How To Disappear Completely

American Idiot and the Hyperreal

I stay up late watching Green Day music videos and I begin to think of Baudrillard and simulacra. I bet for every philosophical text out there, a song expresses it all and better.

"Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alienation.
Everything isn't meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We're not the ones who're meant to follow.
For that's enough to argue.

Don't wanna be an American idiot.
One nation controlled by the media.
Information age of hysteria.
It's calling out to idiot America.

Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alienation.
Everything isn't meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We're not the ones who're meant to follow.
For that's enough to argue."
--American Idiot, Green Day

Some technology paranoia, but it also reminds me of the scene from Hotel Rwanda in which the American newsreporters say, "Sure, the viewers will be sick and horrified. But then they'll go right back to eating their dinner."

It's not real for us, the television. It is, and it isn't. We believe what it says, but it doesn't affect our lives. Not knowing what is real causes angst. I don't want to say it's a new feeling. I'm sure humanity felt angst long before the waves rippled the world right into the living rooms of millions, and we didn't know whether to believe the hand in front of us or the face thousands of miles away. Anyone can manipulate reality, starting with a single serpent under a fruit tree. Yet perhaps the angst has only increased because now there are billions of us watching.

And speaking of music videos....go here and watch 16 Military Wives (Decemberists). Go here and watch Go to Sleep (Radiohead).