In a series called Mondo Ironico, let us discuss how fucking antithetical something in pop culture is.
“Societal collapse is in the air.” Apart from Timothée Chalamet’s backless ensemble at the Venice Film Festival, this was one of the key “meme-able moments” (because that’s how we cope with emotions now) that made him stand out more than usual among the Hollywood “elite.” That, and stating what’s already long been obvious to most non-famous, non-rich people: “It’s tough to be alive.” Mind you, Chalamet doesn’t mention the fact that what really makes it “tough to be alive” has everything to do with the capitalist system effectively causing the societal collapse he’s referring to. Something that’s been around for centuries. But in lieu of openly pinning blame on that, Chalamet, who benefits endlessly from being a capitalist (just like Jay-Z), posits that a more modern phenomenon—“the onslaught of social media”—is what, in his opinion, has rendered young people to be “without identity.”
Yet social media, in actuality, is what has given so many a chance to curate whatever identity they see fit, to find their “niche” and their “tribe,” as it were (even when it’s 4chan). Thus, perhaps it isn’t social media itself that has caused this identity crisis in younger generations, so much as the internet as a whole causing a post-monoculture existence in which no one absorbs the same media or information anymore—instead the algorithm curates what it believes a person “wants” to see.
So it is that there is no longer a shared cultural experience as there was in, say, the 90s when it was safe to assume that everyone had watched shows like Friends, Seinfeld, 90210, etc. at least a handful of times (even internationally, where syndication made many participants in said shows even richer). Chalamet himself just missed the cutoff for being considered part of Gen Z, likely making him a member of some micro-generation that will be classified later for those who are neither staunchly millennial nor firmly Gen Z (oh wait, that’s a “zillennial”). And yet, in spite of technically being able to remember a time when the internet wasn’t so omnipresent, Chalamet said of his role in Bones & All, “It was a relief to play characters that are wrestling with an internal dilemma, absent the need to immediately go on Reddit or Twitter, Instagram or TikTok, to figure out where they fit in.”
In short, like everyone, Chalamet romanticizes the past under the assumption that it was a “better time.” Never mind that during the 80s, the period when Bones & All is set, there existed what essentially amounted to embraced-by-the-mainstream MAGA “culture” via the yuppieism revered under Reagan. Oh yes, and AIDS running rampant while being ignored because it was a “fag’s disease.” Let’s not forget the rollback of regulations on big business that allowed capitalism to go unchecked in terms of the damage various corporations could inflict upon the environment in order to sell as much shit as possible. Then you had the absurdity of the Reagan administration’s supposed fixation on the “War on Drugs,” while it secretly bankrolled literal war by supplying arms to the Contras in Nicaragua. In other words, there’s no period in history that is without its major political and social pratfalls.
To boot, the majority of people in every time period have felt, in some way, that the end of the world is imminent. To be sure, this epoch is “different” solely in that the environment has never been closer to being totally inhospitable to (broke-ass) humans who cannot afford to gird themselves from wind, flooding, extreme heat, drought and the associated consequences of that in terms of access to adequate food, water supply and shelter. And yet, no one in a position of wealth and power, not even “noble” Chalamet, sees fit to mention how maybe capitalism should be replaced by a more sustainable “platform” for those who can never and will never be rich (what it takes for life not to be so “tough,” as Chalamet calls it).
Being half-French, Chalamet likely can’t help but bear the air of nihilism in his sweepingly grim generalizations, regardless of being part of a social class that “has it all” (except something like a moral compass that would prompt them to redistribute their wealth). And so, to quote Mr. Morgan (Daryl Mitchell) in 10 Things I Hate About You, “I know how difficult it must be for you to overcome all those years of upper middle-class suburban oppression. Must be tough.” And sure, while Chalamet might have grown up in “the big city” and be able to cite living in a subsidized building (Manhattan Plaza, which ain’t exactly the Marcy Projects) as part of his “struggle,” his years spent “summering” in idyllic Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, as well as attending LaGuardia High School (where he also dated Madonna’s daughter), don’t exactly scream, “I’m just a poor boy.” What’s more, there’s no denying Chalamet was part of some standard-issue industry nepotism by way of being related to Rodman Flender and Amy Lippman, his writer-producer uncle and aunt.
So sure, Chalamet can sit there on his perch from behind the table at a press conference in Venice and inform the public about imminent catastrophe with a blasé air that Victor Ward or Patrick Bateman might channel (Chalamet, indeed, looks like a character that Bret Easton Ellis would create), but it means nothing coming from him. Just pretty words from a pretty face that will never really know what he talks of, insisting both that nothing matters (if societal collapse is imminent) and that, for all intents and purposes, the only thing that matters is the type of work he does by remarking, “That’s why hopefully these movies matter, because that’s the role of the artist, or so I’m told, to shine a light on what’s going on.”
Of course, nobody needed Chalamet to “shine a light” on how it’s all going to shit, and that the precariousness of the “social contract” is ever-diminishing (if it even still exists at all) in the face of fewer and fewer people being able to ascend to the likes of Chalamet’s monetary echelons, let alone the “echelon” of being able to buy once “reasonably-priced” groceries.
