In that celebrities are a wide-spread and shared point of associative reference I wonder how much they color our perception of the strangers all around us? Take the example pictured in the thumbnail above: Paul Giamatti.

During the period when the movie Sideways was moving through our culture like wildfire did the common perception of him physically combine with attributes of his character intellectually and emotionally, to form a kind of reference point for short, balding, goateed men everywhere? Which is to say during that period did our minds involuntarily find that strangers around us, of similar physical proportion, were a bit more endearing? Perhaps even a bit more amusing or likable? Did short, balding, goateed strangers everywhere, unfounded though it might be, grow slightly more well rounded and “fleshed-out”  in in the eyes of we judges?

An obvious example might be Michael Jackson impersonators. I have to assume that since his trial on charges of pedophilia, and the resulting shift of public opinion,  their interactions with strangers must have become more complex and their business less lucrative. Agreed? So why shouldn’t it be the same for more subtle variations?

For example:

Did horse-faced women walking the streets suddenly become a bit more attractive during sarah Jessica Parker’s ballyhooed stint on Sex and the City?

Did obese tackily-dressed grease-balls in the office-place become somewhat less laughable and simultaneously more imposing after the cast of The Soprano’s became popular?

Did severe-looking suited shrews seem even more hideous and shrew-like after Ann Coulter’s ascendance?

Did poindexters with glasses and bowl-cuts seem suddenly more attractive to the devious among the opposite sex after Bill Gates became the single richest man on the planet?

Did vacuous, squinty-eyed, good-ol-boys and bald, permanently scowling, humorless suits suddenly seem even less affective and trustworthy after Bush and Cheney’s second term began?

I’m not sure, that’s why I ask. But it does seem likely, even leaving aside my poor examples here, that celebrities which occupy easily recognizable physical archetypes must inform our judgement when it comes to the strangers around us, and let’s face it, really, everyone is a stranger.

What say ye?

After a discussion I had this morning here are a few points to consider and kick around, in no particular order:

American culture, meaning the culture, not the government, of the United States of America, was nurtured under puritanical principles, which we have yet, in our 230 years of existence, to shake off. Today’s so called “culture wars” are just another in the long line of skirmishes in which one group of people, lets call them “those who wish to move forward and evolve” attempts to throw off the suffocating and muscle numbing yoke of the old guard, let’s call them “those that wish to take globs of warm amber into their lungs and become fossilized forever in the continually outmoded past of human experience.”

American culture is one fed on repression. Our notions and experiences of sex, the most universal and natural of human experiences, are warped, from our puritanical upbringing, in ways no other culture (save perhaps the Japanese) could even begin to comprehend. For us everything must be hidden and secret. For us everything must be dirty and guilty. For us pleasures of the flesh can never be trusted and so never completely enjoyed. We are a land of philosophical eunuchs, even the best of us, when it comes to human sexuality. We skulk around feeling guilty, averting our eyes when we are supposed to, masturbating in secret places with the memories of what we’ve seen. The worst of us would have vagina’s sewn up with consecrated threads, only to be cut on a wedding night, with saintly scissors; penises lopped off, only to be attached again for the purpose of overpopulation. Every man, woman, and yes- child, knows the deceitful unworkability of this. But we are cowed by those with the loudest mouths. We nod and pretend. We must deny everything and sublimate our yearnings into lies and violence.

Other cultures, with the good fortune to have existed for thousands of years, in one place, look at us and shake their heads. “How can they be so childish?” they must wonder. “How can they be so full of shit?!” And I wonder as well. How?

How, in the year 2006, can so many of us still be so ignorant of the obvious? Heads can be cut off on 80 foot screens, bowels torn from bellies to slap against thighs, bullets can enter bodies from 10 different angles, but the word “fuck” can not be permitted on the airwaves. A breast can never be glimpsed. A fully nude body must be accompanied with a warning which tells us: “This is very naughty and bad for you!” The peoples who descend from ancient Romans, who walk the same avenues as their ruined forefathers, look at us and laugh as they slap one another on the asses without benefit of a lawyer’s council.

We despise the old. We cringe at their wrinkles and bellow behind their slow motions. We put them in cheap rooms to die while doing every ineffective thing we can to fend off age in ourselves. Knives slip between our skin and bones to artificially tighten, firm-up, enlarge, and slim down. We inject poison into our faces to remove our hard-won wrinkles. We dress in children’s clothes and pretend at child-like freedom. We buy a never ending succession of “toys” we don’t need. In short we make vulgar monsters of ourselves. Everyone sees this but no one admits to the ugliness of it all.

We see the fake breasts creasing and bulging on the sides, we see the faces pulled back into masks, we see the wigs shift, we watch the artificially plumped lips move, we see the huge heads, like baubles, of those who had the fat vacuumed from them, we watch the starving women making excuses and we pretend this is beauty. We pretend we are fooled and celebrate it on every magazine cover and television screen. We pretend the glow of youth dwells on a knife edge, in a needle, in a cream, in a wish.

We blame and repent and pass judgement, never for a second doing the only thing required of adults: taking responsibility. We sue, and we go on talk shows, and we tell all, and we accuse, and we weep, and we “self-help,” and we take our medicine, and stuff our fat faces, and stuff our pockets, and we congratulate ourselves, and we pamper ourselves, and we turn our culture into a infantile embarrassment fit not for men and women but for children whose development is forever arrested.

“We must do it for the children!” What better sentiment for a culture that endlessly caresses and fondles and probes the tight anus of youth!  Our culture, from our music to our “literature” to our entertainments is all unsophisticated and childlike. Every market salivates over the youth dollar and every decision must take the children into account. Nothing legal seems to exist anymore for the benefit of adults. We idolize vapid celebrities. We make millionaires of game playing man-children. We elect intellectually stunted buffoons because they remind us of ourselves, because they are “average” and visibly flawed, as though that were a selling point. The stories of our leaders are always coming of age stories in which mistakes must be made in order to be learned from, but each leader is temporary, and each lesson must be learned anew.

We worship youth both in our rhetoric and in our degradation. But not for the actual youth of our population, to them we are happy to leave cesspit of waste and debt and ecological ruin. “The children” we so adore are ourselves. Our young country is full adolescents, awkward and uncertain, always looking to their invisible father figure in the sky for approval, always fueled by a bottomless undercurrent of fear at facing any reality.

Some of us defer to our invisible father figure in the sky whenever we are made uncomfortable, whenever we are unsure, whenever we would rather not be responsible. We honor him in public, always, saying the things that must be said, but in private we are compelled to push the boundaries and see just what we can get away with. We are rebellious in all matters where his “law” does not serve our purpose, but relent when caught. After all the power to invoke daddy’s name is the greatest power of the weakling child.

These among our number will always stand at daddy’s pant leg. It is only his perceived power that allows them to cover their ears and shake their head chanting “la la la la I can’t hear you la la la…” when things like science and facts and logic threaten. It is the weakling child’s last defense when those among us who want change and progress and betterment attempt to speak up.

It is my feeling that American culture, as it stands today, is very nearly a kink in the evolution of human culture on the whole. (We are by no means the only kink, but a kink in the smooth flow none the less.) It’s dominance is troublesome when elsewhere in the world there are more mature cultures who by turns seem willing to celebrate life, to enjoy themselves, to love, and most of all to learn. If those among us who want further enlightenment here on earth do not eventually shake loose of the yoke which keeps America backward and fearful, if we don’t grow up and punch the schoolyard bully square in the mouth as it were, then we are part of the problem and not at all the shining light which we’ve always assumed ourselves to be.

In any event we have some serious fucking issues.

Discuss.

On the one hand I’ve always thought that humanity would be best served by the absolution of fashion all together. If it were accepted that everyone, of every stripe, of every social standing and rank should simply wear a grey sweat-suit or a navy blue jumpsuit everyday, that would be fine with me. ⊕ It would save us all a lot of time and energy. ⊕ But on the other hand I understand that fashion is meant to be both a means of personal expression and a peacock feather of status. So why is it that the everyday uniform of modern man (and I am talking strictly about men here) has come to be the shapeless tan cotton pant, the artlessly cheap rubber-soled shoe, and the totally untailored (in most cases totally ill-fitting) woven shirt? ⊕ Is This the best we can muster? What has happened to us?

The assumption might be made that it’s all about comfort. That perhaps men of ages past would sigh longingly at our elastic-waisted pants, our stained, threadbare tees ⊕ our oversized polo shirts, our torn jeans, and think, “If only I could have such roomy pants to fart in! Such soft, tent-like garments to cover my huge belly!” But somehow I doubt it. I imagine rather they would do what they did best and snort derisively, looking down upon us as the slovenly rabble which we do, in fairness, appear to be. 

Not one of us thinks that silk tights and brocade cod-pieces ought to make a comeback, of that I am sure and in total agreement, but there has been middle ground, certainly, between looking like a shakespearean actor, in drag, playing Desdemona and the style-less khaki-wrapped lumps we’ve become. Most men, I’ll assume, don’t give a Saturday-morning-crap about fashion, just as I’ve professed myself, and would much rather simply blend in with the crowd, not being noticed one way or the other. To “care” is not to be masculine. I get this. To some degree I agree with this. ⊕

Since making the transition from self-consciously clad art-school hipster to ordinary dude I’ve been of the opinion that the best style is the one that invited no preconceptions, that says almost nothing specific about you whatsoever. ⊕ The lack of affected “stance” or statement in ones dress is the preferred statement in my estimation.

If we men do not care an ounce about fashion and want simply to not to stand out then it is the fault of the accepted standards which leads us to look like such sloppy imagination-less douchebags all the time. Though I don’t want to expend any unnecessary mental energy on clothing I am none the less an aesthetic person. Hence I sometimes wish that the fashion landscape I would blend myself into would be one with a bit more… style. Or at very least a bit more nuance. Ask yourself: how is it that even when men wore little more than a single long piece of fabric folded about them and sandals on their feet that they still managed to carry it with more style than we do today?

Is it simply that we, as an enlightened culture, no longer care about superficial things like appearances? HA HA HAA! No fucking way.

The arguments could be made that this state of slovenly disarray has its roots in modern notions of masculinity, in the pure economics of manufacturing and population size, in the rise of the middle class, or in plain ol’ laziness. It’s likely a mixture of those factors and other more subtle ones I haven’t even guessed at. But then it wasn’t until the late 50’s that the final casting-off of finery really began in America ⊕ and there were at least 4 decades in which modernity and higher standards of dress overlapped.

I often wonder why dress-codes of the 10’s - 40’s ever went out of favor for men. Just too much of a hassle? After all who among us have not watched a noirish movie populated with smartly dressed guys in tailored suits, with cufflinks, and a fedora and thought, “Man, I’d look like cool in that!” But of course, you can’t dress in a three piece suit with a felt hat and watch fob dangling from your vest today can you? The social decorum which necessitated such snappy dress no longer exists and so you would stand out rather than blend in. Point is we guys don’t really have much to choose from today. If we want to maintain that blessed state of virtual invisibility we must do so in the sloppy cotton rags once set aside for hobos and men who pushed manure carts. I guess, in the end, I just think compared to all that came before we’ve settled into something very… boring. Ah well, time marches on and the grass is always greener.