Yacht Fascism, 1980-86 (a playlist by Oliver Craner)
- Thread starter Corpsey
- Start date
chava
Well-known member
can't remeber the exact post, but this is the account, couple of these accounts is eh.. interesting to follow: https://twitter.com/fashismnow
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Perhaps too thundering to play on a yacht. Not sophisticated.
But then again I don't know what Yacht Fascism means, you refuse to tell me.
craner
Beast of Burden
I don't think it has an ideological or cultural definition. It's more like a feeling, a tendency, a persuasion, with ambiguous contours. If I wrote a book about it, like you suggested, I would inevitably come to the conclusion that it didn't exist.
One way to think about it: the idea of a Gordon Gekko listening to 'Ghosts' in Manhattan is more interesting than Patrick Bateman listening to Huey Lewis and the News.
One way to think about it: the idea of a Gordon Gekko listening to 'Ghosts' in Manhattan is more interesting than Patrick Bateman listening to Huey Lewis and the News.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Some Bateman expert will be able to explain this - is Bateman supposed to be typically psychopathic, as a Wall Street bro? Or is it that as a psychopath in that world he can easily pass himself off as ordinary because the moral values of that world are so twisted?
Does the stockbroker have a soul?
Does the stockbroker have a soul?
craner
Beast of Burden
I remember reading a Steve Beard essay in which he talked about his fellow Eng Lit graduates at Oxford who absorbed Derrida and postmodernism just like he did but took exactly the opposite lesson from it: they found a conceptual licence to go and get jobs in the City and make tons of money without worrying about ethics, morality or their souls. It didn’t mean they didn’t have souls: they simply treated them differently.
They embraced Yacht Fascism, via Derrida.
They embraced Yacht Fascism, via Derrida.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
it's not on the officially released soundtrack, but the music you actually hear in Wall Street leans heavily on My Life In the Bush of Ghosts
confirming my thesis that Eno's true calling is making finance bro mood music
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
there's also the famous "This Must Be The Place" over the Bud Fox's apartment gets expensively decorated montage
but that's more obviously canonical 80s yuppie music - kind of halfway in between "Ghosts" and Huey Lewis I guess
but that's more obviously canonical 80s yuppie music - kind of halfway in between "Ghosts" and Huey Lewis I guess
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
closer to the latter, I'm pretty sure. it's a satire of a culture, not a serious examination of psychopathy. I think the idea the view he presented of finance bros was more shocking when he wrote it than it is now, when it basically seems like received wisdom, especially post-2008, they're grotesque amoral monsters. Wall Street ultimately pulls its punches - there's that old guy who's always saying stuff like "there are no shortcuts, Bud" so the audience knows not everyone on Wall Street is corrupt - but Ellis didn't unlike Stone he's not really concerned with morality. Which is what gets him accused of shallow nihilism, but also how he managed to capture, probably unintentionally but as well as anyone has imo the gaping void at the heart of modern American culture and/or late capitalism or etc.
i.e. the actual murders are almost incidental to what's "wrong" with Bateman. take them away and you have his roots right here.
luka
Well-known member
I remember that long blog post you did about Bill Gates being a hero of the working class.
