Gorillaz “Stylo”

If you read the whole thing, you’ll see that Newton Minow’s notorious “vast wasteland” speech—delivered right after he’d been tapped by JFK to lead the FCC—at least had its heart in the right place.   Its official title is “Television and the Public Interest,” and Minow used it to lobby a still-formative medium to incorporate more highbrow programming.  But when refracted through the lens of taste, even the most noble of requests appear snobby and out of touch quickly.  Look at Minow’s litany of what’s wrong with TV: “game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons.”  Throw in Arrested Development and that pretty much covers everything great about TV.

About 40 years later, Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett were watching television in their flat, and had the same epiphany: “Everybody on TV’s a fucking zombie,” Albarn told Wired back in 2005.  “The Gorillaz cartoons seem more real to me than the actual people on TV.”  In four decades, then, “vast wasteland” becomes “fucking zombie,” but Albarn and Hewlett’s contribution to public culture has proven to be much more successful.  The two dove headfirst into Minow’s cultural landfill at a time when “public interest” had expanded to incorporate a global audience, and sold more than 10 million albums of post-apocalyptic, polycultural melancholy patched together from “western bad men,” “gangsters,” “violence” and of course, “cartoons.”

Which leads to “Stylo” (click for more).

Filed under: ego-trip  Gorillaz  Newton Minow  Pitchfork