Feel Good Inc.

(traduction française à venir)

It has been several months now that these ideas are running in loops in my mind. Yesterday, I visited Raya B’Dull’s website and saw the video Generation OS13: The new culture of resistance (Article here: Turning reality into fiction and fiction into REALITY ). This article and this video gave me a new perspective on these unorganized ideas floating around my brain. It is now time to organize them…

We’re living in a culture made of death and fear.

(Trigger Happy Hands _ Placebo)

 

There is a crisis which has suposedly begun during autumn of 2008. This crisis was called economical and financial.

Here’s another fact: I was born in 1983. When I was a kid, a teenager, I couldn’t help notice on the news, that I lived in a time of crisis (which never actually stopped).

The crisis was called global, when financial and economical.

Was the crisis ever called political? Yes, but in this case it’s always local (Greece for example).

Only in 2011 events begun to accelerate: revolutions in North-Africa and Middle-East, revealing governmental double standards (in France for example): why is there an intervention in Lybia and not in other countries (Hello Syria), why would be democracy more important in Lybia than in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Yemen… ?

Fukushima proved that nuclear energy was not that safe.

Freedom of speech is threatened by the governments now thinking of regulating the Internet in order to civilize it.

Freedom of the press is clearly an illusion as we observe day after day collusion between the so-called traditionnal medias and the political class. Press cannot be free as long as its primary concern is selling ad-space and selling performances… (It can’t be independant when it’s clearly dependant on the companies which pay for ad-space)

Any other way of information that the people have now thanks to new technologies are discredited by the traditionnal-medias and the political class (Wikileaks now via trying to destroy Julian Assange the man behind it or its/his supporters, Mediapart during the Clearstream case in France…)

 

Art is the weapon.

 (My Chemical Romance)

While watching Generation OS13: The new culture of Resistance, it is clear that Art and Creativity are one of the most efficient ways to convey ideas that are considered by governments as rebellious and dissidents. Which is kind of funny, but really scary: we are supposed to live in democracies, but the governments of this so-called democracies would really like to prevent us from express ourselves. Why? Because before now, before Internet, 3G, social-medias and networks, blogs, freedom of speech was really limited and theoretical for most of us. Now we have means to share and to broadcast our ideas, ideas of freedom, of a need for transparency (global transparency). Oddly enough, and that’s what I find completely off: freedom and transparency should not be considered annoying for any country which proclaims itself a democracy. Our governements would rather protect us from ourselves (don’t smoke, don’t drink, eat five fruits and vegetables every day, exercise, don’t do drugs) than protect our freedom. Freedom is also the freedom to dispose of our own bodies (Habeas Corpus anyone?). Freedom is also freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech was much less annoying for our governments when we could not exercise our rights to speak our minds. Now that we have the means to exercise it, and that they finally understood it, they want to regulate it, to civilize it. Why? Same argument: to protect us.

Where is the line? At what point do we decide that we’d rather have no rights, and be safer? Or at what point do we decide to accept that we live in a dangerous world and to be free in it?

Well we can never be safe. Safety is an illusion. Freedom is becoming one because Safety is becoming a more and more convincing illusion. No matter how safe you think you can be, a car can always run over you tomorrow as you’re sipping your morning Latté. An aneurysm that you never knew you have can rupture. You can get a cancer also by eating healthy and exercise. You can get a fucking EHEC infection if you eat organic vegetables. You can just fall in the stairs. That doesn’t mean we have to be scared, quite the opposite actually, that means we shouldn’t. Well we can be scared. I’m scared. The question is what do we let fear do to us? Do we let it paralyse us? Do we act on it and transcend it? How to transcend it? How can we show that we have different ideas, sometimes new ideas, that are valid too? How can we break the patterns that breed most of our fears (because of the religious background)? Through art and creativity, sometimes just through sharing the rough idea. Do what gets you inspired. Share it. Let it live. The good news is: the so-called Art Industry can not control anymore what will be ok to publish, to release and to broadcast. The Art Industry can not decide anymore what will the audiences enjoy or not. Because there are so many other ways to share now.

The party don’t start ’til I walk in.

(Ke$ha)

(Katy Perry)

The problem of the Art Industry is that it’s an industry. It’s a business, it has to generate money. If you can do that and at the same time be creative and do art, well that’s great. Some succeed in doing that, there are bands working with majors who still can convey their ideas. But lately what the Industry is trying to force on us is that everything will be alright, you just have to party, let go of all the worries you have. Forget the crisis economical, financial, political. Forget that you are unsafe. Forget that there is no equality of rights between human beings in our occidental democracies. Forget that we are at war in Afganisthan and Lybia. How? Most of the songs released (mostly with the help of non-creative genius David Guetta and infamous clones Katy Perry and Ke$ha) is all about partying and not thinking. Please don’t think. There is no need to. We do that for you. All that you have to do is letting go. Enjoy the party.

With every year/season we are forcefed a new pop idol (whatever the country you live in, every year we are in search of the new idol, the next super-model, the voice, the extraordinary talents). They will have a contract with a major. And they allow us to think that we too could be this personn. Well newsflash: you don’t need to go humiliate yourself during a casting to share your ideas or your talents. Not anymore. You don’t have to give in anymore. Do you really need to be Paris Hilton’s new pet or fashion accessory?

TV shows before the crisis were pitched because we fantasize about rich people (Dirty Sexy Money, Big Shots, Lipstick Jungle, Cashemere Mafia, Gossip Girl, Private Practice, 90210, Desperate Housewives). Now it would be obscene so they are pitched with the old traditional values: work, family. Or they are pitched as the perfect entertainment no-brainer shows (Glee, Hawaii 5 0, The Mentalist…). Enjoy the ride, sing, dance, but don’t ask any questions and don’t think. Worst part? In France with Hadopi law and the “Label Pur” creativity and artists are going to be sanctionned by the State (that’s the way I understood the communication they made about it).

You could if you wanted still watch shows that made you think about the crisis, the political corruption and so on, also about good music: Treme from David Simon (The Wire, Generation Kill). Treme is a good show for that (and for good music too), you just have to look it up and watch it.

I agree sometimes it’s good to relax and to enjoy an episode of Glee, or CSI: Miami (although I never really could watch that). But the industry needs consumers. Consumers need to be happy and relaxed to buy. So let’s numb them with all the partying, although we are at war around the globe, although governments are not transparent, although traditionnal medias are an industry driven by the need to make money… And let’s pray that, god forbid, they won’t think, they won’t have new or different ideas than the one we sell, they won’t create and share stuff that we don’t sell and have no control about… After all, the show must go on.