Captain Outrageous, Hooks

Hooks and Derrida are a great team, talking about difference and such. As well as Hebdige and commodifying the subculture.

Hooks makes very valid points. I our relatively dull culture anything to spice it up is an instant commodity dream and we most certainly buy into it. For example, the "taboo" world of sexuality is definitely an Other. Secret practices of the bedroom are things that other people do. Its regarded as a subculture and makes a ton of money. Pornography, for instance, makes more money than the NFL a year combined with other companies I can't remember so don't quote me on it. And why do people tip toe into these Other antics? Why it is exactly what Cosmo magazine covers read all the time : Spice up your Sex life!

Complacency is a horrid thing and that is just about all there is to contemporary white culture, horrid complacency. We Other what we can't have and call it what we don't want. We put Those things Over there in a tiny little marketable package then bring them home and display Them...Oh that? Oh no I don't believe in that, or oh no I didn't buy it for that or Oh no this that and the other excuse.

It is the very essence of these practices of experience Bordieu was talking about. We don't believe in that here or that would never happen under this roof so on and so forth. Practices of experience equals practices of lies. We lie to ourselves we enjoy this Other thing. We lie to the consumer world that it is different. I have those sex toys but that doesn't mean I'm, you know, a freak, the modest middle class housewife might say. Or she might admit over lunch some of her practices of experiences, we did this or we tried that, and still even in the very dialogue it will remain a practice of experience existent somewhere else other than here. Oh thats so scandalous her friends may say. Maybe she'll blush about it for a minute but she'll most certainly end by saying well we were only trying to spice things up but now it is fine. And end scene with a fade out to complacency again. But wait, roll the secret clip at the end of the credits. There she is with her hubby practicing experience again, and liking it. Why? We crave what we Other, for whatever reason, Freudian or not.

Who wouldn't want the tastes of the Orient, the primitivity of Tribal cultures, the liberty of a Dominatrix? Othering is liberating. It is an escape to something different without having to admit or commit to it entirely. And why should we as long as we can say we payed a price for it?