Paranoia Runs Deep/Into Your Bacon It Will Creep

Never trust anyone under 30. That’s my corruption of the original phrase “never trust anyone over 30,” attributed to everyone from Bob Dylan to the Beatles, but actually coined in the 60s by free speech activist Jack Weinberger. Today it’s not really the over 30 crowd I’m concerned about (or let’s say 40, with inflation); they generally wear their weltanschauung on their sleeve and can thereby be embraced or dismissed without much deliberation. It’s the millennials who worry me, that slippery little demographic who might look like a skater or indie band member, but who’s actually a fiscal conservative doing outreach street art for some corporate franchise or mega-bank. That’s right, collaborationists. I know it’s hard when corporate governance is the default program and the only alternative is, say, living under a bridge. I’ll grant you that. Hey, Godard directed commercials.

It is heartening to witness the wave of protests in favor of democratic rule that started this past Arab Spring spreading to the West. Recent street uprisings in Greece, Spain, and England make one wax nostalgic for the May ’68 movement in France, or the UK Poll Tax Riots of 1990, or the 1992 Los Angeles riots, the latter probably representing the last really heart-felt attempt to dislodge the ruling class in Western society. But with the militarization of the police and new techniques of crowd control, not to mention the astronomical expenditures on security and the enforcement of sneaky by-laws to limit the freedom of assembly, street protests are pretty much like pissing into the wind these days, especially if that wind is carrying a lot of tear gas. Just look at the police and government tactics used during last year’s G-20 summit in Toronto. Kind of like “Red Dawn,” except the country you’re being invaded by is your own. (Although you have to hand it to them, using the former Toronto Film Studios as the location for detained protestors was a nice touch. I wonder if it was an ironic nod to the drive-in theater as communist re-education center used in “Red Dawn”? Or is that giving them too much credit? Still waiting for the release of the shelved remake, by the way, with Red-baited breath.)

What set me off on this tirade was a commercial I saw last week using MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech to sell motorcars. The ad seemed sincere enough (they always do), with a lot of people of all races and creeds coming together to eat at a dinner table kilometers long, but when it informed me at the end that the sponsor was a car conglomerate, I confess I was a little plucked. (Because when I think of the civil rights movement, I don’t necessarily think of Chevrolet.) I was appeased slightly when I went online to discover that the ad was directed by non other than Spike Lee; after all, not only did he drink the corporate Kool-Aid a long, long time ago, he helped make it! (But I love his Katrina documentary.) Of course it’s hard to believe now that the roots of black activism (and gay and feminist activism, for that matter) were largely Marxist-based, even though MLK does sound today, especially when stacked up against President Obama – or Spike Lee – kind of like a Commie.

Would I direct a commercial? Sure, although strangely enough, no one’s ever asked me. But if I did, I might avoid, say, using the ultimate protest song of the 60s, Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth,” to sell breakfast meats, as the Canadian company Maple Leaf (evil empire!) recently has. (“Paranoia runs deep/Into your bacon it will creep.”) Canadian Neil Young, who was in the group Buffalo Springfield, is one famous musician who’s always refused to sell his songs to commercials, but unfortunately said ditty was written by fellow member Stephen Stills, who had previously sold it to a Miller beer commercial in the US. If Neil Young were dead, he’d be spinning in his grave.

But this is nothing new. Bob Dylan, the granddaddy of all protest music, has famously sold his songs to banks and supermarket chains. (The Bank of Montreal, for example, recently used “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” a song whose lyrics are largely based on the US Civil Rights movement, for a campaign.) What gets me is, it almost seems like the corporations are deliberately rubbing our noses in it. Do they really need to gut famous left-wing protest songs by exploiting them for commercial interests while the musicians, already wealthy beyond reason, literally laugh all the way to the bank? Bwankers! (My favourite new neologism, btw.)

But it’s OK. I look forward to the day when The Dead Kennedys’ “Holiday in Cambodia” is used to promote tourism in Southeast Asia. When Suede’s “We Are The Pigs” is used for public relations spots by the police force. When Feist’s “1234” is used to hawk iPod… oh, scratch that one. Like the Feist song says, “Money can’t buy you back the love that you had then.”

BRUCE LABRUCE