A Pinoy Blog About Nothing

“Pop culture rolled over and died some time ago. Some people actually think Marilyn Manson is scary, that Kurt Cobain had something to do with rebellion, that Bret Easton Ellis is a dangerous writer, that it’s a good thing that you can buy McDonalds in Prague, that movies are somehow relevant to our lives.

Television is our stage and our anaesthetic. Real life happens on television in preference to our home and streets. People resolve their relationships on freakshow chatshows instead of in living rooms or beds or even goddamn bars.

And it spreads.
Rupert Murdoch beams his shit into Asia, English children are taught that Z is pronounced Zee by goddamn Barney, and all of a sudden, world cultures become the Monoculture, the same conversation, the same clothes, the same show.
All tuned to Channel Zero.

And, all over the world, one by one, we quit fighting it.
We sit and we put the book we’re reading down and laugh at the arseholes on Jerry Springer, snigger at Matthew Perry, get our news managed for us by CNN, and suddenly we’re all like the rest. We’re in cultural lockstep, taking holidays in other people’s misery, asking for our stinking badges, dead heads nodding over phosphordot fixes.”

- Warren Ellis
Introduction for Channel Zero tpb, 2000

…monoculture…
…the same conversation…
…stopped fighting it…

Yeah sounds about right.
09.25.06