Monday, June 20, 2005

Nobility of the Image 9

And so, the resentment that many Americans feel for “Hollywood” or “the media” is much less strange than it might seem. It is basically class resentment. Working class Americans realize that the Nobility of the Image hates their way of life, their existence, and the core values that they shape their life around. In fact, they get to see what the Nobility of the Image thinks of them in the “small-town hick” characters that seem to have stepped out of Breughel and into mainstream films, television shows, and books. There is a way of communicating that seems prevalent in most media today; it is sarcastic, sneering, ironic and shallow. Comedy consists of the social outcast being unaware that his clothes are outdated; a sort of mean-spirited ridicule exemplified by Napoleon Dynamite passes for wit. Vain materialism and profligate sexuality is passed off as “sophistication” and elite narcissism as “self-esteem”. Of course, little thought is given to the fact that 51% of the country makes less than $18,000 a year and so cannot afford “sophistication” or “self-esteem”. Again, the values of the elite are the values of the society.

And so, I think that working class hatred for hipsters is quite justified. Imagine that you work sixty hours a week to barely scrape by and support your family. You have no hopes of becoming rich, but you have the things that you invest value in, such as religion and tradition, that buoy you in times of hardship. Because your life does not revolve around money (you’re well aware that that game is fixed) it revolves instead around a deeper understanding of the world. And so, when your child becomes convinced that you’re a bigot because you’re religious, a moron because you work for a living and come from the South, and terribly unsophisticated because you don’t encourage them to develop a loose sexuality, of course you resent the Nobility of the Image. Why wouldn’t you?

Thomas Frank recently wrote a book entitled “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” His point was that Kansas has been economically devastated by the policies of twenty years of Republican politicians, yet still votes Republican. He could not figure this out and so he finally came to the conclusion that Kansas residents have been hoodwinked. Of course, this was a satisfying conclusion for the urban elites who bought the book; they always suspected that people in the Midwest are morons.

The problem is that Frank doesn’t realize a very simple fact- Republican and Democrat do not mean anything anymore. There is just a top and a bottom now, and never the twain shall get together for lunch. Of course, people in Kansas hate the media- have you ever seen what the media thinks of people from Kansas?

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