“You make me want to La-La,” she said through the dusty speakers near my feet, “On the kitchen on the floor.” She added.  It was the most amazing single piece of artistry I have ever encountered in my entire life.  Studying Salvador Dali for a Spanish project left me with a strange sense of artistic yearning.  No one could fill the void left by his surrealist, shock-inducing masturbatory transitive insanity.  No one could complete the chain of disturbing works that fill your mind like a milkshake entering an empty vessel, and drips out the bottom like a melting clock.  Until Ashlee Simpson.

 

            Ashlee Simpson is the sister of a popular pop music star whose fame is unequaled in the young adult market.  She is famous for being the sister of someone famous for being famous.  It is quite a lovely product of America’s celebrity farm culture.  Ashlee decided that she should dye her hair black, as opposed to the platinum blonde of her famous sister, and release an album.  Simpson stands in her sister’s shadow, and rides her coat-tails to stardom, however; she claims to be the antithesis of her sister.  This irony is at the heart of her career.

 

            Her album, whose title is inconsequential, is a “punk rock” themed caper into the world of pre-teen angst.  Her irony stands further magnified when looked upon under the microscope of the genre of Punk Rock.  Punk rock has been identified as an anti-popular culture movement designed to counter the “mainstream” media.  However, both Ashlee and her sister are products and shimmering poster children for the mainstream of popular culture.  Having only heard one song on the album, and admittedly knowing that this is enough, I have deduced that this is the highest art in the Almighty Lord’s Domain.  One song is entitled “La-La” and plays in the background of a shampoo commercial.  The lyrics read, in part:

 

            You can dress me up diamonds

You can dress me up in dirt

You can throw me like a line-man

I like it better when it hurts

 

Other than introducing children to the joys of sado-masochism, this song produces pronounced reaction.  My friend said, when I related to her that I found this song to be the pinnacle of human artistic achievement in the history of Mankind, that it made her want to “rip out [her] eyes and eat them.”  This reaction is art.

 

            Art makes one disturbed.  If it does not make you feel, it is not art.  What is a painting of a puppy without your reaction (namely: “Awww, a puppy!)?  What is a movie featuring an eyeball being sliced in half by a razor blade, revealing the jelly-like substance held inside, without your shock?  And what is Ashlee Simpson without your abhorrent horror and shock at the degradation of American culture, music, and society?

           

I'm like an alley cat

Drink the milk up, I want more

You make me wanna

You make me wanna scream

The screams of the listener is her art.  Your shock is her artistry.  And her words are the noose from which you hang.  Ashlee Simpson is the greatest artist of this, or any other, generation.


This work written by Zach Claywell. Reproduction requests or general questions should be directed to Zach Claywell care of Zach Claywell at yahoo dot com

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