Verbatim: Cintra Wilson vs. New Kids on the Block
Choosing a single quotation from Cintra Wilson is like having the objects of all your desires laid out in front of you--food, sex, friendship, music, ideas--and being told you can only have one. How do you choose?
In case you haven't happened upon any of the products of this screamingly funny, intensely brilliant writer, Cintra Wilson is a pop-culture critic and author whose first book, A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Re-Examined as a Grotesque Crippling Disease, is one of the most funny, damning, merciless books I've ever read. And--frankly--one of the best.
Capable of skyscraping praise for the art and music she celebrates, Wilson also wields a lethal arsenal of critical savvy, usually put to the page in side-splitting prose and imagery that's impossible not to react to. Viscerally.
A Massive Swelling boasts such incendiary chapter titles as "Las Vegas--The Death Star of Entertainment," "Crossing Boundaries: Towards a New Hermeneutics of Dumb Pimps Like Bruce Willis," and "As a Dog Returneth to its Own Vomit, So Doth L.A." But Wilson is no mere shock-jock, and while her revelations about pop culture occasionally restate the obvious, they do so in terms so hilariously biting as to render them almost canonical. To wit, this nugget about boy-bands from "Cock Rock for the Twelve-and-Under":
"[A]ll 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 are giving 90 percent 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 that has only really worked , so far, for ... ex-New Edition R&B guy Bobby Brown, and now for Ricky Martin, ex Menudo-boy. [Keep in mind that this was published in 2000.] The managers of the new breed of band coming out must have the whole clause in the contract 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."
The above comes after five or so pages of real love letters--by women ranging in age from teens to a late-20s mother of two--penned to the New Kids on the Block during their hey-day as singer/sex-objects. Now that they're back, the New Kids--who, it should be noted, are neither new nor kids--have once again put aside such niggling roadblocks to stardom as shame and self-respect, all for the glorious opportunity to perform pre-packaged material for (presumably) the sad, sexually frustrated kids who have finally grown up to be the sad, sexually frustrated adults they were destined to be. Sure, it's been awhile, but we knew they had it in them.
The music is, of course, beside the point, because if there's one thing NKOTB is good at, it's proving that the captains of (this) industry can shuck just about anything at us, and as long as that anything has a glossy, easily digestible sheen around its rotten core of pure celebrity-as-product, we'll buy it.
Ultimately, I think judging people for what they consume is a useless endeavor, at best. But for those of us who revel in the sound of a brilliant mind as it skewers easy targets with percussive fervor and no reservations, the good news is that Cintra Wilson has a new book coming out in September. Yes, the same month as the new NKOTB offering. Ain't life grand?
--Jason Kirk
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JR on August 28, 2008 at 10:39 AM
Stopping by to show some love to a fellow music lover. I admire and am inspired by lovers of music...especially those willing to step outside the mainstream and remain true to themselves. Stop by and visit sometime.
Much respect to you and best regards,
http://www.melikegoodmusic.com
Me Like Good Music - The Source for Underrated Music