By David Glenn Cox
From one mania to another. Yesterday, I expounded on how the mass media is becoming garbage. According to the film critic, The Critical Drinker. Of the 25 most famous movie quotes of all time, the last one was in 2005. Or 20 years without a memorable quote. “We’re going to need a bigger boat! What we have here is a failure to communicate. “Oh wait, don’t take those man. I almost gave you the wrong shit.”
There’s no more Bob Dylan. No more Beatles, Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath. (RIP Ozzy Osbourne) These are the artists I grew up with, so it’s nearly impossible for me not to feel the decline in quality. As Frank Zappa once explained, there was a time when record companies would send a band into the studio. They’d record an album and if it sold, they would let them do it again. Today, they create the band. Tell them what to play, over produce it, modify it. Auto tune it and then tell the public how much you like it.
It’s synthetic prepackaged meaningless music. Popular for a moment and then gone forever. It has the deep meaningful message of a Bugs Bunny cartoon. “Momma, take this badge off of me. I can’t use it anymore.” In the song, Tomorrow Never Knows, John Lennon sings, “Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream. It is not dying; it is not dying.” Then, “That ignorance and hate may mourn the dead. It is believing, it is believing.” Poetry with impact. Art is supposed to generate an emotional response. If it doesn’t, it isn’t art. It’s pseudo art. A comfortable corporate replacement for thinking and feeling.
Woody Guthrie said, “Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple.” In the song “I’m Only Sleeping” John Lennon examines a feeling every single human being on earth can relate to. “Please don’t wake me, no don’t shake me, leave me where I am. I’m only sleeping.” Why nobody else ever thought about how universal this subject is becomes a mystery for the ages. And today’s music says, Tara la, la, la, la. Meaningless music for the heavily sedated.
Television commercials once awful have now become toxic. They used to sell floor wax and plastic wrap, new cars, cigarettes and beer. Today they sell pharmaceuticals and sex aides. A room full of dancing people sing and dance about how sick they are while singing the praises of this great new drug! They’re deathly ill, but they’re happy! A woman sings in an off-key voice, “Take me out to the ball game.” They don’t care if it is annoying and jarring. That’s the point. To get your attention and keep it there by insulting you. So, when you need to book a room, you’ll remember them. You can’t sell car insurance without a mascot. A bird, a lizard, or idiots in smocks. Insulting your intelligence with a sledgehammer.
Movies no longer know how to have fun. Sequels, sequels, sequels! Don’t ever try anything new, never ever! You don’t need good story telling with CGI around. In the film Flat Top (1952) A pilot disobeys landing instructions and is dressed down and grounded for not following orders. In Top Gun Maverick, Tom Cruise blows through security on his motorcycle. But it’s alright, everyone knows he’s a rule breaker. He’s special and the military really likes special pilots like that.
In the 2019 film Midway, a pilot attempts a dead stick (engine off) landing (just for fun) in a plane notoriously slow and heavy on a pitching carrier deck. Not only would such a pilot be grounded, they would be in the brig. If not dead and scattered across the burning carrier deck. But pow! Zang! Boffo! Ain’t that exciting? History isn’t exciting enough. So, let’s just jazz it up some! It doesn’t have to make sense. They won’t know the difference!
The Netflix version of “All Quiet on the Western Front.” The film won awards and adulation while stripping the meaning from the story. Turning it into a war picture instead of an anti-war picture. They beached it white and deleted all the uncomfortable truths. It was a movie with the same character names and places, but not actually the same story at all.
“This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.” ― Erich Maria Remarque
Rotten Tomatoes – “All Quiet on the Western Front” war/history/drama/action. Not the same story at all. Like modern music, they stripped out all the meaning. The Eloi wouldn’t understand it, anyway. We must explain World War One to them, because they weren’t listening in history class. Corporatized and sanitized for your protection. “Only teach them enough to know nothing.” Educated them with pseudo facts. Fill their heads with things which never really were.
“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” ― George Orwell
The corporatization of entertainment is just like the corporatization of the news. Don’t rile them or upset them, pacify them and numb them and dumb them down.
“The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.”
― George Orwell
“You’re bound to get idears if you go thinkin’ about stuff”
― John Steinbeck
Maybe in a generation or two, they will forget all about art and beauty altogether. Forget about sympathy or sophistry. Maybe meaning and values can be muddled, until infotainment is just another form of mental masturbation. Stimulate their eyes and dull their senses. Let them vent their outrage only in the appropriate places. If they can teach them to think about nothing, they will be happy. And if they are happy, we need not teach them about anything.
“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.”
― Aldous Huxley
“Or play the game “Existence” to the end
Of the beginning
Of the beginning
Of the beginning
Of the beginning
Of the beginning
Of the beginning
Of the beginning.”
- Lennon/McCartney
Thank you for reading “This Carbon-Based Life.” Hand made fresh each day the old-Fashioned way. No artificial ingredients and no corporations were injured in this process.
This Carbon Based Life 
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