Seven years ago, I had very little presence in the digital sphere. As an oldschool comms marketer who was eager to cross over into the future – and, yes, as a writer with a little audience looking to find a big audience – the potential of the online world called to me with tempting stories of little people with big websites. And I was late to the party. By the time I got there, it was already a little like a Corey Worthington bash – the press, similarly to their ridiculous stories of businessmen who made it big from their garage (we liked those, didn’t we?), often toted around success stories of talents who had been “stumbled upon” online; but in the now crowded cybersea, nobody was being stumbled upon, because nobody was able to sit there in anyone’s way to be stumbled upon. But I knew enough from my marketing background to understand what this meant  - you had to be connected to something else, something big, something commercial, that people were quite deliberately stumbling into, and, through association, there you were. I needed to write about something everyone was talking about – or reading about – online. And I needed to write about something that also gave me the vehicle to slip in the same things I’d be writing about, anyway – disguised as discussions not about those concerns (psychosocial concerns, a the end of the day), but of the topic du jour. I investigated commercial hitrates, did a bit of cybersurfing, and found what I thought was too good a vehicle for Aaron Darc to be true: Big Brother. Aaron Darc meet reality television. Whether you like it or not.

To make it perfectly clear, I hated the thing. What I’d watched of the show repulsed me. But that, at the end of the day, became not a hurdle, but the very way in which I’d make my mark – as the antichrist of Big Brother, so successful in his brutal pulling back of the curtain for its fans, but somehow so engaging to them, even the show had to act in the end (“Don’t suppose we could… um… buy you over?!”).

And ah, the timing. I’d turned on the TV, not too long after the planes had hit those towers, and the west had declared war on… well…. pretty much anything other than a collectively aspired series of “norms”. We were hungry for blood. And Big Brother, as I soon realised, was going to ride this bloodlust and translate it into one of the most horrifying models of mass “entertainment” I’d ever had the misfortune of following for hours upon hours, or, worse, writing about for hours and hours, every single bloody day. Can you feel the disdain, even now, all these years later? I shudder, to remember it. And yet, it was also one of the most successful ventures I’ve ever conjured, and, to this day, I’m quite aware I wouldn’t have built the career or profile I did without it. Eye On Big Brother, as I christened it, would garner upwards of 400,000 hits – not bad, when you consider the show’s official website only managed to near a million. And by the end of its run, not only mainstream press and radio, but the show itself, was eager to uncover – and, in  some cases, employ – its enigmatic writer, known only as The Eye.

Why did I reveal nothing of myself and choose only a gimmicky pseudonym? I had a wonderful monologue – and it became true, at least – that it was all part of my clever plan, to reveal something to society about the nature of projection and discrimination of pigeonholes. Since Big Brother (and reality TV, most of the time) relied solely on this dynamic, it turned out to be true and a powerful tool, and, realising this, I used it to full extent in this way. Across cyberspace, there were ridiculous arguments and conspiracy theories as to who I truly was. Was I an angry feminist dyke? A pissed ex contestant? Or a clever ploy by the show itself? As far as viral marketing without me needing to lift a finger, it worked in my favour, needless to say. But I’ll tell you a secret, all these years later. I first hid anything about my identity, simply because I understood that I would be entering one of the most brutal broader social playgrounds there has ever been. There was blood on the slippery dip. I couldn’t afford my true identity to be dragged down it. To this day, not a single piece of vitriol (the total of which could easily fill volumes of books you’d never want to read ) emerges with a google of my name. Thank God for that. I understood what really pumped through the veins of Big Brother and the record-breaking audiences who lapped it up… cruelty.

You see, the world never really understood what to do about the towers falling down, about the apparent reality (however conjured and manipulated by opportunistic politicians and marketers) that we were – gosh - actually a threatened people hanging on the verge of possible bloody apocalypse (laugh if you want, but let’s not forget the sentiment at the time). It was quite a shock when we realised John Lennon was wrong. Nobody really understood how we got there, or why we ended up there. One, minute we were donating to Live Aid, enjoying the neon splendors of our capitalist haven. The next minute, we were at war. With whom or why, we weren’t even sure. Something about bad people from another culture who were jealous that we lived in a capitalist haven. Or something.

And it’s one thing to be frightened, anxious and angry. But it’s even worse to then not even be able to logically connect those emotions to a tangible understanding of why we came to feel them, or what we were going to do to resolve them. In psychology, it’s called “floating anxiety” – emotion that exists within no consciousness of the nature and meaning of that emotion. The problem is that it’s human nature to want to amend those emotions – to get rid of them – which is perfectly understandable, after all. But what if we don’t know how? What if we don’t understand them, to begin with? And what if, even if we feel we do understand them – and I suppose many, however simplistically (however wrong), did – we don’t feel able to interact with the thing we feel caused them? What was Kevin Briggs gonna do about Osama, after all? Not much, when push came to shove.

And so, we had what is then referred to as “transferred anxiety”. This is an emotion that, unable to either understand itself or directly interact with the perceived cause, is dealt with via a kind of symbolic or vicarious engagement with something that actually had nothing to do with that emotion. You’re smart boys and girls, right? You can see where this is going, yeah?

Big Brother was beautifully placed – as was the entire advent of reality television – for this mass transference. I’d suggest that if the planes hadn’t hit those towers, if post-9/11 culture hadn’t suddenly (quite brutally) arrived, the phenomenon of the genre as we know it – a decade of nasty, exploitative television that pushed envelopes to breaking point without anyone with common sense stopping to say, “Um, guys – this is… really fucked up, if you think about it” – would never have existed in the way it did. It would have died in the shallow waters of our short attention spans, long ago. But we needed the voodoo dolls. We needed the symbols. We needed a variety of poor bastards who wandered into the contemporary – illusory – promises of Fame, hoping they would amend their isolation, their pain, only to – oops, whaddyaknow – be cast as archetypes to represent a series of Others, for a threatened population who very much wanted to destroy The Other, but who couldn’t get near (or even really grasp) The Other they wanted to destroy.

And so, for a decade, we crowned strapping, young, white, straight, Aussie lads, and pretty, young, white, straight, Aussie bimbos – and, best of all, their crowning came off the back of months of hammering those horrible Others. There have been more studies of ex reality show contestants than you can poke a hidden camera at, and what they tend to have in common is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and a far too long list of once ordinary lives these contestants find unable to piece back together, after being hung on the neon cross and crucified. You might not be able to find my involvement with the genre online, but their abuse – the psychological violence these poor buggers endured for our “entertainment” – will probably outlive them. Having become a kind of public spokesman for them (one of the only people speaking up about just how vile it all was), I eventually was contacted by many, and their distress was always obvious – whether it was there to be seen in little ways, or whether they cried to me for hours (for some, years after their appearances). And go figure. Quite frankly, you’d be messed up by it, too.

But it’s 2012. Things – let’s all sigh, together – did eventually begin to change. The fruitless war in Iraq yielded very little, nobody blew up the Harbour Bridge, Bush and the era of conservative war mongerers met their political end, and – yes – eventually, a team of special US ops would burst the doors down of a Pakistani fortress and BANG! Bye bye, Mr Bin Laden. The world went on. The apocalypse never came. And yes, we have a bunch of new anxieties – climate change, the economic collapse of our civilisation, and so forth. But their origins are different, and so too are the ways we seek to transfer and amend them. Enjoying a social minority be collectively malled on a TV screen just doesn’t have quite the same vicarious thrill.

One by one, the Neon Roman Arenas fell – Big Brother being the first and largest thump. Public obsession turned to pubic outrage, and having pushed the envelope beyond all reasonable confines of sanity or legality, the only people people screaming at Dreamworld were riding roller-coasters.

Just as Big Brother finished, along came Master Chef, and, as I noted at the time, a potential shift from the sadism of the crass model of reality television that dominated the last decade. Most critics called it “tame” in comparison – some even referring to it as an “adult” counter-action to Big Brother. Really, both missed the point. The success of Master Chef that followed – alongside the terribly cutesy 80′s-ness of So You Think You Can Dance? – was not about being “tame”, and not about Big Brother being “immature”. Both lacked sadism as their prime dynamic of engagement. What the people wanted was changing. And what they wanted was to feel good. They wanted to champion a vicarious symbol – and not as that symbol brutally conquered their competing minority voodoo dolls with their frantic SMS’d help. This was victory for the sake of victory. And as the archetypes for winners emerged in a pattern from these shows, there was a startling difference: often these winners were now archetypal of minorities in their own way – or, more to the point, they were classic “Underdogs”. The previous decade was absent of the Underdog. It had always been a previous staple of Australian culture, in particular – hardly surprising for a country so plagued by feelings of global irrelevance – but in post-9/11 culture, we were desperate for the feeling of being an empowered collective. It was not about who we felt we were, but who we felt we wanted to be – like some sort of identity fantasy, touched through the magic of television. The Logan Brothers come to my mind – a pair of vile twin brothers (privileged, good-looking, smarmy, white boys) who, ten years earlier, would have inflamed resentment and jealousy within a national audience. In the early 21st century, however, they were gleefully crowned kings, after acting horrendously to any of the less-privileged who got in their way.

On the same series of Big Brother, I remember what continues to stick for me as the absolute pinnacle of everything so vulgar, so horrifying, about that era. One of the contestants bullied and ridiculed by The Logans was Rachel, a working class girl from Western Sydney. Quickly signaled out by the upper class alphas, and quickly destroyed for our viewing pleasure, I can’t help but wonder what would have happened to Rachel today, if she were to make the horrible mistake she did, ten years ago, and wander into our living rooms. But ten years ago, she eventually broke down and confessed – oh, Rachel – her past of domestic abuse (both physical and sexual), her time in the sex industry, her poverty, and her determination to find someone who would accept her, to love her like nobody in her life had. Our response? We evicted her, right there and then, and as she sat on the eviction stage with tears rolling down her face, the crowd yelled “slut” at her. The Logan Boys were further ingrained into our hearts. “They’re easy to love, aren’t they?” Gretel Killeen blushed to her, referencing how her heart had been broken, subsequently leading to her demise, by one of the Logan brothers. Rachel didn’t even hear it – she obliviously scanned the crowd, stunned and devastated, reading the charming range of cardboard signs that took pleasure in her destruction. She went there to be loved. but she was nothing more than fodder for our bloodlust. Thankfully, I didn’t start properly watching the show – and blogging it – til the following year. That was the one time I was free to turn the vile thing off. And I did.

So I’m not suggesting we live in a utopia, but let’s not let our gripes with 2012 blind us to the memory of just how dark it all became during those war years. Nothing has come close to that sort of entertainment, in recent times. And anything that does is met with a similar response (amazingly enough) as my response to Rachel, all those years ago. The country turns it off.

A few weeks ago, we fell in love with the latest heavyweight on the reality TV block, The Voice. The country is turning on in record numbers – now even smashing the records previously held by such moments of television as the crucifixion of Rachel, or any one of the other hundred crucifixions given to us by Big Brother. Master Chef was a clue to where it was all heading. But the last few months have, once and for all, cemented the contemporary mainstream mindset as it can be seen through reality television, and what was evident to me in Master Chef in ways subtle enough for many to dismiss what I was sighting, is now LOUD AND CLEAR in the success of The Voice. Cruel is out. Shmulz is in.

Master Chef showed a commendable change in attitude regarding ethnicity, both in the public’s willingness to receive it, and in the network’s willingness to show it. But The Voice takes it as far as exploiting the handicapped. And if that seems a jarring word, in light of what I’m proposing – “exploited” – let me make it perfectly clear. Supply and demand means that whatever we want, we’ll get. It’s the one argument I did repeatedly remind everyone of, when even I was leveling criticism at the producers of Big Brother: if we weren’t so sadistic, they wouldn’t have made such sadistic television. Network TV makes the advertising industry look like social workers – which they’re not. And they’re still technically exploiting everyday people – zero has changed, there. But what they’re exploited for does matter. It’s the difference between an exploitation ending in Rachel’s trauma or it ending in crowning an underdog victory.

So enjoy it, by all means – but don’t completely buy in. The Voice’s clever use of disability – particularly the “blind” audition with the blind contestant (I mean, really!) – is nauseatingly contrived, but the result is that we champion the Underdog and get our hit from their triumph – as opposed to getting our hit out of watching the blind girl picked on and eliminated in front of ten thousand bogans yelling out “You can’t even see my cardboard sign!” – which is not that far fetched, when all is said and done. Or, perhaps, simply stick with reality, and cast your mind back to the very last season of Ten’s Big Brother, which actually did go as far as to finally use physical disability; casting a midget who was eliminated as quickly as Rachel, and made to kiss her (six foot) partner on the eviction stage, as the crowd shrieked ”eeeeewwww!” en masse. Nice. There’s not an inch of my being that wants to engage The Voice, but after selling advertising space between jeered abuse victims and midgets? It’s hard to scoff at the country’s love affair with this new breed of rubbish.

Several weeks after its arrival, the shift in cultural mindset was affirmed yet again, when Master Chef made its return. The last season of Master Chef – a show that, now a good few years ago, was one of the first success stories to capitalise on this change – was an interesting one. Faced with the problem of how old the show now was, producers responded to a desperation to “make it fresh” (famous last words in TV land, so very often) the only way TV producers know how – start writing and manipulating the drama themselves. Short memories, it would seem, for any of them who had watched the rise and fall of Big Brother. Master Chef was suddenly hit with a constant barrage of negative press and public reactions to the show becoming yet another “fake” and “nasty” reality show (the public have short memories, too – or, at least, a bizarre ability to reconstruct their own affection for such nastiness); the ratings finally starting to sound the alarms by last season’s end. By last week’s return, after the advertising that followed as a response to last season’s lackluster ending, it was clearly confused – its brand now weakened by not having the guts to be anything in particular, and, therefore, fatally coming across as nothing at all. And all this, just as the country was linking youtube videos of blind girls with beautiful voices all over their facebook walls. Not only did Master Chef fail in return, this week – its launch came in fourth - fourth – on the night, beaten even by secondary news bulletins. All those years ago, Big Brother’s cruelty revived a weakening Network Ten. But it is The Voice’s heartbeat – however contrived it may be - that is reviving Nine. For the first time in six years, Nine managed to win six of the top ten ratings positions for the week. As far as impersonations of Lazarus go, that’s pretty impressive.

And what does Nine also have up its sleeve? That’s right – a potentially ironic circle, of sorts. Soon, we will see if the rather expensive purchase that so many scratched their heads at was in fact a wise decision. Nine will revive, of all things, Big Brother.

It’s on a very different network. But that’s much of a muchness, at the end of the day. If Nine believe the show will be most profitable rehashed as Ten’s old beast, it will do just that. Rather, we live in a very different world. The thought that led us to salivate for such blood was driven by a fear of the world outside us, beyond the neon capitalist haven of the 80′s and 90′s. I’ve already sighted the end of those boogie man. But what of today’s boogie man? What of the possibility that our neon capitalist haven is killing the planet that haven exists on, the very world we live in? What about the stockmarkets being in the hands of the suits we used to revere, and the ones we, as little people, are far too below to have any control over? Ten years ago, the boogie man was them. In 2012, it’s us. Whoever do we crucify, this time? We can’t deal with the climate crisis, because then we’d have to give up the flatscreens we watch our reality television on. We like our flatscreens, thanks very much. We cannot give them up. And we need the men in suits to keep feeding us the little pills of industry that lead to our flatscreens, sitting there, shining as if a burning bush on a holy mountain, in JB Hifi. How can we get angry, when it’s ourselves we would have to get angry with? Is there really something wrong with us? Are we really that toxic? Please, someone, assure us we’re not. I mean, we’re beautiful people. Aren’t we?

Hot tip, Nine. The masses have a new need. Your forthcoming juggernaut might, technically speaking, be an old show. But it better be wearing a new face. And by God, that face better have a tear in its eye. C’mon, Mr Brother, get them happy.

They’re ready for the Judgment Day.

There are two artists who I would say I “grew up” on. One is David Lynch, whose neo-noirs very much connected to my sense of isolation in a quaint little town with a darkness beneath it (the kind of darkness quaint little towns show those who are outcast). But sadly, David Lynch has recently declared he will probably never make another film, which means his work will become forever connected to my past. My other love, however, refuses to give in – and, considering her nature, will no doubt eventually be forced from the stage, than choose to exit it. Madonna continues to amaze me for, if nothing else, her continued ability to rise from her own ashes, facing a barrage of male journalistic criticism (that has, thanks to ageism coming to the party, only increased over the years), as well as a widening generation gap that now has bizarrely thrown her the challenge of appearing “original” amongst a sea of young popstars who are all commercial rehashes of her own career, and yet somehow coming out on top. And she’s done it, again. This week, her new album, MDNA, hit number one world wide. In the UK, this gave her the new crown of most number one albums ever, finally beating Elvis. She has been one of the most hated and scorned stars the world has ever seen, and yet she continues to be the biggest of them all. And in this way, she has not betrayed the essence of what she represents – like most of the diehards, Madonna also appealed to the outcast in me, and still does.

Still, MDNA’s release was going to be so interesting, and so crucial for her, partly because today’s outcast youngsters have, in the time she’s been away (the longest between any of her albums), found a new mother figure to empower them. For the past twenty years, media has been declaring any new female popstar (particularly the blonde ones) “The New Madonna”. Generally, this lasts all of about ten minutes – poor Britney was apparently the new Queen of Pop, and who remembers Gwen Stefani? These stars always fade, and Madonna always regains her crown, til the next contender comes along. But Lady Gaga stepped up, like none others before her. And this was because she was the first one to hold a similar cultural connection to her fan base. The outcast youngsters of the world heralded her as “Mother Monster”, and it looked as if the hands of time were finally about to push Madonna closer to the pages of a history passed.

To anyone who was there, it was more than clear that Gaga was increasingly mirroring Madonna’s career; “influence” becoming downright plagiarism. In the corporatised model of the modern music industry, it was all very simple marketing; cleverly relying on a young audience who had no idea about the history of Madonna. It was almost as if Madonna’s ability to forever transform herself had finally caught her out – I’d many times explained to young people that Madonna was the Queen of Shock, the quintessential anti-establishment figure, who stuck her thumb up at every pillar of our civilised – patriarchal – society, and who then laughed all the way to the bank. They found this somewhat shocking, in itself – to them, they had only experienced Madonna, post Ray Of Light – the spiritualesque pop auteur, whose maternal qualities were literal, and whose music had not appealed to them for years. I showed some of them my Sex Book, and they often literally stared, mouth open, as a completely nude Madonna hitch-hiked on a Miami freeway, and questioned me: “That’s Madonna? Are you sure?” And they were mostly Gaga fans, needless to say. Even though Confessions On A Dancefloor completely beat Gaga to the punch, only a few years before Gaga’s arrival, it was, at the time, too ahead of itself – too different, ironically – for an American market obsessed with R&B. Confessions was a successful record, but it didn’t find a young audience.

And it was clear that this was her intention – to grab back the mainstream in its entirety, to continue to be the biggest star in the world. Madonna, as much as I love her, is one of those great artists who you really have to allow some of the potentially pathological qualities that are all part of that genius. Madonna is a Narcissist of the highest order. Her ego has been in the driver’s seat the whole time; it’s no doubt were she gets that blonde ambition from. The upside to, as her friend Liz Smith calls it, this consuming “self obsession”, is that it was partly what forged Madonna’s music ahead of everyone else, a kind of highbrow pop music – because this self-obsession also walks hand in hand with introspection. I would say that what separates Madonna from all the Madonna 2.0’s of today – including Gaga – is her ability to pen lyrics that do have something to say, albeit in a kind of pop poetry manner. They’re often quite simplistic, but with a depth other pop stars simply don’t inject into top 40 hits.

Before Gaga ran around the world, declaring “I’m an artist”, that was one of Madonna’s staples: to differentiate herself from the pop machine, to see her work as a kind of artistic expression, and not as a piece of catchy pop music churned out by a factory. “I am an an artist”, she defiantly reminds us in In Bed With Madonna, “and this is how I choose to express myself.” And another of the main differences I have also repeatedly pointed out is that Madonna did have every right to this claim, having come from the New York underground in the early 80’s. Before she was who she became, she was Basquiat’s girlfriend, and Warhol adored her. She spent years, after dropping out of a dance scholarship, playing drums in punk bands, desperately trying to craft a name for herself, while she squatted in local artist communes. She wrote and recorded her first record, and personally pushed it in the nightclub scene, until she was discovered. She’s the real deal. Gaga, on the other hand, was Paris Hilton’s classmate on the Upper East side, her career funded by her millionaire father who already worked in the industry. They are completely incomparable in their origins.

But to understand how, and why, we have arrived at this latest number one record – an astonishing 30 years after her first – we have to turn back the clock, to even before Confessions laid down a blueprint for Gaga’s sounds. Long before Gaga (or any of them) arrived, Madonna’s marriage of ego and introspection finally culminated in one of the most well-loved and iconic records of last century, Ray Of Light. There’s an obvious problem, as she has grown older, that part of her artistry was due to her being connected to underground pulses that, as a mother and wife in the English countryside, she eventually strayed from. This connection to the underground arts and music scene was pivotal to her genius, and part of acting like an artist and not a product – her work then seemingly even more breathtakingly original than it really was, perhaps, but only because of her ability to remodel these movements into her own brand of pop music. Vogue, for example, was her adaptation of a dance craze that swept through underground drag halls in New York and Paris, which she then put into the hands of all the outcast youngsters in hick towns – like me, for example.

]]> http://www.aarondarc.com.au/poppsychology/2012/04/mdna-madonna-triumphs-but-at-what-cost-2/feed/ 3 http://www.aarondarc.com.au/poppsychology/2011/10/thinking-differently-remembering-steve-jobs/ http://www.aarondarc.com.au/poppsychology/2011/10/thinking-differently-remembering-steve-jobs/#comments Fri, 07 Oct 2011 14:54:43 +0000 Aaron Darc http://www.aarondarc.com.au/poppsychology/?p=824 More >]]> “My job is not to go easy on people. My job is to make them better.”

Steve Jobs

So there was this guy on my friend’s friends list today, and he’s like one of those hippy anti-Apple brigade types, carrying on like it’s all just some evil capitalist corporation or whatever; and he was on this thread where a bunch of them were going on about how the Chinese workers who make the iPads are tortured and treated like battery chickens, and how they kill themselves, and bla bla bla, and he asks this question. He says that if Steve Jobs changed the way the world communicates, then did the guy who made the car radio change the way we drive? You know, basically doing that whole “Steve is not important to our civilisation” thing. Completely ridiculous.

And it got me thinking. I’d been thinking all day, really. In fact, since Steve Jobs died yesterday, I haven’t stopped thinking about Steve Jobs. Reading all those quotes everyone’s been posting on facebook – those amazingly profound things He has said throughout His career – you realise what a Visionary™ this man really was. And He was more than that. He was a Teacher™. I mean, you forget that. But He didn’t just give us all this Cool Shit™, and let our dreams come true on these machines, and enable us to download movies on demand and stuff. He taught us. He taught us how to Be. He changed our lives by teaching us how to change it. And He gave us the machines to do that on.

I don’t know about the guy who changed the way we drive, because I just catch trains. But on those trains, I leave the cruel reality of strangers sitting all around me – we all leave one another, together – through the little screens that take us to the place we were before, when we were in our homes on a slightly bigger version of the machine. All day at work, I can keep going back there, too. My boss can ban us browsing important facebook status updates on our work computers – like “here’s an upload of an aspirational lunch I’m valid enough to afford”, or “I’m loving my life, as evidenced in this photo where I’m smiling with my many friends, and feel free to tell my ex you saw this status update”, and so forth – but we have our iPhones. And we can go back to that place on them, and what can the boss say? They’re just phones, right? We’re not even talking on them, right? That’s the genius of the iPhone! And I don’t even have to literally speak to anyone anymore. It’s fucking amazing.

And the China stuff, I mean, seriously, what were the Chinese even doing before we gave them the industrial revolution and let us make our Cool Shit™? Does anyone even know? I don’t. They were no doubt sitting around their little huts, starving to death, bored out of their minds, and now they have something to do, stuff to make – cool stuff like iMachines – and in return we give them enough to go buy some wheat or soup or something. And that might seem pretty shitty to us, but in China, wheat and soup are like AMAZING. They’re lucky to have that experience. And we came along and basically gave it to them, in return for letting them know the value of being a worker, and to make something as Cool™ and Important To Our World™ as a fucking iPhone! And none of that would have been possible without Steve Jobs.

Before Steve, our lives were often having to be spent OFF THE MACHINES! I mean, really, breathe for a second and grasp that. We sat on those trains and actually had to deal with those people around us; we actually had to sit with our own thoughts, with nothing to stimulate us but our own minds. People were having to resort to reading books – big motherfuckers made of paper – and they were like hundreds of pages long, and it took you days and days to even get to the end of them, like a status update that only reveals itself, one character at a time, over the space of weeks. Imagine that. That is beyond painful. But that’s what we did, until Steve made our world mobile. Then, we could have our world with us on the train. Before, going anywhere meant not knowing if my status update had garnered some scathing attack that required me to instantly defend myself – and being completely unable to defend myself, because I was on a fucking train with no way of being online. Shit was happening to my identity, and I was just sitting there, helpless, on the train. That is a vivid anxiety nobody can deny.

I had to go to nightclubs in the hope of getting shagged. I had to go outside. All the time. Getting shagged had a maximum possibility of three nights out of the week where I got to go through excruciating effort that potentially only amounted to the failure of me not getting shagged. Who here has not walked that long walk of shame home, seedy and deflated at 3am, where you inevitably turn the key in your door alone, your effort amounting to absolutely nothing? Excuse me for being glad I don’t have to do that, anymore! Now, I can pick up on the train! I could even not have laid eyes on them in the flesh – which I wouldn’t, because I only watch the screen – and before you know it, there we are, making those emoticon smileys with the tongue poking out (we all know what that means, thank you). The anti-Apple dudes go on about how it’s disconnecting us from humanity, bla, bla, bla, but it’s bringing us together. It’s bringing us together in places we have never come together, before. Before, I’d be sitting there reading a fucking book, knowing that I wouldn’t learn what happened to Dumbeldorf until God knows when. And now, I’m getting together!

I have to be honest, I have seriously thought about unfriending lots of people who I’ve had to sit and endure today, as they go on and on with the usual propaganda they mask their envy or whatever it is in. And they think we’re the ones in the cult?! They seriously just don’t get it. They go on and on about how Steve’s evil and how Apple are just about taking everyone’s money, and how the other machines are better because they’re open-source or whatever. Like they know what we, the people, actually want? Why on earth would I need to install shit from wherever on my phone? Who the hell wants to actually know how to install something? I press a button on my iPhone, and it installs things for me. And it has everything I could possibly need. Apple have got the biggest app store in the world, there is nothing your life could need that isn’t on there. I challenge you to think of something you want to do that there isn’t an app to do for you. You won’t.

And yes, yes, I have to synch it to my Macbook pro and can’t just plug it in anywhere. But so what? When am I not on my Macbook Pro? I like that it synchs. Synching is a good thing. It knows it’s me. If I plugged my phone into a PC or whatever, it wouldn’t know it was me. It’s like it wouldn’t really be mine. My iTunes comes up, and it connects to me, and it loads everything on my iPhone to my iTunes, and there it is, I can do whatever I want with it. How can anyone in their right mind argue with that? Why would I want something that doesn’t synch?

Oh, but I have to pay for my songs just for the device! I can’t take my songs to anywhere else! Well, boo hoo! Hello, I pay to have them put onto it, right there and then. And I don’t want to put music into it from somewhere else. Why would I be somewhere else? And why would I be buying songs there? I don’t have anything else to get them from or put them on. I just want to pay for them and own them – to have them right there with me in my life, the minute I realise I want to own them. If I can have that capability if I pay, I’ll pay. Who wouldn’t?!

And Steve made that. He gave us somewhere where we already were to go buy songs – whatever songs we like. He deserves every cent of His however many billions. He gave us something to listen to our songs on, even if we’re running on a treadmill, or even when we’re defending ourselves on the train, on the way to work. Music is life. It’s our dreams. Steve Jobs gave us those dreams. How can you compare that to a radio being put in cars? That’s just stupid.

I also read this article by some bitter journalist who no doubt gets kickbacks from Bill Gates, and he was saying that on the same day, some doctor or scientist or whatever died, and this guy made some breakthrough in cancer treatment, and how ironic that this man had probably prolonged Jobs’ life, bla bla bla, how the world had lost someone who had given us a hope in life itself against this most terrible disease, and yet how wrong it is that we don’t know his name, or talk about him, like we do Steve or whatever. But still, that guy’s only really affected a small portion of people. Steve Jobs may even have been one of those people, but then look at what Steve Jobs did with that time to the whole fucking world! He changed us. Life was different before Apple. That is no exaggeration. What were you doing before Apple? No doubt something completely different.

They say it’s like some kind of cult, and that Jobs was just a good marketer who basically built a corporation like an evangelist builds a church. But they just don’t understand. There’s like this pathetic world left behind, where people for whatever reason decide to resist this new world. But this new world is better, and most of them who carry on about it are in this world anyway. If you’re forced to be in something, you might as well enjoy it. Maybe you’ll realise how much better this world is, and then eventually you won’t even have to try to enjoy it any more – you just will! I don’t know, I just feel sorry for these people, really. I think they’re the ones in the cult. They’re hoodwinked by the evil media, and the evil media just don’t get it. The media have clearly got it out for Him, everybody knows that. And now they’ve spawned all these ridiculous people who go around trolling on about how sad it is that the world is mourning the death of a ruthless CEO and whatever, and it’s like “God, who told you that? The meeeeedia, by any chance?”

I was reading this article on CNet the other day, and they totally had it in for Him, it was so transparent – going on about how Apple are suing all their competitors to destroy the competitive market or whatever – completely ignoring that if anything it just shows how much Steve cared for the world, that He would go to all that trouble to keep it free of inferior technology and imperfection. That should be a matter of law, after all. The world has changed, and we can’t let the legal system fall behind. I feel relieved to know that the courts are helping Steve help us be the best we can be. And quite frankly, do you know how long it would have taken Steve to decide what shape the screen should be? Why can’t these companies think of their of own shapes? Why should they ride His Vision™ for free? But no, no, the Android sheep believe everything these so-called journalists are saying, and so then they go around spouting off these slogans like they’re the words of some great sage or something. They’re basically brainwashed.

I see them sometimes on the train, sitting there with their Androids or whatever. They always look miserable. And you just see this thing they’re sitting there scratching away at, and you just know it would have the touch intuitiveness of a fucking magna doodle, and you know they’d bark at you about how it’s better than your iPhone; but there it is, just looking so god damned ugly. I mean, really, those poor people – so naive, completely unable to grasp it. Steve Jobs understood what these people do not. He understood that we do not want these complex machines that look ugly. We want simplicity and beauty. My iPhone is beautiful. How can you not want that in your life? It’s art. Steve Jobs is an Artist™ too, don’t forget. How can you have anything against art? These people who don’t understand Apple are basically lefties, aren’t they? But Lefties love art, don’t they? How could they try to destroy the very thing they supposedly love?

And now, He’s gone. I think part of this incredible global grief is that we’re realising that, if anything, we took Him for granted. We actually underestimated this guy. We never took the time to remember just how great what He was doing for us was. His machines are so great, they make us forget how great they are, because its like you can’t imagine any other life anyway. Have you ever been without your machines because of some reason? You freak the fuck out. You know you do. And this is like losing the machine. Except it’s the biggest machine of them all. It’s Steve. It’s the man who created this whole damned world. And I’m supposed to believe I’m in some kind of cult for realising this?

In the end, those people will dwindle. They’ll realise. And the ones who won’t realise will die out with the generations. Steve is gone, but he has already built His world, and it’s here to stay. We are a part of it. The market share will rise and rise, and they will finally be the world’s richest company. And that is a good thing. We should be glad that in the middle of all this chaos of recent years – of wars, of terrorism, of the world’s economy collapsing, of fears that the world will heat up and destroy us – that a company like this could rise to take it all. That says something good about human beings. That says something good about us. We put Him there. He gave us a new way of living, and in return we put Him there, to a place that was rightfully His. He will look down from the clouds, and He will see His world finally become all, and it won’t matter that He died, because He’ll still see it. And we’ll all be here, connected to each other. He died building this for us. He did not give up. He basically died for us. Did the guy who gave the cancer patients a few more years or whatever do that? No.

I bite the Apple because I choose to. You made us better people, Steve. iMiss you.

Martin Luther King

Earlier today, I had the misfortune of finding a copy of The Daily Telegraph (yeah, I know), which led me to experience the displeasure that was Miranda Devine’s creative take on the London riots. I say “creative”, because she somehow managed to turn a riot that happened under a conservative government into another case of left-wing mismanagement. You gotta hand it to her, she doesn’t let reality get in the way of what they pay her so nicely to spew out. For Devine, it was all down to “politically correct policing”. Yes, that’s right, lovely Miranda actually proposed that, far from having too much racism and cruelty in our social policies, we have not had enough – and if we did have more, like… say… the freedom to basically lock away the immigrant portions of our society (they did that in Germany, once), then this damned riot wouldn’t have happened, because they’d all be… I don’t know…. locked up… or killed. Elsewhere in the paper, random fuckwits on the street (they’re not exactly thin on the ground in this country) answered the searing question: Could the riots happen in our own country? My favourite was the guy who answered, “No, because though they have the same problems, they have some on a much bigger scale that thankfully we don’t, like immigration.” And it struck me, really, because at the end of the day, everybody knows it – we know very well what this riot “was” – and yet the media, none of it, has had the guts to outright call this… hello… a race riot. It’s also a class riot, yes (we’ll discuss how aspirationalism has given birth to a new monster in a moment), and certainly there’ll no doubt be plenty of white looters and rioters. But class and race are ultimately inseparable in this society of ours, anyway. And if there is shown to be no element of race in the rioting – taking note of the current absence of race in the actual reporting (as opposed to the op ed pieces, where it’s perfectly acceptable to basically invoke genocide) – we have taken it upon ourselves to imagine it was (hence the mountain of racist op eds and abominable forum comments) – and that in itself says so very much about the racial divides in Post 9/11 West.

We certainly seem to be enjoying the angry aftermath. The truth is that we – the Great White West – were as hungry for this riot as they were. We love nothing more than hate campaigns against The Other – than acts that justify our fears and aggressive urge to “protect” our society at the expense of those Others. We completely ignore the fact that during the course of this riot, it has been discovered that – just as his family had swore (which nobody believed) – Mark Duggan had not fired at police, and that the bullet lodged in the police car that was used to justify them holding him down and blowing his brains out came from the gun of another policeman (Cameron will no doubt happily whip the public anger up to completely overshadow the incident that sparked all this). These people complain – to deaf ears – about how they are harassed by white policemen, their children strip-searched for no reason (exploiting laws that were supposedly for the fight against terrorism), and it boils over when eventually a group of policemen hold a member of their community down, kill him, then create a false story to justify their slaughter, before then completely ignoring the family. I mean, really, why ever would these people be so pissed? They live in a society where, whilst existing in huge numbers, they are segregated and used – at best – as the city’s spat on services industry (janitors and hustling taxi drivers), constantly subjected to racism, growing up in the nightmare of British public housing projects. They have been slowly watching their welfare be stripped from them as Britain’s increasingly Orwellian government continue to increase the wealth of the white elite, and subjected to the rampant and self-indulgent white consumerism each modern child is raised on and pumped full of from the minute they are born and sat in front of a television (a consumerist joy they can never aspire to knowing). And the white people think there’s not a problem because, like, they had Beef Jerkey in Brixton just two weeks ago (how Cultured™!). We rob them of the right or voice to even complain, we tell them to comply and accept. We even tell them they should be grateful.

Why on earth would they be grateful? And what would motivate them to obey and conform to this society? Humans are motivated by reward – I do A because I know it will lead to B. What do they have in front of them? We just think they will stick to our conditions because we told them to, even when those conditions screw them over? Of course, not. And they didn’t. And London went up in flames and fear. The Other rose up, in a terrifying and blinding meme of pain, and struck out. They were so driven by the culmination of emotion this riot was that they even destroyed parts of their own communities. They hated the world. They hated their world. All of it. That’s all that drove them to these riots – an existential angst that was not, as many are sighting, opportunistic, as much as it was simply triggered, the fuse lit, the explosion finally erupting, and their individual turmoil validated – empowered – by the collective. No longer would they comply, because with the power of numbers, they no longer had to. And, yes, they acted with a cold and vengeful indifference. Because that’s what the world they grew up in is like, after all; the generations born in this society will act as their world has shown them, a world where they are displaced because their fathers and mothers may have been a part of a different world. But they don’t know that other world of their parents, after all – they are a total product of this – our – society. And it has shown them nothing but savage indifference, and largely because of their connection to another world they themselves have never even known. That must seem awfully unfair, don’t you think? Hare dare we expect them to act with compassion? How has the world we’ve forced them to live in shown them compassion? It hasn’t.

I was sitting on the train, a couple of week ago, coming to the city from Western Sydney. I’ve never really been out that way much, so traveling to and from their for my latest contract has been a bit of an eye opener. I had the audacity to complain about the ridiculous ticket price ($12 return for me to travel from Western Sydney to the city) because I noted the need to actually purchase one – unlike traveling any other direction, transit guards and hordes of police jumped on and off the trains, leaving no stone unturned. Over my travels I began to witness groups of young boys – mostly of immigrant descent – being harassed by the police, endlessly grilled and taunted, whether they had tickets or not. I heard the groups of boys, and how they would talk of the police, after they’d finished harassing them and walked away – needless to say, the boys weren’t overly fond of them. And we’re talking boys as young as 9 here – perhaps, younger. What do we expect these boys to grow up and think of the society that looms down on them in such a way? What do we expect them to think of the righteousness of law? How do we expect the to have compassion for the society those white policemen “protect” and ultimately represent? Not much, I reckon.

Where are the police on the North Shore line? Nowhere. When I was working in St Leonards, I knew never to worry about buying a ticket. There were never any guards or police, and even if someone was standing at the gate, they’d do nothing more than tip their head and smile. What a different world it is when you’re white and affluent. And these boys from out West, they see this world, they know how they exist on the outskirts of a world they will never be able to know. You can’t honestly expect them to hold much respect for them, for their privilege, for their things.

In London, they decided to just take those things. The government and press knew to throw the word “violence” around – and while there was an element of violence, most certainly, it was still slightly unrepresentative to put it down to that, as the crowd were not hellbent on violence, but on theft. This was a looting riot – and that’s very different to aggressive physical riots. Looting will always happen around those, but in this instance the looting was the point. And that says so very much about the psychology of the meme (which is ultimately what a riot is – a physical manifestation, unification and mobilisation of a meme). They struck out at the consumer world, because to these kids, that is the world of the white and privileged. And it is the logical product of the same consumer culture they, being here, are still raised on, even if they can never attain it. Consumer culture is designed – every inch of it – to create anxiety within us, to make us strive for something, something someone is selling, as a perceived necessity to attaining wellbeing or joy. They are not immune. From the minute they are born, they are made to want it. Just like us. But, unlike us, they can’t have it. The only way any of them ever get to have it is through dealing, so the price of having it is either ending up locked away in our system, or – perhaps like Mark Duggan, depending on what the truth is – being slaughtered. But in the end, fuck you, they took it. They bust through the barriers that divide these things from us – all upheld by law – the windows that keep us out, the properties that house these things and relinquish them only for the exchange of cash – and they took them. In days gone by, they would riot to bring down a government. These kids rioted to get iPads. Grasp that for a moment. It’s all going terribly, terribly wrong.

And usual, we have lapped up the outrage. And we should be outraged. But we are allowing the powers that be to manufacture that outrage, a shallow outrage that does not see the bigger picture. We just can’t empathise – that’s how we got into this mess, after all – and so, nothing will be solved. We no doubt have more strange scenes ahead of us, god knows where. And this, just weeks after another manifestation of racism boiled over in an individual in Norway, a very different – but even more unsettling – consequence of conservative and capitalist culture. But we didn’t tie our outrage to the killer in Norway to the fact that he was a manifestation of us, heavens no. But this – this is those little monstrous immigrants. It was the immigrants the dude in Norway slaughtered in the name of getting rid of. It doesn’t matter what race it is we are trying to get rid of, whether the racism du jour is anti-Arab or anti-African or anti-whatever. It’s all The Other. But The Other is starting to rise. Push groups of people in large enough numbers into a corner and they’ll do that. The government won’t change anything because of London. Already, David Cameron has publicly vowed to wage brutal justice upon the rioters, calming our fears by telling us not to worry because “we will not let any phoney concerns about human rights get in the way.” Oh, good. For a second there, I thought the tax-dodging upper class elite who run the place might be considering human rights in the way they deal with the uproar of the lower classes they spit on. We can all rest easy. They won’t be.

And so, what will be changed? Nothing. The irony is that more fuel will be put on the fire. You think they hated us when we blew that guy’s head off? Wait til this is over, and see if they feel any better about us once we finally see an Orwellian England rise and put its foot on them. I’m thinking they won’t. I’m thinking times are about to get a little interesting in the mother country.

Further reading:

One of the more interesting commercial blog piece I’ve read on the riots: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100100708/the-moral-decay-of-our-society-is-as-bad-at-the-top-as-the-bottom/

David Cameron’s incredibly scripted interview for the Telegraph, unashamedly and explicitly announcing the arrival of a “Nanny State”: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/8699770/UK-riots-zero-tolerance-promises-Cameron-but-will-this-be-his-finest-hour.html

With Tony Abbot’s current decision to sit in the dirt of our outback indigenous communities (well, that particular photo opp was the conjuring of his publicity machine, not himself) and manipulate more white right-wing votes… sorry, I mean… engage the indigenous community and try to help them… there couldn’t be a better moment for this new Australian film to hit our screens. It’s called Mad Bastards, and this week, I had the pleasure of interviewing both its writer and director, Brendan Fletcher, alongside its main star. Have a listen…

Okay, I can maybe – just maybe – be accused of being a bit of an elitist snob, when it comes to film. I don’t spend much time in multiplexes, let’s put it that way. I’m really excited about Lars Von Trier’s new film. I have every David Lynch dvd you can buy. I thought the original Funny Games was better than the remake. I thought Rabbit Hole should have won every Oscar for everything. I’m like that. Feel free to sigh “wanker” under your breath, if you must. But, unlike many of my pretentious film wanker friends, I do have an inkling, somewhere inside, for the occasional venture into those hideous cinema centers for something – gulp – mainstream. But it’s a certain kind of rubbish that gets me there. It can be rubbish, as long as it’s clever rubbish. Then, it actually does become a kind of art. I think Basic Instinct is art. I adore Tim Burton – most of the time (let’s all forget Alice, shall we?). I think Romi & Michelle’s High School Reunion is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. And I will tell crowds of intellectual wankers that the Scream movies – every one of them – are god damned cool. “It’s actually really clever. And fun. But clever. And scary!” I don’t have too many big words to use – though I’ll happily put it in a postmodern context, if that is required – but I love them. And so, this week, while an invite to the Scream 4 preview screening wouldn’t have excited too many of the city’s “serious reviewers”, I, for one, was pretty psyched.

Now, only a couple of hours fresh from the experience, one of the first people in the world to finally witness it, I’m… well… feeling guilty about the morning I completely wasted by revelling in the excitement, watching youtube trailers, reading Wes Craven’s exclusive blogs on MTV. He told me – he told all of us – that he had come back for a reason. Even Campbell this week went out into pressland to shoot down the very concept of sequels – a strange thing to say, on one hand (in retrospect, it’s too unfathomably hypocritical for me to ever respect her – ever – again), but naturally all designed to assure us then that she had indeed come back to this particular sequel because it was just so freakin’ good. How was this most iconic of horror franchises going to resurrect itself, over a decade later, in a different world?

I ask this, because I’m quite sure it was the governing question that drove the board meetings that ultimately are responsible for Scream 4. I’m not sure if there aren’t a bunch of copywriters and market analysts somewhere who should maybe have been credited for… you know… basically constructing a hunk of crap with the sole function of making mula. It’s that stale. It’s that fake. It’s that deathly unfunny, deathly unclever, and, most of all, deathly unfrightening. And, despite what Wes spent all week assuring us on MTV, it’s not only lacking in originality, but entirely built on mirrors – formulas – ideas – of every other Scream. It’s the same film, with the volume turned down. Oh, except for spoon-feeding tacked-on monologues where we have the film’s hollow “messages” shoved down our throats with slightly more velocity than the actual stabbing. Something about how young people today use iPhones, and film themselves at parties, and have blogs, and, like, are destroying themselves to be, like, famous and shit. Or something. Well, that’s what it says – almost literally – in one of the more painfully scripted moments placed so wrongly in the film’s climax. But, truth be told, it’s all pretty painful.

Is Wes just too old? I couldn’t help but ponder this, after seeing Scream 4. And if so, what happened to him? Is his creativity gone? Or has this guy just got to a point where he’ll sell out to whatever suit came up with the idea of repackaging Scream as a blockbuster cross-demographic sensation (pulling in older audiences on nostalgia, and getting a new audience who haven’t experienced its originality) because he needs to buy a bigger house or whatever? Wes Craven is a talented man. He’s really smart. He’s actually incredibly creative. I respect him. But does this guy actually believe the rubbish he’s saying in interviews about this film? Because if he does, then… well… oh dear. His twilight ‘aint quite at the caliber of his midday sun, if you know what I mean.

It is Wes who has announced his film to be a cutting commentary on the tech generation. I actually agree with him, in the vague, overall sentiment echoed in the film – that this contemporary mindset is breeding a generation of inept monsters. But it is so completely shallow in how it is presented and explored in the film, it simply feels like an old timer, beholding a new world he doesn’t quite grasp, and barking, “Goodness, these kids today! They’re all connected to the interwhatever, and looking at their phones all day, and downloading those app things, and filming everything they do! What’s the world coming to?!” And yeah, okay, sure. What is the world coming to? But this film doesn’t in any way ask that question beyond that image of the barking old man turning his nose up, as any generation does, at the one below him – this film doesn’t actually “get it”. It sees it. Yes, the kids are walking around glued to their screens. But it doesn’t get it. So, really, it has nothing to say. And yet, the film spends so much effort trying to say it. You almost wanna shout “Oh, stop thinking you’re clever, and at least scare us with knives for a couple of hours!” And that’s not something I say lightly.

As for the “plot”… well… let’s not call it a plot. I don’t think Scream 4 has a plot. It has a bunch of old movies – mostly, its own – stuck together and kind of “rebranded”. And because the plotline sees a new killer copying the original murders (just as Sydney arrives back in Woodsboro – on the anniversary of the original murders – for her book signing tour!), this means… you guessed it… the film literally uses the same concepts as the murders of the first film. The film even has the audacity to point this out, itself – thinking it’s being clever to do so, no less – but all the Cleverness™ in the world can’t mask for how lazy this is. Or how unthrilling it is, to go see a supposedly new innovation, and be hit with such a level of rehash. By the end, the film’s cleverness finally admits the truth – a bigger revelation than the absurd twist ending (don’t spend too much time trying to figure it out, okay? It really doesn’t even matter, and makes almost no sense) – that, when it’s all said and done, Scream 4 isn’t a “sequel”… it’s a kind of remake. It’s a remake having sex with a sequel. Does that, at least, qualify as New™?! I guess so. If only the one original thing the film can be credited for didn’t seem to simply be a way to be lazy. This film feels like it took five minutes to make. It probably met a week long deadline to write. I imagine around 80% of it was phoned in. Or maybe it was done via email. You know how it is these days, it’s all on the computer, it’s like nobody even interacts anymore. Wes will happily tell you that, after all.

Somewhat ironically, the very generation it’s supposedly criticising don’t mind if a film doesn’t have a plot – in fact, they increasingly prefer films not to. They don’t relate to their world through narrative (like those old timers did). They pay for a two hour hit of visceral, ultimately nihilistic, stimulation. But this is going to be the final nail on Scream 4′s coffin. This, truth be told, is the reason for the secrecy behind it, and the restraint placed against preview audiences. The thing is, marketing groups can paste these sorts of films together, thinking they’re on a winning formula. But, once the thing has actually been made, they’re not dumb. They see it, and they know what is going to happen. And they know what will happen to this. That’s why they went so hellbent on the hype. That hype will pull in mammoth opening crowds, because nothing has been allowed to spoil the anticipation – it’s been left up to their marketing department (all anyone knows of this is commercial – we’ve only been informed by ads). But the reality, after that first week or so, will set in. It may find a cult audience within its own fanboy scene, where the level of sycophantic consumption (though, ironically, they all talk about Scream, without even a hint of irony, as a brilliant swipe at “consumerism”) is high enough to completely blind them to the film’s actual quality. But I suspect it won’t get much broader than that, past the first week of eager crowds. Granted, a film today only has to pull off those big openings to economically warrant a sequel (even Tron – which I really didn’t mind, but seemed to be in a minority group in that reaction – is getting another one); but this is not the mammoth hit many were thinking this might be, and certainly not in the long run.

This is mostly because, for all its appealing to its original fans, it still needs the new generation to succeed. And that new generation won’t take to Scream 4. They’ll find it dull, even kinda silly. They’ll think there’s “too much talking” (I already heard one of the younger audience members tonight conclude just this, as the credits rolled). They’ve clearly put more blood in this one – to try to appease those blood-hungry youngsters who have been desensitised to the horribly graphic torture scenes of the past decade – but the blood won’t cut it. And stabbing?! Meh. That’s boring. Someone gets stabbed, some blood squirts out – sometimes, quite a lot – but that’s it. They fall down, they stop moving. Over. These kids are used to the most horrific scenes, where victims are not stabbed a couple of times in ten seconds, but forced to endure endless moments of spectacular agonies, and all before their young eyes. I don’t in any way agree with torture porn and its influence on this genre, but the facts are the facts. This film does not work as a horror movie to the torture porn generation – and no amount of catty, “clever” post-modern references are going to change that. To these kids, Scream 4 is for pussies. As it is, there’s only really one killing sequence every 25 minutes or so – the first hour goes by with very little actually happening. It opens with the expected, and then? It turns into a bizarre – unfunny – comedy-come-parody (wrongly thinking it’s being satire). And the kids aren’t down with that. They don’t get anything its referencing, anyway. We saw this happen with Tron (which aimed to hit a similar cross-demo, and failed completely).

In short, they won’t in any way understand its generational cynicism (in fact, many will be perplexed by its paper-thin under-depiction of their technological lives), very few will get the film’s cultural references to itself, and hardly any of them will be very scared. They want the volume at 11. They want it hard and fast. This doesn’t give them that. They will walk out, then, having been given nothing. They’ll jump on twitter, on facebook, they’ll text their friends. They’ll tell them what a bore Scream 4 is. It will be murdered by the very thing it says is murdering a society. That’s a fascinating kind of phenomenon, in a way – but not in the “clever” way it intended.

That leaves the older audiences – the ones who, like me, were there for the original. Okay, so they have the characters they love, and, yes, they get lots of screentime to spend with those characters. But that screentime is empty, often embarrassing. The cast seem to be ashamed to be there. You can’t particularly blame them. And so, the nostalgia is all very well – again, it will pull big opening crowds off this – but the fact is that they won’t get what they’re paying for, either. Unlike the youngsters, they’ll at least be susceptible to the scares – silent house walks near open windows, men in capes, knives, these things can scare the crap out of them – but it pales in comparison to those unbearably tense moments in the original films. As it is, they speed by at lightning pace; while the final death count is quite high, not only are there not many actual scare sequences (around these killings), they’re mostly over in about two minutes (the count is partly so high because, this time, the killer rips through some murders in flashes – groups – without those thrillingly suspenseful – and often quite long – lead-up scenes). The violin sets in, there’s a quick walk in the shadows, then bam! Everything you think is going to happen does; then, it’s over, and back to… well…. empty, embarrassing dialogue and hollow statements about kids on iPhones.

So conscious of itself is Scream 4, in its intention to be a horror movie that lives partly away from the horror, it seems to rush the horror there is, just to fit in more “plot”. Except, it isn’t a very good plot, nothing much happens, and the comedy borders on tv slapstick sitcom. I laughed once – once – at the very end, in a line every bit as stand-out as it was intended. Yet, its punchline, “don’t fuck with the original”, was, once you gave it any thought, yet another brutal irony for this film. Sure. Don’t fuck with an original. But surely, the solution to that is to leave the original alone and not repeat it, half assed, either? If only the film had’ve listened to its own self-important wisdom.

Promises, promises. Scream 4 gave them to so many. But it has short changed us all. Let’s hope that boardroom doesn’t green-light a phone conference to pitch another. But with that opener weekend I’ll be stunned if it doesn’t pull off (you can hear those cash registers, already), I’m guessing this won’t be the last we see of Ghostface. That’s not that exciting, now. Let us never forget his wonderful origins. But let us accept that it is, I’m sorry to say, over.  As elitist as this sounds – so be it (and if you know what I mean, you’ll know exactly what I mean) – but this is a lowest common denominator film. C’mon, you know what I’m saying. And there’s plenty of those around, after all. There are plenty who flock to them. But Scream?! Scream somehow crossed over – it was never high art, but it was better than that. Was.

It is with a sorry heart that I inform you that the battle between oldschool slasher horror and contemporary torture porn has been waged. Gen Y won. And that, at least, is frightening.

*listen to Aaron’s live radio chat from Celluloid Dreams (2SERFM) below….

GASLAND (directed by Josh Fox) – opens Nov 18th

Just last week, the Queensland government announced it was approving a new natural gas drilling operation by multinational giants like Santos and British Natural Gas – heralding in a new economic boom the embattled Bligh government can’t wait to bandage their budget blowouts with, or take to their electorates with the creation of thousands of jobs. The Official Position™ is that the government is imposing stringent environmental policy and report conditions upon the deals and, not to worry, we’ll all make a tonne of cash and everyone will be safe. But this has already come a little unstuck, with the recent discovery that toxic chemicals were found in eight exploration wells already in operation (Santos alone already has 1500 wells in operation prior to this current expansion deal). Federal government, whilst backing the deal, has wiped its hands clean of environmental accountability, passing the buck onto the state governments – which may not be great news, considering a new admission by state government that approval has been given to the operation, despite many of the environmental conditions not yet proven to be met.

It’s perfect timing, then, for the Australian box office release of Josh Fox’s acclaimed documentary, Gasland. It’s easy to dismiss the urgency of the steady flow of left-leaning activist documentaries that flow from The States, these days, and treat them as mere indulgences or cross-cultural studies; but whilst Fox’s eye remains firmly on natural gas drilling across America, it views a model that is no different to anywhere else – certainly when it comes to the model of the resource industries, and the science of natural gas drilling. The only variable, then, is government response and legislation – but if recent concerns are anything to go by, perhaps we’re not as different as Tony Burke would like us to believe. Gasland is a film about America, but it is a dire warning to us all.

In it’s near two hour run, we meet tens of everyday Americans who, like an increasing number of Australians, live with natural gas wells quite literally in their backyards; breathing the air around them, and relying on the local water supplies they utilise and, as we’re now seeing, contaminate. These include many who now suffer horrifying medical conditions – some even succumbing to cancer and brain lesions, and some who can light their own tap water by simply holding a match to it (and, yes, seeing is believing, and, don’t worry, you get to see water burn before your very eyes in the film). They drink from creeks that literally bubble, and they’re begging for help from a government who is too busy piling the cash to care. It’s an enraging film, but taken far beyond the technicalities of most political documentaries by the heartbeat that pulses through it; the film playing out like a road movie, each stop unveiling a character that deepens the audiences connection to the tragedy on an emotive – at times profound – level. And it’s often as affirming, as it is heart-breaking. Not to mention, at times very funny. In short, it’s a must-see. And I was lucky enough this week to speak to the man himself, director Josh Fox. This is what he had to say…



visit the website at www.gasland.com.au

“Mathew Newton should know better,” said one angry forum fiend. But should we?

Well, here we go. Another month, another celebrity domestic violence scandal – albeit one with considerable déjà vu. I guess this means we’ll forget about Mel Gibson now, until the next time he flips his lid? Or will these two take turns? It’s this cycle that is the shocker in these situations – that we have, after all, seen it all before. Mathew Newton is a damaged man with a violent streak – well, what a surprise! And don’t get me wrong, it’s worth our repulsion to domestic violence against women to be a part of this, absolutely. But let’s stop for a moment, and also take a look at the other aspects such situations allow us to see, in some rather startling shades of very dark truths. There is more to this than meets the single-track minds of the consumer public, or their obliviousness to network TV factories. There is much more damage to be seen, here, than just that of a troubled boy who has been poisoned, like so many before him, by the silver coating on the spoon of his nurture.

First, there is our legal system. To behold its ability to be seduced by celebrity really is an intense thing to consider – not only in what it says about that system, but the society as a whole that it is a part of. That’s where this celebrity culture has got to – our legal system. I mean, really, hello. It’s not just that Newton walked, scott free, from pleading guilty – guilty – to physically assaulting Brooke Sachwell… it’s how.

Newton – and his influence, and, naturally, his family’s money – assembled more than just a clever legal team. First, he assembled the stars. Bert and Patti – those lovable icons of our living rooms – are now busy conducting a range of publicity interviews, and they are, they assure us, very sorry for their son’s illness. But why, then, instead of getting him proper help, did they only help simply in getting their son off charges he was, by his own admission, guilty of? One by one, friends and industry colleagues – none with a vested agenda, heavens no – were rolled out to tell us what a lovely boy Newton is, how he had seen the light, even how much he adored women. Such a compelling character portrait must have been assembled that it led the presiding male judge, Joseph Moore, to declare to official records that he’d been convinced Newton was a man with “the utmost respect for women”, and that – my favourite – he believed he was – wait for it – “a gentleman”. Grasp that, for a moment. Newton had managed to have some of the allegations dropped, as it was – but he at least admitted to pushing her to the ground, weighting himself on her; then, when she freed herself and begged him to stop, he punched her and threw her into the wall. Then, he “consistently stalked and intimidated her. ” The judge acknowledged that he had admitted this was what had happened… and then, called him “a gentleman.” What a wonderful message to send to victims of domestic violence!

And sure, stars get access to great psychiatrists. In fact, the stars have their very own – a top tier of savvy mental health entrepreneurs who tend to the celebrity world’s needs for big dollars, and who are always handy, come the odd court case, should any of them fall to the strange impact upon ego and behaviour that is being famous. Newton’s shrink declared that he – in just mere months, without any intensive treatment – had achieved “real rehabilitation”, and that he had only committed the acts because of an acute attack of his “full blown depressive disorder”, and should not only be free of blame, but seen as having no risk of re-offending. Never mind that depressive disorder very rarely involves violent behaviour (except unto themselves) – although alcoholism would have seemed a more obvious condition to focus the act around (as many have done in the court system, over the years – including our Mel), the trend of late has seen depression and bipolar as the public relations choices du jour – for the decision would not merely have been one for the courts, but a portrait very knowingly tinted with deliberate public relations requirements. Cocaine is always conveniently left out of the mix, for obvious reasons (the public can hardly empathise with that); but now, it turns out that we don’t feel as sorry for alcoholics as we do for those who are pathologically sad – the bizarre redemption of Andrew Johns (who has now blamed everything, from drug abuse to various aggressions, on his bipolar) has paved the way for a new marketing trend.

And it was good enough for the judge, too. “It is significant that Dr Hampshire believes that he is unlikely to repeat an offence of this nature,” he declared, upon allowing Newton’s appeal, completely quashing any conviction. The circus was over. Newton walked free, and was soon picked up (after God knows how many hours of boardroom production meetings where personas were carefully considered to bring the show to life and to the consuming public) as the perfect choice for the “bad boy” of Underbelly. The bad boy of organised crime being played by the bad boy of media. I shuddered. The publicity of the crime had not only failed to damage his career – it had actually helped it. Record viewing audiences rocked up to see Newton “act” out various scenes of crime that he had only months before been tried for committing in his actual life. Sometimes, the imitation of life by art is a repulsive thing – particularly when it forsakes such ethics for profit.

Meanwhile, Brooke Sachwell’s career hit a dead end.

The ethical debate over the autonomy and responsibility given to those who are psychologically suffering and who have committed a crime is a complex one. It’s another article. But regardless of one’s opinion on this, the one thing that can be at very least sighted is the dissonance between cases like these with the same cases tried against everyday men and women. They do not have fancy lawyers, they do not have celebrity star witnesses, and they are not, I assure you, crowned “gentlemen” by the judges. And, likewise, the celebrity “I’m suffering depression” case is, I have to say, utterly insulting to the millions of everyday men and women who battle these illnesses. They battle them, without being paid millions to lead the party life, tearing through hundreds of thousands of dollars of cocaine (a drug that, whaddya know, makes you a violent asshole). They very rarely get off on court charges on such a basis – they simply can’t afford to roll in the shrinks required, and they certainly do not have the hypnotic allure of star witnesses. But it’s very different, if you’re rich and famous. Celebrity corrupts law. That’s… you know… kinda screwed up.

And nobody cared, mind you. That’s the thing. Yes, yes, the forum boards are flowing with self-righteous blame of Newton; but it’s all a bit rich, quite frankly. Where were these people, before? Where was the outrage? There wasn’t any. And why, if they are so disturbed by him now, were they not boycotting his new gig on The X Factor? What are we not getting about the way contemporary media and entertainment – the culture of celebrity – works? If we will buy, they will sell. It doesn’t matter what they’re selling – or who – or what they’ve done – so long as we will lap it up. And people did. There was genuine excitement in the mainstream commercial TV demos when Newton was declared the host of that horrid show. The people were buying. The boys in suits were getting paid. Newton was still a star. Everyone’s happy.

Oh. Except, Brooke Sachwell. I’m guessing she hasn’t had the best time watching that all happen.

Chanel Seven… well… it’s vaguely redundant to observe the lack of ethics in a commercial TV network like Seven, but let’s consider it anyway. There is a fair observation that can be made by anyone who really understands the industry – and it’s being made, mind you, by some commentators, at least – that this one really has an added layer, if you ponder the chronology and realize that, obviously, Seven knew very well their star was in trouble when they hired him. The million dollar question (literally) is whether they were, therefore, simply ignoring this reality – so eager to exploit his celebrity status – or were they actually expecting him to fall apart, hence creating the incredible volume of publicity now being given to the show? The show, after all, has benefited greatly out of this.

One Daily Telegraph commentator noted that hiring an actor in such a state had now paid “enormous dividends” in “saturation publicity” and suggested the network execs “give themselves a big pat on the back.” It’s hard not to agree that this must be a potential reality of the inner-workings behind the contract – particularly, when you look at the publicity leading up to the incident. If you don’t properly understand the industry and its publicity machine, let me assure you, every single interview he does in and for the lead up to a show he is under contract for is arranged and basically scripted – strategically positioned and penned – by the show and its marketing & publicity departments. Why, after so long, was the show so very keen to send Newton out to pressland to bark endlessly about his “problems” and his glorious redemption? Why inject that into our consciousness? It actually didn’t need to be – we had, as we do with our five minute modern attention spans, largely forgotten. Then, what happens? It creates the perfect attention now set in place for Seven to start giving stories to the press about how Newton had started to fall from his self-declared grace, and that he was now being picked up and dealt with by who? Seven. What angels! Soon, there are stories of Seven sending out their angels to rescue Newton and bring him home, and finally that he is being relinquished from the show. There is no mention, mind you, of the incidents against Rachel Taylor, Sachwell’s unfortunate successor – even though, considering we now know the incidents were “the talk of the town” and had even resulted in police being called, and the sedation of Newton, there is no way in hell Seven didn’t know what had gone down. They said nothing, of course – only that they had gone to fetch him, after certain “incidents”. But they didn’t have to. That bomb was about to explode by another detonation. They had him positioned already for that – announcing his unfortunate departure, with Seven supposedly sending him off to rehab for his own good – by the time that happened.

It’s a bit off, to say the least. And more than a bit suss.

The X Factor has secured the kind of publicity it simply couldn’t have bought through traditional avenues. It is now the most anticipated premiere of this season, and, far from the brand being damaged by the scandal, it can position itself blameless. It’s not Newton, after all. Hey, they sacked him, after all. They did what they could. It’s brilliant. Whoever the people are behind this, they would have been the dream team in the days of Big Brother. At very least, however contrived, they have ridden the crisis control completely away from any questioning of why they would have hired someone they knew was in such a space, in the first place. They can all expect a raise.

It’s brutal, the world of celebrity. The juxtaposition of its brutality and its glamour is truly mesmorising. The machine saved Newton in a way no ordinary man or woman is privy to, when it suited it to. Now, the machine will abandon him and grab the publicity and brand positioning it can ride off the public’s hypocritically late lynching. Newton may deserve condemnation. He does. But what a pity it is a timed condemnation that we are manipulated into having, simply because the media has decided it’s time to.

It is too late to have prevented the horrible experience for Taylor (whose public statement today was strong, and should be applauded). It is too late to have stopped Newton re-offending. And, of course, it is too late for the girl who had to not only watch the celebrity machine completely abandon her, as it strove to protect its product and a member of an industry dynasty, but the legal system and the public at large. Sachwell must be relieved, in part – that, at least, he has been seen for what he is. But her case can never be retried; I’m sure the memory of that abandonment will forever linger. We see truths, sometimes, in the most brutal ways. What a dose that poor girl has had.

One waits for the Australian public to reach its own epiphany. It will turn, instead, to the most high profile reality TV premier of the year.

“It’s Magical™”

(Steve Jobs)

This week, Li Hai, a 19 year old Chinese factory worker, began another 15 hour shift, as he had done every single morning this year, meeting the frenzied demands of Apple’s hungry cult of technology. It had been a “good” year for his company, Foxconn, after scoring the contract to be the main producer of the latest Must Have™: the “revolutionary” and (let’s not forget) “magical” iPad. You could easily presume that these magical devices form in rose petal cocoons upon golden clouds in a cybersky, their freshly glossed screens glistening in the sunlight, waiting to revolutionise the life of yet another middle-class Westerner. But, in fact, it is the hundreds of thousands of Chinese factory workers, like young Li, who deliver us our 21st century Salvation™. Li’s factory, in the province of Hunan, is home to 300,000 such workers. They slave tirelessly through 7 day working weeks – forbidden from talking or listening to music, most not even given a stool, and under military-style supervisors armed with iron bats – and all to earn less than what most us make checking facebook in between lunchtime and clock-off (building an iPad earns you around 50 cents per hour). They are not given a magical device for themselves, nor could they dream of affording their own. They are the faceless, hidden cogs of the Apple Machine™. And they are dying.

Where Dreams™ Are Made

On Tuesday, as the world’s media – gun pointed firmly to its head by its new overlord, Steve Jobs – hurriedly pumped out advertorial after advertorial, heralding this wondrously pointless device as the official replacement of our souls, Li left his workstation, climbed the steps to the roof of the Foxconn factory – as eleven others, all under the age of 25, had done in the first five months of this year (that’s 2 per month) – and walked to the edge. Of the twelve who have done so, only two have survived the fall. Li Hai would not be one of them. He is dead. As Apple’s golden bitch du jour, Stephen Fry, happily rode the publicity train to tirelessly repeat “It really is a Revolution™!” to any media agent who would listen (thanks to their desperation to appease this new content platform, that’s basically every media agent there is), the Hai family gathered outside the factory to mourn and reject the tragic loss of yet another Chinese factory worker’s future.

Just a week before his death, Hon Hai Precision, the parent company of Foxconn, had joyously reported a first-quarter profit rise of 35 percent (netting over 800 million AUD) – small bikkies, of course, next to Apple’s annual profits of over 60 billion.

The story of Hai’s death, quite predictably, achieved nothing more than a barely noticeable ripple in the muddy Western media puddle, and was run with by the last remaining newspapers yet to sign lucrative deals with Apple for content publishing on the magical iPad. At first, Apple announced it “did not wish to comment” on the situation; but today, after at least some traction on the tragedy occurred, it has released a tiring press release, suddenly becoming “deeply saddened” by the events. It assured us that, whilst it has no comment on the allegations of beatings now coming from the factories, it had requested (but has had no policy of enforcement or even checking) that these workers at least be given a stool and work no more than 60 hours per week. It has promised to investigate the situation in all its supplier’s factories, yet has confirmed there will be no interruptions in the current manufacturing of its iPad (or its other magical devices) whilst this takes place.

The complexity of the problem is further illustrated by the factory’s incredible attempts to respond to the situation. At first, it simply – wait for it – “demanded” workers “not take their own life” (I shit you not) – an approach somebody clearly told them was probably not going to be looked kindly upon by the western way of doing things, because today saw them announce a retraction of this approach. Still, its angle remains – that the suicide attempts themselves are not the problem, but, rather, whether these attempts are successful (!!!). Bizarrely, it was happy to reveal that original media estimates actually fall short of the reality, boasting that there have been a further 20 attempts throughout its factories since January. Why announce this? It takes credit, as an example of the company’s ability to address the situation, that these further 20 were intervened and thwarted. This morning, the company invited media to hear a young employee who was marched out in front of journalists to announce that “this is a good place to work because they treat us better than many other Chinese factories”, and to view the nets it has now placed around its walls! It also announced that it will be hiring troops of gymnasts to periodically brighten the lives of its one million workers. Get a load of real life, huh? Fucking hell.

Even on a local Chinese (state run) TV station, broadcasters offered a strange sociological analysis of what was resulting in the suicides of the young factory workers who build our iPhones and iPads. It saw the problem as a lack of “chi ku” – a term literally translated as “eat bitterness” – a cultural reference to a Chinese ideal of being able to put aside individualistic angst and basically take the hardship it is dealt with for the bigger picture. “The previous generation,” it mused, “only thought about how to improve the lives of their family. The younger generation starts to think about themselves more.” What a selfish generation!

The problem here is the impossible intertwining of the Western dream this machine has now become a part of, with the reality of that machine. And it is a part of it. For us, we don’t have to think about this reality – we are quite deliberately made sure we don’t have to – but what we see in China is the juxtaposition of the complete picture: that behind the dream, so long as our dreams are now the stuff of gadgets and consumer products (which the iPad is surely the current apex of), a fundamental foundation of this must be the production of these products. China has jumped to the head of the global economic cue, thanks to communism’s complete disregard for humanity for the sake of industry, and we have allowed our own corporations, like Apple, to build our modern lives on the blood and very being of the millions of Asian factory workers that are sacrificed to this enterprise. That is an obviously grave problem in itself, but it is now being further complicated by China’s growing elite that is flourishing as a result. This is how the “chi ku” is lost – the irony is that the state broadcaster’s analysis is spot on. These factory workers are no longer oblivious to the “good life” that these products they spend their own lives building for 50 cents an hour are for. One Chinese social science professor this week highlighted the cruel paradox that these factory workers, such as Li, now see the affluent Chinese generations now coming through, who live a very different westernised life, toting the products they slave for at 50 cents an hour but will never themselves be able to buy. The awareness is creating an angst that undermines the “efficiency” of these young workers, because they understand the bigger picture, the ladder they are clearly at the bottom of. “What is the point of living?” they ask themselves. An increasing number seem not to be able to find any point, at all.

Lu Xin, a 24 year old worker who committed suicide on May 6, wrote in his diary: “I came to this company for money; but then I realised this is wasting my life, my future. I made a mistake even at the first step of my adult life. I am lost.”

It’s game over for Lu Xin. But tomorrow, the hundreds of iPads that passed through his latex gloved hands will bring a hollow glean to the eyes of the Apple faithful, who can hardly contain their anticipation for Jobs’ latest Revolution™.

The brutal irony continues, when you consider the nature of this Revolution™ on our own shores, far away from the bloody reality of the factories where our dreams are, literally, made. We can note and tisk away at the Chinese propaganda seen in the story of Foxconn and the countless other factories like it, and at the response in Chinese media. But let’s take that finger we spend a lot of time pointing, and instead point it to ourselves. Yes, the iPad is a “revolution”. Of the very worst kind.

It’s Jobs’ world, after all…

The saddest part of the iPad’s arrival in our world is that millions are very aware of how ridiculous it all is, but to no avail. The Apple machine has been very successful in recasting it is a tiresome cliché, but the idea that this device is nothing more than an oversized iPhone that does far less than much of what the iPhone can do, and a smaller laptop that doesn’t do anything anywhere near what a laptop can do, is actually correct. The iPad does nothing new. Zero. There is not a single thing you can do on your iPad that you can’t already do. That is not the essence of this Magical Revolution™. Functionality and practicality have, with the arrival of this machine, finally left the building. We are down to nothing more than marketing. That is all this is. Jobs’ slow rise to the top of the techno pile has culminated in a terrifying moment of our times – the moment when one of the richest companies in the world finally managed to convince a people that it “needed” absolutely nothing than what a marketing strategy and brand culture had fictionalised. That is fucking scary. What is says about where we’re at is truly horrifying.

But this rather common sense of many trying to be heard in cyberworld has been completely quashed by the even more terrifying moment this has all come to be. Even aside from the horror of watching consumers dizzy with the thrill of holding this beautiful looking piece of shit, simply because they have been so successfully brainwashed by the marketing, is the broader picture of how the model of media has now officially changed.

Ah, technology. I mean, we thought it would free us. And it has, in some ways. It did. My hope in all this – and it’s an arguably futile one – is that it will push the climate back to people’s media (which would, admittedly, require people to wise up and reject it – a big ask, I think). Because Steve Jobs now owns the media. When all the different forms of media realized they would need to wander over to cybertown – from newspapers, to book publishing, music publishing, all of it – they were walking into a trap. And they would no longer be different – regardless of the nature of their content – for they were all about to become enslaved to a new model where whoever managed to monopolise content distribution and delivery platforms, owned the whole damned thing. And that’s what Steve Jobs and Apple have managed to do in the last few years. He calls the shots, because all these industries now need him to survive.

He did it through the machines. I mean, it’s brilliant. Evil. But brilliant. Once upon a time, the machines meant nothing. The manufacturers of walkmans never had any say in the music industry; there was no direct relationship between the content and the machines that delivered the content, between the media and the media players. But internet technology changed all that. The internet began as a “free world”. But Steve Jobs sought to close it. And he has.

We watched him do it to music, completely killing the entire industry as it had evolved through our society, by managing to commercialise digital music and subsequently become its gatekeeper. This was the role of both iTunes and the iPod (continued with the iPad, which only syncs with Apple-oriented music). If you want to use his platforms and machines, then you’re only going to purchase from businesses who deliver their products for these platforms and machines. This allowed him to completely redefine the industry; not just controlling pricing, but placing Apple in the stream of those profits. Almost every sector of the music industry tried to side-step Apple, and all failed. Today, they have completely given in, and their industry is in tatters. Music piracy didn’t destroy the music industry. Steve Jobs did. They now do as he tells them to do.

He further developed this technology to begin to intersect video content. And what many people still don’t grasp enough is how his quest for domination is now bullying other technological companies – such as the current war with Adobe (of which the iPad is the strongest assault yet, and predicted to be the final blow), where Jobs has simply barred all his devices from playing video content on Flash. If you don’t understand the Adobe vs Mac war, it’s one of Apple now trying to quash other platforms. Adobe makes the Flash software that, up to now, has been how the world watches video content online. But Adobe are too big and too autonomous for Jobs’ liking, and have simply refused to bend to his demands. So, what has he done? Again, used his machines to wage a war – none of them will allow consumers to view content through Adobe Flash. What this will do is push the media (who use Flash to deliver their content) to turn on Adobe, as they all now need to make sure their content can be viewed on Apple devices (knowing consumers will choose media with content viewable on their iPad or iPhone).

It is an incredible testament to the marketing power of Apple that the iPad – even though it is heralded predominantly as a web browsing device – won’t even let you watch the content on most sites (who are still using Flash), yet is still being heralded as a Magical Revolution™. Consider it – a device that kills such a large section of media and content, yet somehow is declared as the next best thing, a giant leap forward in technology, and naively lapped up by the masses. Those masses will now be angry to discover how restricted their consumption actually is. But they won’t blame Apple, heavens no. They’ll simply start choosing sites that have already (and plenty are) forsaken the Flash player for one no Apple rival currently controls. This will either force Adobe to submit to Jobs, just as the recording industry did long ago, or die. Either way, that’s one more slice of the pie belonging to Jobs’ control. In our modern technological lives, there really are few slices of the pie he doesn’t. That should scare the fuck out of you. When it comes to the world of technology and media – a fairly governing realm of modern life – you live in a world where a CEO controls it all. Grasp that for a moment.

But the most frightening thing of all – yes, it gets much worse – is that the final slice of the pie now lost in the arrival of the incredibly useless iPad is news media. That’s really what the iPad is. It’s a bomb dropped on media – the one world that, until now, Jobs has had no control over. This is not just about a bunch of stupid people hypnotised by a flashy but stupid piece of machinery. This is about the nature of media itself, and the corruption of truth. That is the difference when you apply the Apple model to media, instead of music and film. We’re not dealing with a song or a blockbuster movie, here. We’re dealing with a channel that holds a great power over this society, because it is the very voice of authority, of truth, of our reality. Jobs now has a stake in what is and isn’t real. And he’s already flexed his muscles. It has begun. The entire lead up to iPad hitting the shelves has been among the most disturbing wave of propaganda the contemporary commercial world has ever seen. There is hardly any dissent. Every day, I cringe to see another once reputable news source bow down to the new media overlord. Ironically they have been forced to sell the iPad to consumers, convince them that this meaningless device has great meaning – cornered into creating the reality that will make sure the iPad achieves its stronghold that will nail the coffin on his control over them. They know it. But there’s nothing they can do. They are too afraid, and the business reality of news and media has come to be its own demise. They are too afraid that, without the Apple platforms and machines to be consumed by the consumers who keep their business alive, they will die. Jobs has effectively held a gun to their head, demanding; “Tell the people to buy the iPad.”

“But if they do, we are giving our power to you,” they respond.

“Do it,” he says, shaking his gun at them. “Do it, or you die, anyway.”

And so, they have.

One by one, deals are signed. The media are allowed into the Apple world, given access to the channels the world of consumers will be searching for media on and through. And in return, they chant their hollow slogans.

And this is not just the trash media we’re talking about here. That’s what is so sad about this. It’s all of them. Every lefty, supposedly “independent” news source there is left is now chanting the slogans. And they’re chanting them through advertorials that exploit the validity the general public give to “news” and “reviews”. It is propaganda of the most thorough kind. Jobs now has a voice of truth as the microphone through which to hypnotise the masses, leading them to buy his machines, which lead him to own it all.

The Guardian, this week, ran a series of full page ads for the iPad, as well as signing a deal that placed them in official iPad subway posters (they’re the website viewed on the machine for the product shot). It featured a daily article by a selection of its journalists, all heralding the arrival of “the future” of our lives – a “future” that rests on in this over-priced heap of shit that does nothing but restrict what we’ve all been able to do for years now. 24 hours after Li Hai threw himself to his death, one of the most respected newspapers in the world chose not to publish this story, but instead placed on its front page what it declared as “the final verdict” on the iPad, titled “Me & My iPad”. In it, a selection of journalists and celebrities were given free iPads, and then asked a series of questions that obviously a bunch of copywriters had answered for them. While Hai’s body was taken to the local morgue, UK media celebrity Jonathan Ross had this to say of the iPad:

“It’s very beautiful to look at. I have a variety of laptops and some are very chic and easy on the eye, but the iPad looks nicer when waiting to be used in, for example, the front room. Also it’s very pleasant to hold. The apps I have on it are dreamy and reading/sending mail on it is lovely. I have a Kindle as well, but the iPad’s colour screen really trumps that for comfortable reading, and of course photographs and artwork really “pop” on it, so it’s by far the best digital reader for magazines and comic books.”

Never mind that it’s screen resolution is half as clear or bright as a laptop – I just can’t wait to have one, sitting there looking so gorgeous, in my front room, can you?! And nice weaving in there of its main reader competitor, Kindle (which is a far superior reading device).

Even artists – to appease that often resistant arty crowd – were bought out. Apple copywriters, pretending to be funky artiste David Hockney, came up with a true gem:

“It has a better relationship with the hand. The iPhone was limited by the relationship with the hand and ear, not an interesting one like the hand and eye.”

Oh, baby, that’s… Arty™ and shit. He even would have us believe he uses not only his iPad, but his iPhone, to – wait for it – draw his art! Despite there being no such application, beyond a cute app (designed for children) that allows one to Create™ in what is best described as a modern version of the Magna Doodle.

Despite it’s processing power being in the dark ages in comparison to not just laptops but nearly all notebooks, writer/director Graham Lineham, was impressed mostly by its “speed”:

“It just springs to life and waits for you to catch up. The opposite of our normal experience.”

Goodness, it’s changing life as we know it!

Even the BBC happily sold out. It sacrificed Rory Cellan-Jones to announce this dazzling lie:

“The sheer delight of doing just about everything I can achieve on a laptop in a much more intuitive way – watching video, controlling my home audio system, using a photo editing app.”

Actually, Rory, it can’t do any of these things in the same way your laptop does – far from it. Not only does Apple’s battle with Adobe mean that, far from watching video “more intuitively” than a laptop, you mostly can’t watch web video at all, it is Adobe who manufacture the world’s dominating – and far superior – creative software (including photoshop, etc). You can “control” your home audio system, so long as you don’t use anything other than Apple devices and libraries. Neither is there any way to store any music on the device that has not been purchased or imported through iTunes. And let’s not mention document production and editing – needless to say, Microsoft are not allowed to play in the Apple sandpit either, and Word is incompatible and unavailable for the iPad platform.

But it was The Guardian’s own India Knight – who has penned some decent articles in her time – who came out with my favourite piece of propagandist dribble:

“Everything looks so beautiful. It’s like holding the future – especially if you’re interested in newspapers.”

Newspapers, like, say, The Guardian? Who currently have the biggest deal with Apple for content distribution – and advertising – and even their own iPad content delivery app?

My favourite reaction to India’s futuristic declaration came in the furor that did, thankfully, erupt in the comment boards, as a response to these ads masquerading as journalism. FunkyBadger had a question for Miss Knight:

“’It’s like holding the future in your hands’… But is it made of otter’s paws and stardust?”

Others were more damning. In fact, it’s where I first came across the story of Li Hai’s suicide (linked to by a disgruntled Guardian subscriber). These reactions are out there, most definitely. An awful lot of people, it is at least refreshing to see, are not this stupid. But they are mostly those from the world of IT, and are not Apple consumers. A handful of angry tech-savvy anti-Apple mobs are yet to make a dent in iPad’s sales (it has already outsold the far more useful iPhone). As it was, whilst The Guardian generally leaves comment boards open for days after the publishing of its articles, I returned to its selection of Apple advertorials to find a recurring announcement: “Comments on this article have now been closed.” The consequent video of The Guardian editor in chief – yes, they gave him an entire video posted on the front page of the site – where he, what a surprise, heralds the iPad as the future (and The Guardian’s own iPad app as the best on the market!) didn’t even have the option to comment, in the first place. Guess they’d learned their lesson.

Of course, all these articles have now begun taking the standard advertising and marketing approach of hiding deceptively – but only implicitly – antagonist statements within these advertorials. Many of them now begin with a seemingly unimpressed commentator who expresses their concern over this new device. But they all end with telling us we are witnessing the future of civilization itself! It’s a psychological, and very deliberate, trick used in most marketing, these days; it’s because the marketing industry has caught on to an evolving consumer awareness of advertising corruption, and that people have at least grown to mistrust anything too glowing. The compromise is to throw in a statement that, whilst eventually completely drowned by the praise, acts as an assurance to your fears (“Oh, this must be real – it said something vaguely negative amongst the 15 slogans”). I find this requested in many of my briefs, these days, and a lot of the marketing I write will deliberately appear to knock something in the middle of selling it. You’ll see this approach at its most extreme form in what is called “anti-marketing marketing” (yes, quite the paradox!), such as The Commonwealth Bank’s latest campaigns that poke fun at major marketing firms producing deceptive ads for banks. The ad itself is a fictionalised scenario made by a major marketing firm.

Our very own ABC has used this approach, when it unveiled its own glowing reviews of the device (ABC has plans for its own iPad app, needless to say). The honour was given to Nick Ross, who began his article, “iPad: Hot or Not?” by sounding as if he was about to give us the world’s first critical review from a mainstream media outlet; “regardless of what I say, heaps of people are going to buy one.” True, perhaps, but what he then went on to say was that it was a wonderful thing that he “can’t imagine not owning by the end of the year”, describing himself as “hooked” on a device full of “guaranteed winners”. He even managed to get a mention in of The Guardian app, which, Ross tells us, is “mesmerising”.

But with much less screen resolution than your laptop, a slaughtering of multi-media capability, and that ultimately smaller screen, the hard fact of the matter, away from this propaganda, is that even this website you’re viewing right now trumps anything on the iPad hands down. You can browse this website on your iPad, sure. But you can’t watch any of the videos I embed, and the whole thing will be in lower resolution. For something that claims to be the world’s best “reader” device, that just makes absolutely no sense. The Kindle, with its specially developed ink-screen, is a reader. This is just a glossy screen (that you cannot even see at all in the sunlight – but my how pretty that gloss makes it), showing images at a resolution from eight years ago. This is not a revolution. It’s an ad. They’ve sold backwards steps as forward. Buy it, knowing that is what you’re taking. And yes, the official Apple answer to these gripes is that what you’re getting is a machine that is “ready to power up and go”. It’s lack of capability means that you don’t have to boot it, as you would a notebook or laptop. But once you’ve turned it on and are ready to go, it goes at much less speed and power anyway. So if your idea of speed is to not have to wait an entire 30 seconds, to get into a system with nowhere near the power as one where you do have to wait 30 seconds, then… well… you deserve your iPad.

Apple vs Darcness

The thing is, I’m by no means a PC boy from the standard anti-Apple world. If anything, I’m the perfect Apple demographic posterboy. I work in the commercial creative field, I’m an early 30’s trendy inner-city dude, and I even wear funky sneakers in the office. Furthermore, I already own Apple products. I write this on my Macbook Pro, and I also own an iPhone. But my love affair has been fading, over recent years, and has, with the advent of the iPad, finally come to a head. That’s the thing about companies with a black heart of greed the size of Apple’s – they deteriorate as they dominate. The symbiotic deterioration and domination of Apple has reached a point where the two of us, like jilted lovers, are no more.

There have been plenty of quarrels, leading up to this moment; but one of them happened quite recently, when my ridiculously expensive Macbook Pro, just six months after its purchase, decided to die. This is hardly a shock to anyone who knows Apple products. Another testament to its marketing hypnosis is that this brand still manages to sell the products it does, even though people now have an expectation that there’s basically a flip-a-coin chance your device is going to one day, probably not too far away, simply not turn on. The iPhones are notorious for it – even all these generations later – and dead iPods are all part of the parcel.

But this was not even my gripe in this experience. My gripe came when I had to do something about my broken computer. As it was, this was my second Macbook Pro in a year, and the first dealings I had with Mac support were, without exaggeration, traumatic. At least that time, however, the problem was my fault – sure, they still acted atrociously, but hey, it was my foolishness with a glass of red wine that led me to have to deal with them in the first place. But this time, it was their fault. The hard drive had decided, with no help from me, to commit suicide. I expected them to respond to this, considering it was a six month old three thousand dollar computer, in a manner that was both apologetic and accommodating. I expected them to be friendly. But you only get that when they’re taking your money. Or, as I would eventually find out, if you threaten influence over the other people they take it from.

Firstly, I find it appalling that any company uses slave labor in Indian call centers to deal with local business, but a company the size of Apple – who last week finally surpassed Microsoft in share prices, to become the world’s most lucrative technology giant – is unnecessary and abhorrent. Of course, if you choose a selection at the initial automated prompts that relates to you purchasing a product, you don’t leave Australia. Got a problem? Off to India you go.

Thus began six hours – count them… six – that I paid for (I explained I had no land line and was paying literally hundreds for the call, but they refused to call me back instead) that ended in nothing more than a great big bunch of lies. My greatest concern was that all my data had died with the computer. I could see it still on there in disk utilities, and before anything was done to it, I wanted to make sure I had that data back. In the modern world, it was my fucking life – a confronting moment, as it was, to consider that our existence now sits inside a piece of metal that can die, and kill the last few years of our existence, along with it. Yes, I’d made a backup, but the screwed up hard-drive had corrupted the external hard-drive as well. I wanted my laptop working again, and I wanted my life back. Considering it was a six month old, three thousand dollar computer that was still under warranty, I did not consider this an expectation I did not have the right to put forward.

They, however, did not agree. Every time I would put forward that I knew enough about computers to know the hard drive had shit itself, the unpleasant man would promptly interrupt me; “if it is a problem with the hard drive, sir. It sounds like it could very well not be.” We’d try another way of getting it to work – based on the idea it was not a hard drive problem, but a software problem (which they take no responsibility for – even though it’s still their software, as well) – but to no avail. “It’s the hard-drive! C’mon!” I’d repeat at increasingly aggressive volumes.

At one point, I was told to purchase a new external hard drive and ring them again, so we could put the new plan of rescue into action. I did. It cost me $200. I was assured this wonderful idea would work. It didn’t.

“C’mon!” I shouted at them. “I mean, really, c’mon! This is a fucking joke. Your computer fucked itself – can we just admit that now and help me here?’

“I’m afraid I’ll have to terminate the call, sir, if you use language like that.” At roughly $50 mobile phone cost for every vein attempt, I felt quite within my rights to use whatever language I fucking wanted to.

At one point, I demanded to speak to someone higher up. I was refused. Instead, I was placed on hold for 20 minutes, until I was told that “regretfully, after speaking with our customer relations department, there is nothing we can do, at this point, until you follow the next steps.”

These next steps – because they still were not prepared to entertain the thought that something was wrong with the actual machine – was to take the laptop to a data recovery specialist (they take no responsibility for data loss, even if it is their fault), then “zero out” the hard drive (basically killing the whole thing, to start again – and something that only works if it is a software problem and not a hard-drive problem). Frustrated, I hung up the phone, and faced the terrifying thought that I really did have no choice but to submit.

I rang three data recovery specialists and the cheapest quote I could find was $2,100 (almost the cost of the laptop itself). Fortunately, one of these specialists was kind enough to ask me a series of questions that led them to assure me that the Apple support knew full well that this was clearly a hardware problem. “They’re lying to you,” I was told. “But that’s Apple, that’s always their first approach.”

I was not prepared to give up. I decided to somehow get through to the Sydney store, so I spoke to India one more time and demanded a local number. I got it.

“Welcome to Apple Sydney,” the unsettlingly serene voice welcomed me.

“Oh, thank fuck,” I sighed.

“Press 2 if you are experiencing technical problems.”

Oh, I am. Indeed, I am. 2.

“Hello,” said the Indian voice, “I am Trevor.”

No, you’re fucking not.

Okay, take two.

“Press 1 if you would like to enquire about an Apple product or service.”

1.

“Welcome to Apple Sydney!”

Thought so.

This time, I played hardball with a language Apple understands: publicity. I had used it to some effect, during my last battle with my wine-soaked Macbook. I should have used it from the get go, this time – silly me for expecting to be treated on the basis of my legitimate consumer merits.

I explained that I was an IT journalist who had written for digital marketing publications (true, after all – though they would hardly be interested in publishing my “Apple shit me” story, alongside my digital marketing how-to’s) and been published by Sydney Morning Herald (again, true – but they’d care even less). I explained that I had always been a follower of Apple (semi-true) and had even written favourable reviews in the past (okay, a complete lie).

“Can you bring the computer down, right now?”

Thought so.

Not only was I personally walked up the glowing staircase and bypassed through the appointment listings for the (I love this) Apple Genius Bar™; I was offered a beverage, engaged by several staff with absurdly transparent chit-chat about my “line of work”, and even apologised to for the stools being “not very comfortable” (somewhat different to the Chinese workers denied any stools at all). Within five minutes, it was declared that – whaddya know – I was suffering from a hardware problem, and not to fear, because they would personally extract all my data off the hard-drive, right there and then, before my very eyes. And they did. What I was told was “utterly impossible”, just two hours earlier, was suddenly happening in no more than five minutes. I waited for the data to copy over, was handed the external hard-drive (and my digital life) with more apologies, and told that my laptop would be fixed as soon as possible, to ensure I could continue writing my IT articles (praising Apple?). And just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, after discovering they didn’t have any of the hard-drives required in stock, they personally removed one from an instore laptop and replaced it for me, ready to pick up, the very next morning. They even pre-loaded it with a bunch of apps for no extra cost. How terribly, terribly kind of them.

“We’re so sorry,” they said for the five-hundredth time. “We hope we’ve restored your faith in Apple!”

“Oh, totally! I’ll be sure to write something extra nice!” I winked.

And it’s funny and all, but really, what if I was just your everyday consumer who didn’t have it in him to pull this off? What if I were you? You’d be screwed. You would have been paying literally thousands for the data, and waste more pointless hours with the next steps of zeroing the machine. Then, you’d end up in a cue, to finally have the thing sat on a shelf out the back until your part arrived and someone got round to fixing it.

I still had to pay for the original mobile calls, mind you. $387.26. That’s more than twice what most of the factory workers in China – the ones who are flinging themselves of roofs – make in a month to build these things.

So I know all about what publicity means to Apple. My, what a different world it is, when you’re in the club! I can just imagine the pampering that goes on with these real journalists – even if their companies don’t have a gun held to their head in regards to their future in content delivery (which they do), its amazing how easily we can be bought out. Apple knows it. If they can buy you out, they will. Everyone else can get fucked. If you don’t like it, speak to India.

I hate them. But yeah, I got my laptop working again – in exchange for being part of the propaganda machine. It works like a dream, now – like… I don’t know… the future or something. It’s a revolution, I tell you! A fucking Revolution™!

I’m writing this article on it, right now.