Fatbergs and Sinkholes
A loose cultural framework for our times.
I'm a fan of mixed metaphors and playing fast and loose with analogies. Works like The Hedgehog and the Fox seem like a fun and cogent way of describing and synthesising complex qualities like intelligence and knowledge. Isaiah Berlin conceived of it as an enjoyable game, but nonetheless, these games extend to other avenues of culture. Metaphors have legs.
I mean to have fun too.
Recently I was struggling to parse/assimilate/understand the weird nay absurd presence of the Village People performing at the Trump 2.0 inauguration. What was a late 70s, soft Gay Rights pop-disco act doing at the coronation of a megalomaniac soft-fascist? Why was he on stage like he belonged there? When he's broadly against LGBTQ+ rights? How much money was exchanged, and but more seriously, What The Hell Does This Mean?
'Cultural trainwreck' came to mind. But that trope is too pointed to deal with this absurdity. The Village People haven't been a cultural force since 1980 — there's nothing to wreck in their trajectory, except to provide a curious endnote. From a political-coronation perspective, it could be said to tap into a 'great' period of American musical history. But the late 70s, early Reagan 80s era were certainly not great times for the Gay community. So... Trump is aggrandising himself, somehow...?
It's too absurd.
But it's an absurd pairing that's somehow possible in these strange, demented times. When 'deep catalog' music, that is, retro hits from the 60s-90s, is the most profitable genre of music, and nostalgia acts rule the market when the market has for all intents imploded, then anything will seem fair game in the name of entertainment and political fanfare. Two or three greatest hits can be rallied to a fascist cause, sure. There's nothing that translates into cultural accountability when the broader culture is relativistic, profitless and hollowed-out. When there's no real future to engage with.
But here's where my analogy comes in.
I had a Twitter-grade news joke along the lines of: The Government's main focus should be to protect us from sinkholes and fatbergs.
Allow me to expand: extreme cultural events can be compared & contrasted as Fatbergs and Sinkholes. Especially when they intersect with politics.
Trump is a Fatberg occluding our culture like a dense blockage constantly amassing fatty dregs and waste. Our media tilts in his direction because of this weight-gravity-force, it can't escape his presence and endless outrage-material clogging the channels. The media is weakened by a) the seriousness of the fallout of it all and b) the metrics of engagement that define News now. The media can't look away. Trump is great for clicks, as the tech-wankers proved by sharing the coronation stage. A fatberg is a narcissistic entity, it dominates and negates the free flow of, well, anything else around it. It draws all attention toward itself in a clamour of self-righteousness and ego. It can only be removed with drastic and often destructive intervention.
The Village People performing at the coronation is the sign of a cultural Sinkhole. The band (consisting of how many original members?) haven't had a hit since the 80s, and but a truckload of money and some no doubt interesting negotiation meant that whoever owns the rights to the brand could assemble a cast and make the moves on the Federal stage. How many other Trump-aligned acts weren't available or willing to take that stage? What tier of names did you drill down to land on the Village People? You mean there's nothing else culturally-important on the musical interwebs, who we can leverage to our cause?
Well, culturally, lots is happening on the micro-genre level and niche movements online. But nothing big and famous like these retro acts and Boomer-era megastars. And we can't really have a Spotify playlist at the inauguration. So gimme something theatrical and familiar, none of these viral nobodies.
All the great and interesting music made today could fall into a sinkhole, for all the money it generates its creators, and little would change in the overall landscape. Other artists might know to skirt these microgenres for a while, but no great cultural weights would rise again. The playing field has imploded — which is the economics of content when the value of content is zero. This is my familiar grumble. Music is created from love and need, otherwise it's a financial sinkhole. And it can only be filled with drastic and expensive interventions like policies and support.
A fatberg is the cruel attestation that Value (and attention) gravitates to a handful of channel-dominating, channel-owning entities.
A sinkhole is the broader cultural-economic vacuum that threatens to expand and thereby collapse genuine Value. Where meaning is arbitrary and flatlined and culture just falls into nothing. Where you hope the cheque (any cheque) clears on the way down and that your community won't notice. Where you desperately hope for a future where talent and success and social relevance equate again. Our current landscape…
Thoughts, other examples?
