Why the duct-taped banana is a true work of art

Oscar Wilde said all art is quite useless. Many disagree but at a level of human necessity, he was correct. You can’t eat art. You can’t build your house out of it. You can’t burn it for fuel (at least not for long, anyway). So it’s kind of like gold in that sense. Its only value is the value we place on it.

Last week, the value of US$6million was placed on a work of art consisting of a banana-duct taped to a wall. (Okay, maybe you can eat art).

What makes this a true work of art in late 2024 is that it is quite simply stupid. It’s a stupid price for a stupid work. We can all agree on this. It’s simply stupid.

One of the cures for ethylene glycol (or antifreeze) poisoning is to get the patient drunk and keep them drunk. Stay with me here; I’m going to make a connection.

Ethylene glycol on its own will not kill you. The problem is the liver will convert it into chemicals which will kill you.

However, the liver also prioritises the chemicals it processes. Ethanol, or drinking alcohol, is a much simpler chemical than ethylene glycol and the liver processes the simpler toxins first. By getting the patient medically drunk on ethanol, the liver spends all its time processing the ethanol, and the ethylene glycol passes through the body unprocessed. If successful, the patient lives do to another stupid thing another day.

I wish to present the theory that the liver is not the only organ which processes the simpler things first.

We live in a world full of relentless, toxic stupidity.

We see Israel bombing hospitals and murdering children in the name of self defence and there are people willing to accept this logic even when the stated objective is one that can only be described as genocide.

At the same time, it’s somehow controversial that Ukraine would defend itself against a hostile invasion by a notionally far more powerful nation. In the world I grew up in, powerful countries consuming smaller ones was considered bad. Then again, taking the wider view of history, maybe this value was just a 20^th century blip, but I’m holding onto it.

Meanwhile, America has elected a carnival clown as its leader for a second time. And said clown wants to put the guy who became a multi-billionaire from government contracts in charge of cutting government waste and a science denier in charge of the country’s health.

Each of the three paragraphs above contain so many complex layers of unfathomable stupid as to leave the normal, compassionate human brain beachballing.

It’s much easier to process the stupidity of an artist duct-taping a banana to a wall and getting someone else to pay $6million for it.

I’m sure there are people willing to justify the rationality of this, but they are far fewer and further between than those willing to accept the stupidity of Israel, Russia and Trump.

That makes it easier for us all to process too. In a world where even objective reality is somehow up for debate, we can comfort ourselves that we can all at least agree that paying a stupid sum for a stupid banana taped to a stupid wall is stupid.

For sure, it’s a sad indictment of us all on many levels, but this is a piece of stupid we can all process without killing ourselves and for a moment, the really toxic stupid does us a little less harm.

And that is art.

 

Time dilation in popular culture

When George Lucas’s nostalgia trip American Graffiti was released, the tag line was “Where were you in ’62?”

The movie was made in 1973 and seemed to be set in a completely different world.

If the movie were made today, it would be set in 2013.

 

In The Four Seasons’ Oh What a Night! the singer was reminiscing about December 1963. The song was released in 1975.

If it were released today, it would be about 2012.

 

When The Eagles sang “we haven’t had that spirit here since 1969,” that was eight years prior to the song.

If it were released today, it would refer to 2016.

 

In The Smiths’ song of educational trauma, The Headmaster Ritual, Sir wears the “same old suit since 1962.”

Since the song was released in 1985, the suit would be from 2001 today.

 

The Smashing Pumpkins sang about 1979 in 1995.

Today, it would be about 2008; the year Obama was elected.

 

The song 1985 by SR-71 and made famous by Bowling For Soup is about a mother who is completely out of touch and living in the past. 

Both versions are now over 20 years old – older now than the era the song was about.

Oh, and if it were twenty years ago today Sgt Pepper taught the band to play, that would put it way back in 2004. 

A few reasons to not despair

It’s early days yet. The count in the US election will probably stretch on for weeks. Polls are useless but credible analysts are showing the current results are following the red mirage/blue wave of 2020. However, the fall of Georgia means for the good of our mental health, we should begin preparing for a second Trump term. I will be more than happy if the following becomes redundant. 

[Update: It didn't]

1:

The one saving grace – if you’d call it that – of the first Trump presidency was its rank incompetence. It was a joke from beginning to end. For sure, great damage was done which will reverberate for decades, but apart from appointing partisan lickspittles to the Supreme Court (and I am in no way minimising what a heinous outcome that was), he did almost nothing he said he would. The wall remains unfinished, Hillary Clinton remains unindicted, the Affordable Care Act remains in place, and it was left to Biden to withdraw from Afghanistan.

And this was all while he had the ‘axis of adults’ who figured he may be a sack of shit but at least he was a Republican sack of shit and they could guide him towards what could be considered normal conservative policy.

What everyone from John Bolton to Marine General John Kelly found was the Trump is absolutely uncontrollable. Now the MAGA crowd claim that this axis of adults were the ones who nobbled Trump’s first term agenda (and to a certain extent they’re right) but these were competent people who knew how to get things done in government.

A second Trump administration will likely be filled with ideologues with no experience in government. This is not going to turn out well, either for the American people, or for their agenda. Eventually they will realise that “because I said so,” doesn’t actually get stuff done and Trump will find himself longing for the dignified competence of Sean Spicer. 

And it surely takes a special kind of stupid to believe the guy who became a multi-billionaire through government contracts is going to be the one to cut government waste. 

2:

We know exactly how people get what they want from Trump.

It’s obvious that Trump becomes putty in the hands of anyone who flatters him. His mortal enemies become his best friends with the slightest of compliments – and vice versa.

What we (and by ‘we,’ I mean sane people) have to do is suck up our disgust for him and play his game. A little like this:

“Congratulations Mr President! My, what big hands you have! I can’t tell you have great it is to have a REAL president back again. This really should be your third term, you know!”

- Yeah, and it would be if it wasn’t for the fake news and all the stealing but at least we’re back now, right? So what’s this meeting about again?

“Well, we wanted to… Wow! You know, your tan is even more radiant in person. I didn’t expect that!”

- Thanks! You know people keep saying it’s makeup but this is all natural. And I don’t even have to go out in the sun or get under one of those light bed things. It just happens. It’s genes. It’s all about the genes!

“Yes sir. Well, we’ve come to you with a recommendation on how to replace the disaster of Obamacare.”

- Yeah, what a disaster! You know I’m gonna come up with something so great even I can’t imagine it yet!

“Well, good news sir! We’ve got the plan right here. We call it Single Payer. We’ve written it all up and you don’t need to do a thing!”

- Single payer! Yeah! It’s genius! Why have all these hundreds, thousands, millions of payers when you can just have one?

“It’s so much more efficient, sir!”

- Damn right, it is! And no-one knows more about health care than me. I basically invented health care. They call me the father of health care!

“We certainly do, sir! Thank you, Mr President! The people are going to love you for it!"

- They already do! But who couldn’t use a little more love, huh?

“I knew you’d see it our way. I was sure Stephen Miller was mistaken in what he said,”

 - Wait, what did Stephen Miller say?

“Oh, nothing. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

- Has Miller been saying bad things about me? You know I never liked that guy!

“Well, I’m sure he was just joking when he said you were so far up Steven Bannon’s ass you’d never listen. It was an honour to meet the greatest president in history sir!”

 

3:

Assuming Joe Biden becomes a lame duck, he has two months to executive order the absolute shit out of everything.

Do it all! Ban automatic rifles, mandate Medicare for all, institute a national $15 minimum wage, or even a universal basic income, fire and replace the entire Supreme Court, seize every oil field, deport Elon Musk, revoke Fox News’s licence, outlaw the Republican Party, bomb Mar-a-lago. The Supreme Court ruling in a case brought by Trump says the president has the absolute right to do all of this and no-one can stop him.

 

I remain (slightly) hopeful that none of this will be necessary. [Edit: so much for that!] But if history has taught us anything, it’s that the last thing Trump will do is what he says he’ll do, and his staff will be too busy trying to find a working microphone to implement any of their horrific visions.