It's official. That dirty great marquee, smeared with brash corporate logos, sponsored by peddlers, pimps, booze cruisers and bling merchants is being taken down piece by piece, crooked tent pole by crooked tent pole. The naff, the vulgar, the vacuous, the money-obsessed are slowly being sent on their sleazy way while ordinary people wander back to their teepees and to lives less shallow, less ephemeral.
The illusion of prosperity, generated by grubby casino capitalism, by life high-on-the-hog is crumbling before our very eyes and reality is dawning. God-willing, the veneration of celebrity, of success borne out of cheap and easy money and empty fame is becoming a thing of the past. It is time for the ordinary citizen to re-engage with what really matters in life: Family, friendship, love and learning... At least, that is the hope...
The unexamined life is not worth living, said Socrates. And let us pray, now that the ghastly confidence trick is over, now that spin is viewed with mistrust even contempt, that people will start examining their lives - not through the prism of political or corporate or commercial narrative nor 'correctness', but through their own eyes, taking into account their own concerns and the issues that really matter to them and those all around them.
And is celebrity dead? No. It never was and never will be. These shallow individuals will be with us for some time yet. But at long last their fetid, stinking legacy is under scrutiny. And people might in time look upon the society they created - along with all of its ugly accoutrements - with suspicion and disbelief, perhaps even with, who knows, unrestrained loathing. We can only dream...
But whoever said that cynicism was a bad thing? It sure beats bling - hands down.
Thursday, 17 June 2010
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