The New American Philistine

Recently I received an email which read, in part, “you are often railing against the philistines, but you have yet to really define who they are.  Just so I fully understand your points of view, who are these philistines that you see every day, and how can I recognize them?”

Good questions all.  You correspondent must confess that defining the contemporary philistine is a formidable task: the picture must, thanks to the rapidity of change, shift too fast and too regularly for a concrete definition to take hold.  However, like the good judge and pornography, I know it when I see it and so, in that spirit, following are some of the defining traits of the new American philistine.

None of these characteristics, separately or in-and-of-themselves, are enough to label one a philistine, but one or more are a sure sign of cultural and intellectual decay.

Multiple tattoos, for instance, or, anyone with tattoos that are visible when fully dressed.  Why this repulsive, tribal holdover has reemerged is a mystery of terrifying potency; at times, it almost seems as if modern man wishes to run around in grass skirts and nose bones, which leads us to the next signifier.

Multiple piercings – if an individual is pierced in the eyebrow, nose, tongue, perineum, lip or has more ear holes than a rotary phone, then a charge of philistinism is warranted.  In fact, I had recently seen a woman with so many piercings in her lip that watching her drink was like looking at a fountain.

If underwear is at all visible when fully clothed, then that person is a philistine (and rather unhygienic, to boot).  Similarly, if trousers are worn so low on the body that running becomes impossible, you are witnessing witless philistinism.  Such individuals invariably have photographs of themselves with: a baseball cap turned sideways or backwards, thumb-index-and-pinky-finger extended, tongue pointed at camera, or, a gun.

If you are near someone listening to an iPod, MP3 player or similar device through earphones and you can hear the music, you are near a philistine.  If you can hear the music through their earphones more than two feet away, it is quite possible that the wearer is not only a philistine, but functionally brain dead.  The same is true of car stereos audible outside of the actual car itself.  Which leads us to another indication…

If the subject is interested in rock (be it ‘classic,’ glitter, glam, pop, bubblegum, hard or whatever), funk, rapp, hip hop, reggae, gangsta, disco, gospel or soul, then you are dealing with a philistine.  This, I’m afraid, is beyond debate.

If the person in question owns fewer than 25 books (not including, of course, children’s books and/or comics and ‘graphic novels’), then they are a philistine.  Similarly, a taste for Dan Brown, Harold Robbins, or Harry Potter is highly suspect.

A philistine thinks movies made pre-1980 are ‘old,’ refuses to watch anything in black-and-white or with subtitles, and equates box office success with quality. 

If the television is on whenever the subject is at home, they are a philistine.  If they have a predilection for Mad Men, they are a philistine with pretentions.

If artistic tastes run towards graffiti, ‘tagging’ or other forms of public vandalism, then you’re dealing with a philistine.

If tastes turn towards ‘art’ that incorporates any of the of the following – feces, urine, decapitated cows, lard, blood or detritus – then that individual has surpassed philistinism and entered barbarism.  If you have paid a considerable amount of money for a signed urinal, ‘street art,’ a soup can label or a bucket of broken glass, you are not just a philistine, but a sucker, as well.

The philistine decorates their home with ‘collectibles’ issued by the Franklin Mint.  Often, there is at least one picture of a napping puppy, throw pillows with ‘cute’ phrases stitched into them or potpourri.  If you, gentle reader, find yourself in such an atmosphere, run for the nearest exit.

These are the signifiers that immediately come to mind.  I now open the floor to my readers – how do you define the new American philistine?

Barbarians Beyond The Gate #1: James Harrison

The American Sports Idol In All His Splendor

First, I apologize to my readers for the ugly, offensive graphic.  However, it is an unfortunate necessity.  The purpose of The Jade Sphinx is two-fold: to celebrate beauty and to examine our current culture, both high and low. Sadly, today, we look into a particularly repulsive low.

The worthy pictured above is an individual named James Harrison.  He is probably unknown to my more cosmopolitan readers, but it seems that he is a football player of some renown.  He was the recipient of a fawning article on July 13 in the Men’s Journal (www.mensjournal.com) and is the idol of millions. 

At one time in America’s (now seemingly distant) past, sports figures were revered by children and unlettered adults looking for images of heroism.  This practice continues today – it just seems that our ‘sport’s heroes’ are less and less worthy of the honor.

Before going into the article, let’s take a closer look at this photograph, chosen to illustrate a world-famous sports figure.  The guns that Harrison holds are his own.  (One can only infer that he has a remarkably small penis.)  The scowl is the look of a colicky child or school bully, not that of a mature man.  His steroid-enhanced physique is covered in tattoos, a strangely primitive practice of body ornamentation that has inexplicably returned to the modern world, and he squints in that patented way low-self-esteem cases often do when acting tough.

Let’s quote a few lines from the profile, so we can take an accurate bell weather of the state of American hero worship.  Author Paul Solotaroff mentions in passing Harrison is the “man who knocked two Cleveland Browns cold in the span of seven minutes last year … saying he liked to ‘hurt’ opponents. He amended that in the next breath, saying he tried to inflict pain without causing serious injury, but it sounded like lawyer-ese and was ignored.”

Let’s parse this for just a second: this is a leading men’s publication, highlighting a $9 million-dollar-a-year sports thug with a gun-toting photograph, lionizing his efforts to harm other human beings.  It is time that we acknowledge that the barbarians are not just at the gate, but they have invaded and restructured our civilization, our discourse and our aesthetic.

Solotaroff finds it “refreshing” that Harrison is the “same guy off field, as on,” which is, I suppose, his way of endorsing bullies, braggarts and probable sociopaths.  He also wrote of when Harrison “iced” (to use gutter argot) two players, in a deliberate attempt to injure.  Solotaroff writes that Harrison: “desperately loves football for its fireball explosions, the blood burn he gets from planting his right foot and blowing up the guy with the ball. It is all he’s ever craved since he discovered at 10 that he could smash another kid as hard as he liked and not catch a whipping from his mother, Mildred.”

Asked what drives him on Harrison grows reflective: “Likely as not, what drives him now is the fury that drove him as a boy, when, as the youngest of 14 kids in the house, he had some epic meltdowns. He punched holes in the walls when he lost video games, set fire to himself and an attic rug playing with lit matches and rubbing alcohol, and ran around shooting birds and squirrels in his yard in Akron, Ohio.”

Now, in most communities with access to proper psychiatric care, this would be a warning sign of a dangerous mentality.  To our good friends in the National Football League (NFL), this is a resume.

Harrison is not only a fast man with a debilitating blow, but with an insult, as well.  The article quotes Harrison at length, referring to critics and other enemies as: faggot, devil, dictator and mother-f----r.  (I must confess that I would find his opinion of your correspondent too delicious for words.)  Nowhere, however, is there any indication that it is probable that Harrison himself has suffered one concussion too many.

He has been arrested for domestic assault (over a religious issue – I kid you not!), believes that students and teachers should be armed, and is a great advocate of corporal punishment.  To the 50,000 people who have signed up on his Twitter account, his pearls of wisdom drop like gentle rain.

The questions that all of this raises are many and disturbing.  Why is a person like James Harrison playing professional sports?  Why is he lionized?  Why do Americans so adore their guns – so much so, that they are now fashion accessories?  More important – is the well of American manhood so permanently defiled that James Harrison passes for a role model?

The people a culture selects as its heroes are, perhaps, one of the most potent indications of its overall health.  I can only guess that the United States, or at least those who wallow in the orgy of violence, narcissism and big money called the NFL, is in great trouble indeed.