Where's the Grief?

...in which Ashley travels back in time to America, circa 2023.

Upon my return visit to the velcro jungle that is the United States, I was immediately confronted, in all forms of communication, with one overriding message: You are entitled to compensation for your injury. This has been such a consistent theme, in fact, emanating from the nation’s interstate billboards and bus stop benches for generations, that it may as well be enshrined on America’s currency (that paper money your grandparents use to pay for their handguns). US citizens know little else, but they know injury is imminent, and it boasts a considerable street value.

This legal truism is now common knowledge, passed down from attorney to client long before the invention of drive-thru coffee. The second important message America has for me is also a golden oldie, albeit with a modern flavor. And that message is: Taylor Swift.

As with other established brands like Coke and…well, coke, the advertising for Taylor Swift has long ago graduated from its “have you heard about?” phase into the steady, all-consuming “never, never, never forget about” epoch. Through clickbait, Clear Channel, and chyron, America is desperate to emphasize that any and all information regarding the music industry – its ticket costs, its streaming revenues, its wardrobe malfunctions – is now specifically information about Taylor Swift (illustrated with shots of the eternally-teenaged kewpie doll in one of her glittering cheerleader outfits). It’s a wide-scale rebranding; the music biz itself is now known as “Taylor Swift.”

We aging consumers who have endured waves of pop star promotion for decades, who have survived the Puppy Loves and MMMBops of Cassidys and Tiffanys since the Kirschner dynasty, may say, “T’was ever hella thus.” We’ll remember Madonna, herself a recycling of Monroe-ian kitsch, now the Sculptra-packed face of yesteryear, a totally tubular elder statesman. Isn’t Taylor Swift just another in a long line of commercialized, body-rocking material girls, stuffed down our collective gullet and into our hearts?

The only difference, it seems, is the scale. Because, particularly for those of us on the sidelines of America’s never-ending halftime show, the takeaway is that Taylor Swift is not just the world’s biggest pop star; she is the only pop star. Madonna had to share the media buzz with Prince, Van Halen, and Michael Jackson (a guy willing to shack up with a chimp and set his hair on fire if it kept Leeza Gibbons talking). Today, in the commercial tidal wave of Swiftism, the Biebers and Sheerans are so comparatively inconsequential as to not exist. In this way, America’s attention economy for pop musicians perfectly reflects modern American wealth distribution: Taylor gets 99.9 %, Billie Eilish and Post Malone fight over the scraps, everyone else gets a heart emoji from grandma.

Same as it ever was, but samer than ever. This is always my impression when I visit the US: Everything’s familiar, louder than before, yet with less to go around. The cars, the commercialism, the TVs, the flags, the limited-time offers – they all seem just as I remember them, only more concentrated and desperate to smell fresh. A rusting Delorean, doused in new-car smell, jacked up on tractor tires, all the doors locked.

The sameness is a disappointment. After unplugging myself from Americaville for so long, I keep expecting to see that the cultural horror has leveled up in some innovative way. Maybe I’ll switch on the tube and see people eating their children’s brains to win valuable prizes or spot a new restaurant called T.G.I.Fuckhole on the freeway. You know, a bold new era of degradation. But the tone of American culture is mostly unchanged. Same cheerful sing-song about the 0% introductory rate. Same football-themed Budweiser store displays. Same police sketches of the suspect on Live Five News. And most tellingly, the same decaying malls, still playing Duran Duran on the PA, still selling Ninja Turtles t-shirts and Thriller on vinyl, still cooking up Sbarro pizza, and still hawking the same Calvin Klein jeans that designated Brooke Shields America’s Jailbait. It seems the US set the dial on “80s” and never wanted to change the station.

The Taylor Swift industry still operates within the pastel-hued ‘80s platform of pop star pimping. It harkens back to the days of mall record stores, when jheri-curled and acid-washed teens snatched up the new releases between sips of Orange Julius. But this brick-and-mortar monoculture looks like the crumbs of the Acropolis these days. My recent tour through America’s Sprawlville was, quite literally, one going-out-of-business sale after another. Record stores, what’s left of them, look like abandoned storage sheds, and the only type of physical media in demand at all, ironically enough, is the Vinyl LP, the classic format for recorded music that was supposed to have died in the 1980s. Taylor Swift has to be the biggest pop star because she’s all that’s left of the classic pop star model, the kind that fills the aisles with Trapper Keepers, posters, and promotional pudding cups. There’s no shelf space for anyone else. There are no more shelves.

What the PR blitz wants me to know, aside from constant reminders that Taylor exists, is that the mass-market dream is still alive. This is the comfortable commercial glut we all know so well. Taylor is just like Shania or Britney or Brandy or Miss Jackson if you’re nasty. The retail music biz is still humming along in the same, familiar fashion, and is not, as you may have heard, an isolated, inhuman monolith of consolidated power, streaming immaterial data waves among the ruins of a dead civilization. We’re still partying like it’s 1999 in 1982.

I’m not sure why this attempt to defibrillate Dead Mall America depresses me so much. After all, that’s not my ‘80s the man behind the curtain is trying to keep illuminated. Glittering pop divas do not represent my youth. My ‘80s was about Black Flag and Minor Threat records, which…come to think of it, are currently available in the few remaining Hot Topic stores. But still.

Most of what I heard about Taylor Swift during my trip to the US came from the radio, another dead format reanimated by a sole media colossus. IHeartRadio, Inc. sings to me in chipper tones, on every station, reassuring me that American culture is as bland and reliable as I remember. Here’s that hit from Huey Lewis you’ve heard every day since 1983. Here’s the local news, weather, and traffic reports, so familiar and provincial you’ll forget they’re coming from a freelance DJ in North Dakota who’s never driven on Savannah Highway in his life. The voice of corporate America, more disembodied than ever, echoing through the vacant halls where Sam Goody and Tower Records once reigned supreme, and other scenes from a classic dystopian film starring Chuck Heston.

I suppose that’s what gags me with a spoon about totally heinous America. The complaint used to be that the US was a homogenized glut of identical retail outlets in every city you visited. But at least it felt reliable, predictable. Those concrete slabs of GAPs and Applebee’s are what America was. But now those stores are shuttering, and it feels like there is no real America for a material girl to visit, because America isn’t a material world anymore. America is on your phone.

The question is, are we entitled to compensation? I’m going to call that number on the billboard to find out, right after I stream the new Ninja Turtles movie.

-A.H.

(And let’s not forget Ashley’s website, jam-packed with portraits and other drawings, his highly-affordable prints and books currently available, his eagerness for your portrait commission, and his contact email, thrdgll@gmail.com, where he longs to hear from you.)