I've written about t-shirts before (this blog doesn't have enough history for me to link back to it - don't be lazy), but I don't consider another t-shirt-inspired post too soon. I mean, who doesn't like t-shirts?
Anyway, while testing the neighborhood hamburger joint waters yesterday evening with KB, I saw a gentleman enter wearing a purple t-shirt with a backwards purple "S" on a yellow shield. Using my super powers of geekery, I knew that this was meant to evoke the DC comics supervillain Bizarro. He's like a mirror-opposite of Superman. Whereas Superman is good, Bizarro is evil (though clumsily so). He also uses inverted adjectives to emphasize his oppositeness. Where Superman might say "Up, up and away", Bizarro would say something like "Down, down and here". Superman fights for truth, justice, and the American Way, so Bizarro stands for Lies, Injustice, and...I don't know, a Parliamentary Monarchy? You get the idea. Bizarro is everything NOT Superman.
It seems to me that wearing a shirt with some sort of recognizable logo inherently proclaims that you identify with that logo in some way. I have a t-shirt that has the cover of Orwell's "1984" printed on it. I love that book and have no problem being identified with it. I also have a Freebirds t-shirt (or two). I love burritos...again, you get the idea. But what does it say if you are wearing a Bizarro t-shirt? I don't think that guy was evil, from another dimension, or allergic to Blue Kryptonite. I think his statement was supposed to be something like "I'm weird, I'm defiant, I'm not within the mainstream."
How defiant and unique can you be if you're purposefully acting that way (or identifying as such)? It seems to me that the most truly unique individuals are those that are unique simply through living their authentic lives, and being themselves without any (maybe a little) pretense. Joseph Beuys, Jackson Pollack, Andy Warhol. They were (mostly) authentic in their art and set out with a specific goal in mind; the changing of perception about what art (or culture, or pop culture) could be. But if you're out there just being defiantly weird for no other purpose than to be unique, how unique is that (also, how defiantly weird is it to take your Mac to a coffee house and surf the web with their free wifi?). For me, the guy in the Bizarro t-shirt summed up the thing about Austin that I find most difficult to get my head around. Being "weird" because that's what you're supposed to do. It's almost as if there was a group of unique, idiosyncratic Austinites that roamed free a generation ago, and now all we have left are these echoes and shades of what it used to be like. It's a difficult position to be in, and to watch from the outside. I want to embrace our new city, but it's rather prickly at times. Bizarro, unlike Superman, hates hugs.
The search for authenticity strikes me as a "dark night of the soul" for a lot of people, especially those still being formed (read: in their 20's). In the vernacular, I believe this might be called "keeping it real". Holden Caufield called out everyone that came across his path for being "phony." So what is it to be a fully authentic person? I would argue that the real fakery we see is actually a form of mimicry. Take "foodies" for example. If someone is truly passionate about food, then their enthusiasm will show, and they will tell you about where the animal was raised, where the vegetables were grown, etc. That kind of infectious enthusiasm will naturally inspire imitators (as flatterers), but perhaps their enthusiasm and passion are a bit diluted. Now imagine this chain of imitators keeps going, so that the food discussion becomes de rigueur and loses its original passion and life. That's the place I see too many people living. That's Bizarro-world. They sell t-shirts.
No comments:
Post a Comment