Klosterman - Chuck klosterman on media and culture: a collection of previously published essays

A Collection of Previously Published Essays

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Essays in this work were previously published in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs copyright 2003, 2004 by Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman IV copyright 2006, 2007 by Chuck Klosterman, and Eating the Dinosaur copyright 2009 by Chuck Klosterman.

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First Scribner ebook edition September 2010

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Manufactured in the United States of America

ISBN 978-1-4516-2496-0

Portions of this work originally appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, and SPIN.

From Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

From Chuck Klosterman IV

From Eating the Dinosaur

Merry Christmas, Juggalo.

This is what he scrawled on the card, a little one-flap piece of construction paper featuring a picture of a Clydesdale standing next to a snow-capped conifer. It was attached to a Fuji videotape and handed to me in my favorite bar. I immediately knew what it was. Thanks, Ninja, I replied to the dashing twenty-four-year-old doctor who gave it to me. You are my stone cold elf. My doctor friend returned to his dart game; I proceeded to have four more drinks while listening to Dean Martin on the jukebox before getting into my car and driving home, traversing the empty, frozen streets of downtown Fargo. Winter nights in urban North Dakota are fascinating, because they resemble overcast summer afternoons: The painfully white snow has such a high albedo that it reflects the glow from streetlights with a remarkable intensity. You can drive without headlights at midnight, which is exactly what I did. It was beautiful. I love Christmas, I thought to myself when I arrived home from Duffys Tavern, just drunk enough to wrap myself in a terry-cloth robe and watch Pamela Anderson perform oral sex on Tommy Lee.

Every holiday season, I rewatch my illegally dubbed Pamela Tommy sex tape. Its sort of my version of Its a Wonderful Life. There is no thrill in seeing it anymore, and certainly no prurient rush: It is probably the least arousing videotape I own, with the possible exception of Walking with Dinosaurs. However, its also the only important videotape I own, and its important because it shows how unsexy oral sex can represent what we want as a society (or maybe what were afraid to want). Everyone is willing to classify Pamela Anderson as a bimbo and a whore and an idealized version of why half the women in America loathe their bodies, and all of that might be truebut what nobody seems willing to admit is that shes the most crucial woman of her generation, partially because we hate to think about what Pam Andersons heaving bosom means to our culture.

People freak out whenever you attempt to compare Anderson to Marilyn Monroe. In fact, I used to freak out when others have made that comparison, even though I had no idea why. I was unironically watching the E! network a few years back, and some forgettable bozo kept insisting that Pamela was a Marilyn for the nineties (this was either a retrospective on Baywatch or a promotional special for V.I.P., but I cant remember which). Somehow, this bozos assertion made me vaguely angry, which is how I used to react whenever someone claimed Metallica was my generations Led Zeppelin.

My desire to protect Marilyn Monroe is inexplicable; I have no idea why I would feel territorial about the legacy of a woman who died ten years before I was born. Marilyn died young and lonely, so (I suppose) its impossible not to feel a certain sense of compassion for herbut its also hard to imagine anyone who benefited more from an early death. James Dean comes close, but its entirely possible he might have made a handful of good films in his forties, and beyond; its unlikely Monroe could have had any long-term career. Film revisionists have taken to insisting she was an underrated actress (mostly because of Some Like It Hot, Bus Stop, and Niagara), but its actually the other way around: So many people have retrospectively declared her acting to be underrated that shes become overrated, simply because she didnt make enough important films to vindicate her advocates claims.

However, Monroe was the most significant female figure of the middle twentieth century (cinematically or otherwise), and that had almost nothing to do with acting. Both physically and philosophically, Norma Jean was the incarnation of the early fifties sexual archetype. And ironically, thats why that forgettable bozo on E! was right when he compared Monroe to Pamela Anderson, even though hed never be able to explain why. Pam is the contemporary Marilyn Monroe, inadvertently illustrating which aspects of human desire can evolve (and which aspects never will).

I cant seem to find a definitive source for Andersons physical dimensions. The numbers once ran at 362434, but those obviously changed after her 1999 breast reduction. Her height is listed as either five-foot-seven or five-foot-five (although oddlynever five-foot-six), and her weight is generally placed at 107 pounds. She has what women refer to as an impossible body, a claim thats only partially contradicted by the fact that her body actually exists. There are scientists (goofball sociobiologists, mostly, and also Desmond Morris) who argue that men are visually (and one assumes unconsciously) attracted to the two-thirds ratio in nature, which is why the clich dimensions for ideal women somehow became 362436. Mans affinity for this ratio supposedly shows up in everything he createsarchitecture, auto chassis, the circumference of an Absolut vodka bottle in relation to its height, etc., etc., etc. This is an interesting theory, especially since it would seem to explain why male artists in the sixteenth century were attracted to obese women (one could argue that they were interested in the same 2/3 body ratio and simply inverted the modern-day proportions). Of course, this is a very male-o-centric theory to advocate: Guys would love to somehow prove they want to have sex with Pamela Anderson because of math.

Still, I cant help but partially believe in this hypothesis, probably because Im secretly ashamed to be attracted to Pamela Anderson. Somehow, it makes me feel stupid. Its almost like desiring Pam Anderson is like admitting thatsexuallyyou have no creativity. I would feel much better about myself if I would prefer to go down on Kim Deal or Ellen Barkin. I would somehow feel smarter if what I wanted was even just a model with a mantis-like skeleton body, like Kate Moss. I profoundly prefer to be turned on by any woman who looks vaguely fucked-up; thats much more intellectually satisfying. And I know dozens of men who have completely talked themselves into this way of thinking, so much so that they dont even realize theyre overcompensating; these are the same people who insist they prefer Mary Ann to Ginger. In fact, I once worked with a guy who told me that he thinks Pamela Anderson is a fundamentally ugly, plastic woman whos antisexy. His claim is that its not just that Anderson doesnt excite himshe actually makes him want to recoil. And every woman in our office seemed to like him more after he said that.