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rebus's review
4.25
I was dazzled by the couple of issues I was able to find in the early 80s, but a re-reading left me slightly disappointed by the confused ideologies of so many of the authors.
Melinda Gebbie is a big culprit early on, suggesting in the Quilting Bee that a woman who dropped out of a physics program would join the Zionists (the most evil expression of world fascism). This was silly because she also cited male domination of the field rather than the war production as a reason. Burnham and several others were simply incoherent, though Shelton did a delightful take on Death Race.
Mavrides mostly hits the right notes, seeing Freud as a clown, attacking Religion, State, corporations, the energy industry, the controlling media, a rigged one party system, and mass produced food. He saw life as an unceasing series of anxieties born of unmet desires falsely fed to us by advertising, and he felt we were heading toward either an Apocalyptic Babylon or a Planetary Disneyland (why not both, since that seems to have happened?). There is also the notion that machine subservience is worse than being a slave to the king, and he also pointed out the prophetic words of Guy Debord: Revolutionary Theory is now the enemy of all revolutionary ideology and knows it.
The confused ideology also infects the notion by many that the right to be greedy is ok, which is really just an expression of white privilege and capitalism. Sadly, many ads for so-called leftist material were in fact for Libertarian tracts, some of which ludicrously called themselves Libertarian Left or Libertarian Social Democrats or Libertarian Marxist or Libertarian Communist, when in fact ALL Libertarians are just far right wing Capitalists and exploiters (who just don't care that you are gay or smoke dope because they can make money from that too).
Mavrides and Kinney fail when they attempt to satirize punk and more militant anarchism, the sects that are far more authentic and not out for themselves. The anti-violence stance that infected 90s punk is where it all went wrong, these sad posers, losers, and wimps who simply feared for their own lives of white privilege (not a one of them came from anything less than upper middle class money and privilege). They sadly portray the punk as a Frankenstein figure who hates music--typical Boomer formalism by Jay and Paul--and after bringing him to a Utopia that he hates, they send him back in time to a period he hates more: that of the hippies and Boomers, who are still the most evil and self absorbed generation in human history (Millenials and Gen Z will out do them though).
Alan Moore, in his blurb for the book, had it right: 60s counterculture was just a bunch of lame assholes working toward self actualization and hedonism and did more to bring about our current crises than anyone. They were indeed falsely political.
This is no more true than in the work of Spain, where he deifies the Paris Commune and calls the provincial people hateful and conservative, when it has always been the opposite, city dwellers fascist and rural people socialist or communist in practice. Pepe Moreno and Harry Robins developed video games, and no greater evil has existed over the last 35 years (Robins was also involved in Church of the Subgenius idiocy and clearly a poser). Like all Boomers, they cared more about their own selfish asses than society and equality.
It's still a decent read, but the fact that so many of the creators are wealthy and live in exotic places all around the globe in semi-retirement is proof that they were frauds with no true ideals.
Melinda Gebbie is a big culprit early on, suggesting in the Quilting Bee that a woman who dropped out of a physics program would join the Zionists (the most evil expression of world fascism). This was silly because she also cited male domination of the field rather than the war production as a reason. Burnham and several others were simply incoherent, though Shelton did a delightful take on Death Race.
Mavrides mostly hits the right notes, seeing Freud as a clown, attacking Religion, State, corporations, the energy industry, the controlling media, a rigged one party system, and mass produced food. He saw life as an unceasing series of anxieties born of unmet desires falsely fed to us by advertising, and he felt we were heading toward either an Apocalyptic Babylon or a Planetary Disneyland (why not both, since that seems to have happened?). There is also the notion that machine subservience is worse than being a slave to the king, and he also pointed out the prophetic words of Guy Debord: Revolutionary Theory is now the enemy of all revolutionary ideology and knows it.
The confused ideology also infects the notion by many that the right to be greedy is ok, which is really just an expression of white privilege and capitalism. Sadly, many ads for so-called leftist material were in fact for Libertarian tracts, some of which ludicrously called themselves Libertarian Left or Libertarian Social Democrats or Libertarian Marxist or Libertarian Communist, when in fact ALL Libertarians are just far right wing Capitalists and exploiters (who just don't care that you are gay or smoke dope because they can make money from that too).
Mavrides and Kinney fail when they attempt to satirize punk and more militant anarchism, the sects that are far more authentic and not out for themselves. The anti-violence stance that infected 90s punk is where it all went wrong, these sad posers, losers, and wimps who simply feared for their own lives of white privilege (not a one of them came from anything less than upper middle class money and privilege). They sadly portray the punk as a Frankenstein figure who hates music--typical Boomer formalism by Jay and Paul--and after bringing him to a Utopia that he hates, they send him back in time to a period he hates more: that of the hippies and Boomers, who are still the most evil and self absorbed generation in human history (Millenials and Gen Z will out do them though).
Alan Moore, in his blurb for the book, had it right: 60s counterculture was just a bunch of lame assholes working toward self actualization and hedonism and did more to bring about our current crises than anyone. They were indeed falsely political.
This is no more true than in the work of Spain, where he deifies the Paris Commune and calls the provincial people hateful and conservative, when it has always been the opposite, city dwellers fascist and rural people socialist or communist in practice. Pepe Moreno and Harry Robins developed video games, and no greater evil has existed over the last 35 years (Robins was also involved in Church of the Subgenius idiocy and clearly a poser). Like all Boomers, they cared more about their own selfish asses than society and equality.
It's still a decent read, but the fact that so many of the creators are wealthy and live in exotic places all around the globe in semi-retirement is proof that they were frauds with no true ideals.
jameseckman's review
3.0
I think I paged through some of these in the distant past. They seem familiar and a bit nostalgic. Arts not the point in these, though some of it's pretty good. Punk Rock! Etc.
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