"Little Dark Age" by MGMT, Sunday, June 26, 2022 (Updated Repost) --Trigger Warning: sexual assault, gun violence
I first started listening to MGMT in the spring of 2009. Their debut album Ocular Spectacular had been released at the end of 2007, but tracks like "Kids" had hit the alternative radio stations by 2009. My roommate in college loved the opening track "Time to Pretend," which is a fun song about moving to Paris and marrying models, and when things get difficult, just get a divorce. After enjoying OS, the next year the band released their follow up, Congratulations, which boasted more experimental electronica. After reading the review about how the band refused to release radio singles, I never tried the band and felt that they were venturing into a musical realm that wasn't for me. However, in 2019 when I heard their single, "Me and Michael" in a book store and when I started listening to "Little Dark Age," I realized that the MGMT that I loved in college was back.
THE MORE I STRAIGHTEN OUT, THE LESS IT WANTS TO TRY. The political climate in 2018 was bad. Democracy around the world had been on a decline. America was in the second year of Donald Trump's presidency. The rise of political and religious extremism against minorities was at an all-time high. All the progress the hippie side of the boomer generation had fought for was starting to come undone. What was worse was how irrational dialogue had become. How easy it was to say that the other side was "dead to me." But with the Internet feeding "Alternative Facts" and Fake News, no wonder we all felt a little gaslit. But as I'm writing this post, I'm straining to remember anything that actually happened in 2018. I had to search for "US Politics 2018" and get a list from CNN. There were three mass shootings listed on the list, though Wikipedia lists 323 in the U.S. with 387 deaths. But in comparison, as of June 3 (the 182nd day of the year) the Washington Post reported that there had already been 250 mass shootings. In 2018, there was the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, marred slightly by the sexual assault allegations against the now Supreme Court Justice. In the middle of the #MeToo movement, women watched the hearings as the next Justice smirked off justifications of his past behaviors as childhood follies.
I GRIEVE IN STEREO. MGMT's Little Dark Age hides anxiety in plain sight in a totally danceable beat. Today's song is political. This weekend is political. We can't escape what's happened, no matter where you stand on the issue at hand. "Little Dark Age" indirectly references police brutality, specifically toward minorities, but every issue is entangled. It's BLM, it's gay rights, it's trans rights, it's the right to choice, it's the right to affordable healthcare, it's the right to go to school or the mall without being shot by an AK-47. It's our Draconian voter-suppressed Republic that is starting to look more and more like the latter days of the Weimar Republic. And without the rights we once counted on, we reenter the dark ages. We hope that they are "little dark ages" until the dinosaurs die off, but they leave their money to a new generation crazies--crazies our own age who will die off when we die off if we're not shot by an AK-47 or starve to death serving the oligarchy. I went to high school taught by people who longed for this day to come, yet they would say that the law hasn't gone far enough. I grew up believing that birth started at conception, but that's not what I was taught at home, only at Evangelical Christian school. I grew up with some strong women in my life who believed that bringing up a child is a choice--perhaps the most noble one. To bring up an unloved child, to my mother, was one of the greatest sins, and no family should be forced to provide for children far beyond their means. I've watched my sisters achieve levels of success in their careers and model alternative styles of relationships than the ones deemed righteous in Southern Baptist Bible class. But the truth is, in the 21st century everyone is poor working their asses off and that righteous model of traditional marriage hasn't worked for some time. I realize that this post is turning into a rant no better than my opponent, but I think the best way to combat things that don't make sense is with a question. After all, in the 2019 film Bombshell I watched yesterday, the women at Fox News, a simple question about being allowed to wear pants on air caused the workers to realize what kind of system they were in. My question of this weekend is, what is plan b? Even if we can establish that life begins at conception, what does the government have in place to provide for that life, especially at a much higher birth capacity than now?
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