{"id":8,"date":"2010-05-21T20:16:48","date_gmt":"2010-05-21T20:16:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reactions.mrsadman.com\/?p=8"},"modified":"2010-05-21T20:16:48","modified_gmt":"2010-05-21T20:16:48","slug":"michael-d-caigoy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reactions.mrsadman.com\/?p=8","title":{"rendered":"Michael D. Caigoy"},"content":{"rendered":"

MR. SADMAN<\/strong><\/em>
\nby Michael D. Caigoy, radicalposture.com<\/a>, The Buffalo Beast<\/a><\/em>
\n
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Destiny, destiny, protect me from the world.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em>
\n
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u201c Radiohead<\/strong>, Anyone Can Play Guitar<\/em>
\n
\n[FYI, I worked on this movie. Minor role, actually. Rather not talk about it.]<\/em>
\n
\nFor many, fame really has become a prerequisite for happiness. Americans are so saturated by the demanding mundanity of real life that they dream of being plucked out of it and whisked off into the vibrant surrealism of stardom. Life has always kind of sucked for the majority of people. An aristocratic class typically manages to slither its way into parasitism, so the masses can work themselves to death enriching their masters. Christians got through the bleak drudgery of it by dreaming of their own deaths. In the afterlife, everything would be awesome and they could hang out with Jesus\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ghost, and tell God how cool he is for all eternity.
\n
\nBut, where people once had to strain imagine a paradise, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re confronted by it every single day. Advertising has long ago abandoned the informative route, and turned to what Chomsky would call \u00e2\u20ac\u0153deluding [us] with imagery.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em> We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not buying a bottle of watered down Budweiser, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re buying a pool party with leggy models all dying to fuck us. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re buying a car that never gets dirty and zips down hypothetical racetracks in places we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll never visit. Everything is meticulously lit, manicured and surrounded by the antidotes to all our insecurities.
\n
\nCelebrities represent the fulfillment that lifestyle advertising promises. At least in theory, in our subconscious view of the world. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bullshit, but we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll become involuntarily convinced of it thanks to the onslaught of shining, invincible prosperity we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll probably see a hundred thousand times more often than we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll see our grandparents.
\n
\nWho we are goes from being a product of our actions and beliefs to something defined by our wants and aspirations; our desire to imitate. We can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t let our personas be self-directed or not properly compared to the mainstream ideal. An ideal not belonging to any real person, just a permanent state of radiant euphoria, constructed from an incoherent montage of gleaming teeth and jubilant spontaneity. Individuality becomes frightening, unquantifiable, repulsive.
\n
\nThat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the torment I see in Mo\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dilemma. Before his dismissal, his role in life was totally defined by his imitation of one person. There was no need to compare himself to any other standard, or worse, find himself. Once his purpose was torn away, and he finds that his likeness is reviled by Angelinos, his limited instincts lead him on a mission to replace one imitation with another. As he experiences the real world for the first time, he goes through a kind of maturation process, each phase represented by another counterfeit persona.
\n
\nWhen we take the typical American\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s obsession with fame, and magnify it through the impressionable eyes of Mo, we get a reductio ad absurdum of our own unfulfilled dreams.
\n
\nlink to original<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MR. SADMAN by Michael D. Caigoy, radicalposture.com, The Buffalo Beast \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Destiny, destiny, protect me from the world.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Radiohead, Anyone Can Play Guitar [FYI, I worked on this movie. Minor role, actually. Rather not talk about it.] For many, fame really has become a prerequisite for happiness. Americans are so saturated by the demanding mundanity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reactions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reactions.mrsadman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reactions.mrsadman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reactions.mrsadman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reactions.mrsadman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reactions.mrsadman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/reactions.mrsadman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reactions.mrsadman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reactions.mrsadman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reactions.mrsadman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}