What Lil Nas X Means to Me, Part Two
Max Barry’s 2003 satirical dystopia, Jennifer Government, utilizes a common Cyberpunk trick of name-dropping real-world corporations abusing quasi-governmental power. In the story MacGuffin, the Nike shoe corporation plans a “guerilla” marketing campaign. To create artificial demand for ordinary athletic shoes, the company orchestrates a series of murders, killing teenagers for their shoes. It works, and the unremarkable shoes become a hot commodity, too valuable to wear.
I remembered Barry last week, when Lil Nas X, the only rapper to ever top the Billboard country charts, released his new Satan shoe. Everything about this shoe appears unremarkable. It’s a repurposed Nike Air Max 97, a similarly quotidian shoe retailing, according to the Nike website, for about $170. In collaboration with a New York art collective, LNX alters the shoes with supposed satanic medallions, inflammatory logos, and one drop of human blood. Then he charges over $1000.
LNX’s Satan shoe channels previous pseudo-scandals created by professional media manipulators. The lightweight blasphemy recalls Madonna’s 1989 “Like a Prayer” video, or virtually everything Marilyn Manson has ever done. Marvel Comics and the band KISS released a 1970s comic book featuring, like the shoe, human blood in the ink. LNX seemingly designed this shoe to ask: How many times can the squares believe the same overhyped bullshit?
The squares responded: at least one more. Prominent Republicans, TV preachers, and conservative pundits flooded social media last Monday with condemnations and repudiations. Like clockwork, predictable sources claim a cheap publicity stunt means we’re engaged in a theological struggle for America’s shared soul, or something, and proof, proof I say, of the moral cesspool youth culture has become. It’s sadly, dishearteningly predictable.
And I say that as a Christian.
Importantly, while White cishet Christians throw theatrically public tantrums, they’re foregrounding LNX’s message: that, as a gay man raised in a conservative church, he spent years living with an internalized message that God hated him. It’s a dishearteningly familiar experience. Encouraged to consider themselves damned, children embrace that as their identity and, like millions of heavy metal meatheads everywhere, wave their anomie in everybody’s faces, because it’s all they have.
Because, don’t fool yourself, LNX’s demonstrations are every bit as ordinary as the conservative reactions against them. This banality has become an inevitable part of the performance. The headbanger, dungeon master, or walking virgin-whore dichotomy, behaves in some predictably provocative manner. Then the squares respond like puppets, moving mechanically through a standardized litany of performative outrage. The sequence is completely scripted, and has grown tiresome with repetition.
The market popularity of blasphemy results in commodified rebellion. Don’t forget, LNX is signed with Columbia Records, the label which previously gave us focus-tested teen rebellion like AC/DC, Rage Against the Machine, and Blue Öyster Cult. Like LNX, these acts promised to spit in the Establishment’s eye, while remaining ensconced within the womb-like security of one of Earth’s largest media conglomerates. Way to screw the system, guys.
Don’t misunderstand me. Lil Nas X’s accusations of traumatic treatment against the church require serious consideration. American Christianity has told outsiders “Jesus loves you,” but qualified that by endorsing racism, sexism, homosexism, and other us-vs-them behavior. (That’s in the aggregate, certainly.) Meanwhile, American church membership is falling precipitously. If Christians want meaningful explanations why, they should start seeking in their pulpits and pews.
But, failing that, let’s recognize that rebellion, like conformity, is a commodity token. Zondervan, the publisher which owns the New International Version translation of the Bible, is a subsidiary of media conglomerate HarperCollins. Anton LeVay’s The Satanic Bible is published by Avon Books, a subsidiary of… HarperCollins. The exact same company will sell you righteousness or blasphemy, whichever brings you comfort. They don’t care, they want to get paid.
Because both LNX’s blasphemy, and the resulting Christian retrenchment, follow a predictable script, neither will ultimately move the discussion meaningfully. The only beneficiaries of this conflict are the CEOs and marketeers. While individuals often see themselves as taking bold moral stands on these issues, the monetary transactions which result, ultimately redound to people like Kenneth Copeland, on the Christian side, or on LNX’s side, the shareholders of Sony Music Entertainment.
In Jennifer Government, the murders make ordinary shoes look valuable, and people pay literally thousands for ordinary joggers. But within a few months, the media landscape moves on, people forget, and the shoes get remaindered. Nike doesn’t care; they made their profit months ago. Max Barry’s point bears remembering, for LNX’s allies and enemies alike: brands aren’t your supporters. They’re here to get paid.
See also Part One
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