Friday, August 30, 2013

UNETHICAL FATHER FIGURES


Faceless, nameless anonymous sex. Exchanging partners like changing socks. A dissipated life full of momentary gratification but little happiness. A world of wealth but a poverty of well-being. Suffering in the classic sense. A man defeated by his own fame, carried off by the ether of his uncomfortable acclaim.

Such is the myth surrounding my friend Currado Malaspina.


Is it a self-inflicted wound or a carefully orchestrated campaign of marketable misinformation? I know the man well and I confess that I too am unsure.

It is true that Currado has the oily temperament of an unrepentant roué but it is equally true that his business acumen is as sharp as his wit and that he suffers none of the scruples that hinder his moderately ethical peers.

The French are a forgiving lot and so my friend Malaspina has had to set the transgressive window toward the highest rafters of raffishness. His sins are those of a Sardenopolus and the hurts that he has inflicted upon his fellow man (and fellow-woman) have been biblical in scale and diabolical in scope.

And yet, the French eat it all up like a giant stinky wheel of fresh brie. His celebrity and notoriety rival the worst of the American rappers and make your average Russian oligarch look like Albert Schweitzer.

As the French cultural historian Professor Ayn Analie-Meelee wryly pointed out not too long ago in a piece in Paris Hier, "If not him, whom? If not now, when?" (Si ce n'est pas lui, qui? Si ce n'est pas maintenant, quand?). She went on to explain that what seemed unconscionable in the recent past is practically de rigueur today. She claims that in the arts we are in an end of history moment (un épisode du fin de l'histoire) where ideas are merely synopses of narcissism (synopsis du narcissisme) and the formerly menacing cults of personality are now the stuff of quaint trending topics of Twitter.

To be on top one must remain on top and in Currado's case this means a ragged course of constant self-debasement and a relentless supply of oxygen for the engines of infantile public curiosity. 

But for the love of Mike, what the heck is a "synopsis of narcissism??"





 



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