Democracy Is Coming
Reality mocks The Boys, the Eagles chart C&W, and Schubert: The Balm
The Boys, Amazon Prime original (based on the Dynamite Entertainment comic book series written by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, developed by Eric Kripke)
With events in the saddle, even this RNC update suddenly feels dated:
WATCHING THE NEWS break in real time on July 13, it almost felt like reality had sprung directly from a script for The Boys. In Prime’s vicious and profane (and poorly named) satire of MAGA, the Vought Corporation runs the country by puppeteering The Seven “Supes,” humans injected with a potent serum that manifests as a super-power. These comic-book heroes can either stop jets in the air or outrun trains or inhabit some creepy sea underworld. A curdled smile named Homelander (played with understated relish by Antony Starr) leads this team, a fusion of insecurity and narcissism so arch it approximates a real estate developer from Queens. After he wrests control from his corporate overlords, Homelander bullies America into an autocratic dystopia, with politicians pandering to their testosteroned overlords (cue exploding heads). A scrappy troupe of misfits led by Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) and Hughie Campbell (Jack Quaid) mount an unsteady resistance. (“With great power,” Butcher says, “comes the absolute certainty that you'll turn into a right c*nt.")
The show taps such a gusher of the national mood, you could almost eavesdrop on the stage directions as the real Tr*mp dropped to the ground, then insisted on raising his fist and shouting “Fight” as Secret Service agents wrestled him offstage. As many pointed out, a lifetime of media training kicked in to make the moment stick. It was as easy to imagine T’s swift calculus about how to appear defiant in that moment as it was how a slick consultant might have him frame it at the RNC the following week. If anything, The Boys falls short of the cynicism on display from JD Vance, his wife Usha, Melania, Speaker Mike Johnson, and the whole party’s blastoff into cosmic divine intervention. “That chart saved my life.”
As Masha Gessen observed, “We grew accustomed to an ever growing gap between reality as we experienced it and the ways in which it was reflected back to us by politicians and journalists…” Seth Abramson published an epic deconstruction of how much Trump gilded his made-for-reality-TV moment when restraint would have taken him further. By demanding sympathy, Trump made himself mannered and petty when even President Biden seemed to sympathize on a human level.
The Boys has suffered from a fourth season that tilts into overwrought SDM degeneracy. Saved by flying killer sheep, a seductive octopus, the satire has grown cruder, and harder to watch, as it scrambles to keep up with “real life” (this season wrapped before Trump’s felony convictions). Even Biden’s Covid affliction and Judge Cannon’s dismissal of the National Security case had the hairy-hand-of-the-puppeteer gloss of the show’s marketing gurus. The best touch so far lies in a new supe, Sister Sage, a brainiac black woman (Susan Heyward), “the smartest person in the world.” When teamed with Homelander, her impassivity disguises her manipulations with the weight of history. With the Kamala Harris candidacy ascendant, this now rings out in new shades of irony.
Homelander’s self-satisfied grin heaves with rot. And people cower less in fear of his superpowers than his unpredictability, his fecklessness, and all-consuming self-interest ("No God. The only man in the sky is me"). His Barron stand-in of a son makes a fiendishly squalid subplot.
Satire this sharp boomerangs oddly. Hulk Hogan wuz robbed of that VP slot.
elsewhere
Seth Abramson on Trump’s lies in Proof
Masha Gesson on the RNC in the New York Times
Timothy Snyder on Veep Stakes
“Democracy” by Leonard Cohen (from The Future, 1992)
more on Joe Walsh and the Eagles
We’re tempted to take credit for Hotel California “returning” to the Billboard C&W charts, less a return than an orbit that finally slipped into new gravity. According to Forbes, the album “reappears at No. 47 on the 50-spot ranking of the most-consumed country-only full-lengths and EPs in the U.S…” but I’ll need convincing that it ever charted Country in the first place. If it did, when? In the late ’70s that would have cursed it among rock fans. In 1989, I watched Joe Walsh sing “Desperado” after intermission at Ringo’s All-Star Show, and many mistook him for the original singer. Returns the favor for Don Henley’s Walsh vocal on “Life in the Fast Lane.”
Nobody complained but only after I wrote that piece did I even remember that Henley cut a country record (Cass County) in 2015, including duets with Dolly Parton. The forgetting feels understandable, but we still “regret the omission.” Having said that, I still think the Eagles would have made a better country record than this Henley product, which cuts right down the middle and doesn’t compel many relistenings. How is that Henley makes a duet with Parton feel… cynical? Also, a “template for Dwight Yoakam” overshoots the opinion for emphasis, but Yoakam makes better records than that (If There Was a Way…, Under the Covers).
album of the month
Schubert: Ländler, Pierre-Laurent Aimard (Pentatone)
https://pierrelaurentaimard.com/
noises off
Raid the archives for recent bangers on Woody Guthrie, the Kinks, and Eric Wolfson on concept albums. Always lots more Beatles content here. Stop the press: McCartney sneezed.
riley rock index: music’s metaportal—obits, bylines, youtube finds, reference sites, pinterest, beacons.ai, random deep link. And the feisty SmallTalk, where substack earns new stripes.