“There's no money. There's no possessions, only obsession. I don't need that shit”.
Above is the opening line from Californian Alt metal/hard rock group Papa Roach's 2001 single Between Angels and Insects (though there is nothing to be embarrassed about in believing it was a quote from another disgruntled speaker on Liveline).
In Papa Roach's widely popular single, Jacoby Shaddix, the band's strikingly rebellious looking singer proclaims his hatred of commercialism by paraphrasing quotes from the film version of Chuck Palahnuik's novel Fight Club. The film was a great success at the box office and incited teenagers into considering the sterile world around them. Shaddix makes his anti-commercialist statements, screaming the vocals passionately over a wave of heavy metal guitar sound, paraphrasing and using direct quotes from the film for the 3 minutes and 54 seconds of the song. The fact that the song used so many lines from the film made it quite popular with youths, who allowed the song reach number 17 in the UK singles charts and 27 in the US mainstream rock charts – remember this was a time when people actually paid for music. Many listeners of the Papa Roach song recognised the extensive paraphrasing and various direct quotes from the clever film and decided it was so wonderfully arranged into a song that they would buy it.
The single was included on the bands breakthrough album Infest, which was promoted by the DreamWorks label the band was singed to (which was in turn owned by Universal Records – a subsidiary of Vivendi, who boasted a revenue of $27.13bn in 2009). Infest went on to sell 7 million albums and the bands subsequent records brought their total sales up to 10 million units.
In an earlier season of MTV Cribs the singer would appear to present his lavish dwelling, and in 2007 the bands drummer would leave to attend rehab due to abuse of an unstated substance(s), while the band continued producing and selling records with the DreamWorks label.
The story of the band, developing from this seminal work is indeed comical owing to the obvious hypocrisy – It is a message that the band quite evidently failed to follow through with. It is being used here as a metaphor for how many such voices for radical change in our society have fallen flat.
The film Fight Club presents an underground anti-commercial, neo-Luddite movement which goes to the lengths of blowing up a several blocks of a central business district in a single terrorist attack to demonstrate the conviction of its message. The film presents a nihilistic leader who encourages disillusioned men to physically deconstruct society. It is an account, on a literal level, of a radical political group who take one of the most extreme and destructive routes possible to convey their views.
Irish people advocate massive extreme measures to solve the current financial crisis. Cries of “get the bankers out in the streets and we'll deal with them”... “lock them up and burn their houses” have now become quite commonplace in day-to-day political discussions. The embarrassing flip side is the reality of inaction that plagues any passionate point. Irish politics is a calm pond, with a few slight ripples, likely to be frozen over when the dark months arrive.
Compared to similarly placed Greece, Ireland has reacted to a with bailout with stark awkwardness and feebleness.
“There's no money. There's no possessions, only obsession. I don't need that shit”
Like Shaddix, Irish people talk of having “no money, no possessions”. This is the Irish people's “only obsession”. The government is hypothetically overthrown in animated conversations at pub counters each night of the week – we are quite certain that we “don't need that shit”.
Ireland is indeed gripped by reform fever at the moment. We can't wait to get Fianna Fail out of power and progress the glorious future free of crippling inefficiency and sickening nepotism. We can't wait to print off an 80 page thread from boards.ie to prove that the Irish people don't want the IMF deal. We are all going to bust in the door of the Merrion Hotel and belt up the stairs to Ajai Chopra and Angela Merkel's love nest up in the presidential suite and tell them to get the f**k out of our country, with the same vigour you'd tell a Subaru owner where to go when you're armed with your horse outside.
The cultural trait of talking 'til the cows come home is as potent and characteristic of Irishness as a burst of solstice-fuelled light flying through the hole in Newgrange stinging your retina into submission. In a way it is reassuring to consider that at least bar-stool republicans realise the ineffectiveness of their ramblings. What is different from the economic strife on the 80s, is that this current crisis now has the internet as a vehicle for radical political reform voices.
While the internet, and social networking sites in particular, can be used very effectively by an established party to quickly communicate ideas and gain feedback, political groups that begin on the internet, have done nothing but stay there. Although 2000 people may follow a group on twitter,
this does not necessarily mean that anywhere near 2000 people are actually committed to the cause.
What it actually means to 'follow' on twitter of 'like' on facebook must be questioned.
It takes a very minimal effort to show support for a cause on the internet, deciding you like something while browsing facebook can be translated into a virtual 'like' on your online page instantaneously. Indeed, friends who may be browsing your page might see you 'like' this group and in turn, after checking it out for a few moments, they may indeed 'like' it themselves. Every now and then a post from the political group may crop up in the news feed and depending on how you feel about their post, you might want to 'like' it, if you really feel strongly about it, you might comment on it. How exactly is this process meant to translate into real political support for a cause? When a political group begins on the internet, it becomes the primary vehicle for its growth, is the internet really the means for the ends that is radical overhaul of the conventional workings of the government? How can committing to something through a means that takes less than a second to become a member ever really command your strong support? New political groups have been lost in the notion that the internet allows for huge political change. The internet allows for ideas to spread rapidly indeed - the internet allows many people to connect ideas regardless of geographic situation. It has been feted as the way to mobilise anti-government support. This idea ignores the fact that the message is more important than the medium. Just because an inane opinion is put forward on twitter by a group with a professionally designed logo doesn't make it any better than if it was shouted in a town square by a raving drunk.
This isn't to say that those running political reform websites don't really have their hearts in their cause... Just stating that it's somewhat delusional for leaders of such groups to think that 2000 (to use the figure in the above paragraph) people really care about what they post on the site – that they are really anywhere near emotionally engaged enough to ever react to ambitious rhetoric proclaiming a revolution.
A school of thought popular in conservative political circles says that activists attempting to overthrow established rules and change established ideas (liberals/radicals/leftists: everything from communist activists to politically engaged animal rights and vegetarian activists) are often acting out of self interest and/or personal insecurity. This disgusts such activists and the conservative voice attempting to denigrate them is said to be using personal insults to try to damage their political cause. Those in the middle of the spectrum normally go along with this, agreeing with the idea that political figures should discuss political matters only and that when the discussion slides into personal attacks, the political message is lost. Therefore, politics and personal matters should be separated in order to ever truly address the pressing issues. The furthest the personal realm may acceptedly reach into the political arena would be when a voter assess a politician's background in deciding whether to vote for him/her (ie. “He was brought up in a working class family, I will vote for him because he will understand my concerns”).
Internet political reform seems to have breached this guideline in a whole new way. This section will take the example of one particularly ambitious group - Tiger Reborn (http://www.facebook.com/tigerrebornireland). Ambitious title, straight from the start the viewer is confronted with connotations of a utopian Ireland. The title suggests an unorthodox and confusingly unique movement however – why would they want to bring rebirth to the Celtic tiger? Do they want to go full circle and reinstate the same economic conditions as Celtic tiger era Ireland – a time of unmitigated Fianna Fáil power – most political reform groups seek to connote the opposite.
The group used to have a mission statement in the left column. They have actually taken away the only previous (and impossibly ambiguous) statement of intent. The previous mission statement proclaimed that Tiger Reborn wanted to replace the old corrupt system with “soul inspiring change”, among many other vague clichéd statements.
For such an ambitiously and radically titled group the posts on the page from the group leader don't seem to match up. Most of the posts are of satirical videos making light of the current crisis. The main feature is a video called Cowen Says Sorry in which 2D animated figures of prominent govt. ministers sing a song of confession and are chased out of the Dáil by the 'Anglo cement truck' in the news some months ago.
Up until this blog had decided to bring this up with them, there had been no serious material relating to the economic crisis. The mission statement was also adapted somewhat to attempt to assuage concerns of perplexed visitors to the site, who see no correlation between the lofty ambiguous statements in the description of the group and the content posted by the group on the page. One must also question why the group feels lampooning government figures is important. It's nothing new. Gift Grub and Aprés Match have been around for over a decade doing a much better job at Irish political satire. It s important to note that the use of satire in making a point does depend on how 'good' it is also. Satire can be an amazingly effective political tool – people don't like to be bombarded with statements of how bad the government is doing, but if they can come around to that view themselves by watching what seems to be a seemingly harmless video/listening to a harmless sketch, then their support will be much stronger. If satire is not fresh, if it is not something novel that inspires genuine laughter then the political message dies with it.
The only thing now in the left column of the TigerReborn page is “Current issue: EU/IMF bailout is a bad deal for Ireland. Pension reserve must not be touched. Irish citizens are not responsible for bond holders disastrous investments in private banks.”. What a hackneyed, pathetically worded goal for a group...
As this blog returned to view the page, some comments of criticism had been left by other facebook users. Generally within a day these were taken down. When this blog pressed the group as to why its comments were deleted, the leader said it was to filter out discussions on threads which didn't relate to the video content. Each of the videos have a huge amount of comments, all words of praise for posting the video. Each comment of praise (there are possibly a hundred on all of the videos) are individually 'liked' by the group leader, Stephen Saleh.
Furthermore, a post left today by the group was a quote by the leader - “"Ireland's success will be judged on how it takes care of the weakest and most vulnerable people in society, not on how many millionaires/billionaires it has or how big the economy is. People, family and community are the core of all future success!" - Stephen Cronin Saleh, TigerReborn.com Project Leader.”. Stephen Saleh is the only person listed as a member of TigerReborn leadership, hence he has more than likely put up a quote of himself on his political site.
These last 3 points are confirmation of the conservative view. It almost makes one want to launch into a Jim Corr styled conspiracy theory rant that Fianna Fáil have hired Stephen Saleh to dissuade people from the concept of radical change (complete with all Jim's classic scare tactics - “Irish people are afraid to put on the heating”... “for the sake of our children”, “predatory attack by the EU”, “draconian measures imposed”).
Suffice to say this group typifies the vapid, ineffective, clichéd, histrionic, insecure nature of the Irish concept political reform. They are not the only group, other similar groups are evident: All Ministers Out (whose sole goal is to remove each minister of the current cabinet – inevitable come the next general election surely?) politicalreform.ie, and a myriad politics.ie and boards.ie threads.
Maybe this crisis will be remember as the time when Ireland proved itself to be the most politically complacent and lethargic country imaginable. Maybe by this very nature we wont even notice this.
The most memorable feature of Fight Club is its twist. The twist relating to the problem of identity defines it as an important post-modern text. The film is likely to have introduced postmodernist thought to the millions of teenagers who have watched it over the years. Political reform in Ireland is waiting for its twist, the plot seems straight forward however, it seems like a simple tale, they will fizzle out with the same predictability as the ending of a Cecilia Ahern best-seller.
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