My favorite dumb hobby is taking pop culture way too seriously.
At first glance, it may seem like a useless thing to obsess over, but pop culture can actually tell you a lot about society in the time period that birthed it. The ways people make movies and TV shows, the ways we worship our rock stars and venerate our celebrities is like a pulse readout that also happens to be endlessly entertaining.
Judging by our current state, it seems like we might be headed to a bleak place if we aren’t careful. American popular culture is increasingly un-self-aware, snobby and narcissistic without substance (as opposed to narcissistic with substance, which is beautiful and should be encouraged). This increasingly vapid cultural landscape is one where 9/11 is blatantly exploited for Facebook likes and "irony" has practically become the watermark for high art. Movies are deliberately created to suit the dumbest possible audience, and everything we listen to is either a repackaged classic from the last 50 years or was produced in a laboratory by the same handful of Swedish guys.
Take Taylor Swift’s "1989" for example, which heralded the return of the same unambitious, superficial culture that it took most of the ‘90s for us to escape from. It’s already here. Don’t believe me? Watch an early episode of Seinfeld. George and Jerry don’t look out of place; rather, they look kind of hip. And it shows no signs of stopping: Last week, singer Ryan Adams covered "1989" in a sad, singer-songwriter fashion. It’s not very good.
Don’t get me wrong — so far, this new-‘80s thing we’ve got going on is cool. "1989" itself was good — oh God, so good — but it makes me worry about where we’re headed all the same. What chance do we stand if "like a pop album, but without any of the things that make pop fun or enjoyable" is a legitimate cultural pursuit?
Luckily for us, there’s a glimmer of hope from one redeeming cultural figure, a voice crying from the Laurel Canyon.
It was two years ago that "Fear Fun" first appeared on my YouTube queue, sparking a long and cherished relationship with the music of the enigmatic, elusive man known as Father John Misty.
Joshua Tillman was born into a strict evangelistic Christian family, from whom he escaped as a young man and fled west. He worked odd jobs and got by making music but wasn’t content with his life or his art — even when he landed with Fleet Foxes as the band’s on-tour drummer. He still wasn’t satisfied.
It was after that tour that Tillman — sitting in a tree, naked and high off his ass on shrooms — heard his own voice for the first time. This creative vision birthed the persona of Father John Misty — propelled, I’m sure, by handfuls of extremely dangerous drugs and a nearly self-destructive drive to make art. He’s a cynical bastard, a smartass and genuine lunatic — often funny, sometimes self-indulgent, always insightful and wickedly handsome.
His first album detailed L.A., disillusionment and dissatisfaction with his youth. His second, "I Love You, Honeybear," is about him and his wife doing away with the Byronic tropes and instead showing a man terrified to death by himself and the person he needs most.
His often-painful sincerity leaves him with a tendency to do away with any bullshit so unfortunate as to find itself in his path. FJM doesn’t limit this to his music either. The man’s Instagram feed is just an angry mockery of the kind of entitled navel-gazing Instagram has helped to blossom.
I believe if anyone can save us from another ‘80s, it’s him.
In response to the Ryan Adams "1989" cover, FJM released his own "reinterpretation of the classic Ryan Adams album ‘1989,’" which was the lyrics of Swift’s "Blank Space" shoehorned into the melody of "I’m Waiting For The Man," a Velvet Underground song about going uptown to buy heroin. Misty later took the track down after posting a Facebook status about the band’s frontman Lou Reed appearing to him in a dream to scold him for summoning the dead.
The point: Father John Misty doesn’t just create music. He inserts himself into the unceasing dialogue that is popular culture, almost always calling bullshit on the whole thing and drawing attention to the parts of it that are gaudy and knee-deep in trash. He may not be the cultural icon we deserve, but he’s definitely the one we need.
Alec Carver is a UF history junior. His column appears on Fridays.
