Syndicate: mailradek no. 18 (Beavis and Butthead)

[Oleg Kireev <kireev@glasnet.ru>]

The "mailradek" project is a non-regular posting of subjective 
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							text no. 80
				20.06.1999
Not long ago it was an announced in "Afisha" magazine that Beavis and 
Butthead animated series are going to be banned because of sex and 
violence propaganda, and titles on MTV proclaimed that they were going 
to vacations till autumn. Beavis and Butthead series have already 
become a favourite TV show for many people because it's the only thing 
left from the free, ironical and postmodernist 90s. TV-Centre, ORT and 
"Culture" channels have been filled with some insane serious 
degenerates for a long time so far. We supposed the ironical 
postmodernists to be the first target, but the serious degenerates are 
pushing us back to some dark, pre-ironical, almost Brezhnevian times.

A naive theoretician of the recent past could see mass-culture in 
Beavuis and Butthead series first of all. An unexpected example of 
mass-culture: it's extremely critical towards its own consumers. Beavis 
and Butthead are exactly those teenagers who're crowding the clubs 
nowadays and calling up the same MTV shows to order some videos from 
Lika the leader. They might be an image of the post-perestroikian 
generation. "How dumb you are, buttmunch. Don't you know beer must be 
shaken up first? I know this, la dolce vita and stuff". Aren't they 
those teenagers who study sex by American movies? Aren't they those 
shooting crowds of their excellent student classmates in America?

Well, the don't reflex and they don't have the complexes. Beavis and 
Butthead give a manifesto of culture of an extreme and spontaneous 
nihilism; they ignore a "dumb" question "What can you suggest 
instead?" They loathe school and they won't ever work ("What for? 
To become a dumbass like him?") They chose to became outsiders, and 
this choice is not stimulated by any "dumb" pathos, heroism, 
resistance, rhetorics. Their hippie teacher belongs to the dying 
century like all the contemporary culture (the resistance culture 
first of all), directed to the past (historiography, analyses, 
development, drawing lessons). Their  rage is directed against 
values "suggested instead" by the whole XXth century. Not only for 
the sake of good and Christian god gloomy Chuck Norris beats the 
shit out of dirty Arabs, Vietnamese and Serbs, but also the 
politicians call the expansion of the cheap labor market the 
"cultural mission of the state". The entertainment industry not only 
derives profit from the exploitation of the "basic instincts", but 
also, more than Stalin, falsifies history. The endless stream of 
heroic action movies about Vietnam made the world forget that it was 
the hamburger country who suffered the most humiliating defeat there. 
Apparently, that is why mass production of terrific stories about the 
fact that the victory of forces of Humanism, Love, and Good simply 
makes the intellectuals to be tolerant towards the few apologies of 
hate and every kind of beastiness.

Maybe Beavis and Butthead will suggest something positive at the 
beginning of the next century but this positivity will not involve 
neither programmes nor ideas, but spontaneous action, maybe they will 
grow old enough for nachos and chicks, maybe they will be able to 
resist the serious degenerates returning, like Luzhkov.
						Oleg Kireev
                                        translation: Alexey Kovalev

INFO: The "Against all parties" programm originated from the former 
"RADEK" magazine has been "appropriated" by the State Duma deputy 
Ella Panfilova. She declares it to be a "new positive step in the 
struggle for liberal ideas and democracy" in the famous "tycoon" 
Boris Berezovsky's newspaper "Nezavisimaya". That's an example of how 
political elites make use of the radical culture's achievements; it 
forces us to elaborate the ideas which they won't be able to 
appropriate without danger.

The fax and media campaign inspirated by the Socio-ecological union 
and its Bulgarian ecologist partners has prevented the import of the 
nuclear waste from Bulgaria to Russia. Long live Socio-ecological 
union and its colleagues!

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