The Blindboy Podcast - Trolley Gogs

Episode Date: August 26, 2020

How Irony was deliberately dismantled post 9/11 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hark, you pensive Gerrards! Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. I'm going to start this week's podcast with a short poem that was submitted by Czechoslovakian 1980s electronic musician Jan Hammer. Jan Hammer. It's a silent J. Jan Hammer's gander is on a meander in Santander. Jan Hammer's gander has gone crooked with desire. Jan Hammer's Gander, which I can only assume is a poem that Jan Hammer has written about his own gander, which he obviously keeps as a pet.

That's what he's at now. He has a male goose as a pet and he writes poetry about it and sends the poems to me. All right. If you're a new listener to this podcast, I don't know, go back to an earlier episode although this this episode i don't think is wildly specific you can listen to this episode if you want but there's a a wealthy plethora of previous podcasts that i'd like you to listen to right um go back to one of the earlier ones all right just listen to a few get into the culture of this podcast, get a feeling for it, do you know what I mean, I've had a small bit of boldness, a small bit, earlier, I'm a bit giggly,

I'm recording this podcast, if you've listened to past, I'm in a toxic fucking cycle with this podcast, I'm in a toxic cycle where I record them on Tuesday nights, alright, I record them on Tuesday nights alright I record the podcast on a Tuesday night quite late into the early hours of the morning and there's no reason for it whatsoever I used to do it because just my schedule my schedule was so intense

that I had to do the podcast the night before very late so this week I'm not doing it well I am it's what time is it now it's 10 p.m and I've begun recording the podcast which is good because some nights I don't start recording it till maybe 1 a.m because I've been doing it for so long the hot takes only release in my brain after 12 p.m or or 12am, whatever the fuck that is.

The beam of inspiration that is my hot takes arrives from the heavens into my head after 12am, which is playing havoc with my sleep pattern. So this week, I'm getting out of that pattern by starting slightly earlier, alright? Also, I got a good review this week in The Face magazine which is like an iconic British arts magazine from the 80s and 90s and they've relaunched but I got a really good

review if you want to look it up it's theface.com the article's called How Blind Boy Became Ireland's Biggest Cultural Export and you know how I am with fucking reviews i've spoken before about my rule which is you're not allowed you're i don't allow myself to take in a good review because if i take a

good review on board that means the bad reviews will hurt but this is such this is just a really lovely retrospective of my entire career review, and I kind of, I let myself have it today, I let myself have the good review, and read it, and feel good about it, even though I know that's dangerous, and that means when I eventually get another bad review, that's gonna hurt more, so it's irresponsible, but ah, fuck it man, it's nice to get a good review every so often. I sent it on to my ma as well. Because she knows how to use the fucking internet man.

And she'd read up on bad reviews from my book. And then ring me up going. Ah sorry you got a bad review. Is that the end of your career now? Does that mean you'll get no more books? Is that it now? Will you have to go and get a fast course and i'm like holy fuck man you're quadrupling all my deepest inner fears can you stop please stop reading my reviews on the internet so it's nice to get a

good review because do you know what man i got unfair reviews for my last book, right? Now, I know that sounds like sour grapes, but no, literally, the Irish examiner reviewed my book, right? The reviewer didn't even read the book because he wrote a review about an imaginary book. He accused me of not having any female characters in the fucking book. And then I tweeted at him going,

hold on a second, buddy. This is actually mostly female characters and then then the review was so bad they had to delete it off the internet because it was a review about an imaginary book and like so that's an unfair review that's like someone didn't buy my book because a reviewer can't be arsed reading my book because I've got a plastic bag on my head and how could he possibly write serious literature, so I'm just going to, write a review,

based on what I think it is, and no one will notice, because blind boy, is a fucking idiot, from Limerick, with a plastic bag, in his head, and he's not allowed,

into Irish literary circles, that's the class of review, I got for the last book, so I'm allowing myself, to read one good, fucking review, even though I shouldn't. I shouldn't take any of it on board.

To be perfectly honest. I need to have an internal locus of evaluation for my creativity. Funny how everyone on Amazon who bought the book and read it. Gave it 105 star reviews. But the Irish critics are just like. Nah. Nah not this guy with the bag in his head. The Irish Times wrote,

I don't believe in gatekeeping literature, but... Anyway, fuck that. I got a good review from the Brits. And one good review from a British journalist is worth four bad reviews from an Irish journalist. I don't make the rules. That's toxic post-colonial shame but those are the rules and we all know it

so this week I have a hot take I have a hot take thread what I have is sometimes when I have a hot take I have a fully formed hot take this week what I have a hot take, I have a fully formed hot take. This week, what I have is I have the internal feeling of a hot take that I want to explore with you live. All right.

It's kind of playing upon. So a couple of podcasts back, the podcast name was Clancy's Pancake. I tried to define the current zeitgeist of 2020 the feeling and mood of 2020 and i did this by exploring american politics through the theater of professional wrestling that sounds like a lot but go back and listen to clancy's pancake it's 90 minutes of a cultural analysis through professional wrestling, trying to understand in particular Donald Trump. Just right now, I saw in the news,

in North Texas alone, right? Right now, in North Texas alone, a local hospital has had 50 cases of people drinking bleach in North Texas. Adults drinking bleach because they think that bleach will stop, either prevent or cure coronavirus. North Texas alone, 50, now Texas is big, but 50 adults drinking bleach is a lot.

And these 50 adults in America are drinking bleach because the President of America, Donald Trump, told people to drink bleach. And that's a real sentence. That is a sentence in the English language, 2020. The President of America used his platform at a press conference to say to Americans I heard that when you drink bleach

that the bleach can get into your body and kill coronavirus and now you've got 50 people adults in Texas who were in hospital with bleach poisoning because they drank bleach because the President of America told them perfectly normal sentence in 2020

if I'd have said this to you 10 years ago it would sound like a rejected like satire doesn't work anymore it's very hard to find satire in 2020 that works because our reality is so utterly absurd and if I'd have said that to you in 2010 that a load of people are in hospital for drinking bleach because the president of america told them

to do it they'd just go that sounds like a not very funny onion headline a headline for the the the onion which is an american satirical site sounds like a headline that got rejected but now it's true so what i want to explore this week is i want to explore what 9-11 did to culture not necessarily what 9-11 did to the world what it did to politics what 9-11 did to the way that we think and how you can trace the the shift in thinking that happened after 9-11 to what we're now dealing with and I think what 9-11 did the main little hot take that I have inside me the little voice inside me that I can't prove or disprove just a feeling the feeling that I have is that 9-11 killed irony

I don't know if killed is the right word 9-11 hit irony onto the head with a hammer because irony still exists but irony doesn't exist in the way that it existed in the 90s 9-11 also ended post-modernism. Irony was a huge part of post-modernism. So I want to look at what 9-11 did to culture

and then what it did to how we all think about ourselves and about the world. So before I get on to 9-11, I want to talk about late 80s and 90s postmodern irony in culture, right? Now, when I say irony, I don't mean the Alanis Morissette irony where it's like rain on your wedding day.

It's like, it's a wedding day. Wedding days are supposed to be happy, but it's raining. Isn't that ironic? i'm not talking about that type of irony 90s cultural irony and late 80s cultural irony is an absolute opposition to being sincere or believing in anything right a coolness what was cool and what was hip and what was relevant was defined by how appearing to not care and appearing to care about something was deeply deeply uncool and generation x who would have been the kids of the 80s. They were opposed. To any type of sincerity.

If you want to see a good example. I was on a fucking. A YouTube binge the other night. And I loved a band. Called The Pixies. The Pixies are fucking incredible. As a music band they are an American band from the mid 80's

that would have foreseen the sound of grunge and The Pixies are incredible if you don't listen to them but The Pixies have a song called Here Comes Your Man amazing song a song I know really well but I realised Jesus, I grew up listening

to The Pixies but I'd never seen them on TV I don't really I grew up listening to the Pixies but I'd never seen them on TV I don't really have an idea of what the Pixies look like so the Pixies video for Here Comes Your Man which was released in 1987

comes onto my YouTube and what fucking struck me was so here's the Pixies this band with this incredible song this song that's that's rooted in in 60s beach boys-esque type pop and here they are doing their own music video but it's like they're fucking up their own music video and it's not like they're consciously fucking up their own music video to perform i looking at the the pixies video for here comes your man i genuinely believe that every single member of the band were utterly allergic to the idea of doing a music video

were utterly allergic to the concept of because you think about what does a music video mean in 1987, in 1987 that's the height of MTV, MTV had changed what music was, music used to be about the radio star and then video killed the radio star and now the biggest musicians were whoever had the best videos that were being rotated on MTV so if you had a good video and this video was good and it got on MTV that's it guaranteed fucking success and success in the 80s as a musician meant millions it meant real success so I'm going here's the pixies with this incredibly catchy song this in disgustingly catchy song i'll play it for you

so that's perfection you hear that once and that's perfection. You hear that once and that's stuck in your head. And everyone who heard it at the time, all the record executives, the band knew it. This is a guaranteed hit. So why in the Pixies video with this guaranteed hit, does every single member look like they fucking hate being in their own music video and i don't think they sat back and said let's do this video shit i genuinely think the pixies who'd just been given a huge music deal were setting out venues hated the idea of doing a

music video because it was so fucking uncool and and i get the feeling that they hated the fact that they have this record label and they don't want to be seen as uncool and they couldn't be how they perform the video the lead singer's name is black francis he doesn't even mouth the words, he deliberately fucks up the mouthing of the words the guitar player is literally angry with the

cameraman and I don't believe performatively angry, I think he's pissed off to be there, the bass player is her name Kim Deal she's not into it the drummer is staring the camera out of it. And I'm looking at a band with this really catchy song. And they don't want to be there.

They hate it. And that right there is true. That's that fucking 80s, 90s irony. What you're really seeing there are a lot of really successful hipsters terrified of being sincere yes we've made this incredible pop song yes it's catchy but we won't perform a music video for it it looks too much like we want to be successful it looks too much like we care and it's the utter aversion to sincerity it's like did you know that did you know but seeing the pixies perform that video it's like watching a dog getting washed in a bath and the dog doesn't want to be in the bath you know some dogs just don't like getting washed and you just have the dog in the bat with suds all over his body and he just doesn't want to be in that bat and as soon as he gets

out of the bat he's shaking everywhere and fucking everything up that's the pixies in that video and it was jarring to me I'm like what are you doing this is amazing. Why don't you want to be in your own music video? And that right there is your... That's irony. Late 80s. That's the start of late 80s fucking irony. Man, music videos are for sellouts. Music videos are corporate fucking...

Sucking the music industry dick. We will release songs and we'll make them good, but we won't be in the video. So it's... But then then it's kind of cool it's like they've tried to fuck up their video but why is it why do i like it it's the fact that they don't want to be sincere that makes it really really cool and that right there is your gen x irony another example in music is around that time there was an entire genre of music called shoegaze and shoegaze one of the biggest shoegaze bands actually were irish my bloody valentine but shoeg, how do I explain Shoegaze? The trick is in the fucking name. Shoegaze, as a music, very, very loud, atmospheric, indie rock, okay? But the reason Shoegaze was called Shoegaze, and it would have come out at the same time as we'd say The Pixies, it was a mid to late 80s music it was called shoegaze because

when journalists i'm assuming a journalist come up with the term so the bands like my bloody valentine in particular would perform this amazing huge music but it's like they were embarrassed to even be on stage so they would stare at their own shoes. Or sometimes even perform with their backs to the audience. Because they couldn't face. The sincerity of performing. Performing wasn't cool. Like if you think of what was uncool at the time.

David Bowie. Like David Bowie wasn't cool in the 80s we can look back at it now I mean his let's dance period 1985 onwards I look back at it now and I go well you were wrong Generation X these are some fucking incredible tunes

but David Bowie got really sincere and corny in the late 80s and was up playing saxophones on stage with these huge bands. And because MTV and the visual spectacle was defining what music was, being centre spotlight on the camera, the cool hipster bands still wanted to make music, but they couldn't allow themselves to appear that they actually wanted to be famous or even wanted an audience.

So you have My Bloody Valentine doing an entire 90 minute concert of their incredible tunes. Some of them literally with their back to the audience. And the ones that didn't have their back to their audience were on stage staring at their own shoes. And then a genre gets called shoegaze and what that there there that's irony that's 90s irony it's the terror and fear of sincerity because to look up and engage the audience and to acknowledge that like here I am with my cool song that I spent ages writing about and that I actually do care about. And here I am performing it for you.

There was nothing more uncool than that. But then of course what becomes cool? Have you heard about this band My Bloody Valentine? They're really, really loud and their music's incredible. Man, they don't even stare at the audience, they just look at their shoes. Oh my God, they don't even stare at the audience they just look at their shoes oh my god they don't give a fuck yeah and that's 90s post-modern irony now how does that happen how does it happen that within culture what's hip and what's cool is someone pretending they don't care about what they're doing okay how does that become cool i would you know what's

happening in the world at the end of the 80s the cold war is ending so throughout the cold war is the war that never really happened right post-world war ii russia and america were they you know were they weren't they not going to have a giant nuclear war? And the reality became defined in the 60s and in the 70s by capitalism good, communism bad, the huge big binary opposition fight between capitalism and communism, Russia, Soviet Union versus the West and this huge head to head and building up nuclear bombs and if anything goes wrong the world is destroyed

because in the 60s people like Cuban Missile Crisis people thought the world was going to end, it happened again in the early 80s Operation Archer I think it was called NATO were doing some shit

NATO were doing a war games exercise about 1983 and Russia didn't know whether it was an actual invasion of Russia or not so in the early 80s people did think fuck the world might not be here tomorrow and

under that tension since the fucking the Cold War started in the mid 40s so under that tension, since the fucking, the Cold War started in the mid-40s, so under that tension, decades of the world might end, the communism versus capitalism, East versus West, Soviet versus US, is so big that the world might fucking end, that by the late 80s, it looked as if the Soviet Union had lost. And 89 it absolutely did the collapse of the Berlin Wall that's it communism's over the US has won and I view post-modern irony

as having come out of that it's post-modern irony it's it's almost like the feeling of being let down when you do win it's like here you go now america you've won you've won soviet union is over the threat of nuclear war is gone capitalism has prevailed you have it all now the land of plenty everything you want is now at your feet full consumerism no more pesky russians they're falling apart and what it did is it gave the west english-speaking countries will say europe britain america europe it gave the west a false sense of certainty you've spent decades worrying about the russians now they're gone you've won, here's your certainty. But a huge amount of the Cold War was actually manufactured. Yes, there was this threat, but the scale of the threat was way, way overhyped.

Massively overhyped, the scale of it. People lived in an intense level of fear at all times. the scale of it people lived in an intense level of fear at all times and all you you you know there's think of think of a child in 1983 thinking that the world is gonna end tomorrow because of a nuclear bomb and then finally at the late 80s it's like here you have it you've won and then people are left with this intense emptiness well we we've won. But won what? The Russians are gone. Why don't I feel. As happy as I thought I would feel.

The West has won. Why don't I feel this great enlightenment. Why do I feel empty. And from that emptiness. Sincerity then kind of loses meaning. It's like. We were sincere. Society the west was sincere about russia being a threat society was sincere about the threat of nuclear war and now we've won and our sincerity hasn't paid off it's like you've been you've been sold this false version of heaven and then you finally get it and nothing's really

changed so how can you be sincere anymore and the response to that then is this irony that you see permeating through culture that becomes the zeitgeist i spoke about the zeitgeist a few podcasts back zeitgeist is just a word that you use to determine the general sense and feeling of a time and large global events can help define a zeitgeist and then this creeps its way into popular culture like music so from that and also the safety of having won when you have the safety of knowing or not knowing but being told by the powers that be the west has won the soviet union has collapsed the berlin wall has fallen uh the people in berlin have freedom and you get it and you go this this i don't feel any better was this all a lie have i been lied to what What can I believe in? What is sincerity?

So then sincerity becomes something that's terrifying. And art starts to become ironic. You become, as an artist, you can't show anyone that you care about anything. And the new trendy thing becomes having extreme apathy. Then you get into the 90s. and the 90s was actually quite a prosperous time for members of generation x i spoke about this before in my podcast about the film big but i spoke about early 90s slacker culture films like bill and ted wayne's world Wayne's World, Slackers, Beavis and Butthead. What was cool

were, like, you look at grunge fashion, you've got people wearing clothes that are ripped. If you look at Wayne's World, there are these two lads that don't appear to be doing much with their life. And they don't seem to care about doing anything with their life.

They're just hanging around in their 20s fucking bill and ted's excellent adventure is the same thing stoner culture you have this whole generation of young people and no one no one wants to admit that they would like to have a job no one wants to start a family no one wants to be successful everyone wants to drop out and chill out and don't worry about anything and it's also a response to 1980s where you had the yuppies which was complete early 80s uber capitalism i mean the early 80s was quite a sincere time you've got yuppies uber capitalism I want to be successful

I want to embrace and envision everything about western capitalism and then it starts to fall apart at the end of the 80s at the same time as the fucking Berlin Wall comes down and the Soviet Union collapses but 90s angst and irony

and slacker culture it only exists because we said the lads in wayne's world they feel safe if you think of friends now friends is more late 90s but friends as you can still look at friends in this context no one in friends was worried about their rent no one in friends was particularly worried that they would ever get married or own a house like they were just enjoying their 20s no one really worried about what if am i going to be living in this apartment in my 40s um my rent is too high they just seem to just like work in fucking coffee shops and everything was grand because in the 90s shit was like that

there was no real threat and everyone had the luxury of this sense of we've won we've won everything's grand the other thing too with the with 90s art like people get if people get offended at things nowadays and people get concerned about things nowadays like a classic 90s ironic lyric for me would be Beck 1993 Beck's got a song called loser and the main lyric is I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me and this was cool as fuck at the time now if someone released a song today called I'm a loser baby why don't you kill me that person would be dragged through the mud on Twitter

because the lyric is insensitive to people who might have mental health issues or it trivializes suicide or trivializes wanting to die but there was this sense in the 90s of nothing can be offensive and go out of your way to be offensive and to even care about what if something is offensive or not the sincerity of that is deeply uncool you You have to remember too, a decade previously in the early 90s, when pop music started to be explicit, the likes of Prince or some heavy metal music, the right-wing American Christians, utter sincerity of Christianity, believing

in a god, Reaganite fucking Christians Christians they were the ones trying to censor lyrics of music and this was seen as deeply uncool so by the time the 90s comes around there was a backlash against that but ultimately the capacity of a culture for it to be okay

in the 90s to have so much stuff that was deliberately offensive, deliberately antagonistic deliberately nihilistic it can only exist because the members of that culture ultimately feel safe it's it's from it's from safety it's like the russians are gone the economy is doing well there's no more threats so we don't have to believe in anything and we can just say fuck god fuck christ look up the likes of what Marilyn Manson was doing by the late the late 90s with this deliberately offensive deliberately antagonistic and an utter freedom

to offend to do whatever you want because society felt so safe society had won the Russians are gone there's no more nuclear bombs everything's going to be grand and by 2000 then MTV stopped being about music videos and Jackass comes about and Jackass you all know Jackass but Jackass comes about. Jackass. You all know Jackass. But Jackass was a TV show. That happened in 2000. And Jackass. Jackass was people hurting themselves. On television for entertainment. It was people really.

Johnny Knoxville was an ex stuntman. He hosted Jackass. And he had a bunch of friends. And they would. It came out of skater videos I suppose. But they'd hurt themselves on camera they'd jump off buildings without protection they would get into shopping trolleys and slam themselves down roads and people would really do dangerous things and injure themselves

in real for for real on television and that was jackass and that's what MTV became, it didn't, like, this is why I'm comfortable, when I'm speaking about this in the context of 1987, you've got the Pixies, and the Pixies are terrified of the sincerity of performing for their own music video on MTV 1987, right, that's the earliest bit of it, we're going to perform this brilliant song but we won't have the sincerity of caring about the video because we need to be ironic and we can't be sincere then you've got Beck 1993 on MTV and he's saying well I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me and it's like well I'm after upping the fucking irony there because if the pixies are too cool to be in the music video well I'm too cool to fucking live so I want you to kill me and then the natural and I feel okay with this with making this comparison it's not too much of a jump the natural fucking

progression then MTV in in the year 2000 is well how do you trump the pixies? How do you trump, I'm a loser, baby, why don't you kill me? It's not even going to be music anymore. It's going to be lads in shopping trolleys trying to kill themselves. They're going to have no disregard. And that's the end point of 90s irony, because what's more uncool than fucking health and safety?

Are you going to wear knee pads? No. Knee pads would be like the pixies sincerely singing their songs I don't want knee pads I don't believe in anything I'm being ironic man who cares if I break my fucking leg it's all meaningless anyway

and then 9-11 happens 9-11 happens in 2001. And. I can say it now. Because it's fucking 20 years. Or 19 years after. But I just find it.

From a zeitgeist point of view. From a zeitgeist perspective. And I don't mean this to be in any way offensive. But. I find it visually interesting. 9-11 is almost like an extreme version of jackass jackass is on tv you've got these fucking egypts with their irony deliberately hurting themselves careering down a concrete ramp in in shopping trolleys and smashing their heads in at the end with no health and safety and now you've got planes crashing into the twin towers with absolute death fueled by the sheer sincerity of islamic fundamentalism

and the spectacle of 9-11 stopped that type of 90s irony that sense of you can be as offensive as you like you can hurt yourself on television fuck the rules fuck safety i believe in nothing 9-11 stopped that shit. Because. Everything. That America feared. All throughout the Cold War. The big fear was. The Russians are going to. Put a bomb in America. The Russians are going to blow things up.

We're going to see. Deaths on American soil. We're going to see. Death and pain on American soil. And it never happened. Everyone had been prepared for it. It never happened. Pearl Harbor. Before the Cold War. Was the last time it happened. But it never happened. Everyone had been prepared for it. It never happened. Pearl Harbor before the Cold War was the last time it happened.

But it never happened. And the 90s come along. And everyone's told. Sure the fucking. Soviet Union's gone. Who's going to fuck with us now? And then 9-11 happens. Something you can trace directly back.

To the fucking Cold War. Because the CIA funded. Bin Laden. In the 80s in Afghanistan. Because the Mujahideen. Of which Bin Laden was involved in. Were fighting the Russians. In Afghanistan.

And the CIA and Reagan fully fucking funded them. But 9-11 ended that irony. 9-11 ended. You can't't have Beck saying I'm a loser baby now because now it's like here's your sincerity lads here's some Islamic fundamentalism while ye were all being slackers and not worrying about the rent and saying I'm a loser baby why don't you kill me there's some people over here with a big problem that you didn't see and you ignore them and here they are now and they're creating a spectacle of terror on television so before I get into that and the impact of that and where I want

to conclude this hot take it's time for a pause this week it's going to be the popcorn shaker pause um i have a musical shaker that i made myself which contains popcorn kernels and i'm going to shake this and while i shake these these popcorn kernels um you're going to hear an advert for some shit you may or may not need On April 5th You must be very careful, Margaret It's a girl Witness the birth Bad things will start to happen

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to see me live streaming three or four times a week that's good crack yurt i remember 9-11 when it happened and i would have been a teenager but i was not so young that I didn't have an awareness of the world. And also, my da was very political. My da, like my da before 9-11, he would have been very much interested in watching like the Oklahoma bombing in 1998, Timothy McVeigh. the Oklahoma bombing in 1998, Timothy McVeigh, my dad used to say that America will implode, that what America has to worry about is not from the outside, it's from the inside. He was convinced that he thought there'd be a civil war because of domestic terrorism like Timothy McVeigh. And I remember my dad was so on the ball that when 9-11 happened he knew it was Bin Laden before the media even said it

because he had been following the likes of Bin Laden because Bin Laden tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993 so my dad was real interested in global politics he knew who the Mushajideen were and all of this

and I remember when 9-11 happened for me the big shock i remember in ireland was it would cut to americas and the americans on the television and they genuinely couldn't understand why anyone would want to do this to him. As in, Americans were completely oblivious and unaware of the foreign policy in the Middle East and the American imperialism for oil. They were unaware of the impact of that on the people in the Middle East and why it might lead to some people in the Middle East. And why it might lead.

To some people in the Middle East. Being very upset with America. And also. There was no attempt at the media. To try and understand that. Now I don't mean it in a way to. Justify. 9-11.

Because it's unjustifiable. It was disgusting. What I mean is is there was no attempt to ask why the fuck would why are there a group of people in the Middle East shouting death to America surely there's a

reason did we do something to them there was none of that that discourse didn't exist what quickly like obviously the world Did we do something to him? There was none of that. That discourse didn't exist. What quickly... Like, obviously, the world was upset. The world was terrified. The world wasn't used to seeing America in flames. Because, remember, the world had been told,

this is the big fear with the Cold War and it never happened and then in the 90s everyone thought sure the Soviets are gone we can chill out now and then 9-11 happens and it was a big shock to fucking everybody but

what soon took over was very very very loud American tears now I'm not saying the tears weren't real the tears of the people were real but the tears of the American media and American politicians

those tears were I won't say, there was an element of performative tears from the media and from politics. Now, by which I mean, it was the first time, I was born in the 80s, I was a child in the 90s, I was born in the 80s. I was a child in the 90s. So I grew up around 90s irony. That was my culture. I remember seeing Beavis and Butthead.

I remember Nirvana. I grew up. My brothers would have been watching Bill Hicks. I was raised on 90s irony where anything goes. I was watching Jackass. I was raised on fucking irony I did not know an ounce or shred of fucking sincerity my school tried it with Catholicism when I was a kid I had nuns and priests trying to teach me Catholicism but I was going home to a house where my ma and my da are not religious and also my older gen x siblings certainly are not religious so that the odds of me coming home saying the priest told me that I'm getting communion and this is the body of Christ

as soon as I got in home like my entire family were openly laughing at everything I'd been taught in religion class so I was raised on to reject sincerity reject religion I was raised to believe 90s irony make a joke about whatever you want to joke about there's no sacred cows sincerity is embarrassing make a joke about whatever you want, nobody cares no one can be hurt and when 9-11 happened it was the first time in my life

I felt this really strong sense of here's something you can't make a joke about and it was reflected back in the media. It's like, 90s irony tried to exist with programs like South Park was on

and it tried to exist, but there was this one thing. Here's what you don't make a joke about. Here's what you can't ask questions about. And then, what starts to happen is you see this of when, by about mid-2001, when the American tears turn from sadness immediately to anger and revenge, and America starts to scan the world to go, well, who did it?

And they're talking about Afghanistan and talking about Iraq. to go well who did it and they're talking about afghanistan and talking about iraq the what you have there you have the reintroduction of extreme sincerity when you can't make a joke about 9-11 when you can't when you must speak about 9-11 only through the lens of american tears it's conditioning you then when America says Iraq's got weapons of mass destruction Iraq has nuclear weapons even asking the question of where's the fucking evidence

was immediately shot down the world tried to go hold on a second lads I know 9-11 was really really bad and we're with you and that was terrible, but I don't think Saddam Hussein was the one who did it. And America, rather than calmly trying to present evidence as to why they think Saddam Hussein did 9-11, instead of providing evidence, America responded with the sincerity of its emotions around its tears. And sincerity became reintroduced. It's like, how dare you say Saddam Hussein didn't do 9-11?

Do you not see how upset we were? And then countries like, so America goes to the UN to say, we want to invade fucking iraq because we think saddam did it we think he has weapons of mass destruction they didn't have enough evidence france was one of the first countries to go yanks you're talking out of your holes saddam didn't do fucking shit we know who did it and it wasn't saddam we are not backing you to go into war in Iraq. And America responded by, they renamed the name of French fries to Freedom Fries. And that moment for the world, that was a real jaw dropper. Because it was so fucking corny.

It was such the opposite of 90s angst and 90s irony it was like something a three-year-old would do your so france won't back you on this war so you're rename renaming chips to take france out of it and you're calling them freedom fries and all of a sudden, you have these right-wing pundits start popping up, like Bill O'Reilly. Like, if you want to see... Like, the Bill O'Reillys won. The Bill O'Reillys of this world, that type of right-wing, illogical punditry, where it's pure emotion and you can't even argue anymore because the Trump administration nowadays will say things like alternative facts so therefore argument is broken down we've gone past

sincerity to batshit irrationality but one of the last great debates of American TV in my opinion is the 80s TV presenter Phil Donahue debating Bill O'Reilly about the Iraq war and it's like the last attempt at a logic and rational based debate against this new American sincere puritanism and that's the last gasp of it and then the Bill O'Reillys and the Sean Hannity's won Irish American cunts you've got George Bush starts openly talking about Christ. Christ was not spoken about in the 90s from America. Christ was very uncool. Alright.

Christian fundamentalists were from the 80s. They were the ones who got offended about music lyrics. And then they start to reappear in post 9-11 on television. And it became okay to start talking about christ fucking george bush says the invasion of iraq was a crusade an incredibly dangerous term because crusade means the crucible it means the cross the crucifix you know and crusades in that area of the world are very problematic historically but anytime anyone tried to challenge this new post 9-11 sincerity it would they were met with extreme American tears and pain and the narrative was

shifted to if you didn't agree with the Iraq war it meant that you agreed with 9-11 or it meant that you felt that it was okay and nuance was going out the window also what was going out the window was like the irony you'd seen in the 90s can only exist culturally when people feel genuinely safe a lyric like i'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me. Can only operate in a culture. That feels secure and safe enough. To view it in context of. He doesn't really want someone to kill him. He doesn't really think he's a loser.

He's being ironic. But then 9-11 happens. And. I'm a loser baby gets banned from the radio. And not just I'm a Loser Baby so why don't you kill me gets banned from the radio immediately after 2001. A fuckload of songs now stop getting banned from the radio because of the collective trauma that America is experiencing from witnessing the 9-11 attacks. Free Bird, a song by Lynyrd Skynyrd, which has nothing to do with fucking planes crashing, with violence,

simply the lyrics, I'm as free as a bird, with that, Freebird is the most amazing example, because, they banned Freebird from the radio, Lynyrd Skynyrd Freebird from the radio, got fucking banned, after 9-11, because the lyric, I'm as free as a bird,

accompanied with the floating sound, and then how the song suddenly turns violent, the powers that be, felt that that was enough. To trigger trauma. Or make people feel more unsafe in America. Having just witnessed 9-11. I'm a loser baby why don't you kill me.

Gets taken off the radio. An episode of the British comedy Only Fools and Horses. And the name of the episode was The Sky is the Limit. Gets taken off TV um a really mad one because this operates within the mechanics of 90s irony within the films of Quentin Tarantino and also John Woo there was a 90s trend in let's just say Tarantino what Tarantino used to do because he was a big man for 90s irony Tarantino would show a very violent scene but while the violence is happening on camera he would contrast that by playing a piece of music that isn't violent at all and is quite

upbeat so a classic example of this is in Reservoir Dogs, someone's getting their ear chopped off in a very graphic fashion. So he plays Stuck in the Middle with You, which is a cheerful song. And the contrast of the cheer with the spectacle of violence through irony together create this new meaning. It's like, this cunt's getting his ear chopped off on TV but here's some happy funny music so ah it's ironic he's laughing in the face of death because there's no actual threat in the world and what

John Woo would do, John Woo used to make action films but he was famous for having like slow motion scenes of a car going on fire but he'd play like Somewhere Over The Rainbow, this real, a song that has the utter, kind of sincerity of World War II sincerity.

So one song that gets banned off the radio after 9-11 is Louis Armstrong, What A Wonderful World, which is a beautiful sincere song about like the lyrics I see trees of green, red roses too I see them blue before me and you and I think to myself what a wonderful world like that song is utter

sincerity but like an audience in 2001 if they hear that song in their mind they're thinking Tarantino, and they will place the sincerity of that song over the visual horrors of what they've just seen on the news with 9-11. So they had to take the song off the fucking radio. In fact, any song, right? So if you think of the spectacle of 9-11 and all of a sudden you're not allowed to parody

it you're not allowed to laugh at it you must take it utterly sincerely any piece of music which could be seen to subvert ironically or poke fun at 9-11 if you placed it alongside it was banned even if it was unintentional so acdc had a lot of songs banned it's safe in new york city like acdc have a song called safe in new york city so what happens if you get footage of 9-11 as it happens and then in the background you play safe in new york city what is that that's 90s irony that's tarantino right there there you have I mean literally what that's called is detournement it's a technique from a post-modern art movement called the Situationists who would they were in the 1950s what they would do as their art is they

would they'd take two separate things and place them alongside each other and the irony of those two things together would create something new each other and the irony of those two things together would create something new so if you get footage of 9-11 and you play the horrors of that but the music that's playing over it is it's safe in new york city then right there you've got detournament you've got irony and it's the same as quentin tarantino 1991 someone's getting their ear chopped off let's play the upbeat, stuck in the middle with you, how the two of those things interact together,

create irony. So they banned songs, that would even create irony, or parody, in someone's mind, when they're thinking about 9-11. Rocket Man by Elton John, is banned from the radio.

Eve of Destruction by Barry McGton John is banned from the radio. Eve of Destruction by Barry McGuire is banned from the radio. Bye Bye Miss American Pie is banned from the radio. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of songs are immediately banned from the radio post 9-11. Not because the songs have anything to do with plane crashes, not because the songs have anything to do with plane crashes, not because the songs have anything to do with violence, but because people were so media literate that they create the irony in their heads. And you can say maybe they did it because they were so worried about people's trauma, but I don't think so.

I don't think it was. I think it was part of the new american sincerity 9-11 is the most serious thing that has ever fucking happened and the message came from the top down that this needs to be capitalized on we need to create something that is so our american tears need to be so utterly untouchable that we can capitalize on this thing to get the rest of the oil that's in the world. And that's what happened. Speaking from 2020, that's what fucking happened.

Alright? The invasion of Iraq was an illegal war. It's a war that happened, alright happened without the consent of the UN. For a war of that scale to happen, the UN, which was founded after fucking World War II, one of the things that prevented the Cold War from turning into this massive war that was going to happen, prevented the cold war from turning into this massive war that was going to happen the american you the americans exploited performative tears and now when i say performative tears i'm just covering my arse here because i don't want to be disrespectful to people who died in 9-11 i don't want to be 9-11 was a fucking horrible tragedy a horrible horrible tragedy okay and

the lives of those people that died are valuable and there's a lot of fucking pain all right but what i'm talking about is not 9-11 i'm talking about how the spectacle of 9-11 was blatantly hijacked by the Bush administration. And the memory of the people who died in 9-11 was spat upon by that administration, by going into Iraq and waging an illegal war and killing hundreds of thousands of people in the Middle East. That's what I'm talking about when I speak about the spectacle of American tears

and the forced sincerity of American tears I'm not talking about real tears I'm talking about the exploitation of them for power and abuse and corruption and imperialism and it worked on culture the 90s didn't have sacred cows there was nothing in the 90s you couldn't be ironic about there was nothing you couldn't sincerity was deeply uncool no one would dare be sincere about something and

the first time I ever saw anyone even try and make a joke about 9-11 it was 2005 and even then it was too soon it felt too soon it was a film came out called the aristocrats and the aristocrats was it was a documentary about a joke called the aristocrats so the aristocrats

is it's a traditional joke that goes back years and years and years usually flourishing through times of censorship right so what the aristocrats was is it's a joke farm that comedians going back to the 19th century would tell in private clubs only amongst other comedians rarely in the presence of the public it was a comedian in joke that you'd tell amongst other comedians and the point of the public it was a comedian in joke that you'd tell amongst other comedians and the point of the aristocrats joke format was not to be funny but to be as as offensive as humanly possible the worst thing you can think of that's the aristocrats it's like it starts off with like a family go to a talent agency and the whole family are there and they go to the talent agency and say uh this is me and my family we're performers

let us do our performance for you and then the talent agent says yes uh tell me the performance and then what you do in that in that space is you tell the most off-color horribly offensive joke i'm talking fucking pedophilia uh shit killing people whatever whatever it is to to utterly be as offensive as possible and then you finish the joke by saying talent agent goes that was good what's your act called and you said that was the aristocrats it's not funny it's not supposed to be funny it was something comedians would say to each other to deliberately offend and this documentary the aristocrats came out in 2005 and they had numerous comedians on it doing the aristocrats joke making jokes about pedophilia making jokes

about killing babies as the worst you can think of and then south park were in it and they made a joke about 9-11 victims and that was the then, and that's how powerful the control of culture had come about since 9-11, from banning songs on the radio to that, you couldn't fucking say shit about it, You couldn't fucking say shit about it. But it was used. Those performative American tears. And the utter sincerity of it. Were used for consistent. And continual.

Violation of human rights. And I tell you when. I tell you the moment. I remember. Noticing the impact. Of this new sincerity on art. Because here's the thing with sincerity. It's hard to have. Good art often isn't completely sincere.

Like. You need to have. There needs to be a bit of irony in there. There needs to be a bit of skepticism. Alright. Other sincerity. I mean. You can have good art that's sincere.

Of course. But. but irony has its place and sometimes when sincerity is performative or misplaced it makes really bad fucking art that doesn't stand up and the first time i desperately felt this a film came out in 2008 called the heart locker and the Locker was nominated for nine fucking Oscars and won six now if a film has nine nominations and wins six you're just gonna think wow this is class what's going on here this must be fucking amazing so I rent out the Heart Locker on DVD I think it was about 2008-2009 because it had gotten so many Oscars rubbing my hands together going

well hey this is going to be great man you don't just get nine Oscars for no fucking reason and it's a pile of shit it's grand, it's grand, it's grand it's not fucking nine Oscars and every single one of the heartlockers fucking oscars are american tier oscars it's a film about an american soldier in the fucking us and his trauma of being a bomb disposal expert all right and it's straight up America you invaded

a fucking country illegally and now you're sucking your own dicks by giving nine Oscars to a film that portrays the tears

of the invading army and Jeremy Renner like Jeremy Renner became a leading man off the basis of it

I'm sorry but Jeremy Renner is not a fucking leading man where the fuck did Jeremy Renner come from he looks like a belly button like what the fuck and the heart locker

is not that good no one is watching the heart locker today nobody who the fuck says let's put on the heart locker nobody because it's only okay and it got 9 academy awards because of patriotism support the troops 9-11 collective heart sincere bullshit fucking american new sincerity tears

trumping what is good and bad art and now everyone has to like the Hurt Locker when it came out, everyone has to clap people probably nominated it because they felt that they support fucking Al-Qaeda if they don't nominate it and that was the impact on art and I remember

watching it going this is shit I want to listen to In Utero want nirvana you know what i mean and of course it directed by by katherine bigelow who she also directed zero dark 30 i prefer zero dark 30 but look it up this is this is not conspiracy theory zero dark dark 30 and there was cia funding in the film cia worked as advisors on the film and you can look it up zero dark 30 was the cia invested in that film as a type of propaganda to normalize torture in guantanamo bay look that up that's not me talking out of my hope

so that's the same director. For the fucking heart locker. So. Like the Iraq war. Went ahead. And Iraq was invaded. And everyone knew it was for oil. Everyone knew it hadn't. Like they took down Saddam.

It was for fucking oil. It was for oil. Because. Iraq had the biggest amount of fucking oil. We know that now in 2020. That's what it was about. It was about controlling fucking oil. And it was led by corporations but like the iraq invasion happened it was an illegal war the un didn't say it was okay america just did it and britain got stuck into it as well

then you had extraordinary rendition flights which basically extraordinary rendition if america felt that any citizen of the world was a threat to america no matter what country they were in britain france germany usually young muslim men if they felt for whatever reason that this person was a threat to america they would fly to the country kidnap the person probably bring him through Shannon airport which we're not 100% sure about and bring him to Guantanamo Bay and imprison them and there's still people in prison in Guantanamo Bay being tortured and they'll say oh yes but some of them were definitely terrorists but there's a lot of people in Guantanamo Bay there for 18 years who had no affiliation whatsoever

with Al-Qaeda or anything like that and were literally kidnapped off the streets of Germany and England and brought to prison for a couple of decades just to have questions asked of them and to be tortured the Americans brought back torturing they did so much shit

off the back of the sincerity of these American tears and if an American citizen didn't agree with the Iraq war they were accused of being unpatriotic, they were accused of not supporting the troops all of these things were rolled out

and one of the most horrendous of not supporting the troops all of these things were rolled out and one of the most horrendous violations and abuses that came about after 9-11 through again this spectacle of these sincere American tears

was the US Patriot Act which was brought in quite quickly and it was October 2001 Was the US Patriot Act. Which was brought in quite quickly. And. It was October 2001. So it was a couple of months after 9-11. They brought in. The US brought in the Patriot Act. Which.

Basically like. Violated. The US citizens constitutional rights to privacy. It meant that. If the US government. Felt privacy. It meant that. If the US government. Felt that. A US citizen. Was supporting terror.

Or even. Critical of the government. That they could spy on them. For whatever reason. Whatsoever. Because that meant it helped counter terrorism. Policy. And from that then you get.

The likes of the fucking NSA. You know. That shit that came out. the wiki leak stuff in 2000 and fucking 2013 where it's it turns out that Obama then took the Patriot Act and the NSA took it and the government were compiling people's data and spying on everybody you can trace all that back to 9-11 i i think what i'm trying to get at i think what i'm trying to get at with this hot take is that 90s irony and apathy was deliberately destroyed from the top down deliberately i think the u.s government understood that this 90s skepticism and irony and the tenets of post-modernism which caused people to look at power with skepticism that once 9-11 happened this was viciously eradicated out starting with

the banning of songs from radio, it was a deliberate cultural engineering, but we can't have these slackers who don't care, we need patriots, we need God-fearing patriots, we need fundamentalists, we can't have fucking another Nirvana, we can't have acts and bands and kids thinking that you can be a slacker and you can't believe in things because we need recruits for the army we need fundamentalists we need people to believe in a black and a white and i think this was consciously engineered off the back of 9-11 it was conscious engineering of culture through various shocking and terrifying acts globally i mean airport security like

airport security since 9-11 how much of that shit is actually useful do they really need to take away my tiny shampoo bottles do they really need to do that or is the extreme the heightened airport security that we experience when we go through airport security how much of it is actually useful and how much of it is a ritualistic spectacle to remind us all the time. That there is a threat of terror. That there is a threat of terror. 9-11. American tears.

Sincerity. Don't fucking laugh. We're taking your shampoo bottle. Like how much of it is ideological? How much of it is from the top down? To control and change culture. So that we are compliciticit in the absurdity of something like the Iraq war and what do you have today now I've deliberately left the internet out of all of this because if I started including the internet that that's a separate a B storyline that runs

alongside all of this the internet and social media which I've left out of it. Do we have irony today? We do, but like, it's a different, it's a post-irony. What we have today is, it's not, that 90s irony shit, that falls under the remit of post-modernism what we have today is meta-modernism we we we have to have sincerity and irony existing at the same time in this continual fluxus and we have to kind of figure it out for ourselves and when you hear people today using bullshit terms like snowflake generation and things like that thinking people are being these people are being deliberately offended this didn't offend generation X I don't look at it in terms of offended

it's more if you raise a generation with that spectacle of performative American tears for power and you know every experience of an airport being this someone's going to blow up the plane and a war on terror if you raise a generation like that you're going to

have adults who have a heightened sensitivity to threat and pain so it's not the same if Beck was around today and released a song called I'm a Loser Baby So Why Don't You Kill Me the young people listening aren't going to sit back and go wow that's cool that guy doesn't care if he dies they're going to have a heightened sensitivity and say like I know I have a friend who took their life

or I have depression explain to me their life. Or I have depression. Explain to me again. Why you think that's cool Beck. It's just a heightened level of sensitivity. It's not necessarily being offended. It's the zeitgeist has shifted. The zeitgeist has changed. And that's how things are now.

But from that. You also get people with a greater level of fucking compassion. So that's my hot take, I think. I think that's it. How 90s irony was consciously deconstructed from the top down as a response to 9-11. And I could be wrong. What the fuck do I know? This is a philosophical rambling podcast that's what this is I'm not right or wrong these are my it's my lens and view of it

do you know what I mean all right I hope you enjoyed that I enjoyed doing it oh catch me on my twitch stream by the way Wednesday Thursday Friday twitch.com forward slash the blind boy podcast playing video games, having fun, having a... Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th, when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre

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