Sex and Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, or Why I Don't Understand Men ...
First, I don't understand men's magazines. Seriously, why does an issue of Men's Fitness have a scantily-clad woman on the cover? Shouldn't a fitness a magazine for men have a picture of a ripped man on the cover? Shouldn't they advertise "This is what you can be if you read this magazine!" instead of, um, whatever they're advertising. Maybe they are advertising "This is what you can get". If that's the case, you might be able to rationalize the fitness magazine covers, but what about the car magazines?? Or, more inexplicably, the gamer and gadget magazines? Yeah, playing Nintendo will help you get laid. Right.
Anyway, speaking of men (Okay I needed some kind of segue, even a lame one), I don't think I like Chuck Klosterman. It's not a strong dislike I feel towards him, but this sort of queasy feeling: a combination of uneasiness and bafflement. I was pretty indifferent towards Klosterman, only skimming his Esquire columns once in a while, before my boyfriend linked to his excellent Super Bowl blog on espn.com (you now have to be a subscriber to read it, unfortunately). Anyway, I immediately decided Klosterman was awesome because he revealed in his blog that:
1. He had a soft spot for the Steelers.
2. He hated Crash (the -- vomit -- Oscar-winning one, not the one starring James Spader).
So I decided to jump on the Klosterman bandwagon (which comprises of almost everyone between the ages of 18 and 35) and borrowed the much lauded Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs from the library. But as I read on, I just kept getting progressively more disappointed. Well, it wasn't really a progressive thing. There were spurts in between where I found myself into certain essays, and I'd think "Okay, things are looking up," and then I would come across another dud, which would make my disappointment all the more palpable.
The thing is, people say that Klosterman is such a great pop culture anthropologist, but I don't really think the things he says are that insightful or interesting most of the time. Of course he has some little gems, such as "people who say they like all types of music don't like music" and his essay comparing The Empire Strikes Back and Reality Bites, and his one-paged interludes are funny. But most of the time, his "observations" or "analyses" are just mildly amusing or odd instead of interesting and read like the products of someone who has way too much time on his hands. You only need to read his essay on the Sims, which reads more like a magazine feature btw, to see this. And while likening Pamela Anderson to Marilyn Monroe does seem interesting, Klosterman takes so long to finally rationalize his thesis that it feels like he just decided to compare these two seemingly disparate icons just to see if he could convincingly do it.
He also makes some weird conclusions and generalizations, like women hate Pamela Anderson because she shows why women hate themselves (or their bodies). Now I don't hate Pam Anderson, I'm completely ambivilant towards her, but I don't think she's attractive, and I would HATE having huge boobs like that, they would just get in the way. Even though I like to make self-deprecating comments about my tiny chest, I secretly love my A-cups. I can move about freely, not to mention that it greatly expands my options as far as shirts and dresses go: I can pull off just about anything. But, I'm getting side-tracked. Klosterman, I think, would say that I'm lying to myself, and I think he'd accuse any man who claimed to find Anderson physically repulsive a liar too.
That's what makes me so uneasy about Klosterman. He has this air of superiority that permeates throughout his writing, and it's profoundly unsettling. And it's completely asinine: he'll have contept fot you if, say, you like a popular band like Coldplay, but he'll also have contempt for you if you can't appreciate G'n'R or Billy Joel, because then you're, like, elitist or something. You can't have it both ways, Chuck, sorry.
Anyway, speaking of men (Okay I needed some kind of segue, even a lame one), I don't think I like Chuck Klosterman. It's not a strong dislike I feel towards him, but this sort of queasy feeling: a combination of uneasiness and bafflement. I was pretty indifferent towards Klosterman, only skimming his Esquire columns once in a while, before my boyfriend linked to his excellent Super Bowl blog on espn.com (you now have to be a subscriber to read it, unfortunately). Anyway, I immediately decided Klosterman was awesome because he revealed in his blog that:
1. He had a soft spot for the Steelers.
2. He hated Crash (the -- vomit -- Oscar-winning one, not the one starring James Spader).
So I decided to jump on the Klosterman bandwagon (which comprises of almost everyone between the ages of 18 and 35) and borrowed the much lauded Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs from the library. But as I read on, I just kept getting progressively more disappointed. Well, it wasn't really a progressive thing. There were spurts in between where I found myself into certain essays, and I'd think "Okay, things are looking up," and then I would come across another dud, which would make my disappointment all the more palpable.
The thing is, people say that Klosterman is such a great pop culture anthropologist, but I don't really think the things he says are that insightful or interesting most of the time. Of course he has some little gems, such as "people who say they like all types of music don't like music" and his essay comparing The Empire Strikes Back and Reality Bites, and his one-paged interludes are funny. But most of the time, his "observations" or "analyses" are just mildly amusing or odd instead of interesting and read like the products of someone who has way too much time on his hands. You only need to read his essay on the Sims, which reads more like a magazine feature btw, to see this. And while likening Pamela Anderson to Marilyn Monroe does seem interesting, Klosterman takes so long to finally rationalize his thesis that it feels like he just decided to compare these two seemingly disparate icons just to see if he could convincingly do it.
He also makes some weird conclusions and generalizations, like women hate Pamela Anderson because she shows why women hate themselves (or their bodies). Now I don't hate Pam Anderson, I'm completely ambivilant towards her, but I don't think she's attractive, and I would HATE having huge boobs like that, they would just get in the way. Even though I like to make self-deprecating comments about my tiny chest, I secretly love my A-cups. I can move about freely, not to mention that it greatly expands my options as far as shirts and dresses go: I can pull off just about anything. But, I'm getting side-tracked. Klosterman, I think, would say that I'm lying to myself, and I think he'd accuse any man who claimed to find Anderson physically repulsive a liar too.
That's what makes me so uneasy about Klosterman. He has this air of superiority that permeates throughout his writing, and it's profoundly unsettling. And it's completely asinine: he'll have contept fot you if, say, you like a popular band like Coldplay, but he'll also have contempt for you if you can't appreciate G'n'R or Billy Joel, because then you're, like, elitist or something. You can't have it both ways, Chuck, sorry.
posted by nflsuperbowl at 6:25 PM
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