Idiot Joy Showland

The following is the transcript of a roundtable discussion held at the offices of Damply Media in Brooklyn, to discuss the cultural importance of Rihanna’s new single ‘Bitch Better Have My Money’. The discussion brought together some of the leading thinkers in their fields for a unique evening of lively debate. PANTOPHAGIA PULPH is a digital sibyl, feminist scholar, literal goddess, and visiting professor at the Jersey Turnpike School of Media and Dentistry, and it’s not her job to educate you. ALAN GORKENBLUM is a respected economist noted for his work in developing nations, his occasional columns in the New York Times, and his influential 1994 paper ‘Could Death Squads Be Good For Freedom?’. PENCIL GLEASE is a radical leftist philosopher and the author of over fifty books, including ‘Why Breakfast Cereal Is Communism’, ‘Why Boy Bands Are Communism’, ‘Why Disneyland Is Communism,’ and ‘Why Capitalism Is Communism’. THE GHOST OF GEORGES RIBEMONT-DESSAIGNES, moderating the discussion, is a sad, tattered, howling spectre, barely capable of speech, his vague form clammy with sadness and regret. HELENA BIBBS is, despite all appearances, an adult woman.

ALAN GORKENBLUM: First of all, I’d like to thank Moist Media for inviting me to-

JENNIFER BIBBS: Damply.

ALAN GORKENBLUM: I’d like to very damply thank Moist Media for inviting me here to speak. Now, from what I can gather, the video under discussion today concerns Ms Rihanna’s personal experiences with an unscrupulous accountant, who squandered her money on wasteful programmes and led to her credit rating being downgraded. In the video, this fictionalised accountant is subjected to various punishments – his wife is kidnapped and murdered, and he is then murdered himself – which of course as a liberal I don’t condone. But it seems to me that the central dynamic here is the relation between debtor and creditor, and frankly it’s extremely encouraging to see youth culture finally expressing the important message that debts must be paid. For too long we’ve allowed the culture to become infested by socialistic ideals. But as Ms Rihanna says, you need to ‘pay me what you owe me’ – and this is a message that the current leadership in Greece, for instance, would do well to heed. In order for rational, sustainable relations to exist between human individuals in a free market, it is absolutely necessary that the consequences of debt non-payment be as, uh, cutting as possible. You know, the last time I was in Athens I spoke with a very well-educated taxi driver, who told me that the only way his country could ever get itself out of its current situation is if they remove the ridiculous restrictions preventing student agitators from being hacked apart with axes. So it’s a very positive sign that this kind of sensible message is being broadcast to young consumers.

THE GHOST OF GEORGES RIBEMONT-DESSAIGNES: Art is a cold wound. We will consume you.

HELENA BIBBS: ok so, i agree with everything you said and whatever, but can we just talk about how great RhiRhi is in the face of aaaallllll those haters? just look at her, you’ve got Maxine Fulgerswitch in Good Crockery Magazine saying that her video was sexist pornography worse than slavery and she’s just like, bitch idgaf, cactus emoji, i’m out here jus’ doin’ me while you get like two likes on your insta pics of some totally basic doilies? and this is so important, if your feminism doesn’t include a true luxury bitch murder aesthetic then don’t nobody give no shits about your backwards-ass praxis. but that hair! such an inspiration, it’s like, yaaasssss, slay, slay queen, slay me, i want you to tie me to a chair and, heart emoji, take a knife and draw it across my throat so the blood comes pouring out all wave emoji over my shitty basic-ass frock from H&M. can you imagine if rihanna actually ended your worthless life? it’d be everything. i think i’m actually in love with her. omg we need to die together. i’m coming for you. i’m coming.

THE GHOST OF GEORGES RIBEMONT-DESSAIGNES: Suffering.

PANTOPHAGIA PULPH: So first up, I’m not here to educate a bunch of crybaby white het cis binary ablebodied men about Black women, and about how this is the only worthwhile artwork ever produced because it shows a Black woman killing white people. If you want to learn about this video, you need to pay me.

THE GHOST OF GEORGES RIBEMONT-DESSAIGNES: They did pay us.

PANTOPHAGIA PULPH: Nobody asked you to speak. How is this helping me? Stay dead.

PENCIL GLEASE: Before I start, if this is a start, if it is possible to ‘start’ under the condition of a discourse already dependent on the structural possibility of its having-been-started, I would like to say a few words on the enigmatic nature of this verb, ‘to start’. For how can I speak of a video, of something which ‘to start’ appears as pure blackness, pure void on the screen, unless I can start the video, set in motion the chain of inscriptions and reinscriptions on the graphical substrate of pure absence? As in Joyce, the church is founded immovably upon the void. Now, the word ‘start’, as we all know, derives from the German stürzen, to fall, to fling, but into what? Into precisely that absence. So to start to speak about ‘Bitch Better Have My Money’ means not to institute a relation on the level of tangibility, to find a reference to any determinate object, but the very opposite. Before I started, if I have indeed started, I had a metaphysical relation to the object, to that void of meaning into which I am about to leap, but in the condition of having-started-ness I find myself permeated by that object in my discourse’s necessary condition of permeability, a permeability that defies definition or direction, that obliterates itself and in which I am obliterated. To start something is to institute a primordial lack, which is why in all metaphysics the creation of the Universe is experienced as a hollowing-out of the spectral univocity of absolute uncreated Being. In this way the universal dialectic can only be read as a progressive dismantling of the ontic, as the slow degradation already present in this verb ‘to start’. As such, in its possibility of being started, this video embodies a truly transcendent revolutionary hope.

THE GHOST OF GEORGES RIBEMONT-DESSAIGNES: Suffering.

PENCIL GLEASE: Yes, precisely.

THE GHOST OF GEORGES RIBEMONT-DESSAIGNES: Any final comments?

PENCIL GLEASE: I think one thing that we can all agree on is that this video is extremely important to politics. We are all serious intellectuals, we enjoyed watching it, and things can only be good if they reinforce our categories. Certainly at this point we’ve exhausted anything that can meaningfully be said about this film.

ALAN GORKENBLUM: I can only echo the title of the song under discussion: It’s Good To Have My Money. Uh, smiley face emoji.

PANTOPHAGIA PULPH: Yeah. Give your money to women. Greece needs to give its money to Angela Merkel.

HELENA BIBBS: i dont fear death. ive seen the face of god

Please join us for our next roundtable discussion, in which we’ll be talking about snails.