Complicity
In what? Every time we have a conversation without mentioning… it.
- The metropole of the nightmare
- Malina. “universal prostitution”—universal complicity; everyone participates. The mail carrier who can no longer be complicit, and commits an act of philosophy.
- Twin Peaks. Campy small-town supernatural crime mystery soap opera. Rape, the nuclear bomb, American genocide, imperialism, war, slavery, racism.
- 2666 (see also at Twin Peaks, 2.9, on The Part About the Crimes)
There is a certain family of entertainment media, of which the prototype is so-called “true crime,” that purports to reveal the horrors of our society, while in fact subduing our innate sense of morality by transforming it into a vague sense of unease. See also on the absrtaction of the dream. It is a kind of fake art.
It is not even limited to commercial art that is produced expressly for entertainment purposes. On how academialized art seeks to strengthen the empire while ostensibly opposing it, see The Cultural Cold War; and about MFA programs, see Workshops of Empire. And of course the counter-cultural movement of the 60s was maybe the prototype of this phenomenon.