Gawker
A.S. Hamrah, film critic for blah-blah-ing lit journal N+1, is stuck at the glamorous Cannes Film Festival but it's not as glamorous as it was when it was new, and that makes him sad. "It’s not just that celebrities are dull. More and more, there’s also something about them that fills us with revulsion. It used to be that a celebrity sighting was cause for celebration. You’d phone the wife and kids: 'Hey, I just saw Robert Stack walking into the Automat!' Now it’s more an occasion for jeering. Or, more accurately, a chance to feel a deep queasiness about what’s happened to our culture. The celebrity is quickly becoming a harbinger of nausea, a delivery system for Weltschmerz, there to remind us that things, actually, are what they seem: pathetic."
Whenever I’m in Los Angeles, I experience this unease. I don’t have a name for it. I go out to lunch and worry Sinbad’s going to be sitting across from me. I wait in line at a hot dog stand and hope I don’t spot Carmen Electra.
A celebrity sighting can really ruin your day. At night it’s even worse. Not too long ago I was eating in a favourite restaurant when Mike Myers walked in with a large group I hesitate to call an entourage. As the loveable star of the Austin Powers movies sat down with his people, you could see on the faces of the other diners that their wine had just turned to vinegar. What’s he doing here, their expressions said. What’s he doing in this part of town? Why isn’t he in his own area?
Increasingly, that’s where we want them: away from us. The Bible suggests that the poor will always be with us. Today it’s the rich who will always be with us. If they’re famous on top of it, that makes their presence all the more galling, not to mention disruptive.
Whole neighbourhoods of our cities have turned into ghettos of the celebrated, and there’s nowhere we can go to escape. They will always be with us. Who wants to live across the hall from the breakout star of Survivor: Guatemala? Riding the bus is bad enough without Ashton Kutcher taking the last seat. [TheNational]
Comments
a celebrity sighting can ruin your whole day
a friend on a photo safari said they ran into brooke shields, and it made them so sad they all shot themselves
You wanna talk Weltschmerz!? You would think the revealing of the powerlessness of the man behind the curtain would be freeing, liberating, cause for celebration, reason to invent new ways of doing things, embracing new worldviews but no, I think I see more googlbation on the horizon for this crowd.
Hey, uh, Hamrah, you know who else is a harbinger of nausea?
I would like to direct Mr. Hamrah to a forty-nine-year-old book called Hollywood Babylon.
A.S. Hamrah suffers from Crippling Ennui, a silent killer that strips its victims of the ability to experience emotions, make sense, or connect to reality. 4 out of every 10 American writers from the ruling classes suffer from ennui. The symptoms can be excruciating for readers.
PLEASE SEND DONATIONS TO THE A.S. HAMRAH ENNUI RELIEF FUND.
We can find a cure for Weltschmerz in our lifetime!
Give generously.
...n+1 has a film critic?
they can even hire!?
wow. color me surprised.
Hamrah, you'll never worry about others having the same problem when they see you coming.
@mitchel_stevens:
better yet, they could afford to send him to Cannes?!
..oh wait, he's working for The National.
the abu dhabi paper that cherry-picked a bunch of ny reporters and stringers.
@Dickdogfood: Um, yeah.
Also on the syllabus:
The Day of the Locust,
Play it as it Lays,
and pretty much anything by Bruce Wagner.
yes the cannes film festival is filled with phonies
phony phony phonies
yawn
scratch
I would like to go back in time and meet Robert Stack at the Automat. I could have pie with him - maybe we could get different kinds of pie and share them. One of the pieces would have a hair in it and we would laugh together. Then we could go to Toots Shor's for Sidecars and Clams Casino. That would be a perfect day.
See also
Angst
Existential dread
Dukkha
Ennui
Weltanschauung
Sturm und Drang
Suffering
I'd love to be whining from the Côte d'Azur. I know the Cannes Film Festival -- like everything else -- is hyped, but I've never done it.
One day, Ma. One day, my name will be in lights. You'll see. One day I too will deliver Weltschmerz to A.S. Hamrah.
@rosaluxembourgeoise:
Schadenfreude, by contrast, provides a mild sensation of euphoria.
I once saw Tom Sizemore at Busch Gardens and was filled with Bratwurst.
Chekhov, to Gorky, February 15th, 1900, Yalta:
"I am bored, not in the sense of weltschmerz, not in the sense of being weary of existence, but simply bored from want of people, from want of music which I love, and from want of women, of whom there are none in Yalta. I am bored without caviare and pickled cabbage."
@rosaluxembourgeoise: The women in Yalta are hideous - or is it Malta?
@rosaluxembourgeoise: You are so right to call attention to the scourge of acute ennui. In some of the more vulnerable groups of the population (liberal arts school students, the French) virulent and highly contagious strains have developed that are resistant to irony and mockery. This past year a number of Comparative Literature departments have had to be quarantined.
The French government was slow to respond to the crisis, They simply underestimated the threat imposed by the yearly waves of American poseurs flocking to the Left Bank. The CDC believes that this encounter between two powerful strains of ennui created a Weltschmerz super-bug.
My cat has acute ennui.
@NinaHagen: My cat's ennui is adorable.
"The Bible suggests that the poor will always be with us. Today it's the rich who will always be with us. If they're famous on top of it, that makes their presence all the more galling, not to mention disruptive."
Why can't they be more like the poor: easy to ignore? So easy in fact, that one can make a statement implying that they are no longer with us.
@Seeräuber Jenny: re "Schadenfreude, by contrast, provides a mild sensation of euphoria."
Whenever there is rise in Weltschmerz, you also see an increase in the number of illegal Schadenfreude labs.
@AndSheSaid: so true. might as well just legalize it,
Kung Fu Panda is this year's Bee Movie at Cannes, which would make any stunt Jack Black pulls equivalent to Seinfeld zip-lining in wearing a bee costume. Isn't it supposed to be some sort of well-respected film festival? Why do they allow these antics to occur?
@rosaluxembourgeoise:See? There is nothing wrong with n+1 that a little pickled cabbage couldn't fix. (Or maybe a lot.)
Chekhov, to A.S. Suvorin,
MOSCOW, October 27, 1888.
... In conversation with my literary colleagues I always insist that it is not the artist's business to solve problems that require a specialist's knowledge. It is a bad thing if a writer tackles a subject he does not understand. We have specialists for dealing with special questions: it is their business to judge of the commune, of the future of capitalism, of the evils of drunkenness, of boots, of the diseases of women. An artist must only judge of what he understands, his field is just as limited as that of any other specialist-I repeat this and insist on it always.
@Hez:
Actually, there is nothing wrong with N+1 that the want of pickled cabbage-- or anything, really-- couldn't fix. And actually, fuck it, that's not even true. They're too far gone. All moaning in the Terminal Ennui ward.
I'm off to make Victory Against Weltschmerz! rubber bracelets.
@rosaluxembourgeoise: Oooh, I hope they will be dull grey!
@rosaluxembourgeoise: You could be our ennui specialist!
@ian spiegelman: Don't know enough about it, Spiegelman, but I do have some pretty radical ideas about treating this crippling disorder of the bourgeoisie.
@rosaluxembourgeoise: Why do I suspect that those ideas revolve around secret police, children snitching on their parents, gulags, forced labor, and jump suits? Though I like a good jump suit.
@rosaluxembourgeoise:
In case your question isn't rhetorical, the answer is "because you have a rich and detailed fantasy life."
But yeah, there was a marked decline in Russian Weltschmerz sometime after 1917. What?
@rosaluxembourgeoise:
That was @ian spiegelman!
@rosaluxembourgeoise: Well, there's that. But there's also the fact that you're a dirty scheming pinko who wants all free, right-minded people put into bondage to benefit thems what stands on the corner lookin' for handouts!
@ian spiegelman:
I swear Spiegelman, if it's the last thing I'm going to do, I'm going to make every last second of your life, from this moment on, a living hell for what you've done!
No, no, no! Go ahead, talk to them, they're all singing your song tonight, Ian! Go ahead, I'll never make it home tonight!
Also, you promised you would put that "on the corner looking for handout" index card away, Spiegelman!
@rosaluxembourgeoise: Don't you steal Bill Murray's lines to further your wicked cause, Red! And put away an evergreen like "on the corner looking for a handout"? Hell no!
@ian spiegelman:
We're bulldozing the evergreens to make way for our massive irrigation project in the South. Haven't you heard?
@rosaluxembourgeoise: You lay off the evergreens! They work all year long, unlike your wussified, leftist European trees that take the whole damn winter as a vacation!
What is this, reactionary Arbor Day?
Your stupid evergreens symbolize degenerate waste-stage Capitalism; a dead tree under which to pile useless goods that alienate and shove the masses deeper into debt and immiserated labor. Things that mean nothing and that you want more of; things that extort consent to slavery for the benefit of the cackling bourgeoisie.
We're clear-cutting, do you hear me, Spiegelman? The masses need irrigated fields, not sentimentality!
@Hez: @rosaluxembourgeoise: "There is nothing wrong with n+1 that a little pickled cabbage couldn't fix. (Or maybe a lot.)"
I don't think they need anything that will make them more gassy; they already blow too much hot air out their asses. And they insist on publishing their farts so everyone can appreciate them. It would be so much better if they just lit them on fire.
@rosaluxembourgeoise: You would see much and mire and defeat in something majestic and organic (unlike your the "order" you seek to force upon human nature) that never stops producing.
@ian spiegelman: much=muck
What's "organic" about killing a tree to pile blood-stained, mass-produced crap under it? What's "natural" and "spontaneous" about billionaire corporations enforcing displays of pointless consumption and dehumanization?
The only thing that "never stops producing" is capitalism, and what it's producing is misery.
Jump off the sad merry-go-round, Spiegelman. The revolution could use some class-conscious scrappers like you.
I think when I rule the world I am going to construct a room (a very nice room mind you) and put two laptops back to back on a rough-hewn table in the center of the room. When I turn the lights on there will be Rosa and Ian dueling away at the keyboards. No talking though. That would ruin it. I am also going to have my own Starbucks in the den with a revolving crew of 18 year old baristas. Viva Fidel!
@rosaluxembourgeoise: See? That's just the thing with all you reds. You don't like what someone is sayin', you just say he's sayin' somethin' else and then you say exactly what he'd been sayin'!
I was talking about how fine and strong and natural an evergreen tree was. Not all about cuttin' it down and building with it and what you put into what you build with it and whatnot. You were the one sayin' you were gonna cut 'em all down for some hair-brained commie eco scheme! They've got you suckered real sweet, Red Rose. Now why don't you turn down their broadcast and come on in to the Big Parade? It's good here. Ya keep what ya earn and ya earn what ya keep.
@belltolls: Where do we sleep? What do you feed us? Does this involve a basement?