Vacation: Day 8 – Ain’t it cute?

“What’s right? If you want something, you have the right to take it. If you want to do something, you have the right to do it.” – Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero

It’s 1985, and I’ve acquired an unwanted friend. He’s a fellow student in my freshman art open studio class who has glommed on to me because of my collection of EC horror comic reprints. Over the course of the school year, he will regale me with tales about Alice Cooper, current slasher movie offerings (recounted in pornographic detail), and his plans to make a Freddy Krueger glove in metal shop.

It’s 1989, and I’ve just written an essay for Student Government Day which draws heavily on the lyrics to “Bodies” by the Sex Pistols. Although I am pro-choice, I thought it would be amusing to provoke my ultra-liberal English teacher with phrases like “converting children into clouds of greasy black smoke drifting from an incinerator’s vent.”

It’s 1994, and I’m walking with a friend along Memorial Drive, and trying (and failing) to not listen to his euphoric praise for Natural Born Killers. “It opens all sorts of new directions!” he exclaims. “Yeah, but they all lead to the abyss,” is my response.

It’s 1999, and I spend the entire long bus ride from Woburn center to Wellington Station listening to a group of teenage boys rave loudly about some new videogame for the Playstation. “Dude, you can, like, set folks on fire and they scream and shit! It’s fucking awesome! And when you shoot someone, chunks of skin fly off!”

It’s 2007, and the torture-porn flick Captivity has lowered the bar for sadism masquerading as mass market entertainment, and I wonder to myself, what the fuck is wrong with this country?

Oh, yes. It has abnegated its sense of empathy and respect for others in favor of empty nihilism. Call it Bread and Circuses 2.0. (Only there’s no bread, because fuck you if you can’t afford food.)

As someone who has worn the punk rock mantle, I am acutely aware of the appeal of nihilist transgression. I never thought I’d see it taken out of the context of playful subversion and played totally straight for the masses, though.

Fear – I Don’t Care About You (from The Record, 1982) – The official song of the Libertarian Party...or it would be, but the idea of getting together to pick a song seemed like something Big Government would do, so the members went home to work on their Ludwig Von Mises/Ayn Rand slashfic instead.

The Misfits – Last Caress (from Static Age, 1978) – The melodic side of pure evil.