Quote of the Day
(Critics) waste time on America’s debased, overwhelming, industrial pop culture. They attack it with an energy appropriate to attacking fascism, or communism, or death. But that culture (bad television, movies, ads, pop songs) is a snivelling, ingratiating, billion-dollar cur. It has to be chosen to be consumed, so it flashes its tits, laughs at your jokes, replays your prejudices and smiles smiles smiles. It isn’t worthy of satire, because it cannot use force to oppress. If it has an off-button, it is not oppression. Attacking it is unworthy, meaningless. It is like beating up prostitutes. – Julian Gough, “The rest is silence,” Prospect magazine.
This is an excerpt from an article on the death of writer David Foster Wallace found originally at University Diaries. I’ve not read his only novel Infinite Jest, nor do I plan to, but I think that single paragraph has a much broader application than its author intended.
“If it has an off-button, it is not oppression.”
That needs to go on a T-shirt, becoming part of America’s “debased, overwhelming, industrial pop culture.”