Considering ‘Buzz Box:’ an Interview with Animation World Network

I have been reading a lot of Jean Baudrillard and Guy Du Bord recently.  “Simulation and Simulacra”, and the “Society of Spectacle”, respectively. We have entered a new dimension of bread and circuses, where there (generally, for the most part) is plenty of bread, objects, things, toys, entertainment on demand, and branded experiences, reaching a hyper velocity.  I am not ignoring poverty and working class destitution, I am merely stating we are comprehensively DISTRACTED, and enough white bread and cheese exists to fill a poor persons stomach, however poor the nutrition. The junk food diet often replicates the junk food mental state.

Jean Baudriallard coined the term hyper-reality to express when the signifier becomes more important that what it signifies. When the circus of drama is more important than any event or item within it. And images and simulations are actually a new and more important medium of actual societal behavior than food and clothes and houses.  Yes, the things matter, but the sign that shows its value is what is more important.  This is simply why we buy 100-dollar athletic shoes that cost 10 dollars to make.  This is why branded clothes and perfumes fit the Kardashians quite well.  This is why a two bit reality TV star who uses branded hotels to launder Russian and Saudi and Turkish money is allowed to continue narcissistic drama queen overload.  His circus does not matter to his devoted cult, until it hits them or hurts them, which takes time to reveal itself.  And the excuses for failure are ready made — brown people and liberals.  There, that was easy. Cheer for your team autocrat, against all realities. The tears of lesser people is worth the destruction of everything else.

It is the drama queen aspect of DJT, agent orange, Tangerine Mussolini — that is why the Russians the the billionaires back him with dirty money and ratfucking of extraordinary coordination and skill.  He keeps us exhausted, and watching the spectacle, so our pockets are picked.

This is a new war (so called hybrid war) the corrupt and the crooks are winning.  And the media refuses to acknowledge the attack, since no buildings have come down, and the connections to Putin and MBS and Turkey, require details and critical thinking to understand. That does not make good spectacle, not good television.  Not clear with a personalized victim or personification of hero or villain.  IT IS NOT WORLD WRESTING ENOUGH.  It is not Andy Kaufman enough. where both sides smashing chairs on each other’s head, is now the level of meet the press, or press the meat, is spectacle of who is ahead of who. Keeping score is more interesting than following details.

These folks are well trained in attacking meaning at all levels. They use the words consciously to smear the meaning. If they are a cult, they claim others who investigate, are the cult.  If they are corrupt, the accuse others of corruption.  Fake news used to mean planted Russian propaganda. They needed to smear that line, and so use it in all cases against all things that are investigative or have substance. The debasement of all things — is the conscious act of the spectacle, being weaponized against us.

Anyway, I read these books, as they reflect the same issues as Buzz Box did, 33 years ago.  The rabbit hole is deep, and we are numbed by the massive and unrelenting onslaught.

I am not sure how to grip this slippery epoch of history, but we need tools to understand. The world is not just post modern and hyper real, but also post terrain as well. Meaning and reasons for actions are slippery.

We are not well grounded, for what comes next.  My rant in AWN springs from this desire to comes to grips, and reach out about this peril. Our sense of meaning has become faded and blurred by too much mental junk food.

-David Daniels