Artist: Bryant T. Monk
Project. An installation. Two podiums. Wood, old and splintered and rickity looking, braced by iron bars not visible to the viewer.
One podium painted blue, the other painted red. The paint should be visibly peeling, and visitors are encouraged to peel off a little paint if they want to.
Sitting atop each podium are two tvs. One painted metallic red, the other metallic blue. Not peeling. The red TV showing a continuous loop of the tv show COPS. The blue tv Showing an continuous loop of the Apprentice (strictly board room scenes).
The tvs are muted but with closed captioning. Between the two podiums in silver paint, a small boom box playing a coninuous loop of Common People by Pulp and Who Want's to be A Millionaire by ABC.
So anybody want to put this together go ahead--please send any royalties to me.
This is inspired by a great article at Salon today on what regulare shows might reflect liberal or conservative values. By Brian Montopoli, it's pretty good, but misses a few favorite shows. Anyway he does, in fact cover the Apprentice and COPS.
But for the rest of us, the show's portrayal of back-stabbing, ambitious overachievers drooling over an ultimately meaningless brass ring is one of the most persuasive arguments against life in the boardroom that there is.
Honestly, though, America: Can't we do better than this? "COPS" teaches us that the poor deserve to be that way, and as an antidote to runaway political correctness, it might have a cultural function. Even a staunch Democrat watching the show would be hard-pressed to argue that the shirtless drunk driver with the tooth-impaired, possibly underage girlfriend deserves a welfare check funded by our tax dollars. But what is this celebration of the value of unfettered capitalism really a response to? We almost never see the large swath of underprivileged America that Edwards likes to invoke, and so many Americans can't even begin to contemplate the possibility of a hardworking, socially responsible underclass.
No comments:
Post a Comment