Genius Envy
(from suck.com, sept 24 1996)
In the go-go days of the '80s art
market, it seemed as if any old
stockbroker with a creative
streak and a penchant for
self-promotion could have been
crowned "King Midas of SoHo." In
fact, one of them was. Back in,
say, 1983, when Saturday
afternoon gallery strollers
encountered a ready-made,
plexiglass-encased vacuum
cleaner courtesy of Jeff Koons,
they usually had the same,
amazed, open-mouthed reaction:
"I could have done that."
Unlike Warhol and Duchamp before
him, Koons wasn't out to infuse
everyday objects like soup cans
and blonde movie stars with
extraordinary meaning. Instead,
Koons was interested in
eliminating meaning - parodying
shiny things by making them even
shinier. By proclaiming himself
the "most written-about artist
in the world," Koons became the
ultimate art world parodist.
Only by crowning himself King of
Pop could he skewer the other
More than a decade on, today's
parodists know that those who
can, do, while those who can't,
redo. Still, they must ache for
the life that Koons enjoyed -
wine-soaked gallery openings,
ArtForum covers, an Italian porn
star for a wife. But, since the
bottom fell out of the art
market just around, say, October
1987, the parodists of today
can't hope to enjoy Koons-like
riches. Instead, they're stuck
with nonprofit art spaces -
where society types masquerade
as curators - or the web. Thanks
to the brass ring of press
coverage and ad banners, most
choose the latter.
These days it's easy for a young,
budding parodist to get hooked
on the illicit thrill of digital
caricature. Combine a need to
blow off some work-induced
stress with the common desire to
surf a bastardized version of
the corporate web site, and boom -
the Zippy the Pinhead active
filter appears. It's the
equivalent of that first hit of
reefer for the kid in the
schoolyard. It's safe, it's
easy, and if their hand eye
coordination is good enough,
Alt-Tabbing away when the boss
walks by will be just as natural
as palming the smoking joint
when the wrestling coach spotted
them behind the high school gym.
Eventually, they'll turn to
stronger stuff and need to steal
to support their habit. The
standard web browser's View
Source command is the Saturday
Night Special of the web. Sure,
HTML is easy as hell, but
outright robbery is a hell of a
lot easier. Armed with a
browser, all one needs to
jumpstart a web counterfeiting
career is some free time and a
web server.
And maybe a C-note for a domain
name. Case in point: everyone's
favorite web whipping post,
Slate, spawned two ripoffs, Stale and
Stall. Both swiped layout and
images. Both took cheap shots at
the khakied ones from the
northwest. But Stale had the
$100 for "stale.com," and won
the publicity contest hands
down.
Sure, your mother told you never
to judge a book by its cover.
But on the web, image is
everything. If the game were
based on what's actually beyond
the URL, Stall would be the
obvious nominee for the Parody
Pulitzer. In the book review
category, Stall's review of
Kathy Acker, My Mother, where
"250 pages of the book are
blank" smartly appeals to the
postliterate in all of us.
Stale, on the other hand, tries
to combine the worst of a
decade-old Wendy's ad with Upton
Sinclair in "Where's the Beef,
Inspector?" Nevertheless, Stale
wins the ad banners, while Stall
languishes with obscure-joke
banners.
Stale better watch their back,
because sometimes the grandest
plans of a parodist backfire.
After all, who's not to say that
Stall couldn't reinvent itself
as a parody of Stale? The more
likely scenario, however, is
that the "Oprah syndrome" takes
over, and the cult of the victim
(in this case, Kinsley) grows
over time. In New York, a
mediocre subway mugging
transformed an ordinary commuter
into the "legendary" Bernard
Goetz. On the web, The
Squat helped catapult The Spot
from just another Southern
California soap opera to Cool
Site of the Year. If Microsoft
were smart, it would acquire
both Stale and Stall, set up
alternate production staffs, and
reap the ad revenue from all
three.
Don't laugh - metaparody's been
done. Some of the web's more
jaundiced parodists have found
that the thrill of vandalizing
the unsuspecting mark dulls
after a while, and instead turn
sights on themselves. On the one
hand, it's a way of keeping one
step ahead of the pack, of
outparodying the parodists. On
the other hand, or with the
other hand, it's a bit
autoerotic. Sure, it may feel
good for a while, but eventually
you'll just go blind.
It used to be that high-profile
crimes required high-profile
tools - automatic weapons,
getaway cars, Swiss bank
accounts - and thus limited the
number of people that could
actually pull them off. But on
the web, with such easy access
to the weapons of choice -
browsers, text editors, Paint
Shop Pro - the work of the Way
New Parodists seems to elicit an
oddly familiar response:
"I could have done that."
courtesy of Cleary S. Day