A Canker in a Hedge

As the definition of what constitutes media continues to expand, of course things are going to get worse because more and more things are being dragged into the light. More and more things that we should by rights exclude are now broadcastable. We all have in our pockets what it used to take a news van with a satellite uplink and a passive-aggressive field reporter to send out to the waiting, info-starved public. What was on offer was curated by default, not so much by the choice of the broadcaster but just because there weren't any other options. If your cat fell off the washing machine in a particularly comical way, well, that was just going to have to be your business, forever.

Now of course every cat on every washing machine is a black-comedy set-piece waiting to happen, and the waiting maw of the whole wide world is stretched wide to receive it. Where we once were starved for distraction and information, we're living in a time of what should be embarrassing gluttony, a shovel-and-funnel system of info-feeding and yet somehow we never get full. We should have had the foresight to see that if we went skipping into this new and untested ecosystem, we would be risking ourselves in some unknowable fashion. The Europeans who invaded the interior of Africa were all laid low by malaria, rightly so. Turns out we all ended up with information tapeworm.

The internet is not all bad, of course. Sure, the terrible president is on it, being terrible, threatening journalists and minorities, violating his oath of office, trying to fuck Rihanna, you know, what we call these days "totally normal shit." And sure, I know despair is a mortal sin, but you know what, times change. Usury used to be a mortal sin to, but now lending money at interest is practically the only thing that separates the Jesus-loving capitalists from the communist-atheists, like Bernie Sanders. Which in some small ways is positive social progress considering Bernie Sanders is Jewish. I'm not sure I'm willing to trade the death of one hideous religious stereotype for the literal death of all of us inherent in the anti-science corporations-first system that sustains it, but the good/bad news is that we're living in a time of such disgusting plenty that we can have Christian moneylenders AND vicious anti-semitism at the same time. What a time to be alive.

The good things on the internet are all in some way smeared with the taint of Donald Trump, but over the past several weeks, I've been confounded by one unexpected kernel of undimmed, undimmable lightness in the form of one Keanu Reeves. We've all seen the cycles before of pop culture online lionization only to be let down when we find out the object of our online love likes to jerk off in front of company or murdered a parrot or tips poorly or openly advocates for the suffering and deaths of mass amounts of children to preventable disease. Come on, Jessica Biel. Be better.

Sure, Keanu is beautiful and wildly successful. The focus (and potential scrutiny!) has narrowed and narrowed and narrowed on him as he's had a dazzlingly high-profile summer. While he's at it, he's out there proactively respecting boundaries and practicing universe-level self-awareness. And if that weren't enough, he and Some Other Guy have announced they will be reviving the best completely stupid movie franchise of all time,* in production now for a 2020 release for the absolute and unadulterated betterment of all woman-and-man-kind.

This can't really be allowed to stand, can it? Someone can't just run around being Keanu Reeves in this fully realized Keanu Reeves Platonic form and expect the rest of the internet to let him get away with it forever... can they? I mean, the dude even has a full-on tragic backstory. Not only do I not want to take him down a peg, I kind of want to fight anyone else who would try.

Maybe that's the reservation, then. It's not the man himself, it's that what I know about him comes from the very modern public sphere, built to cripple and maim the ones it first presents as idols. Even if Keanu Reeves is who he seems to be, we'll never be able to fully, unreservedly appreciate him for himself, as himself, because experience says we have to reserve some of ourselves for the inevitable letdown. And we won't know the extent of the tragedy of our cynicism until the end arrives and the letdown never comes.

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*Eat shit, Fast and the Furious. You're a stupid movie franchise in a completely different way.