Free your inner heiress

I've been wanting to write a reply to this post by K-punk on Paris Hilton, but, for some reason, I'm finding it difficult. Why? Because in so many ways he's right? Maybe. And when I read it I wondered am i this person he describes?

They are statements of flaccid flaneurism (a flaneurism reduced to the most dryly theoretical of poses), a flaunted but uninteresting decadence, whose disavowed libidinal charge comes almost entirely from baiting the haters - what I have previously called a resentment of resentment. Would that Paris' defenders were voguers, who had an intense interest in their appearance, clothes and mannerisms, who wanted to make of themselves a work of art. The shameful, embarrassing, and silly 'Free Paris' acting out - I refuse to dignify it with the term 'campaign' - is vogueing without the drive to self-beautification, a spectatorial pretence of worship. For, naturally, the worship is all a matter of being seen to worship her - what else could it be? And who is supposed to be watching?

It made me think.

My defence of Paris is not so much based on decadence, baiting, but on ... what? On the belief that it really shouldn't matter. No, we shouldn't be wasting time on a Free Paris “campaign”. And not only because she shouldn't actually be in jail, but because it really shouldn't matter. But, apparently it does.

My point is merely that everyone takes so much fun from the hatred of Paris, Lindsay Lohan, etc., that the opposing view should be heard. The way I see it there seems to be thousands of bloggers out there who spend their day berating these young women for there “excessive” partying and (the way I imagine it) afterwards go out, drink, get pissed, maybe take drugs, maybe not, but nevertheless party. It seems there's a different standard going on somewhere, and not just in the LA justice department.

The whole ridiculousness of it is, to me, summed up by the Bansky “prank”. Why was this prank given any credibility whatsoever? It seems so utterly banal, even more banal than the original album. This is what is taken as cutting edge art nowadays?

"Often people might have a view on something but feel they can't always express it, but it's down to the likes of Banksy to say often what people think about things.”

Paris Hilton is rich and female and famous for doing nothing? Cutting edge critique there Banksy! Way to go! And i'm not sure that view was having difficulty getting into the public consciousness before you came along to wow us with your art.

So the Paris album was mediocre, something I've certainly said before, something i'll keep on saying. But why the ridiculously disproportionate response? How we all laughed when it sold barely anything. The public still has taste. Brilliant. But of course shit still rises to the top, Paris's album bombing is not a sign of the public's critical taste. It's a sign that the public hate Paris Hilton. It's a sign that Paris Hilton doesn't give a fuck (about anything) about her pop career. Have you seen the wonderfully up to date Paris Hilton website?

“There are no appearances scheduled”.

From K-punk again

it is the pro-Hilton posturing that is a serious symptom - of a suiciding of intelligence, of cultural bankruptcy and exhaustion. It is the logic of cultural depression, of gradually but implacably lowered expectations, that has produced the over-investment in Hilton; a logic of devaluation, not revaluation - a logic of betrayal, of a failure of fidelity to pop culture's great events.

To me the point is that Paris is famous so we can hate her, and, it could well be arguable that it would be preferable to ignore her, to escape the cultural bankruptcy that means we have to take sides on the issue, but of course that is impossible. It is not being Pro-Paris that is the symptom, it is having an opinion on it at all that is the symptom. To be able to ignore it would mean one was not a part of the culture. To ignore it and remain a part of the culture would be the most elitist thing of all. “I am above all that”, “elitist precisely in the sense that it consists in a demonstrating of one's superiority to the plebeian masses”. The masses didn't buy the record because the masses hate Paris Hilton (did you see the figures for the amount of people who thought Paris should rot in hell for all eternity? Upwards of 90%), not because of any judgement on the worth of the CD. So many other mediocre things manage to sell really, really, well, it was Paris herself who prevented this CD from selling.

It is interesting that in Paris's Confessions of an heiress she exhorts us to release our inner heiress (which reminds me of Goldblade's “Live like a millionaire when you're still on the dole”), interesting in the contest of this passage of K-punk's piece:

The problem is Hilton isn't aristocratic enough; isn't sufficiently artificial or invested in artificiality; isn't a weaver of opulent fantasies. Compare Hilton to the artistry of the working class-born Kate Moss - Moss, whose life may well be as boringly hedonistic as Hilton's, but who as an artist (and it is only misogynistic prejudice that maintains that modelling cannot be artistry) cultivates an opacity-without-depth, the fascinating distance of the object that gazes. Working class fantasies about the wealthy are far more interesting than the reality (as Bryan Ferry long ago found out, to his cost.) And if there is a leftist moral to be drawn from the Hilton phenonemon it is this: that the lives of rich people are not interesting.

Unleash your inner heiress.

So it is not out of elitism that I defend Paris. It is because one has to take sides. And the anti-Paris side is even more with cultural bankruptcy than the pro-Paris side. The anti-Paris side is the lynch mob, the triumphalism of the sanctimonious, the smugness of the hypocrite. And I know which side i'm on.

Having said that, i do agree that a “Free Paris” campaign is ridiculous – and now I get to post that stupid photo again, and I might as well link to yesterday's Pirate post as well.