I’m forever tripping over things that would have been useful nuggets to include in my book about
the Noughties. That’s the glory of print media, I suppose; as
Zadie Smith put it,
“...the perfect state of mind to edit your own novel is two years after it’s published.” Anyway, in the section about reality TV, I argued that Noughties celebrities in general, and Jade Goody in particular, needed to be
“at once real, unreal and hyperreal.” Now the excellent
Billy Stockbroker directs us to a thread on
David Icke’s site, which starts with the contention that the whole Jade story was a conspiracy to persuade us, the sheepy people, to accept cervical cancer jabs and then gets even weirder:
i challenge you to find me any verifiable proof that Jade Goody existed at all. by verifiable proof I mean a copy of a birth certificate, copy of a tax return, or someone who knew her growing up in her poor white trash lifestyle she supposedly had. Jade Goody was a character played by an actor.
Well, as far as the last sentence goes, aren’t we all? But another user appears to have been reading
Baudrillard with one eye and
Robert Anton Wilson with the other:
That’s perhaps the most amazing thing about that woman when you think about it. He [sic] whole bizarre life, celeb status and surreal demise was real... She could only be something that could be real in an illuminati controlled world.
So that’s answered that then. She was real. But she was only obeying orders.
I’m forever tripping over things that would have been useful nuggets to include in my book about the Noughties. That’s the glory of print media, I suppose; as Zadie Smith put it, “...the perfect state of mind to edit your own novel is two years after it’s published.” Anyway, in the section about reality TV, I argued that Noughties celebrities in general, and Jade Goody in particular, needed to be “at once real, unreal and hyperreal.” Now the excellent Billy Stockbroker directs us to a thread on David Icke’s site, which starts with the contention that the whole Jade story was a conspiracy to persuade us, the sheepy people, to accept cervical cancer jabs and then gets even weirder:
4 comments:
Jade wasn't real, though, was she? She was a gaudy story presented for my entertainment; a hook on which to hang my prejudices about celebrity culture; a soap opera to be laughed about round the water-cooler. And then she got cancer and died. I felt like complaining to Channel 4 that this was a ludicous development of the story-line. Had they accidently welded the end of one character's story onto the beginning of another's? And somewhere out there, in another world, it was all happening to a real human being. Unsettling.
Coincidentally, just finished watching Velvet Goldmine (I know, late to the party) last night and I suppose much of its message is the same as zettel45's comment -- what we see is the story. Somewhere far behind it is a person. But our vision's not that piercing, and we're easily distracted by the story.
After reading that thread, I wanted to join the David Icke forum. But I feared I'd last about five minutes before taking the piss & getting chucked off.
Maybe that’s the only way we can identify reality, Zettel: it’s anything that disobeys Robert McKee’s rules about story arcs.
Valerie, Jonathan Rhys Meyers isn’t real either. Oddly, nor is he acting.
Oh poo, Billy, I thought you were Officer Chuckleberry.
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