I watched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas again tonight – Gilliam nailed the book and the thesis of the book, as I see it: an American life is perverse. Throughout the book, there is a seething undercurrent of anger and disillusion regarding life in America through Thompson’s mind. Thompson sees the American dream as a fight to the finish, with commerce and status buying nothing but misery and pain. Even those that made a flaccid attempt at “dropping out” (as if), the “hippies,” got it all wrong.
Thompson is a tragic guy, in my opinion. Very talented, but his disdain for ordinary people, his misanthropic nature, wears me out after a while. In a post-modern world, I can look around and can completely buy the idea that life is a sham and the good guys lose. However, that thought isn’t going to make me reject the game and cash in my token. I may have complete disdain for my lot in life, but I balance it with a desire to see something really cool occasionally. For me, that occasional something cool is typically an improbable blessing from the hand of chaos: the immigrant worker that wins 1/8 of 300,000,000 in a lottery pool; the impossibly talented structural engineer that arises from poverty, neglect, and society’s damnation; the high and mighty compass of morality brought down in a blaze of homosexual prostitution and crystal meth – that stuff keeps me alive, sick as that may be. I am comfortable with the idea that life is a fleeting moment; the fact that nothing matters and the good guy loses more often than not does not make me hate life. American life is a perverse life, just as it is anywhere else, in any culture, worshiping any God.
I am ok with it – has growing up a product of post-modern life made me complacent with mediocrity? I don’t know. I don’t question that aspect of life.