December 31, 2014
Source: Shutterstock
I hope by now that I”ve managed to establish the fact that I loathe political correctness and hype. The manipulation of words without meaning, the pseudo-philosophy without content, conceptualizing without concepts”all in the service of egotism and grandiosity”is what I hate in this modern world of ours. People nowadays do not notice the beauty of things like ancient cities or nature itself. They look at themselves from smartphones and take selfies instead, the latter the most obnoxious tool in the kit of digital narcissism. If it weren”t annoying enough to watch people photograph the food they”re about to devour, we now have to have it on celluloid.
Personally, I began my career as a hack by taking pictures. For Paris Match. This was 45 years ago. I have not taken a picture since. I am and will always be a proud Luddite and things like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are as alien to me as transgender dressing. I was recently in Paris, where I grew up, and watched in horror what modernists are doing to the beautiful city.
One particularly awful architect is the Frenchman Jean Nouvel. He dresses like a Hollywood SS man, all in black and with a shaven ugly head. His buildings are as ugly as he is. They are a mixture of grain silos, gas turbines, and atomic power stations. He is oblivious to his surroundings and the history of the city. There is no aesthetic coherence to his work, just monuments to me, me, me! His words have no meaning at all. His colors are those of McDonald’s, bright yellows. That he began his career as an architect early on is a sign of child abuse by the unfortunate parents who brought him up. Avoid him and his works like you would Ebola.
Finally, Jay Z: Prince William’s and Kate’s NBF. How can the future King of England be photographed sucking up to an ex-crack dealer whose rap lyrics are as kind to women as Hitler’s words were to Jews? What Jay Z tells kids in his raps is that crime does pay and selling crack is okay, and that women should be treated like whores. Nice!
Mind you, it wasn”t as bad as the message sent by those nice guys who murdered 138 children in Pakistan in the name of the prophet. “We have killed all the children,” they phoned to their superiors in Afghanistan. “Wait for the army people, kill them before blowing yourself up,” came the answer. Makes P.C., Jay Z. and hype look mild by comparison.
