Thursday, February 15, 2007

Porntacular

I was unemployed when last we invaded a middle eastern country starting with "Ira", so I was able to watch 24/7 news coverage of it for days at a time. I found that, as pornography, it was pretty good. I was happy when I came across Watching Babylon: The War in Iraq and Global Visual Culture by Nicholas Mirzoeff, he made the same connection that was so obvious to me, between war coverage and pornography (He relied on Foucault and Lacan references to make his point, whereas I backed my argument up more with indecipherable profanity). All those explosions lighting up my TV screen are glorified cumshots.

Sure.

And thats why I had no real use for all the commentary. I recall seeing a porn flic in China, which had actually done a pretty good job of translating the "dialogue" and i had to wonder why? Paying attention to that is even less credible than reading Hustler for the articles.

And I take essentially the same attitude towards what passes for reporting.

Somewhere towards the second day of shock and awe I discovered that if I just put the TV on mute and put a selection of Iron Maden and early Black Sabbath in the stereo on shuffle you got exactly the same information content as the "commentary", but it meshed with the visuals so much better.

Yes, hair metal is to war porn as fuzz guitar funk is to the real thing.

So, that's my question to you. What will your soundtrack to the invasion of Iran be?
my top 5 are:

1. Black Sabbath (first 5 albums)
2. Metallica (through Master of Puppets)
3. Iron Maden
4. Atari Teenage Riot
5. Zen Guerilla (Tom Jones singing for a cross between AC/DC and MC5- nuff said)

Thoughts?

3 comments:

Peter said...

War's gotten so banal these days (oh, yawn), I could see it set to cheesy-organ rollerskating music...

mike o))) said...

I like your soundtrack, but I would have said Metallica (through ...and Justice for All). It's still a solid album, plus it's their heaviest and most "political." I realize that politics and Metallica = oil and water, but you know what I mean.

mike o))) said...
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