THEY WERE HANDING OUT OSCARS...
Last week Ukraine's aborigines were shown civilization. Its mouth gaping open worldwide with the soft-spoken tongue hanging out between the teeth (thanks!). Its can open, packed with creative elite. It is American guffaw. They were handing out Oscars.
Every year the triumph of diamond hedonism spits out its gold dust spattering all over the world. Every year the dogs of art receive their 4 kg bones, waggling their tails in front of TV cameras, raising over the planet a tsunami of their achievements and masterpieces for which, unlike antique garbage and Hermitage mediocrity, they were paid serious money. The Oscar is not only the strong hand of those who own life on earth, arbitrarily pointing to individuals they consider the world's greatest geniuses and who can move the Philistine to tears worth, say, a billion dollars.
Once this was known as bourgeois art and was bound fast in the pillory of Soviet morals. However, this militant zest burned out in the covetous period of socialist truthfulness, and art which was synonymous to complete human degradation turned into the mammon of our dreams. Because the Babel Sabbath of stars makes even Ukrainian intellectuals cry out childishly: "Oh, look! Schwarzenegger! Oh, there's Madonna!" And then Kim Bessinger touched her forehead (Oh my God!). For how many years had she been writhing with her "basic instinct" onscreen (incidentally, just as Sharon Stone was having kittens under the stage, gripped with dark envy)? And yet only last year's impersonation of a whore singled out her talent so much that the Motion Picture Academy recognized her best... supporting actress. The Old Believers remain grimly silent, seduced by porno films, now and then warning idly that promiscuity is not the best alibi for the Last Judgment.
Their art, cultivated in ground covered by the feces of enlightened spirituality, strikes us starving savages speechless, makes us crave that dreamlike overseas way of life as though it were divine prophesy. Their idols are marching through our media, shocking us by the number of locks of hair and handkerchiefs sold for staggering sums, driving an ordinary Ukrainian pancreas crazy with their eccentric parties, limousines crashed in one week, and islands bought. And above all this is a myth about art being truly valued in a free democratic society. The myth about glory that has a clearly defined property equivalent. In Ukraine, the standard of popularity is the number of autographs signed by a shamefaced actor and a handful of jackasses hanging around a star's doorway. In the West, they reserve publicity for bank accounts and sacrifice it for the benefit of dens for dirty domesticated animals and contribute to the struggle with their own ills like AIDS, Suicidal Depression Syndrome, drug addiction, etc. Such is the cost of a ticket to the establishment. Complete ruination of the human soul is not only a touching attribute for a star, but also a desirable condition of creative growth. The Titanic sank so well that it grabbed eleven Oscars. Then the director announced a ten-second silence in memory of his "Oscar-winning" drowned fellow countrymen, following which he invited those present to keep boozing until morning. One has to know how to present a tragedy as a sentimental love-story (but it must have children drowning, which is not tear-inspiring truth, but also an apt courting of the four-kilo Buddha). I am convinced that Americans of all people would know how to worthily "celebrate the anniversary of the Chornobyl disaster." This is not cynicism but a simpleton's realism, an innate characteristic of overfed mentality; finally, a much advertised way of life of skillfully degraded, unnerved, and unbalanced actors and their prefab admirers who demand blood and circuses over a bottle of beer, because bread is no longer enough, and because the bread is slowly being chewed by idle rats in Black ghettos. They are bloodless. For true emotions and superior fees. All orders to be forwarded c/o Giants of Modern Bourgeois Art. They know the rules of the game, they are aware of the true worth of glory. Thus, they will pay, if not with their own bodies then with corpses lifted from the bottom of the ocean. They lack blood, sweat, and tears, for this is the only thing worth remembering while the show goes on.
They were handing out Oscars. Multiplying envy. Calling art things that have other names. Thanks!
