Script

WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE (It's No Place for a Black Boy) 12/12/93 -1/1/94 RENAMED "GUNS & POSES" 3/11/94

"To a certain extent everybody treats other people as objects. On the one hand you do treat people as objects and think yourself the center of the universe, and on the other you want to communicate."

Damien Hirst

times up. like a shadow moving on a sundial. inexorable fucking. fashion & fascism. tube steak. doll rape. tube rape. doll steak. fuck meat. shit shake. suck meat. fuck shake. sucking hole. fucking soul. scum gun. stun glum. piss and make up. shit and forget. puke and fuck up. cum and make up. puke and forget.

Text for Ren and Stimpy "Hanging" Audio:

I see the shapes, I remember from maps.

I see the shoreline, I see the whitecaps.

A baseball diamond, nice weather down there.

I see the school and the houses where the kids are.

Places to park by the factories and buildings.

Resaurants and bars for later in the evening.

Then we come to the farmlands, and the undeveloped areas.

And I have learned how these things work together.

I see the parkway that passes through them all.

And I have learned how to look at these things and I say:

I wouldn't live there if you paid me.

I couldn't live like that, no siree!

I couldn't do the things the way those people do.

I couldn't live there if you paid me to.

I guess it's healthy, I guess the air is clean.

I guess those people have fun with their neighbors and friends.

Look at that kitchen and all of that food.

Look at them eat it; I guess it tastes real good.

They buy it in the farmlands.

Then they bring it to the store.

They put it in their car trunks.

Then they bring it back home.

I say, I wouldn't live there if you paid me.

I couldn't live like that, oh no siree!

I couldn't do the things the way those people do.

I wouldn't live there if you paid me to.

I'm tired of looking out the window of the airplane.

I'm tired of travelling, I want to be somewhere.

It's not even worth talking about those people down there.

So. Goo Goo Ga Ga Ga.

Goo Goo Ga Ga Ga

Goo Goo Goo Ga Ga Ga

EVIL FOR SALE. There exists a line described entirely by race and sex that could be fatally dangerous for anyone, even a child, to cross. The memory of slavery, the hardship of poverty and the tunnel vision of ignorance combine with a one-sided system of justice to divide communities as acutely as the stab of a sharp knife. "A Long Slide From Privilege Ends in Slaughter on a Train" Communication between the two sides is like a shout heard through mud: frightening, indistinct, annoying, poorly comprehended.

One of Few Plans That Worked

But law enforcement officials trying to penetrate his mind and motives say he apparently planned the attack for weeks, working out the FINE DETAILS of a PITILESS and PATENTLY IRRATIONAL act, giving it a kind of inexorable quality, LIKE A SHADOW MOVING ON A SUNDIAL. It was, in a kind of twisted logic, one of the few events in his life that went off as planned.

"This is for real," he told them. He felt his message wasn't getting through, because he repeated it three more times: "This is for real. This is for real. This is for real." Standing under a streetlight in front of his house in the ghetto shortly after midnight, and speaking to the only white man on the street for a mile in either direction, he becomes the specter of something scary when he discusses the actions of Mr. F. "I can see it in my mind, exactly like it was happening in front of me. It's like I was there." He stands staring down at some imaginary white woman beneath him, index finger pointed like the barrel of a gun, thumb back like a cocked hammer. He brings his thumb down hard on his forefinger: "Bang!" He turns with fury-gorged eyes to face his one-man audience. "He was telling you something man. He was telling you how much he hates you. It was an act of communication. You understand?"

No matter how wrong-headed the action, everybody seems to accept it as a communication...an unjustified communication?! Ha-ha-ha! What have we done to deserve being communicated at? "Our subjective expression is the other's objective oppression"... Don't communicate at me! Them's communicatin' words. And here we are, holding out our hand, attempting to communicate for so long - what do we get?

"Sing your life. Any fool can think up words that rhyme. Many others do. Why don't you? Do you want to? Oh! Oh! Sing your life. Walk right up to the microphone and name: all the things you love. All the things that you loathe! Oh, sing your life! The things that you love. And the things you loathe. Oh, sing your life! Oh, sing your life! La - la, la, la, la. Sing your life! La - la, la, la, la. Sing your life!"

PERVERSE PROFITEERING "Teenaged pranks have paid off well. Now I'm bored and old." Let's start with a poster or T-shirt based on the photo on pg. 56 of Mr. F. with his pithy mantra hidden on the inside tag: "All The Black People Killing All The White People." We could donate $1 from all sales to his Defense Fund. Could you make scans of the photo with the story for the X-PRZ file? (I have a sinking feeling it may come in handy later!)

I FEEL A SONG SLIPPING IN. By including a secret track of a song by an infamous criminal on its new album, the so-called art band X-PRZ has borrowed a little of the ghoulish allure of a cult killer. Lots of bands thrive by talking a violent game -- advocating sacrifices to Satan or killing police officers, for example -- but this is the rare time when a band's actions will actually help a murderer.

"Privilege Dies With Parents" He hasn't yet understood, much less internalized, the hierarchical rules of class and privilege that govern his world. In a moment of terror, he still believes he has a right to resist. "A Shattering End To Youth"

DOZENS OF INTERVIEWS with acquaintances, former teachers and employers, public officials, psychiatrists and others HAVE PRODUCED A DETAILED PORTRAIT of Mr. F. and suggested that the actions were not the result of a single reverse in his life, but of a long slide that took him from a privileged black childhood to REJECTION AND FAILURE in America

Let the country become real bad . . . Then one day you would like to . . . And if you show them what you're made of . . . Then you might dream. But we wonder. We wonder if the thunder is ever really going to begin. Begin again . . . Mama says: "I've lost my boy." But she should know why you've gone. Because again and again you've explained. You're going to build the Nation . . . going to The Black National . . . To The Black Nationalist Front Disco! Because you want the day to come sooner. You want the day to come SOONER! When you settle the score.

MACABRE FASCINATION "I had strange thoughts the whole time, . . .Half of it didn't seem real. When It dawned on me it was really going on, this guy shooting -- pop, pop, pop -- I thought: `Here it's only a minute before my stop, I was so close to freedom. Why couldn't this guy have done this a minute later?'"

POP. POP. POP. MAKES KILLER RICH. "The fact that he could be earning money from the fame he derived committing one of the most horrific crimes of the 20th century is unthinkable to me," said the record executive.

"We're going to be beating the hell out of you white people," he proclaimed, brandishing a baseball bat. Then lacing his threats with Bible passages, he warned, "We're going to take your children and dash them against the stones," and "We're also going to rape and ravish your white women."

"All The Black People Killing All The White People" Of course, he's wrong. He activates a chain of events that neither common sense nor normal compassion can break. The "action" casts nearly every adult and child in the country into rigid roles. People who have long been amicably acquainted, if not friendly, suddenly perceive only the color of one another's skin. The principals are not merely victims trapped by the crush of circumstance, they are also high-voltage archetypes -- black male, white female.

You know, one of the strangest activities around is the naturalizing of polarities - a journalist writing for The Herald (I'm not clear what his argument was) made the familiar statement - "you know if this act had been committed by a _____ person..." This constant reversal of culturally constructed terms to prove certain theses one has about race is curious. It underscores the violence implicit in the act of naming. The binary terms suggest mathematic equations and are projected upon as having this mathematic purity: X + Y=Z, so Z - Y must equal X.

CRIME. WITHOUT PUNISHMENT. All this sent the record company and the band searching for excuses. The band has insisted it was unaware that the killer could profit. The lead singer said his brother found the album and played it during a game of musical trivia. "I liked the lyrics and the melody," he said. "Hearing it shocked me, and I thought there were other people who would like to hear it."

"Others sang your life. But now is the chance to shine! And have the pleasure of saying what you mean. Have the pleasure of meaning what you sing, oh! Make no mistake, my friend, all of this will end. So sing it now! Sing your life. All the things you love. Sing your life! All the things you loathe. Oh, sing your life. The things that you love. And the things you loathe. Oh, sing, your!. Oh, sing, your! La - la, la, la, la. Sing your life! La - la, la, la, la."

"Creating His Own Whirlpool" The story, once in motion, gathers momentum like a landslide: at first a few pebbles disturb the quiet and then, inexorably, the earth itself seems to collapse into catastrophe; it's as if the very force of gravity were overpowering the personality of individual characters. "As Gunfire Gets Closer, Fear Comes Home" A tragedy in the classical mode, mythic in the sense that instead of the surprise, the twists of plot we might discover in a more typical contemporary novel, here we are confirmed in our worst dreads as destiny immutably and shockingly unfolds. Specific blame (or innocence) is as difficult to fix as the ultimate origin of the crime itself, but everywhere there is a pervading sense of waste, of helplessness and outrage.

A Long Way From Grace

While Mr. F. blamed racism for all his misfortunes and shattered expectations, THE EXAMINATION OF HIS PAST shows NO EVIDENCE that he was ever a victim of discrimination. INDEED, psychiatrists and others say, it reveals a CLEAR PATTERN of RACIAL PARANOIA, an obsession with NONEXISTENT CONSPIRACIES and a personality given to DECEIVING HIMSELF and others.

"Apocryphal-Type Doom Scenario" But he cannot awake from his nightmare, cannot find ever again the sweet oblivion of childhood, cannot -- even with the evidence of his fragile young body -- wake up those who choose to view him as an adult and a murderer, those who finally kill him and call it justice.

FIND VIRTUES IN SIN. A publicist for the band denied that it was merely trying to attract attention. "They have never done anything in their history as a publicity stunt," she said.

"This is a story in a newspaper like any other day. This is a sick story." PROFIT FROM THE SUFFERING OF OTHERS. USE HIS DELUSION.

"Sing your life! Don't leave it all unsaid. Somewhere in the wasteland of your head, ah. Oh, head, ah, oh. Head, ah, oh. Head, ah, oh! And make no mistake, my friend, your pointless life will end! But before you go. Can you look at the truth? You have a lovely singing voice. A lovely singing voice. And all of those - who sing on key, they stole the notion from you and me. So, sing your life! . ."

Note from XDA:

I get a kick out of "Macabre Fascination" Why, why, why? "half of it didn't seem real" - which half? There's a mythology about fate here though, about things happening as "inexorably as a shadow moving on a sundial," about little guys, joe public getting squashed in events he has no responsibility for, or agency over.

pop - pop... the most horrific crime? - Let's get real. Let's think the unthinkable, dream the undreamable...

XTC responds:

Yes, in the "natural disaster" scenario "shit happens", but we all save face by being reduced to "hapless victims." Always "victims" of "cruel fate" and "nature." (We're never the victims of the contradictions and lies of our culture.) Are we're all such witless babes in the woods, in the inexorable sun, in the shadow, in the dark landscape, the landslide, the sinking feeling, the raging inferno this time (and before and again)? The infernal babble recreated is so much bigger than "Little Women" or any "Little Man, What Now?" can ever imagine. Why always the innocent bystander (never the accomplice and beneficiary of power) in our belief in the inexorable rising tide, the thunder, the song coming on, the earthquake crush of circumstance? Busily deceiving self and others in the inexorable chain, sucked in by the whirlpool momentum, the tragic collapse, the mythic catastrophe, the dread gravity, the overpowering destiny that goes: "pop - pop... the most horrific crime?" - Let's get real. Let's think the unthinkable, dream the undreamable..." What criminal wrote this script/crypt tale of "natural" "fatal" closure or paralysing "random indeterminancy?" Who profits from doom? Can you hear the static repetitive music in the loops of dead letters above? Isn't "Mr. F." (acting out his delusion) a figuration of a revenge fantasy? Whose fantasy is this? And why must we refuse to acknowledge an example of the eternal return of the repressed, the same abject figure on which the state, the (master) race, and capital are founded? Is this the part of the "communication" that never reaches it's audience? Whose is "the most horrific crime?"

"Dear Hero Imprisoned: with all the new crimes that you are perfecting! Oh, I can't help quoting you `cause everything that you said rings true. . . Do you know my name? Don't say you don't. Please say you do. I am the Last of the Famous International Playboys. . . Do you know my face? Don't say you don't. Please say you do. . . In our lifetimes, those who kill, the newsworld hands them stardom. And these are the ways on which I was raised. I never wanted to kill. I am not naturally evil. Such things I do just to make myself more attractive to you. Have I failed?"

Revision: The t-shirt/poster featuring photo of Mr. F. Text at the bottom of the image: "PUSSY for PROFIT?" (Reversing NWA's "Life ain't nothing but Bitches and Money!") or "BAMBI Loves MANDINGO"

INSSCRIPTION ON BACK OF SHIRT:

"I never wanted to kill.

I am not

naturally evil.

Such things I do

just to make myself

more attractive

to you.

HAVE I FAILED?"

Billboard idea (Variation)

Ferguson Photo (red w/o text) paired with same size color ground(green w/yellow text)

"I never wanted

to kill.

I am not

naturally evil.

Love me.

Can't you love me?

Why not?

I killed

to become legible,

lovable.

Have I failed?"

Alternate: Target over eyes of Bambi or big-eyed greeting card cherub. Text: (Top)"All The Black People" (Over bulls-eye) "Killing" (Bottom) "All The White People"

MUSIC: "THE FAMILY STONE" (for Dorothy, CG & Taneshea)

Sly Stone Playlist

`Que Sera Sera'

`Sing A Simple Song'

`Everyday People'

`Family Affair'

`Getting Away'

`Stand'

`Don't Call Me Nigger. . .'

`You Can Make It If You Try'

`If You Want Me To Stay'

`(I Want To Take You) Higher'

`Thnk u 4 Ltng Me B Mice Elf, Agn'