Hope is unrealistic... or is it something else?
When I saw 'Idaho' in the 1990s, I felt nothing but envy. Massive envy for the homeless hustler & the other homeless youths depicted. Envy, for one huge, gleaming, piercing, shining, blinding reason: They knew someone, a peer among them, who was rich & powerful in his real, temporarily abandoned life. Scott (Keanu Reeves), the son and heir of the wealthy mayor of the town all these homeless kids were scuffling to get by in, represents the chance to get out of poverty. THAT is what was so completely unrealistic about the story. Like so many poverty films from the Depression Era (Shirley Temple etc) which unrealistically give us the chance to hope for something better than the chit reality we must expect in the real world. Completely engaging while simultaneously frustrating as hell. As it reminds us of how much we want things to get better while also reminding us that nothing will get better. Only worse.
GREAT MUSIC IS ABOUT PASSAGES (not the whole song/piece/symphony)
That said, all the passages are wonderfully entertaining because we are welcomed to Van Sant's satirical writing voice. Which is, of course, superb.
THE WORLD OF ROBERT DUPEA (filled to the brim with ignorant misconceptions of music)
Is the northwest USA a psychotic place? (not a new idea)
Alt-rock (grunge etc), for but one of many examples, is a mirror of this psychotic place in the world. That is, I believe it's supposed to be a mirror. Maybe the problem is that its followers, music fans, don't get that. For that matter, all of us who love rock music are psychotic (pathetic). As FUBAR, for example, as watching a fan try to get backstage through security guards at a Greatful Dead concert. As psychotic (satirical) as the fact that there were security guards at all, at a Dead concert.
THE LONG, COLD DEATH OF ROCK MUSIC
hmmm... I was gonna write something. but... guess it's not really necessary (the title says it all)
TIKKUN OLAM & ALL THE UNIMPORTANT BLOW JOBS (DEAD CHRISTMAS TREES) IN THE UNIVERSE
The Monterey Pop Festival is one of the most revered events in the history of the rock culture. Even saying the words "revered" and "history" feels ludicrous in this context: rock music. Yet we have this overblown music that has been advertised ad nauseum and, like NAMM, there seems to be no escape from it. It keeps growing & solidifying itself, like cancerous tumors.
But we should always remember what exactly such promoted events as Monterey Pop Festival actually were, underneath the Hollywood facade: this galvanized, cheap music style into a heavenly anthem for fool believers. Because this music festival, like all the others, did have its promoters, and those promoters were humans, after all. Actually they were men. As in, horny men. Horny men, who had found something valuable to their sexuality. Like Robert Crumb found value in morbidly illustrating raunchy sexual images, these were men who desired to have passionless sex with innocent virgins who adore them.
It's really nothing more than a cheap sexual fantasy, the kind so many men are known to have: having sex with runaway (vulnerable) girls. But to be allowed to behave like Hollywood celebrities (tough businessmen, politicians) without having to play hardball in Hollywood, that was too much to resist. The rock business made that available to so many loser men who hadn't the chutzpah to compete in Hollywood. For the standard of avoiding sweet lovemaking & replacing it with unimportant sex, where the powerful man may nonchalantly toss aside adoring groupies after soiling them, is really just disrespect of females. The most disconcerting part of this, is how many men truly hate women underneath these pretentious fame/business games.
WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT? (a lot, actually)
There is a sliver of redemption in failure/sacrifice--or, for people who believe in tikkun olam, the crucifixion in Christianity etc, much more than a sliver. In any case, the rock culture seems to have been invented for this. Yet the rock culture, rooted in connivers seeking control over youth, is similarly ironic & wasteful as every pathetic picture of religiously faithful groups of people.
Some folks don't need a god or any other mythical higher power belief concept/social system to embrace humility. Undoubtedly, Jesus of Nazareth was such a naturally humble & compassionate personality. Which is, obviously why he was removed. For compassionate people/teachers are a nuisance when they come around typical, popularity/power based society. Bibles, like record companies, celebrity managers & other Hollywood productions are merely dishonesty machines, tools of social conformity. Their only "value" is found in taming the ignorantly fearful & promoting zealotry in a morally narrow, pop-culture advertisement. So all the fool believers can be on the same page. A pathetic, wasteful picture of what might otherwise aspire to an intelligent, egalitarian & truly compassionate species in deed.