Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

The 'I Hate Pink Floyd' T-Shirt

It's funny how some blasphemies become almost sacred in a way.

I recently favourited this Youtube clip from South Park, and was going to e-mail it to someone, casually, but then decided not to:



I wondered why it was, at first, that I refrained from sending it. I had an instinct that there was something a bit crap about it, but it was hard to pinpoint.

I remember reading some quote from Britney Spears to the effect that South Park is "totally blasphemous". This is not really a mind-set to which I can relate, but I found it interesting. That 'blasphemous' was part of the vocabulary of a representative of the mainstream suggested that it might be a mainstream view that South Park was blasphemous. And, of course, that's a reason to like South Park. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the guys behind South Park, reportedly hate all celebrities, and that's another reason to like South Park. Isn't it?

I'm sure Trey and Matt are great guys and would be great to hang out with, and I laughed a lot at Team America, but, after all, I do think the Goth scene is not quite spot on. Some of it is good, like the girl saying "whoah" after the line in Stan's poem, "my heart has been raped". That's a nice touch. But... hmmm... I don't know. I kind of feel like there's too much of an 'easy target' thing going on here. I get the impression that the Goth movement is slightly different (and more popular) in the US than it is back here in Britain, and for that reason feel a little hazy on the details myself. Nonethelss, I have by now used the internet enough to know that 'Goth fag' and so on are pretty standard insults in adolescent America.



The distance between being the angry subversive outsiders and being the boring bullies is probably not especially great. It seems easy to slip from the former zone to the latter, sometimes without even noticing. I feel that that's what's happening here. Yes, okay, so Goths pretend that they're being individualistic whilst actually conforming to the very strict social codes of their own peer-group. Okay, point made. But it's not that much of a point in the end. It is just as cliched and conformist as a point as the cliched conformist poetry being read out by the Goths here. Well, I don't know, maybe I shouldn't be expecting subtlety, but more even than the bullying aspect - because yes, I do realise it's a 'joke' and that's it's meant to be funny - it's just the sheer laziness of it that gets me. It's like traffic warden jokes in Britain. Even if I hated traffic wardens (which, since I don't own a car, I don't), I wouldn't find traffic warden jokes funny, because they have been repeated to the point of meaninglessness. 'Goths' feels like a 'traffic warden' target to me.

And it interested me to suddenly feel that South Park was being boring, because South Park is one of those blasphemies that has become sacred. Criticising it, in certain circles, is just unthinkable. Hmmmm. That whole conformist theme in the Goth scene is beginning to look really ironic.

Then I remembered another scene in South Park that didn't quite do it for me. It was the scene about Scientology that exposes Scientologists beliefs with the legend "This is what Scientologists actually believe" written across the screen:



(That's the only clip I could find of it this time.) Again, easy target. I haven't investigated Scientology deeply. I used to pass some Scientology shop, or whatever they're called, near Goodge Street Station all the time, and they'd always ask me if I wanted a free stress test, and I would always say no. I know what a cult looks like, and I'm not drawn towards anything so transparently about building a pyramid of power in order to make money. If I have to spell it out - I HATE THAT SORT OF SHIT. I did appreciate South Park going into details about the beliefs of Scientology, because I get the feeling that Scientologists would really, really hate this kind of stunt. So, good. However, in another sense the sketch was just very weak. It was, "Hey, we're Matt Stone and Trey Parker and we're too clever to believe dumb shit like this, because we're South Park and we're clever, and stuff" (sniggering behind their hands). I wasn't impressed. It's not even the beliefs of Scientology that I find objectionable or silly. If they can and want to believe stuff about Zenon the Warlord or whatever it was, that's okay by me. At least it's reasonably imaginative. I don't find it any more silly than most people's beliefs. It doesn't ring true to me, but it seems to mean something to some people. No, that's not what I find objectionable about Scientology.



In the early days of punk, John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) described himself as causing a stir by wearing an "I hate Pink Floyd" T-shirt. I seem to remember him saying, "Which in those days was, 'Ooh, how outrageous!'" No doubt Pink Floyd, at the time were one of those sacred blasphemies, and Lydon had seen this. I wonder how long before people, wanting to be 'Ooh, how outrageous!' will be wearing, "I hate South Park" T-shirts. Being outrageous is fairly conformist, as the South Park Goth sketch illustrates. Maybe, for some people, it is also inevitable or natural. Still, if that's all you've got going for you, it's not much, really. I believe that Roger Waters described punk as "shallow and boring", and he has a point.

Not long ago John Lydon appeared on I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! or some such thing.

After the "I hate South Park" T-shirt phase, maybe it will be okay to like South Park again. Or maybe we can just like whatever we want to like anyway, and be Goth if we want, or listen to Pink Floyd, or even the Sex Pistols. If we want to. I don't especially advise Scientology, though; I'm fairly sure they're only after your money. Being Goth is less expensive.

Labels: Goth, Pink Floyd, Punk, South Park