________________________________________________________________________________ The media propaganda of providing populations with an endless array of 'by proxy' expressive 'representatives' is increasingly being subverted by individuals desperate to overcome the marginalisation and mediation in their lives and who are resorting to guerilla actions in a type of 'cultural - politics by deed'. Obviously the promoters of our tertiary levels of existence within the media empires are not competent to provide a critique of the numerous counter attacks against their vested interests,and so we the Lumpen illuminates hereby make our own attempt to come to grips and understand this latest phase of the 'semiotic insurrection' in our article 'Maslow's prole' MASLOW'S PROLE nEver vigilant or even concerned to keep abreast of the latest developments at the white -and right- heat of the technological revolution (though constantly amused by the chaotic consistency from its semi-permeable boundary) we disembarked from our non-nordic spears and spied a curious 'gift' that dripped seductively from the listings section of a recently received 'fringe culture'catalogue. In our eagerness to chart the focussing and subsequent correlatives surrounding the presence of this - by now - oscillating oracle we quickly reached down and purchased the newly formatted and updated games disc called 'Celebrity Snuff ' (T.M) .Upon its receipt and perusal we were initially struck by the extraordinarily excessive amount of accompanying background blurb and unnecessary pre-run sequences ,which despite being both turgid and convoluted are also rather cleverly designed to work on a number of levels,depending on the age and mindset brought to the console.On one hand it is a straightforward shoot 'em up - peopled by real life extra's in a sort of true crime mag posing,end of pier historical photo style -that is badly overacted and cheaply video edited,yet on another it taps into that ' messianic crusade with lives being lost at this very moment ' kind of vibe,aimed at the bereft and schizo-politicised inadequate.Its instructions are cloaked in the usual allegoric banality and inevitable air of separation we've come to expect from such formulaic promotions ,that said the first character we come across is a tad different from the usual kind of sycophant we encounter as this time our 'on screen host and narrator' is a trans-sexual named 'Martha Davis' who begins by taking us through the scene setting abstract with an incongruous blend of alacrity and nonchalance and ends by her slicing shank from an effigy of Will Self and mercilessly liquidating Alan Titchmarsh.However we found her references to an 'axiomatic manifesto' rather intrigueging (initially anyway) and as such felt the game warranted further investigation as it was becoming more and more obvious that the makers of Celebrity Snuff had gone to 'just a little bit too much trouble' for anyone who considers themselves a transgressive to either overlook or ignore the game .For example Davis pipes up "You comrades are about to engage in a bloody war waged against the enemies of reality... set not in the future... but now... in the present!" she goes on to shout that she is fully aware of how unscientific these terms are ,but for us to please bear in mind that we've joined "...A PRE-BAUDRILLARDIAN BAND OF PROLETARIAN NIHILISTS...within a ...FRONT..organisation called the ...'RETRIBUTIVE FORCE'... who have apparently devised and began to implement a radical new programme for the post modern epoch entitled ...'REACH OF THE STARS'* ... this tract she explains "advances the novel idea that in order to overcome the 'totalizing effects of capital' within the dictatorship of appearances, we must first learn to stalk,murder,maim and film as many popular media icons meeting their deaths as is humanly possible".Having supposedly been nominated by "cultural studies tutors impressed by our contemporary sensibilities and enlarged ears and fingers" this recruit and enlistment phase ends by selecting from a staged dexterity and proficiency test which awards points according to how many radical poses and political soundbites we can effectively demonstrate at public and branch events supporting our cadre leader who is promoting her book 'reminiscences of a cuban revolutionary bore'.Davis begins to salivate uncontrollably as she mutters "ya know ...to altruistic sociopaths ..offin' professional personalities is da new rock 'n' roll" she fades out tilting her head backwards and laughing to reveal an eight pointed star tattooed amongst the track marks on her neck.The scene promptly cuts to a smoke filled Groucho club where our first set of instructions have been left on the back of a packet of cigarettes,these welcome us to the ' semiotic insurrection ' and introduce us to our glorious leader a 'R.Palme-Mutt' who explains "that in order to subvert the impact of an overiding sense of marginalisation in ourselves and our constituency we must first destroy the plethora of self referential signs that are currently used vicariously to maintain a semblance of personal equilibrium and social cohesion " at this point Martha re-enters crushing the fag packet and feeding herself unprocessed coca leaf as a line of khaki clad guerillas run past behind her , at which point she announces and gestures as Alan Wicca "this army...has overcome the debilitating illness that renders.. (get this)..tertiary recipetents of secondary information liable to develop primary delusions !" Panning back ,her outstretched arm starts to beckon the camera past to enter ....'Pinnochio's Playground' .....where we are encouraged to blindly "challenge,question,feel or fuck our way through all we encounter in order to avoid becoming the metaphorical puppet,donkey or ass in the spectacle's masterplan .As we progress through "this maya filled themepark" - purposely being allowed to view the stage set parephenalia and props that emphasise the "constructed points of accommodation and diversion involved"- we are randomly rewarded with binoculars,electoral rolls and phone bills for little more than answering the pressure of speech inquiries spat by the cloned caricatures approaching us from the variety of "recuperative rides" therein - including a youth wing appendage to the tourist industry called ....'Manu-piss-on' ....where you are obliged to get ..'Hi- di-High' ..before you're allowed to -as it were- "move on " ! this is followed by a succession of suburban middle class crack houses making XXX pornography,offered to you the consumer ....'with nothing to pay for a month' ! ....we finish by visiting places of religious and political worship in Georgetown,Downing street and Waco - The standardized answer we have to repeat and confirm is "I want the meme not the scene" and if we do ,we are allowed to progress to the 'meta of sexuality' section ,only to be interrogated further as to whether we find the portrayal of womanhood by 'drag kings' intrinsically mysoginist in nature.The next extract of the manifesto surfaces - literally - from the throne of a trouser ankled Aleister Crowley look a like, as he hands us a soiled piece of paper,his head on his shoulder whining coyly "in Plymouth my mummy's brethren say I'm their lickle beast.....will thou maketh me yours ??? ...I'll lend you instant credibility with a ' dark / neo-classical / apocalyptic / death ambience' that can be endlessly re-packaged year after year ...really I WILL..... I WILL...." as he is about to plead some more he is chinned by an irreverent masked wrestler called 'Kerry' who telepathically transmits - in thought bubbles - an assurance that "by busting caps in the automatons of infor-tainment we are directly serving the interests of the 'Pupkin Proletariat' and that it is not only a rational and understandable course of action but that our non-obsessional spontaneous acts of beauty are in fact a desirable form of resistance, supremely beneficial for those of us looking to rewire our data banks and short circuit the mechanisms of control" he continues "iconoclastic narodnism contrary to -not so- popular authoritarian socialist belief is never the empty, emotional gesture of the misanthropic loner nor merely a short term panacea from the confused minds of the mentally ill,but rather a sincere and spiritual pursuit of the disenfranchised and noble seekers of a life without a living" he later adds that "equal opportunities stalking and its bloody end" must become a sociological imperative that wipes (i.e. Aleister's tissue ) layer upon layer of conditioning clean away , each heroically inspired kill supposedly transporting us 'from a particular instance...to a general principle' consequently igniting a "holy trinity of death, resurrection and union ,bringing us closer to our goal of direct and unmediated access to genuine experience." Several discretionary items are then added to our 'flaks and packs' -including wire cutters,bleach (?) and a hyperdermic syringe- before our entering a scene complete with rolling newsflash text at its base which displays the legend 'Pandora's box please lock the door behind you'...the inside is actually a cage allowing random snippets of information sporadically - and mostly unintentionally - to fall through.These occasional insights into the nightmares of a damaged claim are embarrassingly missed by the 'alternative target audience'seated respectfully outside watching 'the show'. Inside the makeshift prison is littered with Sadean texts,ermine furs and Whitehouse c.d.s but rather more amusingly pungent red fish that are alternately consumed first by the punters and then the 'supermen' walking round -and round and round -its perimeter shouting into the buckets that are fixed permanently to their heads.The task at hand is to discriminate between "genuine creative endeavour as opposed to the production and distribution of taboos that are conspicuously consumed in the marketplace of meaning" if you succeed a piece of golden faeces lights up and if you don't the rolling text flashes its reminder that 'support and opposition are just different sides of the same coin' (it repeats 'coin' over and over as if to remind us of their mutually beneficial and reciprocal inter-dependence ) .If we manage to pass these trials relatively unscathed we are permitted to "go deeper" where we find "a sort of laboratory cum workshop" full of electrodes ,operating tables and "vices" progressively leading to an editing suite .But before entering this penultimate stage we are met once more by Martha Davis - though now clad in a sheepskin coat - and a team tied Palme-Mutt who - commentator to manager - treat us to some of the most god awful pastiches of crass left wing rationalizations ever to see the light of day.Firstly they tender -in tandem - that "the need for a vanguard is precipitated due to the masses inability to synthesize non-televisual consciousness and further to this they will require a more sympathetic mediator to lead them walkey round the garden" (Davis actually mimes this to camera) secondly "as everyone is defined at the point of consumption and because we are not in a revolutionary situation at the moment we must all wait until our - new jewel type - elected officers can shovel and pick from the skeleton of Marx's oeuvre for the right and proper time to get a handful of 'social democratic' M.P's to start things for us.(Davis by now tapping her foot and looking at her watch impatiently) Mutt goes on to say "it is naive to expect proles to abandon such reformist inclinations as they are not capable of switching off the television or even wiping their own arse with newspapers ,let alone stop believing in them! and so it falls to us to orientate around their 'choices' gradually gaining their confidence and learning about the mentality of those willing to accept the crumbs that 'fool' from the table" .He tells us "we must work within the prevailing historical limitations in a policy of 'No-cialist' realism, accepting the complimentary role of centre left newspapers like the 'Guardian' and 'Mirror' despite the blatant paternalism and distortion apparent in their choice of names ,and the peace meal thought framing in both" (After all this gobble-de-gook and looting I suppose we should be grateful they steered clear of the arguments surrounding the monopolisations currently devastating a 'democratic' and purportedly 'free' press).Finally in response to Martha's question of where next for the club the wise one responds that "we must translate our "f...ff....fear...feories" so that the average harbinger of the cathode consensus can understand them in terms relevant to themselves and their virtual lives" ... Davis interjects "and the form Raj tell us a little bit about the teams form" ,at which point Mutt says "..its got to be back to basics hasn't it..good strong defence in the parliament of perception...with the midfield supporting a developing and entertaining entrism...and the attack....well we've got to look for any gaps left in the industry and exploit them..I'm thinking patronisation of morbid fascinations....pandering to the visceral dialects and psycho-somatic manifestations that the lumpen rump are powerless to resist...you see we owe it to the supporters.... we've worked hard and bided our time ... I reckon the only way up is down...to the dungeon ..where notions of well being and fulfillment are purposefully inverted as we begin to film ...CELEBRITY SNUFF" (his emphasis).Pastiche turns to piss-take as the games graphics go into overdrive coming forward at speed toward the screen with a number of detourned news items - for example what were Lockerbie,Iraq,Kosovo and Ocalan crudely become spliced redirections of dubbed footage and photographs showing -severed- heads of the B.B.C and 'Noose' international alongside suggestions that the N.U.J. and equity are responsible for bankrolling a recent spate of cowardly aesthetic attacks upon innocent civilians - minor figures are then fired at the player including images of ..'dead Ken'..Charles Satchi and radiohead before proceeding to layer scrawled blood slogans like..'better dead than red'.. and ..'never have so many..given so little ..and taken so much'..across press photograph's of 'all the usual suspects' arriving at a film premiere.This last piece of sensationalism is linked to a serene,sanctity and stillness that quells the previous epileptic bombardment with lingering,poised and sainted snaps of Jill Dando and Princess Diana that are suddenly undermined by headlines like 'the tears will never stop' and 'it was the pun wot won it' as we cut to the coked up guerillas of the previous scene rolling and hollering with tears of laughter while their cadre leader reads extracts from 'turn illness into a weapon'and Saguinetti's 'on terrorism'. All in all this general and overiding reliance upon an existing journalistic style and content -which is apparent from the moment we start to play the game - just obscures,replicates and compounds the underlying authority pose struck by the current owners of the means of expression,and veils the vested interests of the standby salvationists who fetishize the state hoping to inherit the whole debacle with summary lies about extending the length of our chains and creative promises about co-opting a symbolic and cultural placebo to the nations fevered brow.The romanticism associated with the numerous references and longing for a 'genuine,true,actual or real experience' is synominous with the faded and jaded sounding out we've come to expect from the sub-cultural right, who seem oblivious to the extreme reification and simulation that has rendered such fantasies obsolete,but these 'instinct' based 'natural orders' of the philosophical fascists -who apologetically hope to avoid detection by vainly suggesting that they "would be the first up against the wall" if the nationalists came to power-don't bare up to close scrutiny when one considers the inductive nature of their 'still believing' clutched to catch phrases and credo's.The morphing scenes that allow us to click mug shots onto doctored 'guinea pig' footage occur in the editing suite and directly parallel the police's attempts to drown out physical confrontation and support for popular protest in mounting its panoptical putsch and successfully entering manipulated and re-contextualised footage into the collective unconscious.The constant referalls and name-dropping proof of sale ,tendered in the games subjective reading of Nietzsche (another right wing trait) exacerbates matters further when they overlook the implication that in establishing that 'god is dead' he is in principle detailing the demise of the real, and as such they are guilty of deliberately ignoring the pervasive strength and full potential of the virus.Personality cults aside the whole premise of Celebrity snuff is akin to the investiture carried out by the number 12 shirt wearing followers of sport across the globe, who in responding to such purposely nurtured distractions are conned into staking personal,regional and national pride -along with their respective identities- on the fortunes of a football team .This reliance upon role models and traitors fosters a desire to escape ones class but never one to redress the inequities it suffers, and shows just how the makers of C.S. would have us join other 'fans' in other domains that aimlessly bounce off of who,when, and where the real is located as foretold by P.R. marketing machines and style 'programmers'. Needless to say the attacks advanced in Celebrity Snuff do nothing to impact on the procession or principle of the real and the pre-occupation with the political patsies of the minority economic racket obviously leaves the need for a radical offensive on the mental order effectively unbreached, as if to suggest that the numerous instances of a disappearance no longer occurred ! (if anyone still subscribes to such folly they should examine the christ-mass viewing figures for an east end dope opera where of the 11.1million viewers, a stunning 73 % of us actually got up to check if it was snowing outside when one actor mentioned it was....in a non live broadcast !!!) Several organisations within the anti-media-ocracy movement have previously detailed how the intelligence services routinely fund the making of 'snuff films' so as to provide a convenient censorship debate that injects the idea that the more 'extreme' end of cultural production in the 'arts' - and consequently anyone that endorses freedom of expression - can become responsible for a range of social problems as opposed to the more accurate analysis of it being a pox ridden 'profession' that robs and disarms while triumphantly screaming "life we'll get others to do that for you" , we should point out that whilst we may share an inclination in our ideas about the counter productive role of 'art' and agree that those who live by the sword must not expect preferential treatment when dying by it ,the illuminated rank and file does not endorse the retaliation as suggested in the game as we believe people must learn to bypass and outflank the coercive mediation we face, and whilst it is felt that this particular attempt to agitate against manipulation is politically incorrect (don't you know it's currently politically correct 'to be' politically incorrect ? ) we also believe there are obvious lessons to be learnt, especially when one considers how cheap the technology to make such 'objects of desire' have become.However another point of divergence we have is regarding the adolescent address snuff attempts to employ when communicating with the internally slaughtered child we all carry, as it perishes in the hearts and minds of both the directors and viewers lost in the fixated ambiguity of 'death' on film -including mondo editing and re-enactment techniques-which are designed to placate a craving for something -anything- that connects or alludes physically to a tangible,evident experience in a world of encroaching uncertainty and erosion.These dramatic replays and searches echo the florid pubescent cravings we all tried to negotiate when trying to metabolise the harshness of exteriorised script after script, within a system that is designed to crush the spirit and determination of psycho-sensually orientated human beings.The subtext within snuff is supposed to stem the flow of anxiety and open the floodgates of apathy when creating de-sensitized objects that we can own -and by association master- to use within anti-septic interactions based on pseudo - empirical evidence.This genre's brand value is associated with an acute alienation from oneself and equates with the apotheosis of an economic derive that has an insatiable appetite for dispossessed sensations, divorced from unfamiliar emotional currents that can readily be split off to become temporary titillation and abject relief within a simulated refuge of terror.Celebrity Snuff whilst at times thought provoking ,ultimately fails to distinguish itself from its contemporary's by refusing to detail the geography of interpersonal and social confrontations at their points of production and presentation. As to whether we actually bother to finish the last parts of the game - with its endscene ,scanned canonization enabling us to join our peers who've "successfully stalked the lifestyles of the rich and famous" - it simply doesn't matter as the whole thing reeks of yet another aping of socialist -and capitalist- realism's 'heroes for zeroes' policies employed by the numerous retail intelligence departments that make and market cheap accessories for those of us who require a more proximate and insular relationship than the one we have with our t.v's, newspapers and 'battoned' down front doors. (Bulletin 4 of the L.I. 'subverting the de-humanizing process by allowing its cognitive manifestation'.2.00.) FOR OTHER BULLETINS OF THE L.I. GO TO http://members.aol.com/lumpenilluminate/ E-mail ..Lumpenilluminate@aol.com # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net ________________________________________________________________________________ no copyright 2000 rolux.org - no commercial use without permission. is a moderated mailing list for the advancement of minor criticism. more information: mail to: majordomo@rolux.org, subject line: , message body: info. further questions: mail to: rolux-owner@rolux.org. archive: http://www.rolux.org