The Zeitgeist post
[or, “Khomeini 4 kids”]
I don´t know the odds of randomly bringing the late Ayatollah Khomeini into a conversation for two days in a row, but in a move totally unrelated to yesterday´s post about 1986 I caught myself having to explain… to describe… Iran´s late Ayatollah to my 13 year-old cousin on the phone.
Now, keep in mind we´re talking about the poster child for the prototype 21st-century mass teenage audience as targeted by international marketing conglomerates… The Kali Yuga never had a sweeter designation; it´s a generation bred solely for the mass consumption of disposables and the superfluous, it´s the Matrix met Andy Warhol insomuch as eternity itself has acquired a new meaning all of a sudden, sorely lacking that bit about having no end in sight.
Quoting The Clash on them is like casting a Megalodon out of summer afternoon clouds, but as the “phoney beatlemania” of their Britney Spears & related boy-bands has “bitten the dust”, the kids are currently being swept away by this millennium´s notion [reads, aggressive marketing-induced, artificially inflated hype] of a sectarian plastic punk rock revival with notables like Avril Lavigne spearheading the godhead with the second coming of Green Day for the Apostles.
(I would know. I took my kid cousin to an A.L. concert a few months ago.)
The point is actually pretty simple: it´s perfectly okay that they have absolutely no idea of just w.t.f. is an “Ayatollah Khomeini”; as long as they´re concerned, and not really wrong at that, he´s just one of those tacky afterimages from the Reagan-era tailend of the Cold War like Mr. T and the Care Bears.
Can´t say I disagree on that, though.
So when it came to describing Mr. Khomeini to her, insanity ensued as it always does, and it was pretty much like this:
He looks like Shazzan the genie from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon from the 1960s, but with more of a constipated countenance, as if perpetually waiting for his Ex-Lax.
And by Shazzan of course I don´t mean Captain Marvel´s Shazam, which for some weird reason people do tend to mix those two. Now, did you know Captain Marvel actually outsold Superman in the 1940s? Guy´s mag actually sold more than a million copies a month!
Anyway, the Ayatollah also didn´t have many magic powers, and was probably not associated with an underage American blond girl (at least not in public, God knows what really happens in those crazy mid-eastern harems), which I still maintain must´ve grown up to become one sexy woman, that Nancy. Still, the Ayatollah was, or at least looked, a bit older than Shazzan the genie, and I don´t think he was that much into fancy pants and the weird hairdo either.
All in all, the biggest difference is that whereas Shazzan could be seen grinning all the time, the Ayatollah didn´t seem to be a funny guy. But then, there´s this big gap between the 1960s and the 1980s. SDI, for one. I mean, there really was talk about a space-mounted, laser gun-based “strategic defense” project for the USA. Talk about grim´n´gritty. And remember all the songs? Even Cyndi Lauper herself sung of the woes of the blue-collar common man under the harshness of an economy severely hampered by the previous decade´s successive oil crises.
So yeah, I guess that was why the Ayatollah didn´t look as happy as Shazzan the genie most of the time.
There was also this bit about Khadafi but I sincerely forgot…
I know it sounds utterly crazy, but it isn´t. Upon close scrutiny it is, simply put, the description of this brave new world we live in:
Kid automatically knew about Shazzan but not of Khomeini, hence the comparison was valid.
History (as they say) is written by the winners, so thank Capitalism for Boomerang on TV.
I don´t know the odds of randomly bringing the late Ayatollah Khomeini into a conversation for two days in a row, but in a move totally unrelated to yesterday´s post about 1986 I caught myself having to explain… to describe… Iran´s late Ayatollah to my 13 year-old cousin on the phone.
Now, keep in mind we´re talking about the poster child for the prototype 21st-century mass teenage audience as targeted by international marketing conglomerates… The Kali Yuga never had a sweeter designation; it´s a generation bred solely for the mass consumption of disposables and the superfluous, it´s the Matrix met Andy Warhol insomuch as eternity itself has acquired a new meaning all of a sudden, sorely lacking that bit about having no end in sight.
Quoting The Clash on them is like casting a Megalodon out of summer afternoon clouds, but as the “phoney beatlemania” of their Britney Spears & related boy-bands has “bitten the dust”, the kids are currently being swept away by this millennium´s notion [reads, aggressive marketing-induced, artificially inflated hype] of a sectarian plastic punk rock revival with notables like Avril Lavigne spearheading the godhead with the second coming of Green Day for the Apostles.
(I would know. I took my kid cousin to an A.L. concert a few months ago.)
The point is actually pretty simple: it´s perfectly okay that they have absolutely no idea of just w.t.f. is an “Ayatollah Khomeini”; as long as they´re concerned, and not really wrong at that, he´s just one of those tacky afterimages from the Reagan-era tailend of the Cold War like Mr. T and the Care Bears.
Can´t say I disagree on that, though.
So when it came to describing Mr. Khomeini to her, insanity ensued as it always does, and it was pretty much like this:
He looks like Shazzan the genie from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon from the 1960s, but with more of a constipated countenance, as if perpetually waiting for his Ex-Lax.
And by Shazzan of course I don´t mean Captain Marvel´s Shazam, which for some weird reason people do tend to mix those two. Now, did you know Captain Marvel actually outsold Superman in the 1940s? Guy´s mag actually sold more than a million copies a month!
Anyway, the Ayatollah also didn´t have many magic powers, and was probably not associated with an underage American blond girl (at least not in public, God knows what really happens in those crazy mid-eastern harems), which I still maintain must´ve grown up to become one sexy woman, that Nancy. Still, the Ayatollah was, or at least looked, a bit older than Shazzan the genie, and I don´t think he was that much into fancy pants and the weird hairdo either.
All in all, the biggest difference is that whereas Shazzan could be seen grinning all the time, the Ayatollah didn´t seem to be a funny guy. But then, there´s this big gap between the 1960s and the 1980s. SDI, for one. I mean, there really was talk about a space-mounted, laser gun-based “strategic defense” project for the USA. Talk about grim´n´gritty. And remember all the songs? Even Cyndi Lauper herself sung of the woes of the blue-collar common man under the harshness of an economy severely hampered by the previous decade´s successive oil crises.
So yeah, I guess that was why the Ayatollah didn´t look as happy as Shazzan the genie most of the time.
There was also this bit about Khadafi but I sincerely forgot…
I know it sounds utterly crazy, but it isn´t. Upon close scrutiny it is, simply put, the description of this brave new world we live in:
Kid automatically knew about Shazzan but not of Khomeini, hence the comparison was valid.
History (as they say) is written by the winners, so thank Capitalism for Boomerang on TV.
posted by 186282mps at 8:57 AM
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