Celebrity Deathmatch — If you grew up watching Gumby & Friends, Celebrity Deathmatch was the perfect blend of childhood nostalgia and homicide. The show pitted two claymation celebrities against one another in an arena; the opponents chosen based on obvious common ground (Marilyn Manson vs. Charles Manson; David Letterman vs. Jay Leno; Mick Jagger vs. Steven Tyler, for example). Pop stars, pundits, and politicos alike were subject to gory dismemberment in a time when many of them were in need of a good ass kicking (Jesse Camp comes to mind.)

Undressed — Undressed chronicled the sexual and romantic relationships of LA-based teens and twentysomethings in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. Using elements of soft-core porn, the controversy surrounding the show was exacerbated by prominently featuring teenage promiscuity and gay/ lesbian relationships in a candid and frank way. The progressive and undeniably campy nature of the show is irresistible. Plus, Christina Hendricks!

Beavis and Butt-head — B&B were idiot savants when it came to rock, offering up scathing commentary during their MTV binges (save for the few times they were either so appalled that they changed the channel or so astounded that they watched the video in appreciative silence). Even AC/DC and Metallica, whose names were famously splayed across the duo’s chests for the entirety of the series, weren’t spared from piss poor reviews. The exposure Beavis and Butt-head gave to ‘80s and ‘90s heavy metal, hip-hop, and hard rock played a crucial role in reigning in a new era of music. Resurrected in 2011, Beavis and Butt-head has proved itself timeless, inasmuch as anything spawned by MTV could be.

Daria – Every unathletic teenage girl in America wanted to be the acerbic Daria Morgendorffer. Daria was the story of a sharp suburban teen surrounded by a bunch of well-to-do idiots (aside from her best friend Jane and Jane’s dreamboat brother Trent, whose inclusion on the show helped boost the collective IQ of the primary characters). Daria perfected deadpan, giving girls coming of age in the ‘90s a protagonist who didn’t wear crop tops or talk like a Barbie doll on Vicodin.

Engaged and Underage – Before Teen Mom, before My Super Sweet 16, there was Engaged and Underage: the perfect program to watch with your parents when you needed to convince them that cutting school and sneaking cigarettes wasn’t the worst thing you could do at 15. So maybe you had to wake them up at 3 AM last Friday because you needed a ride home from the police station — at least you have no plans to elope, amiright?

Say What? Karaoke — Say What? was like Speak & Spell for stoned pre-teens. I watched it religiously; the fact that the contestants sang the same 15 songs over and over again for the duration of the season was of no consequence. I was able to recite the lyrics to “Gettin’ Jiggy With It,” “Nice Guys Finish Last,” and “Baby Got Back” with my eyes closed in no time, thanks to Dave Holmes.

Rich Girls – Unlike Paris and Nicole, Ally Hilfiger and Jaime Gleicher didn’t need to sweat it out on a dude ranch and ironically wear overalls to win America over. All they had to do was have spontaneous breakdowns, complain about prom, smoke cigs in a limo, and tap their third eye and I was like, SWOON.

Singled Out – Between Jenny McCarthy’s grody self and the schadenfreude derived from watching a bunch of post-grads meander around a soundstage in Hawaiian print t-shirts and khakis, was there anything not loveable about Singled Out? That show deserves to be immortalized by a Gen X case study.

Wonder Showzen – Wonder Showzen used black comedy and children to lampoon sex, politics, religion, and culture at large. If you combined Sesame Street, Robot Chicken, The Electric Company, Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job, and a bottle of Robitussin, you’d have what amounts to the best show on this list, or ever.

2ge+her – Even an earnest boy band fanatic had to love the satirical mockumentary movie-turned-series, 2ge+her, which gave us hits like “Say It, Don’t Spray It,” “The Hardest Part Of Breaking Up (Is Getting Back Your Stuff),” and “U + Me = Us.” The show unfortunately ended in tragedy when Michael “Jason ‘QT’ McKnight’ Cuccione lost his battle with cancer eight days after his 16^th birthday. RIP, QT.

Buzzkill — Punk’d, Boiling Points, Jackass, and The Tom Green Show can all find roots in the OG prank show Buzzkill. The show’s three “pranksters” traveled around the US in a white van and were likened to The Jerky Boys and human manifestations of Beavis and Butt-head. While Buzzkill’s pranks were tame in comparison to its protégés, the show was cancelled after one season due to legal concerns.

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image – Christopher Macsurak

Dear Fran Lebowitz’s Writer’s Block,

I entreat you to leave Fran alone.

Originally, I was contemplating creating a YouTube video that would become an Internet sensation to present my plea for your abandonment of Fran’s body. Then I realized that such a video would be a wasted attempt: we both know Fran doesn’t “do” computers. Thus, I decided to write to you — yet another thing Fran doesn’t do.

It appears that you have established a powerful parasitic rapport with your host-organism. While it comes as no surprise that you don’t want to leave the sullen genius you call home, by extending your Lebowitz lease you are selfishly making the most acidic humorist of our time waste her poison. The woman knows everything, a fact her completely-based-on-reality role in Law & Order elucidates. She even knows that she knows everything. The person you are paralyzing, Fran Lebowitz’s Writer’s Block, has been a longtime inspiration for haters on a global scale. She is a cause célèbre not in spite of her petulant brilliance, but because of it.

Your landlord knows that the opposite of talking is not listening but waiting. I have been waiting with idiotic patience for years, ever since I read Metropolitan Life and first realized sullenness can become the veneration of wit. I realize that you could have been crueler. You could have caused her a moribund career on all fronts, without Scorsese-directed HBO specials or the sporadic expression of her frustration with everything and everyone you have allowed.

Isn’t it funny (not “funny-haha” but “funny-’it’s like rain on your wedding day’”) that the mind you inhabit asserted that the ubiquitous pursuit of fame Andy Warhol introduced trampled on culture? How right she is, once again. Lebowitz’s insight is the best lens to understand her work ethic. Would she have any had she not attained dithyrambic reviews for her first book at 27? If success hadn’t arrived so brusquely, would you have infected Fran? The commercial triumph came with high responsibilities for her: taking care of Checker and — the most challenging — conversing with David Letterman when he pretended he had hair.

To be honest, I think you stay because of the fame. I might be naïve, stuck on the cultural nostalgia of an era I never witnessed, but Fran said everything used to be better. I know that she knows everything, therefore everything used to be better, indeed. You are addicted to fame and nostalgia. Trust me.

Move out, Fran Lebowitz’s Writer’s Block. Go squat in Ann Coulter’s head. It is time for me to see the interior of Exterior Signs of Wealth. I want the contempt, scorn and sneer on my bookshelf to be delivered before all I will be able to read will be The Pale Queen. It is time for someone to come forward and cajole all these “second-hand smoking kills” fanatics to see the light (of our cigarettes).

Leave Fran alone!

Her biggest fran,

Elias Tezapsidis

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Mary-Kate Olsen tries to talk about her new film, Beastly, (arguably our generation’s Citizen Kane) but she has trouble stringing together words. My favorite part is when she takes a pregnant pause and says the word, “magicallllllll.” Michelle Tanner, where art thou?

Here’s a video of Mischa Barton behaving erratically and looking STONED AS HELL while she talks about fashion or Darwinism or whatever. Honestly, I can’t tell if she’s coming up or coming down, but even Marisa Cooper would be frightened and say to her, “GET IT TOGETHER, PSYCHO!”

Buzzfeed’s Matt Cherette made this HIGHlarious supercut of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Kim Richards acting wasted during a cast trip to Hawaii. Even though Kim recently completed a 30-day treatment at some rehab, she claimed to be totally sober while filming the latest season. This would be somewhat believable if Kim never opened her mouth but, as it happens, the mixture of booze and pills makes her  quite chatty. The darkest point of the episode comes when Kim and her drug supplier boyfriend, Ken, have lunch on the patio of their hotel and proceed to talk gibberish. Kim can’t even keep her eyes open as she slurs her nonsensical jokes. Meanwhile, Ken presumably keeps a Pez dispenser of her pills on hand and is ready to feed them to her in a shrimp cocktail. Also, WTF is with all of the weird things Kim is claiming to be this season? First, she called herself an Arabian horse (and then meowed) and now she’s identifying as a marlin fisher? Honey, all you are is a pilled out mess.

Looking emaciated and wobbly, Farrah Fawcett’s interview on David Letterman was downright bizarre. When Letterman asked why she was late, she explained with a confused expression on her face, “So many people…” Later on, she was telling a story about Central Park and had to slap herself in the face just to get herself to focus. Of course it took 2.5 seconds for Letterman to notice that she wasn’t sober and he spent the rest of the interview having a gay ol’ time screwing with her. Funny but also disturbing.

Was this an outtake for Britney Spears and Kevin Federline’s show Chaotic? It’s brilliant! Besides being unable to understand anything Kevin is saying, Spears also deviates into typical stoned behavior by talking about the possibility of time travel. Or, as she so eloquently puts it, “time travel…speed.”

This list would not be complete without a Courtney Love moment. This famous interview from the 90s between Courtney Love and Madonna is amazing. After interrupting a post-VMA chat between Kurt Loder and Madonna by throwing her compact at Madonna’s head, Courtney Love crashes the interview (much to Madonna’s visible dismay) and proceeds to act like a hot mess. The best part is when she falls off her chair and eats crap. God, the world would be so much less interesting without Courtney Love.

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]]> http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/videos-of-celebrities-actng-wasted/feed/ 11 http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/reasons-not-to-kill-yourself-today-no-8-war-on-terror-is-over/ http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/reasons-not-to-kill-yourself-today-no-8-war-on-terror-is-over/#comments Mon, 02 May 2011 17:05:11 +0000 Sarah Nicole Prickett http://thoughtcatalog.com/?p=44977

The event of 9/11 belongs in part to everyone who had been affected by the superpower of the United States before then, which is to say everyone, basically, plus anyone who had to go through airport security (body scanners!) afterward. This terrorist imagination inhabits us all. I didn’t say that; Baudrillard did. Go knock on his grave.

The big news broke on Twitter. Of course it did. Soon someone by the name of Oprah said, “Does this mean the war is over?” and then someone retweeted her, which is how I know. Don’t go thinking I follow people named Oprah! Now, either this woman is incredibly naive, or she’s developed a dangerously arid sense of humour, or she’s mildly retarded. Or, as is the way of Twitter, she just wanted to say something before everyone else did, even if that meant forgoing all kinds of “thinking” about it.

“…al-Qaida and its syndicate of terror will not end with the death of bin Laden…” – Hillary Clinton

Even if Sen. Hillary Clinton hadn’t said so, we would know that the “war on terror” would continue with or without Osama bin Laden. We’d consider how crazy-unlikely it is that al-Qaeda, with all of its decentralized power, was operating only at the command of a shadow figure, without which it would fall apart faster than Two and a Half Men without Charlie Sheen (fingers crossed). We might also feel like the war wasn’t so much about bin Laden, and we wouldn’t be feeling wrong.

It was the seeming impossibility of finding OBL that made the prolonged fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the perpetuating of fear and irrational patriotism and hatred toward the “other,” all so possible. Maybe they couldn’t find bin Laden because they didn’t want to, deep down, where terror resides. I don’t mean I know anything. Neither do you. I just mean “maybe.” Wasn’t it more effective, for the purposes of war, to dangle the “face of evil” like a carrot, always a few feet ahead of the horse? I mean, predator drone?

Being Canadian, I’m not so much “allowed” to have ideas about this (but if you made it this far, you might as well struggle on). When at the end of a long night I tweeted a David Letterman joke—Oprah? Uma? Osama? Obama?—one of my New York acquaintances replied, “get your own tragedy.” Sure. And yet. The event of 9/11 belongs in part to everyone who had been affected by the superpower of the United States before then, which is to say everyone, basically, plus anyone who had to go through airport security (body scanners!) afterward. This terrorist imagination inhabits us all. I didn’t say that; Baudrillard did. Go knock on his grave.

What made terrorists scary is that they challenged humanity’s most basic assumption: that, above all, we want to live. Don’t we? And yet “they,” the al-Qaeda bombers, the suicide missionaries, don’t. How can we understand that? If we don’t understand it, how can we not be terrified? In the simplest way, that’s how terrorism works.

Dennis Rodman and Donald Trump, chilling

Open Sports

You fight death with death, suicide with suicide. The images of people jumping from burning towers were horrific, and they were prophetic. The American empire is widely felt to be collapsing. The war in Iraq was, too, a suicide mission. It can’t succeed; it also won’t stop now. But inasmuch as it was and is a war on terror, there’s now a break in the fighting. Pay attention: I didn’t say, and no one really says, the war on terrorism. It isn’t that. It’s the war on America’s own terror, all of our own terror, the terror of the unknowable and the unthinkable: that we might not be right.

The revenge-killing of Osama bin Laden is hugely symbolic. It’s only symbolic. But then, symbols are all we have to believe in. Soon we, the West, will find a new face of evil. Maybe Gaddafi. Maybe, although it’s too easy, Trump.

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I have tried to watch things that are hip. I went through a phase of spending beyond my means on Criterion DVDs and watched The OC and The Sarah Silverman Program, neither of which “holds up” along artistic lines, at the respective moments of their coolness. Now I mainly watch things to entertain myself, which is why I’ve been watching a lot of baddish comedy films and The Larry Sanders Show on Netflix.

The Larry Sanders Show hasn’t gotten as much praise as HBO shows that came a bit later—certainly it’s not as widely nor as attentively watched as The Sopranos or even Six Feet Under. It’s not a magnet for the sort of at-least-people-are-watching vitriol (and merchandising) as Sex and the City or Entourage. It’s a show out of time—it ended before HBO was quite legitimate, and its subject matter makes it the opposite of timeless. Its signifiers are impenetrably uncool to the first-time viewer; it’s like watching a period film about the 1990s by filmmakers overly devoted to accuracy.

Larry Sanders (as played by Garry Shandling, an actor, unlike, say, Sarah Jessica Parker, with no significant onscreen work besides, and so one to whom one can attach no real stereotype) is a host of a late-night talk show that somehow coexists in the same universe as Jay Leno, David Letterman, and (this was some time ago) Arsenio Hall. The concept of the inner workings of a late-night show as the makings of what are only somewhat ironically presented as genuine problems for Larry is an unrelatable premise. Last year, during the Conan-Jay imbroglio, most people I knew viewed the sparring over airtime and tradition unfathomable, irrelevant. Who cares about what late night show airs when?

Larry cares, and is defending his position and his creative freedom. Creative freedom here usually amounts to not having to capitulate to network demands to make his show more lucrative, if not appreciably better or worse. “Quality” here as smooth command of one’s domain, not actual comedy in the mold a Conan-Colbert-Stewart viewer would recognize. What we see of Larry’s show is uncompelling—his jokes’ lameness is compounded by a staleness added by time (surely the Bill Clinton jokes had the shock of the new, if not admirable construction, in the early 1990s). The monologue is negligible, the banter with so-nineties stars painful. But that’s sort of the point. There’s something soothing about it all, especially for the viewer unfamiliar with the late-night format. Late-night talk shows send you to bed calmly; the intrigues grafted onto such a soporific form are, given Larry’s peculiar mix of perfectionism and caprice, intriguing, but also ironically fascinating. All this, for this show?

Calling this show a “period piece” may not be fair; Sex and the City, the HBO series that came a bit later, is emblematic of 2000s New York (materialism, cupcakes, waxing) as much as The Larry Sanders Show is of 1990s Los Angeles (Michael Ovitz, steakhouses, booking wars). But Sex and the City hit on a few universal themes; its characters quested to find themselves through love. Larry Sanders cares little for love. He wants merely to find a larger market share. It’s this divorce from human reality as I know it, as well as from television-as-uproarious-entertainment as I’ve viewed it, that makes Larry Sanders so nicely entertaining. It’s never quite my first choice, but when I’m on Netflix Instant right before bed, it sends me off pleasantly. There’s just enough self-awareness in the mindlessness to make it the late-night talk show I never knew I wanted.

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Musical performances on late night television are typically a snoozefest. Half the time it feels like Letterman or Leno have no idea who these bands are. Their booker is just like, “Hi. Put this hot new band on your show and try not to say anything too offensive,” and Letterman or Leno are like, “Fine. Can you bring me my hooker now?” When emerging hip hop group Odd Future performed on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, however, they injected late night with a kind of energy that it had been sorely lacking. My favorite part of the performance is when one of the members surprises that actress on the couch and she’s just like, “Please get the fuck away from me.”

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Since my arrival in Australia more than a month ago, I’ve come to take four things for granted.

1. People will be outgoing and friendly, slap me on the back, and call me “mate.”
2. I’ll drink a lot of beer. It’s to Australians what wine is to Argentines. I still prefer brunettes (and whiskey and coke), but Pure Blonde on tap is simply irresistible.
3. I’ll spend a ton of money. In the five weeks and two days that I’ve been here, the exchange rate has gone from AUS $1 = US $.92 to AUS $1 = US $.97. I suspect the Australian dollar will achieve parity with the U.S. dollar by the time I leave in two weeks, sort of putting Argentine inflation into perspective.
4. Although U.S. tourists are relatively rare, I’m still guaranteed to see and hear a lot of Americans — if not on the streets, in Australian pop culture.

Yes, just about everything big in Australia, it seems, is made in the U.S.A. The list of great Aussie entertainers is long and impressive — from Kylie Minogue and INXS to Cate Blanchett and Hugh Jackman — but Aussies themselves are not so impressed by their home-grown talent. “We love everything from America,” one local lady told me, “because we don’t have anything of our own.”

Despite the now-predictable American influence on pop culture here, when I turn on the TV, I’m still never quite sure what I’ll see, other than that it will be something old and something borrowed. There are reruns of Friends and Seinfeld, of course, as well as The Simpsons and those long-running Australian soaps Neighbours and Home and Away. Interestingly, though, Aussies are hooked on U.S. soaps, too. I wasn’t so surprised when I caught The Bold and the Beautiful because I know that show is massive overseas. But I wasn’t expecting to see an episode of All My Children from back when Babe was alive and still being played by Alexa Havins (circa mid ’00s), and a Days of Our Lives from earlier this year.

The other night at the Greyhound Hotel, a terrible bar in the St. Kilda district that I call my temporary home, after a drag queen made her grand entrance to the musical strains of General Hospital‘s opening theme from the ’90s (I half expected images of Robin, Stone, Jagger and Brenda, the way they were, to pop up on a screen behind her big, blonde wig), she went on to reference The Bold and the Beautiful‘s Sally Spectra. As Spectra portrayer Darlene Conley rolled over in her grave, I thanked my lucky soap stars that there wasn’t a flight of stars for me to tumble down in my total state of shock. How U.S. soap diva would that have been?

It’s much safer re-enacting my favorite scenes from The Golden Girls. I love that when I do it here, people laugh with me because they actually know what I’m talking about, and at dinner, I can have a civilized, intelligent conversation about such hot topics as Joaquin Phoenix, Lindsay Lohan and Kim Kardashian, and we are all on the same page. I’m still not sure why any Australian would even know what a Kardashian is, but if knowledge is the power to ridicule them, then I’m all for it.

Magnum P.I.

As for the most hyped U.S. TV show of all, Glee, so far there is no evidence that it’s as much of an obsession here as it is in England. But considering that the networks here are running episodes of Here’s Lucy, Green Acres, Hogan’s Heroes, I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched from the ’60s, The Rockford Files and Quincy M.E. from the ’70s, Knight Rider, The A-Team and Magnum P.I. from the ’80s, and most of the first-run U.S. series are several seasons behind (though, curiously, Late Night with David Letterman airs only one day after the fact in the U.S., and the Betty White show Hot in Cleveland is already screening here), Glee‘s Australian heyday still might be a decade or three away.

In the meantime, they’ve got Oprah Winfrey, who is set to bring her daytime talk show — along with 300 audience members — to Australia in December to tape several episodes of her final season. It’s one of the biggest news stories of the year, not just because her visit will cost taxpayers, who’ll be footing an AUS $3 million bill to get her here, while (hopefully) boosting the country’s tourism industry, but because, well, she’s Oprah.

No word yet on whether she’ll be featuring any musical guests, but if she does, she’d better make them retro, which, as in Argentina, seems to obsess practically everyone in Oz. Last weekend at Disgraceland, one of my favorite clubs in Melbourne, the DJ kept pulling little surprises that kept me on my toes and on the dancefloor. Sprinkled among the latest hits (loving Rihanna’s new single, but please, no more Katy Perry!) were dance remixes of Stevie Nicks’s “Stand Back” and the Sundays’ “Here’s Where the Story Ends.” My friend Marcus explained to me that the latest musical rage down under is to take some old ’80s hit and have an anonymous female singer record it over a thumping back beat. At least someone had the good sense to leave Stevie Nicks’s original vocal alone!

Meanwhile, over at Sircuit, the playlist has included “Fools Gold” by the Stone Roses (at my request, but kudos to the DJ for having it, and for knowing what it was) and a Belinda Carlisle double bill of “Summer Rain” and “Leave a Light On” (more kudos for skipping the obvious “Heaven Is a Place on Earth”). Madonna, however, remains a dancefloor no-show. I’ve yet to hear any of her songs anywhere in Oz. Maybe there’s not enough room for her and Kylie under the strobe lights.

In the live music arena, Pink’s Funhouse tour last year was the biggest road show to hit the continent in forever, and the six-concert layover of Whitney Houston’s Nothing but Love comeback tour received both negative and positive reviews in February and March. Currently, there are posters all over Melbourne advertising the upcoming Three Dog Night/Turtles concert and an October 15 Smashing Pumpkins show, while Tim McGraw and Faith Hill brought U.S. country music to Oz, with a recent stop in Sydney.

But perhaps the most telling indicator of Aussie pop cultural sensibilities lie in the choice of entertainment for this weekend’s Australian Football League championship match between the St. Kilda Saints and the Collingwood Magpies: Lionel Richie. Lionel Richie! “I thought that was strange, too,” chimed in Marcus, apparently as perplexed as I am by his fellow countrymen’s music taste. “Isn’t he known for romantic ballads?” Um, yes, romantic ballads from 30 years ago. That’s like getting Air Supply to perform at the Super Bowl half-time show, which, come to think of it, might actually get me to watch the Super Bowl.

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In 2008, Joaquin Phoenix announced a permanent resignation from acting, in order to focus on his “music career.” We all remember the Letterman interview in early 2009; a bearded, gum-chewing Phoenix was barely responsive to Letterman's questions, and seemed hurt when the audience laughed at his hip hop aspirations.

From the outset he denied rumors that it was an elaborate hoax. "This is not a joke. Might I be ridiculous? Might my career in music be laughable? Yeah, that's possible, but that's certainly not my intention." However, following this month’s release of I'm Still Here - a ‘documentary’ depicting Joaquin's attempt to transition from acting to hip hop - director Casey Affleck has confirmed that we were all being suckered (although scores of moviegoers continue to believe the film to be authentic).

I was very excited to see it. I knew the whole thing was a farce, and so to me, the sky was the limit – I predicted something in the same vein as Sasha Baron Cohen’s stuff. But I was wrong. What the film amounts to is a long, boring and largely unfunny narrative. There is the odd laugh when Phoenix's improvised ramblings happen upon something chuckle-worthy, but not even the poignant ending compensated for the long hours I spent in a state of anticipation that was never sated.

Upon later reflection, though, I started to wonder if the film was intended for me. Had I watched the film under the impression that Joaquin is genuinely attempting to become a hip hop artist, I would have been shocked and moved by what I saw. The film’s grittiness - the drug taking, the nudity, and steady demise of his hygiene – would indeed have been very engaging if I was none the wiser. But I had known instinctually it was a charade since 2008 - and was duly disappointed by how “real” it felt. I wanted Borat, while Joaquin and Affleck were trying to create the most believable hoax possible.

But why? Do they consider the film a success? If all they were trying to do was fool people, I’m Still Here may indeed be a triumph. The friend I saw the film with - an intelligent and rational guy - was convinced that what he had seen was real, despite my attempts to convince him otherwise. Perhaps that’s why the words "Performance Art" keep being used to describe Joaquin’s antics. I would say it takes a fair degree of sacrifice and acting ability to do what he has done, but again - what was the point?

Throughout the film, Phoenix treats his loyal entourage like dirt, and on the whole, acts like a narcissistic, drug addicted pig. Maybe he was trying to satirize celebrity and what it has become. Maybe that’s what the film is -- a grotesque mockery of celebrity culture. Or maybe he didn’t know what it was he was trying to do. I'd tell you to see the film and decide for yourself, but in all honesty, I’m not sure if it's worth sitting through. If Performance Art is going to stick around, it needs to be less about fooling people and more about entertaining them.

Xiu Xiu have said and done some horrifying things over the years. Their new music video “Dear God, I Hate Myself” is no exception. The lo-fi video, which debuted earlier this month on Stereogum, features Xiu Xiu’s newest member, Angela Seo, making herself vomit while the band’s original brainchild Jamie Stewart sits close by dancing, eating a chocolate bar. It’s pretty offensive. Some people love it. Some people hate it. (And most people, rightfully, don’t care.) I haven’t really watched the video in its entirety but I still consider myself a member of the first camp. This is a good video. Well… Only if you interpret it in a specific, sympathetic context.

Dexter Morgan is marketed as “America’s favorite serial killer.” The reason we venerate him stems, I suppose, from how well Dexter deals with his curse. There are, more pointedly, two major forces justifying our attraction. (1) Dexter does not want to murder people. But he has very little control over his actions. He has to murder because when he was a toddler he watched his mother get cut up into little pieces with a chainsaw and was left for hours to bathe in her blood. (2) He makes the best of his nature vindicating himself with a utilitarian argument. His killing, the logic goes, saves more lives than it destroys.

Do you see where I am going with this?

Xiu Xiu, perhaps, operate under a similar code and can be justified by a similar strain of thought. Jamie Stewart does not necessarily want to write songs about how much he hates himself. Angela Seo doesn’t really want to make videos about self-destructive behavior. But Jamie has to write this song, Angela has to make this video, Xiu Xiu has to do this:

This is who they are. That is how they deal and cope with their “dark passenger.” Now, it’s easy to see how Dexter turns his darkness into something ostensibly much brighter, but how do Xiu Xiu do that with this video?

I guess the “Dear God,…” video does so, as much of Xiu Xiu’s discography does, by making an incisive and cathartic comment on our culture of concealment. Think about the stuff of our world: highly edited political speeches, Tiger Woods’ manicured persona, airbrushed photo spreads, gay men married with children, Dexter’s bourgeois façade, your own makeup. So much of our culture is designed to mask imperfection and gloss vulnerability.

Enter Xiu Xiu: Promoted as America’s most honest and brutal ensemble. Test that claim out for yourself, watch the video (if you can). This presents someone at their worst. It exposes a very vulnerable moment. It unveils what the mainstream constantly tries to veil. It’s kind of like the art-school version of David Letterman’s extramarital confession. Or Lady Gaga for real monsters.

I don’t personally have anything against a culture of cover ups and plastic constructions. Masquerading is fun and often beautiful. Being a phony has its benefits. (Salinger can suck it. The Dove Campaign for True Beauty missed the mark.) Even so, as Dexter recently learned when he found his wife murdered, concealment has its price. And I find it refreshing to see people with the courage to go so intensely against the grain.