A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Re-Examined As a Grotesque, Crippling Disease and Other Cultural Revelations. Cintra Wilson

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СКАЧАТЬ you can see, the deep, widespread, and dangerous hysteria a seemingly inconsequential boy band can spread is absolutely staggering, and all the more depressing since the driving push behind the whole teen music deal is grotesque wealth.

      It is a swell deal: all a savvy promoter with the naked greed of a pederast Svengali needs to do is find some mildly talented teens all lousy with fresh libido and stuck in some lame section of America, promise them a bucking, eight-second ride on the Magic Bull of Fame,, and he or she can forge a sensational golden windfall as long as the kid stays on. After all that happens successfully, the stars might figure out that they are giving 90% of their salary away to some carpet-chested cigar aficionado who tells them what they can and can't wear all the time, and decide they’d like to try their hand at “going solo,” a career move which has only really worked, so far, for the perpetually drunk Mr. Whitney, ex-New Edition R&B guy Bobby Brown, and now for Ricky Martin, ex-Menudo boy. The managers of the new breed of band coming out must have a whole clause in the contracts that says when the boys are too old and fat for the metallic plastic jumpsuits, and have squandered all 10 percent they owned of their careers, they are not allowed to appeal to any human tendencies in the manager and beg them for more cash to get back on their feet. There ought to be a Child-Corruption Czar in government, maybe. Somebody who can keep the pop machine honest, if not clean.

      When Malcolm McLaren, the coolest of all the evil music producers. When Malcolm McLaren did his puppet-master thing back in the punk era toothsome filth like the Sex Pistols and BowWowWow, he gave the world the impression that everything going on in his sphere was a collaborative group art project. He was a good chef about the whole thing; he knew how to throw together different talent elements while retaining the individual flavor and charm of the players. Even if he managed them poorly or tried to stick his hand up their blouse every now and then, he didn’t quite eat their souls (Well, Malcolm may have been partially responsible for the debacle that was Sid, but Sid was old enough to know better.) The saddest part about the whole thing is how little true flavor any of these new young lover-boy bands have; they're wholly inoffensive. They don't stand for anything, they don't question The System, they don't introduce anything challenging or new, even in the world of fashion; they're as instantly pleasing and comestible and forgettable as a bag of Funyuns, and they all taste the same.

      All of the frightful Pop Warner intramural seduction squads that are passing for music groups nowadays are really just dim approximations of an important event that happened long ago that kids today don’t really know about. I don’t really know much about it either. It is a historical event, and it is commonly referred to as “Mick Jagger. “I didn’t realize until viewing the video Cocksucker Blues by photographer Robert Frank what a king hell phenomenon young Mick was. By the time I was in seventh grade and alive enough to notice Mr. Jagger, he looked like a squeak-toy version of Don Knotts, and his laughably antique rock tours were sponsored by Pepsi and peopled by fat computer guys with baseball hats and Calvin Klein eyewear. In my junior high, only the back-parking-lot “loadies” with the feathered hair and bootleg cords had any appreciation for the Stones at all, and then even they mostly cared about the older albums. The loadies were baked all the time, so nobody trusted their taste; they also like Ronnie James Dio and Styx and Quiet Riot and all of the questionable schlock metal nobody listened to except other very, very stoned people.

      That video made me realize that cock rock was once very alive and is now very dead, and rock 'n' roll has lost its supply of frightfully charismatic young front men. Mick, Bowie, Iggy, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan-- hell, Steve Tyler, if you even dare mention Aerosmith in that fearful lineup: they’re all old, old, old, and it’s a shame that most folks my age never had a chance to see those grand old gentlemen of rock when they were at their blow-dried, blow-snorted, blow-jobbed ultimate peak. The late sixties/early seventies is one era that will never really be able to repeat itself. It was an ignorant, selfish, sexist, self-destructive time. You could never repeat any of the backstage action featured in Cocksucker Blues. Even the lowest slag-level of coke-and-cum-famished groupies have more self-respect than that now. That was an era with no boundaries whatsoever, and Mick navigated the ungainly sea of IV drug accidents and weepy orgies and omnipresent starstruck coke-gabbling morons better than any other lacquer-pantsed Glam King of yore. It is amazing that Mick was ever Mick, looking at him now, and it is doubly amazing that he wasn’t found dead in a hotel room with needles in his feet and the remains of some horrible sex act stuck to his person years ago.

      No white man could get away with that much genital focus these days. There was nothing reasonable about Mick at his gangly big-haired best, when he was wearing spangled body socks with extra codpiece sections for his legendary cod and long chiffon scarves and numerous cloth belts; when Lady Bianca was pouting around the dressing room, smoking petulantly in Halston dresses. He was completely without irony; there was something powerfully airtight, autonomous and surreal about his ability to generate enormous sexual charism which made men and women of the sixties and seventies want to immolate themselves against the fiery wall of his cocksmanship. He was, perhaps, the most sexually sought-after human on the planet at one point; a male Helen of Troy. The entire band was cadaverous from sweating off eight pounds a night and eating nothing but heroin; they were blown into wraiths from all that attention, all that masturbation aimed at them, the whole writhing mass of hippy culture imploding into death and debasement right in their hotel rooms. The Stones were a massive gale force that blew sideways the clothes and cash of anyone who came near, and Mick was the dervish at the epicenter, and it is hard to tell if he meant it that way or not, but he certainly survived it, even if his puckering chest and bloated features make him look like he's been shrunken by witch doctors in some form of unholy brine.

      A lot of men followed in the wake of Mick, but none quite matched his porn-star mystique. However, I was thrilled while reading through the box of NKOTB fan mail to find the following letter, written to lead singer Steve Tyler.

      EXAMPLE #5: The Classic Groupie Nymphomaniac

      This letter, in my opinion, is perhaps the healthiest and best of them all, in that it leaps correctly and gleefully to the only foreseeable outcome/ best-case scenario of the groupie/star relationship, i.e., a near anonymous root job.

      Dear Steven Tyler,

      I am a big fan of you guys. I love your music. It sounds great. But personally I am madly in love with you. I know that you are married but I just can't help myself. You are just so damn sexy and cute. I get turned on by just hearing your voice. I just love the way you sing. I am obsessed with your eyes and hair. Especially your lips. You just send chills up and down my spine. Every time I see your videos on MTV I just go nuts. I just wish that you were not married. Because I would just kill to go out with you and have a love affair. You look like the type of guy who can make love really, really good. You look great in fishnet tights. I just love to see a man's body sculpture in tights. You have the cutest little ass that I've ever seen. Especially the cute dimples on the side. That's another way I can tell that you make love really good. I can just picture it now. The two of us in my bedroom on my King size bed, and me lying flat on my back with my legs spread wide while you're pumping me to death. That would be so nice. Might I remind you that I have big tits and a nice ass too. I'm thinking about getting a tattoo put on my tit that says Steven Tyler. I'm sure that you wouldn't mind. I just wish that you could see me. I look much younger than my age. I'm 19 and people always think that I am about 14 or 15.

      It doesn't matter to me how old you are. Age is nothing but a number. And you will always be hot and sexy. Older men are the best lovers to me anyways. They just know what to do. They make me feel good all over. It's just amazing how they please. I would just love to have you over one day. You would love my bedroom. It's like a jeanie's room. My beed has sexy see thru curtains around it and you have to find your way in. But its easy. All you have to do is find the opening and just climb right in. Then we'll have fun all night long. I'll tease you for a while then I'll please you. I'm not gonna tell you who I am right now. I'll let that be a mystery. But think about what I said and I'll write back to you again and maybe reveal my name to you. I love you sweetheart.

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