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Baffler Archives: Salvos

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Back in Black on the Beaten Path
September 22, 2012
So you’ve just completed the inevitable arc from derision to interest to all-out consumer craving over bell-bottoms, and now a new, or rather, a renewed trend has reared up along the ever-jagged cutting edge. And worse, this latest expression of the herd—oops, ...

The Teen Rebel as Model Consumer
September 21, 2012
“The true exemplar of différance is she who, by dint of unflinching critical rigor and unlimited credit, has achieved maximum accessorization of her lifestyle.” —James Hatt, in conversation. Sassy does not want you to think that it is just another version of the ...

What’s Hip for General Motors Is Hip for America
September 21, 2012
One of the most important elements of the culture industry’s cherished self-image as an institution of surpassing hipness is its curious historical awareness. Despite the fact that the three networks and the various Hollywood studios were founded well before World War II, the ...

Brain Dead in Seattle
September 21, 2012
Beavis: Huh huh, like, what’s Seattle? Butthead: It’s this place where stuff is, like, really cool. I start with what I take not to be a radical assertion. Beavis and Butthead are, at the very least, supposed to represent a form of humor. People, from the local TV critic to ...

We’re Marketed, Therefore We Are?
September 04, 2012
The marketing of our generation was bound to happen sooner or later. After the success of Linklater’s Slacker, the promotion of Coupland’s Generation X, and the “discovery” of Seattle grunge, it was just a matter of waiting for the wave. And it came. It started in the ...

Twenty-nothing Revisited
September 04, 2012
So what was the result of all that “twenty-something” soul-searching that so enlivened the mass media over the last year? After months of delicate inquiry and painstaking attention to the subtleties of “our” generation’s experiences, angsts, and deep ...

Life as Style
American consumers are in the throes of a turgid love affair with multiculturalism. Having depleted our domestic cultural resources, we turn our jaded gaze elsewhere, looking for ever more exotic excitements, ever more picturesque pastimes. Signs of the illicit relationship crop ...

The Name-Caller
August 29, 2012
It’s the end of summer and the air is getting slightly sharper, slightly more articulate. The annual Minnesota State Fair just rolled into town—a colossal affair of farm animals, live music, fireworks, exhibits, fried cheese curds, corndogs, carnival rides and games, etc. ...

Sweet Portable You
Selections Palace Brothers, There Is No One What Will Take Care of You (Drag City) The most sincere heart-split to come out from this land in many a day, friends, layed out in a sprung-free style that brings to mind a holy mingling of the Carters and Blind Joe Death. A gnarled ...

A Nest of Ninnies
August 29, 2012
Selected Reviews The Germs, GI LP Pure punk rock fueled by hate. Darby Crash does a growl that might be “supposed to sound tough” in a world where pain wasn’t such a big deal and cars weren’t something to be afraid of. But the Germs lived in Los Angeles, and it sucked, ...

Let’s Talk Rock
August 29, 2012
A Cosmic Battle for Insanely Low Stakes Hilarious that rock criticism started with critics noticing things bands wouldn’t notice about themselves (ineptitude, accidental references, supernatural side-effects, mind-boggling stupidity) and ended (as it does every day, coughing ...