Enveloped by Kultur-Terror

Despite Assertions to the Contrary, the Television Cannot Be Turned Off

Author’s note and disclaimer: this essay is exceptional for its pronounced anti-American sentiment. This author is grateful for and appreciative of those more mainstream readers who likley disagree or balk at such a perspective. No personal offense is intended, and it is hoped rather than unsubscribing or some other negative reaction, differences of opinion on such matters can be appreciated, in order to achieve better understanding among those who share a general dissatisfaction with the current state of culture and civilization.

Any criticism or complaint about the media or crass, undesirable, or otherwise harmful elements in the culture are invariably countered with some variant of “turn it off” or if “someone does not like something, he can always change the channel or simply refuse to watch or listen.” If someone hates rap music, or Katy Perry, or Madonna, or “Doja Cat,” just do not listen to it. This old chestnut is just as ubiquitous as it is unconvincing. Many of these and myriad other undesirable elements of American Unkultur are inescapable, died and woven into both our collective consciousness and the individual consciousness of most everyone, to a man. Anyone who seriously suggests that “turning off the television” (or the radio) is a serious response to problems of culture should accept this impossible challenge: find someone who does not know who the “Fonz” is; they of course most assuredly cannot find any such person. While such considerations may be novel to many, it is nothing new to this author. Such considerations were however revisited most recently upon happening across this image while perusing twitter.

The image depicts stills from the original casts of four American dumb-dumb sitcoms: from the upper left corner going clockwise, Three’s Company. Diff’rent Strokes, Laverne and Shirley, and Mork and Mindy. The tweet reminded readers how each show now has one lone, sole survivor from its original cast. with the sole suriviving member remaining in color while the deceased are in black and white. (Note the lovely Priscilla Barnes is still alive, but she was not an original cast member). In this way, the image draws on para-social relationships people have with actors they never knew, but for whatever reason remember fondly. Despite its distasteful cultural underpinnings, the collage is nonetheless interesting in that it reminds this author how much time has gone by since his childhood.

The image also serves an even greater purpose, insofar as it inspired many of the thoughts and reflections set forth in this essay. Much of my life through both adolescence and adulthood has been characterized by an express, devout opposition to such American Unkultur. I despise it with every fibre of my being. And yet so many of the conscious “life decisions” I have made, which are the very negation and antithesis of these and other portents of American Unkultur, have done little to change the fact that so much of this dreck has been a part of my upbringing (a very chaotic and unenviable one for reasons which will remain undisclosed). As a part of my upringing, these things are therefore part of my very being. I know what these images are not only because I was allowed to watch these shows as a child—they were practically inescapable even for those whose parents actually tried to limit or restrict entirely access to these programs. I know what these images are and what they pertain to because I was born in the United States in the latter third to quarter of the 20^th Century. I of course resent knowing what any of this is, just as I resent knowing who any number of today’s celebrities are, including The Kardashians, Kayne West, Katy Perry, the list is endless. Obviously, growing up watching re-runs of The Brady Bunch, Three’s Company, or other garbage on a sick day or even during summer vacation is a relatively innocuous defect compared to other defining moments of my unbringing, as they are doutblessly shared with others in my generation from a more enviable upbringing.

My study of German and English literature in college, the books, music, and even select cinema I choose to favor as an adult and most especially during my adolescence are antithetical in many ways to American Unkultur. So much of what I despise with every fibre of my being is nonetheless engrained in my very consciousness, precisely because the cultural milieu I was exposed to was a foregone conclusion made inevitable simply by virtue of being born in the United States sometime in the 1970s. The degree to which my personal preferences are the negation of this cultural milieu cannot be overstated. Much of the post-punk, indie, goth, and elektro-industrial genres I have favored since adolescence (going back as early as the 7^th grade) are antithetical to mainstream American culture. Many song lyrics of Death in June have a uniquely anti-American bent, just as Douglas Pearce has always been hounded for his use of fascist and nazi symbols. “The Death of the West” chastises American popular culture in the earky 80s with these lines:

“the kids from Fame will all be there
Free Coca-Cola for you!
And all the monkeys from the zoo
Will there be extras too?”

….

They're making the last film
They say it's the best
And we all helped make it
It's called «The Death of the West»

And then there is Sons of Europe, bar none the greatest repudiation of the “post-war consensus” in any medium outside of historical books.

Sons of the east
Guards well trained
Have put a stop to the Polish train
Sons of the west
Have grown weak
The American Dream
Has sent you to sleep
Sons of Europe
Sick with liberalism
sons of Europe
Chained with capitalism
Sons of Europe
Make very sure
You don't burn
In a Wall Street War, (repeat entire stanza once before refrain).

Sons of Europe Arise,
Sons of Europe Arise- Arise! (repeat once)

On a marble slab in Yalta
Mother Europe
Was Slaughtered.

The Jesus and Mary Chain, particularly their early stuff, have always had a strong aversion to America and American popular “culture,” as evidenced in various songs, including a rendition where Jim Reid sings “Surfin’ USA” in deadpan style, implying that dumb Americans just surf all day. “Kill Surf City” is even more explicit, as the beginning of the excellent music video shows one of the Reid brothers (probably William) on a cross, drawing a revolver before blowing the American flag to bits. I have been proudly listening to early Jesus and Mary Chain since I was 14.

As stated, much of my adult life has been defined by a greater effort to insulate myself from American Unkultur to the furthest extent possible, but there are significant limitations to that. I am uniquely aware of and have been affected by the likes of Jerry Springer and other similar talk shows, even though I was not exposed to it during my childhood, as I was these insipid sitcoms and children’s cartoons. I have found Seinfeld so routinely referenced that it was incumbent upon me to at least watch the more celebrated episodes, so that if they should come up in small talk in business or social settings, I at least have some hope of relating with others, whether they are business contacts or sundry acquaintances. Near constant references to Ron Swanson memes and other similar references to the series obliged me to watch much of Parks and Recreation, just to understand the society I find myself in; despite near universal acclaim, the show is idiotic and rarely amusing or clever, some limited outliers excepted.¹

Even as almost all the preferences and choices I have made since adolescence are the very abnegation of this cultural milieu, neither I nor anyone in my generation can escape this very cultural milieu that has enveloped us all. Some of these portents I have mixed feelings about, including Scooby Doo reruns I remember from as early as age five. As counter-thetical to basic principles of physics as the premise of a World War II battleship being converted into an intergalactic spaceship is, I remain particularly fond of Star-Blazers, which in the Japanese was originally called Spaceship Yamato. As I wrote about in Thrust Into It All; The Individual Defined by Culture and Circumstance, I remain, to this day, quite partial to G1 Transformers, even though the rainbow animated series was poorly drawn and was not much more than a twenty minute commercial. While nothing about Transformers or Star Blazers rises to the level of high culture, there are merits to these offerings that rise above mere subjective nostalgia. Some things just have a natural, timeless propensity for exciting a boy’s imagination, regardless of his generation; trucks and tractors, trains, dinosaurs, and I would submit World War II super battleships rebuilt as space cruisers and robots that can transform into disguises from semi trucks to F-15 fighters fit comfortably in that pantheon of things with a timeless propensity to excite a child’s imagination. A child’s imagination is of course revered by the romantic poets in particular.

While Star-Blazers and to a more limited extent Transformers both originated from Japan and not the States², most elements from this cultural milieu fused into the collective consciousness of many Gen Xers do not make that cut. Consider Diff’rent Strokes, and how remarkably subversive its message really is, advocating or normalizing the idea of a wealthy white entrepreneur adopting two black male teenagers to live with his white teenage daughter. Diff’rent Strokes exemplifies the dumb-dumb American sitcom par excellence, with Gary Coleman strutting around while reciting his stupid catch phrase that amuses the idiot lemmings each time it is uttered. I of course also denounce it for being spelled and written as D-I-F-F-apostrophe-R-E-N T Strokes, rather than DiffErent Strokes. The very creed embraced by the show’s jingle is anathema as well, as it embraces the very sort of relativism that has been the plague of Europe and the West since The Fall of Berlin.

Now the world don't move to the beat of just one drum
What might be right for you, may not be right for some.

The intentionally improper conjugation and contraction of “not to do” in the third person singular alone requires strong condemnation—the world doesn’t move to the beat of just one drum, or preferably the world does not move . . .. I don’t, you don’t, we don’t, they don’t, he, she, or it DOESN’T. The improper use of “don’t” rather than “doesn’t” in relation to the subject of the sentence, “the world,” does more than suggest that even grammar is just a matter of “different strokes”—speaking and writing correctly may be right for some, but “may not be right” for others. Everything is relative—no one’s opinion is any more valid than another’s. A person who prefers a ruined steak per a “well done” order is just as valid as someone who eats steak prepared correctly, preferably medium rare, but not cooked any more than medium at the most. 50 Shades of Grey and Danielle Steele novels are just as valid as literature as the great works by the literary masters of the ages. Snoop Dogg, Katy Perry, or even “Pop Goes the Weasel” are just as valid as musical expressions as Beethoven, Brahms, or Wagner, or for that matter Joy Division, Death in June, the Virgin Prunes, or Funker Vogt. WRONG.

Given that Robert Reed, the actor who played Mike Brady, was actually gay (he died of AIDS), to say nothing of the debauched life of Florence Henderson, the one redeeming quality of the idiocy that is The Brady Bunch is that it reveals what an abject lie post-war American wholesomeness really is. Another instance of this cultural poison poured into the young, impressionable minds of Gen Xers in particular is The Richie Rich Show, which I recall watching as part of the Saturday morning cartoon lineup.³ For those unaware, Riche Rich is a blonde boy who runs around with his dog and his gal pal on various adventures. His chief attribute, as one might guess by his moniker, or the dollar signs on his mansion or his stupid mutt dog, or in the opening and closing credits, is that he is fabulously wealthy. This is why they call him Richie Rich—because his name is Rich and he is a “richie,” get it? It is interesting to consider what Richie Rich conveys as propaganda, furthering or legitimizing nearly unbridled, pure capitalism in the United States, while playing on puritanical and other legacies in this country which propose that those who are born into wealth deserve it, somehow. America stumbled into the status of a world power on account of having two oceans and only having to conquer stone age, primitive peoples on its own frontiers with an added foray against Mexico before murdering Mother Europa; in the course of that sordid history, it has not evolved much from the legacy of Horatio Alger.

Another less benign instance of the dreck I was exposed to as a child was a show called The Banana Splits; while the show actually originally aired in 1968 and 1969, reruns were syndicated into the late 70s and even early 80s. The various tell-tale signs of its actual decade of origin were of course lost to yours truly at four years of age. A Hanna-Barbera creation, the show is a case-study in how even the utterly talentless could make the cut in the age of the three television networks, at least for two years; such talentless hacks only needed the right connections to get paid for producing such rubbish. Idiots prancing around in absurd animal costumes, replete with a “band” with a particularly late 60s gestalt fairly and accurately characterizes this absurd abomination. I recall enjoying the show as a small child, even as I—as a displaced, dissident adult—detest it and so much other cultural dreck I was exposed to as a child.

The A-Team is another notable expression of American “culture,” which I was exposed to when a little older. And despite it having little objective merit to acquit this offering, I nonetheless cannot help but harbor a grudging fondness for it, even though I know as a cultural expression it has little to no redeeming objective artistic or cultural value. A work of fiction that depicts both spectacular car crashes and routine exchange of automatic weapons fire as something that people routinely if not without exception walk away from proves how utterly mindless this show was and is. But even as it is devoid of any objective culture or artistic value, my fondness for it remains in some vestigial form, which is more than I can say for most of the cultural phenomena that were infused into my soft, impressionable brain as a child.

As stipulated under Martin Heidegger’s conception of Geworfenheit, all of this and so much more are things that myself and my generation were born into. Even as those whose parents were mindful and tried to limit exposure to television and other portents of American Unkultur and were at least aware of everything mentioned so far, and much more besides, such limited efforts could never hope to insulate their children from these and a myriad other elements of American Unkultur. Developing a resistance to these things as an adult, or even as a rebellious adolescent, only mitigates damages incurred; such mitigating measures cannot undo or shield the individual from these elements completely, or even really in part.

Some insist that none of this matters, and all of this is nothing more than the mad ravings of a misanthrope and malcontent. But, aside from matters of race, what could be more important than culture, particularly during the formative years of childhood and adolescence? Consider that even those with a natural aptitude for chess will never reach the highest levels if they were not exposed to the game early in life, about seven years old for most.⁴ David Foster Wallace wrote that anyone who went to school after about the time I was born will never learn English as it used to be taught, just because that breed of “grammar Nazi” English teacher just does not exist any more—and things have only declined and devolved in the subsequent decades. Those who have endeavored to master a foreign language without first starting before puberty know it is almost impossible to speak that language without an accent or other anomalies that remove him from the ranks of native speakers. Leider werde ich nimmer die Kartoffelen von meinem Mund herausstecken. However much a person reads or tries to makeup time for lost ground, it is nigh impossible to mitigate the damage of this pernicious cultural milieu completely. Even “Oxbridge” types, populated mostly with the well-to-do and privileged classes of British society, with an accoutrement of various genetic party favors for the sake of “diversity,” do not have even close to the levels of erudition as members of the old school guard did generations ago, such as Enoch Powell. This is even more true on this side of the Atlantic in regard to those privileged snots who go to boarding schools in this country and yet are rarely well-read or cultured at all.

A little smattering of sugar—a bit of all right—helps the poison go down smooth. American Unkultur is very often sweetened with the most alluring white women. Pictured on the left Prisiclla Barnes as Terri Alden from the aforementioned Three’s Company. On the right, Rachel Reynolds. Readers may find themselves entertaining a lewd thought—or several—while contemplating such images.

One confession I will divulge to my readers: for a short while, at least a few years ago, I used to watch five or ten minutes of The Price is Right before turning it off, mostly to ogle at Rachel Reynolds, but also to consider how uniquely American—and stupid—it is, replete with contestants making absolute jackasses of themselves, jumping up and down with no composure, all with this dumb, open mouth gape on their mouths that is passed off as a smile. I even mentioned The Price is Right as emblematic of the fake-smile in American Unkultur in this short rant featured in The Wee Hours section of this publication. The mind-numbingly idiotic game-show is also blatant as propaganda, showcasing the various consumer goods to be had in our capitalistic system, taking Richard Nixon’s comment to Nikita Khruschev about kitchen appliances, and packaging such musings in the guise of a gameshow with scumbag Bob Barker back in the day and now Drew Carey, replete with the various bombshell models of yesteryear and today. At least as regards to the original host, behind that television smile and slender microphone was a sexual scandal most even today prefer to shy away from.

Sie haben dagegen gekämpft. Ghosts of the Wehrmacht will forever haunt me.

There is another confession to make, one that reveals some of my most innermost and intimate thoughts; very often when I watched or reflect on The Price Is Right in particular, but other dumb-dumb game shows and various idiotic sitcoms that I was exposed to as a child, as well as some of the other more pernicious instances of American popular Unkultur that persist to this day, I often think what it would have been like to sit down with a German veteran or two (or ghost of a German soldier who died in combat or in Soviet captivity, were that possible) and hear his reactions, his thoughts on this, and what it means that the nation producing this “culture,” to the extent one can call it culture at all, occupies Europe and claims most European nations as vassal states: above all sacred Germany.⁵ I can only imagine at least some veterans would ask themselves how they ever lost to such a nation of idiots and morons; answer, Hitler involved Germany in a war with three peer powers simultaneously, made a series of disastrous tactical and strategic blunders, issued absurd stand or die orders (which among other war-losijng debacles led directly to the encirclement and destruction of the Sixth Army at Stalingrad), so on and so forth. I also think of how men and women who grew up in that time and before were raised not with garbage American television and other such dreck, but German folktales and songs, as well as a sound basis in bible as literature and Greek and other classic mythologies. This last consideration is something I am mindful of whenever I visit notable museums of fine art as, despite my best efforts to have achieved some minimum semblance of a classical education, I remain woefully and embarrassingly ignorant of so many allusions to the Bible as literature as well as tales and anecdotes from Greek and other mythology—allusions that even the proletariat of that and other generations before them doubtlessly had a better grasp of.

A famous German propaganda poster denouncing the Anglo-American alliance, addressed to the Norwegians, although it was translated in several languages as far as this author understands. Few paid heed to these warnings, as the poster has proven all too prophetic.

People can say whatever they want about that period in history, but the Nazis had Beethoven, Wagner, Goethe, and even productions of Hamlet with national socialist underpinnings. The United States gave me and my generation idiotic sitcoms and gameshows, rap music and junk food, and a broken home to boot. Nazi Germany had mostly blonde babes--BDM girls and Blitz Mädels— who revered their men—those doomed heroes, those great, fallen defenders of Germany and Mother Europe; we on the other hand are afflicted with the fourth or fifth generation of ruined women since the baby boomers, from boomers fucking in the mud at Woodstock, and all their other hippie bullshit (before promptly selling out), to the rise of divorce and single motherhood, to the proliferation and ubiquity of female promiscuity as “feminist empowerment” and the rise of the cam girl menace.

Bejammenswerte amerikanische Jugend, die in der verpestesten Atmosphäre leben mußt und nicht einmal merkt, welches Gift sie täglich schluckt.

“Woe to the American youth, who must live in such a poisoned atmosphere and do not even notice the poison they swallow daily.”

Das schwarze Korps, April 8, 1940

All of this demonstrates how limited individual choice really is. For as much as I and doubtlessly others detest the garbage we were exposed to, and to whatever extent I and others choose to negate such American Unkultur to whatever extent possible, it is still part of who we were and are. And this is demonstrated by, among countless many other things, the image mentioned at the start, showing stills of four dumb-dumb sitcoms, two of which, to my shame and embarassment, I watched as a child with some regularity. For however much I hate this and what it stands for with every fibre of my being, it is a part of me, something I am uniquely familiar with, even against my will, just as about everyone in my generation knows these references as well, even those whose parents made a greater effort to shield their children from idiotic American sitcoms and bad children’s television programming. Ultimately, despite the blithe, simplistic assertion to the contrary, we cannot turn it off—no one can, at least not individually. To do that in any true sense of the word would require a right-wing movement that goes well beyond mere conservatism and looks towards a cultural revolution that eradicates this dreck root, stem, and branch. In the meantime, probably for the rest of my life and beyond, I, like a “germ in foreign blood,” will be listening to much of the same music, reading better books and literature, and doing what little I can to insulate myself from this junk “culture,” to the limited extent that is even possible.

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1. Although generally regarded less favorably by those who recommend the show, Season Two was somewhat amusing. Aside from occasional gags concerning Ron’s hyper-sexual and psycopathic ex-wife and a few other rare high points, the jokes missed far more often than they hit. And yet it is regarded as one of the greatest American sitcoms of all time.

2. Starblazers is entirely Japanese in origin and nature. The Transformers toys were licensed from two Japanese lines of transforming robots, with characters renamed and classifed under the two factions Autobots and Decepticons by American creators. The animated series was made in Japan. In this way, Transformers is a hybrid Japanese-American phenomenon, the origins of which, in the strictest sense, nonetheless strem from Japan.

3. One mitigating factor that may soften the condemnation of this abject rubbish is that my memory of this utterly inane and stupid cartoon has given me an idea for a Saturday morning cartoon of my own, imparting hard truths about race realism; instead of Richie Rich, it would be called The Blackie Black Show, featuring various animated vignettes of different moments of black excellence in the United States and around the world.

4. Yasser Seirawan started playing at age 12. He did achieve the rank of Grand Master despite this late start. There are exceptions and outliers to every rule. Croatian national Stjepan Tomić, the man behind the youtube channel Hanging Pawns, aspires to be a Grand Master. But, now in his 30s, he has not yet achieved title as even Chess Master. He did not begin to learn to play chess until his 20s, rendering his goal all but impossible to achieve.

5. Some readers may be incredulous that this has anything to do with German motivations during the time, but those with a solid grasp of this historical era know better. One anecdote in particular comes to mind, namely a review denouncing Superman comics by Das schwarze Korps, a weekly newsletter affiliated with the SS. The closing line is translated thusly; “Woe to the American youth, who must live in such a poisoned atmosphere and don’t even notice the poison they swallow daily.”