid off, getting sick, or accepting the idea that our homes might be worth less than our mortgages were not plausible scenarios. It was too hard to face the possibility that we could no longer afford our car payments, much less our mortgages, and that as Americans, in the end, we weren’t going to end up with all those things in the Super Bowl ads. Things can start with the purest of desires and very quickly descend into a very dark place, as captured in Jenny Drumgoole’s loving and bizarre quest to get her mother a cookbook autographed by celebrity TV cook Paula Deen, the reigning queen of the more-is-more American culinary philosophy.
Such illusions of luxury bottom out into our current reality with Tanyth Berkeley’s touching and otherworldly portraits of prostitutes in a surprisingly idyllic Atlanta. These are women about to be left behind, caught just before the point when age intervenes to bring their desperate careers to a halt.
Christine Rogers rounds out the show with a disarming video in which she lip-synchs a YouTube clip of a small child reciting the Lord’s Prayer. This familiar bedtime ritual is performed for an unknown Internet audience in hopes that some greater power (God help us) will be looking over us in these troubled times.
Even Barack Obama’s historic election night with his stirring acceptance speech drew only 13.1million viewers, whereas three months later, 92 million tuned in to watch the Super Bowl. Not only is insulting a pop star more of a transgression than insulting the president, but in any given year, seven times more Americans show greater interest in who is crowned the champion of the National Football League than who is going to run the country.
Of course even in the best of times, award shows, football games and celebrities are going to be a welcome distraction from everyday drudgery. The creation of much needed diversion and the effect it has on how we live is at the heart of Calvin Lee’s eloquent photographs of images and image-makers in Los Angeles. His seductive pictures invite you to lose yourself in a carefree world of decadent superficiality: a world that is very enticing in times like these when unemployment is nearing ten percent, housing prices are slumping and there are no foreseeable solutions.
What is so paradoxical is that so many of our distractions have brought about our current situation. Distractions like the ever-present luxury car ads, the constant upgrades of phone technology, and the just-out-of-reach dream that we might be able to live a life similar to those celebrities, who US Weekly reveals, are just like us! If only we work hard enough, we too might end up with an MTV Cribs-like home with a two-story atrium on a golf course. This desire to be connected to the rewards that come with celebrity are lived out in Gina Dawson’s hand carved award trophies created while watching the award shows. These rough amalgams of celebrity accolades become both an act of defiance and contrition towards those desiring to be in the upper strata of our society.
These Hollywood dreams of comfort and luxury have spurred loans and financial risks that we couldn’t imagine going wrong. Getting laid off, getting sick, or accepting the idea that our homes might be worth less than our mortgages were not plausible scenarios. It was too hard to face the possibility that we could no longer afford our car payments, much less our mortgages, and that as Americans, in the end, we weren’t going to end up with all those things in the Super Bowl ads. Things can start with the purest of desires and very quickly descend into a very dark place, as captured in Jenny Drumgoole’s loving and bizarre quest to get her mother a cookbook autographed by celebrity TV cook Paula Deen, the reigning queen of the more-is-more American culinary philosophy.
Such illusions of luxury bottom out into our current reality with Tanyth Berkeley’s touching and otherworldly portraits of prostitutes in a surprisingly idyllic Atlanta. These are women about to be left behind, caught just before the point when age intervenes to bring their desperate careers to a halt.
Christine Rogers rounds out the show with a disarming video in which she lip-synchs a YouTube clip of a small child reciting the Lord’s Prayer. This familiar bedtime ritual is performed for an unknown Internet audience in hopes that some greater power (God help us) will be looking over us in these troubled times.
Características y detalles
- Categoría principal: Libros de arte y fotografía
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Características: Cuadrado pequeño, 18×18 cm
N.º de páginas: 20 - Fecha de publicación: ene. 09, 2011
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