It has come to this.
I am saddened to say that there has been a resurgence of interest in the absurdist theatre at YouTube. You guessed it. Somebody has acted out the play 'Richard McBeef' written by the murderous psychopath Cho and uploaded the video. In classic liberal form, the disclaimer asks 'What can we learn from this?'
What indeed? I imagine that you can learn the same thing from Cho as one might learn from watching Islamist beheadings. You learn that he's a sick monkey. The real question is, who didn't know that already, and what depths of depravity have they sunk to so that a screening of his vulgarity is necessary to confirm that? Or maybe someone expects to find some twisted genius in all this? That can only be the result of a completely devolved sense. I wanted to write sense of something, like sense of taste, but it's more accurate to say a completely devolved sense of everything.
The screening of Richard McBeef and the acceptance of it as anything other than prurient garbage degrades the entire enterprise of critical thought. But one has to consider how it stands (as it does) in light of what passes for entertainment in reality television. Isn't this only more real reality? Isn't denial of this work a denial of reality? No. Cho's plays are not reflections of reality they are shallow violent fantasies and pornographic projections. They are a disturbing perversion of reality TV which itself is a crass exploitation of dysfunctional people. The fact of the matter is, the men who beheaded Nick Berg only killed one man that we know. Cho was worse.
We will not watch, nor will we read Charles Manson's poetry.
I can only hope this perverse curiosity does not reach the level of a PBS special, but it may. I agree with the many bloggers who have said that Cho was a pornographer as well as a murderer, and there can be no redeeming value in distributing his work. Don't do it. The abyss stares back.
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