unpop

The Underground Is A Lie
by Jim Goad

You don't shock me. I shudder with boredom at everything you do, from tattooing your dick to chewing on your own poop. Not only have I seen all of your weak gestures before, I've seen them done better.

You remind me of someone I knew in college. His name was Mark. Pale, unshaven, and wearing his dishwater-colored hair in a Mohawk, Mark was an anarchist. He railed against the corporate elite and cheered for the collective. Projecting himself as his own mascot, he defaced hundreds of buildings with a goofy cartoon drawing of a Mohawk-wearing anarchist. The back of his leather jacket had an anarchy 'A' crudely daubed in white paint. Mark could be seen around town clustered with similarly disaffected youth, drinking out of paper bags, committing petty acts of vandalism, and plotting America's overthrow.

Unfortunately, Mark's parents were publishing magnates who had tucked away forty thousand dollars in stock for their baby anarchist. I once watched Mark transform into a sobbing bitch when he lost a bootleg cassette of his favorite hardcore band. Despite his lowlife appearance, he was a rich boy with the time and money to act poor. So were all of his friends. So are all of the people who consider themselves "alternative." Mark - you remind me of him.

Like Mark, your underground is strictly an upper-class phenom. You're a body-pierced, hair-dyeing, chain-smoking, whip-carrying FAKE, a little bitchy snitch who hasn't been hit enough. Your black eyeliner, rubber pants, and asymmetrical hairdo are a post-pubescent way of playing costume. You can't handle the guilt of your comfortable background, so you commit the heinous crime of slumming. No one worships trash in the slums, where they have to eat and breathe it daily. In poor neighborhoods, weirdness invites violence. Yet a blue-blooded nabob like you acts triflingly eccentric and considers it radical.

The "creative community" doesn't consist of the most creative people; you're the ones with the most spare time to create, those whose parents tolerate - and often finance - your flighty pursuits. What usually passes for art is just the idle noodling of the leisure class.

Your gizzard ululates with, "You sellout!" Well, the wealthy are the only ones who can afford not to sell out. Yes, there are a holy few who have refused cash when it's been dangled in front of them - they're called masochists. If you're still reading this, you're a masochist, too.

...

True psychos stand alone. The only pioneers are those who give voice to the ugliest corridors of their unconscious without fear of censure from any quarter. The acts that ordinary people commit behind closed doors are beyond the ken of any performance artist. Humans' innate weirdness is far more threatening and entertaining than anything the professional shock mavens could conjure.

I boggle your conception of a world split between cognoscenti and squares. I subvert the subversives and bury the underground under six feet of its own hypocritical manure. I perform unsolicited tattooing, body-piercing, and ritual scarification upon you.

Give vent to your sickest fantasies, but don't call it art. Cornhole Barbara Bush, but only if you want to. Sketch your astrological chart with your own feces, but only if it feels good. If you want to do something truly radical, kill yourself… the world will be a better place.