In a new series called Mondo Bullshittio, let’s talk about some of the most glaring hypocrisies in pop culture… and all that it affects.
It started with SXSW (which actually got full-stop cancelled). As if that wasn’t bad enough for privileged (largely white) people with the kind of cash to bankroll something so superfluously costly (“art” is a benefit of the rich, after all). And now, this. The oh so shocking postponement of a festival that hasn’t been relevant for unearthing “fringe” music to people since 2005 (try as the Beyhive and Arianators might wish to tell themselves otherwise, the corporatification of Coachella is the very thing that has tainted it). This word, for many who were hoping to don their flower crowns and other accoutrements of festival wear that stores like H&M have been able to commodify, seems to somehow mean “cancelled.” Granted, we know Americans aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed, but surely they understand the difference in definitions between these two words. That they’ll still get their precious fucking festival–it just won’t be necessarily warm enough for them to dress as sluttishly as they would like to. Then again, it’s always sunny in California (unless you’re marooned on a cruise ship off its coast). At the same time, maybe some part of us knows, deep down, that the virus called corona could rage on well through the entirety of 2020, making public gatherings of this nature feel both tenuous and terrifying.
Even so, isn’t the placation of “postponement” enough to give hope to the easily rattled, lily-livered Americans who can’t seem to fathom that other countries are dealing with much graver issues as a result of coronavirus than the temporary calling off of some douchebag festival? The answer is, evidently, no, as the entire American mentality is conditioned to be of the Veruca Salt persuasion. They want it now, when they want it–and not a moment later. Anything else doesn’t compute with the post-WWII sense of instant gratification Americans have had the distinct convenience of knowing more than anywhere else. It’s part of what fuels the continued myth of the American dream (even though we’ve all seen the pathetic little man behind the Wizard’s pulled back curtain long ago).
It’s also why Americans freeze like a whiny deer in the headlights when, for once, everything doesn’t function the way it’s supposed to all the time. Oh how delightful it would be to see some of these Americans on lockdown in China’s version of “postponing” things. Alas, the only reason China has been able to contain corona better than any other country has or will is because it possesses a government that can do whatever the fuck it wants to people, and cannot be bothered with American-bred petty trivialities like “human rights” and “civil liberties.” Ain’t nobody got time for that when you’re trying to contain a pandemic.
Even those countries that fancy themselves members of a “Western” version of democracy have taken far more drastic measures than the U.S. likely will at any point during the inevitable surge in coronavirus cases there (unless, for once, the American diet of hormone-infused slop just naturally kills any disease that tries to take hold of one’s insides, and cases miraculously “disappear” the way DuPont makes nature and public well-being do the same). Italy is on total lockdown until early April, France has banned gatherings of more than a thousand (and will likely shutter schools at some point in the near future). The U.S. has postponed some white people festivals and it’s already an absolute meltdown among these fucking pussies.
On some level, one almost wishes they would have let Coachella go on. Allow the entitled fuckwads the pleasure of experiencing the spread for themselves, since they all think they’re so damned immune, saying shit like, “If I die, I die” not understanding that, of course, they won’t die (sigh), they’ll just perpetuate the fucking pandemic by not sitting fucking still inside their own containment zone. And then, after the contagion activates (probably some time around Lana Del Rey’s set), they would all be locked up in the newly made quarantine zone of Indio’s Empire Polo Fields. Then they wouldn’t be so gung-ho about Coachella, would they? Especially once the supply of drugs ran out.
