I spent the last year writing columns about the fact that there
wasn’t any leading voice in the arts world. There
wasn’t anything for our generation to unite behind and call
uniquely our own.
I still maintain that this is all true, but I do think there is
one man, one musician, one artist, who is the perfect metaphor to
sum up the year that was 2002.
Moby.
Yes, the diminutive electronica rocker, his tour and his musical
output make the perfect allegory for the 2002 world of art.
Think about it.
Moby is bald. He has no mane of hair, no rich flowing locks,
nothing covering up the ideas that stem from his shiny dome.
Similarly, 2002 was a painfully transparent year. Popular culture
turned further away from complexity and went out en masse to the
shamelessly exaggerated and patriotic “Spider-man”
film. People bought millions of Norah Jones records. College
students all over Southern California opted to buy a Dave Matthews
Band record they already had in mp3 format instead of turning to
the pretentious and more obscure hipster scene.
Moby is a very thin little man. There were plenty of high points
in 2002, but all told, it was a thin year for the arts. Outside of
the very top performers, the year was bogged down in mediocrity.
Pseudo-garage rock invaded the radio. The critics fawned all over
weaker-than-average movies like “Road to
Perdition.”
On Moby’s big arena tour he played after David Bowie.
That’s right, the guy famous for having his song in a
commercial for a Leonardo DiCaprio movie went on after the creator
of “Ziggy Stardust.” Who would stay to see that? Well,
apparently plenty of people. People also decided it would be a
great idea to stick around and see a lot of movies that
weren’t as good as their predecessors. People went to see
“Star Wars: Episode 2,” which was an awful movie
nowhere on the level of any of the previous films. Shame on you and
me for watching this. Other lame follow-ups were movies like
“Signs” by M. Night Shyamalan. The goofiness of the
movie is barely made forgivable by the fact Shyamalan once made
“The Sixth Sense.”
Moby’s best and most well-known music consists of new
beats under old vocal samples or middle-of-the-road pop
electronica. 2002 was a year of little originality. It never really
found its own voice.
Moby is extremely preachy. He goes on and on about pretty little
animals and not eating them. 2002 saw lots of artists weighing in
on supposedly big issues like patriotism. Apparently, people like
George Lucas and Toby Keith think we should be good democratic
Americans, while others are anti-war or, as in Martin
Scorsese’s case in “Gangs of New York,” intent on
showing how death is the only way to purge anything.
In the end though, despite all his shortcomings and how hip it
is to hate him, Moby is really not terrible. Neither was 2002.
Conservative 2002 could be thought of like conservative 1958
““ not at all. There was no major revolution in 1958, and
Moby’s “18” album didn’t exactly
revolutionize last year either. Moby and 2002 will both be
primarily forgotten, except by the more intense fans of their
specific outputs.
And appropriately enough, however atrocious the act itself was,
Moby was beaten up recently. Thus ends 2002, “The Year of
Moby.” Let’s hope 2003 kicks its ass.