when life was great.
Recently, the video of Alien Ant Farm’s cover of Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” was making the rounds on Twitter accompanied by the tweet: “back when life was great.” I watched the video several times, it’s filled with homages to Jackson’s other music videos, but I’d forgotten it takes place mostly in a boxing ring while people mosh and crowd surf around it. I’d also forgotten we were a culture who felt confident wearing collared shirts under t-shirts for the pure excess of it.
At one point the camera cuts to a group of men we might refer to now as ‘Trumpers’ or ‘boomers’ sitting in their lawn chairs King of the Hill style. The modern viewer anticipates their derision, something akin to Taylor Swift’s “You Need to Calm Down,” but in the next scene they’re standing and grabbing their crotches a la MJ. A group of punkers, one with a metal mohawk, do the “Thriller” dance. A kid in a mask, a choice that a modern viewer reads as normal, dances down a sidewalk in full view of an audience on the lawn. His shamelessness is a further excess.
It’s no secret that I was a nu-metal fan, and that song certainly comprised a part of my high school soundtrack. However, when I looked up the actual release date, I was taken aback to discover it was released in May 2001. Four months before 9/11. In a far less divided America. Before we all watched the Twin Towers fall on TV. Before music pivoted to the ‘we’ll put a boot in their ass, it’s the American way,’ variety. Before the public was made aware of Michael Jackson’s sordid legacy. Before The Apprentice ever aired.
Recently, I had the pleasure of reuniting with my high school creative writing teacher who introduced me at my book event in Houston. It was surreal and wonderful. When she tried to recall what year I had been in her class, she said, “You were my 9/11 class!”
People in my parent’s generation tell me often about Vietnam, how they were forced to watch it day after day on television. They forget that we had a war too, that some of my friends would join up. That some wouldn’t come back. That, after college, the man I was living with would sign up for the Army without telling me because he felt like he had a ‘duty’ to America. That he would be deployed and come back waving a Trump flag.
I watched the Alien Ant Farm video again while the Supreme Court handed down the decision to limit the power of the EPA, to actively create a worse world for us to live in, and I felt a welling up of unexpected emotion. Was this actually the last time life in America felt good? The last time we weren't parsing all artistic imagery as political archetypes? When was the last time we were just enjoying things?
I am not a writer of culture essays, and I am sure someone else could tie up this idea more neatly, but I guess I just wish we could all mosh together because everything feels very broken and fragile right now.
I went camping last weekend and it felt good to be outside, to touch grass, if you will. I put my phone on airplane mode and we drank wine, sat around a campfire, made s’mores, and played acoustic instruments. It felt very pure, a throwback, and I wondered again how to strike a balance between staying informed and doom scrolling and feeling less guilty about taking a step away.
All of us are just trying to hold on to our small slice of joy, and whatever that may be, I hope you find it in abundance this week.