shantih shantih shantih

I will admit that this out.com article on the blonde pop star whose name rhymes with Baby Zaza is the best argument I’ve read that she’s the embodiment of postmodernism. It’s true. She is a mind-bending whirl of influences. She steals like the hurricane; she is everything and nothing, a mirrored disco ball reflecting the tiny desires of millions -nay, brillions!- of fans. I say this sincerely. She is apocalyptically famous.

Unfortunately, all that means nothing, because postmodernism is dead. It died decades ago, with the rise of Andy Warhol — a thought that brings to mind the famous moment in Watchmen, when the heroes are abruptly told that the villain enacted his evil plan “thirty-five minutes ago.” They are left standing with their fantastic, useless toys dangling in their hands, in shock. It’s already over. The moment a subversive idea becomes popular is the moment it dies, and postmodernism was already pretty popular before the pop star whose name rhymes with Maybe Baba arrived -out of breath; covered in gold dust and wearing a borrowed bra- to become its belated messiah.

Now, what the fuck was postmodernism? This is not a joke or a philistine complaint; since it’s such a complex term, it’s a question we all must answer individually. Personally, I define it as it seems most often used: a philosophy holding that to be perfectly and elaborately allusive is the highest aim of art, that meaning beyond the superficial is an illusion dreamed up by pompous Victorians — and that all of this is to be celebrated, because in the absence of possibility for change, our only options are celebration and complaint.

That’s an exciting idea, but not for long. It’s true that its foundation was strong. Allusion is a cornerstone of good art; then we have the genuine headiness of the idea that nothing means anything, that we’re all essentially failed moral actors. I don’t want to belittle the strength of this idea. There is a good deal of truth in it. The only problem is that, once you believe it, it’s hard to believe anything else at the same time, which means you’re missing out on a crucial part of critical thought.

To believe anything from this position of freeing hopelessness, or to leave said position entirely, requires us to become people of faith — an increasingly stigmatized decision for modern intellectuals, which is why many intelligent and vigorous people have believed in nothing for decades. You can look at them in museums. Also, unfortunately, in universities and libraries and cafes and parks and private homes. These are perfectly intelligent, wise people; it’s just that they’ve decided that nothing they do can have the remotest effect on a yawping and bizarre universe, and the only fit topic is, indeed, how yawping and bizarre it all is.

This is boring. Anything is boring which refuses to engage. And when I look at a pop star like the one whose name rhymes with surprisingly few neutral-sounding words, all I can think is: we should be done with this. We should be beyond a point now where we are dazzled by a commentary on a commentary on a commentary. Nothing is ever interesting which exists only for its own sake — and the great example is fame-for-fame’s-sake, even if it’s fame-for-the-sake-of-parodying-fame. There is nothing clever about parodying something that’s already parodic. All you’re doing there is tapping into a rich vein. It helps to be a sharp needle (to switch veins, from ore to blood) — but it’s not required. Other recent pop phenomena, women who don’t seem all that sharp, prove that readily enough.

What would interest me more would be a New Obscurity. How such a movement might work, I don’t know — whether its members would simply reject traditional publication, or would reject publication entirely; whether they would dress in plain gray clothes or dress as wittily as they might otherwise, only refusing to photograph themselves or be photographed. I don’t know if they would prefer to be invisible or despised. I certainly can’t find an example in my own life, since I can’t separate fame from success any more than most of my contemporaries.

I say “most” because I’m convinced that there are New Obscurantists already, and perhaps have been in every century; you just haven’t heard of them. But because of the way we were raised, New Obscurity is impossible for most of us. Perhaps that’s actually best; you’d spend so much of yourself resisting the desire for raw recognition (with its attendant scent of postmodernism’s corpse) that you’d never write about anything else.

But if we want to resist it to a reasonable degree, I think an insistence on our own terms will help. Artistic fulfillment, and a sense of power over our work, can help to keep us from despairing if we go unrecognized and thus fail the official culture’s test of worth. If we work carefully, producing what we want without a specific eye to being seen at any cost, we can still quietly grab the rest of the world, all that she hasn’t yet (in partnership, of course, with the many fans and thousand predecessors and corporate identities she represents).

So, like most arguments which start out big, this one ends small, and with the usual little individualist plea: please deny this woman, in her human and metaphorical forms, by producing things with some kind of perspective, and occasionally for yourself alone.

PS This post has been obviously influenced both by “Three Guineas” and Thief (the plot of which eventually concerns itself with a secretive faction of warrior librarians, a sort of New Obscurity Militant, though they end up failing because they don’t really have anything to say).

PPS If I’m going to link to it, I have to take at least a token moment to complain about the Out article’s fervent belief that it speaks for the entire “gay community” by attempting to speak for those camp-oriented,  assimilationist, apolitical, postmodern-minded individuals who happen to be homosexual male fans of the pop star.

Out is theoretically aimed at both men and women, and more importantly, it’s theoretically aimed at everyone who may enjoy the company of their own gender from time to time — which must make it awfully hard to write for, much like writing for a magazine aimed specifically at strict heterosexuals who have nothing else in common.