“A sense of restlessness began to be addressed tentatively, and was confronted with increasing boldness as the decade progressed. Battles were being waged on multiple fronts of this unacknowledged war, claims were being sought from historically neglected constituents.”
“Faced with the death of its utopian hopes, the remnants of America’s counterculture split into two tendencies: the pastoral and the criminal. Its despondency was turned inwards and outwards; one side sought to build alternative structures in line with a higher authority, while the other strove to rearrange the wreckage of the existing order.”
“The cowboy is an emissary of civilisation, enduring all the hardships the elements can throw at him to create a space in which civilised values can flourish unhindered. The symbolism of the cowboy is so potent that it continues to be invoked for political gain.”
“With the Acid Western, the genre had once again proven itself capable of assimilating new grievances and anxieties.”
“With his concern for the outsider, and his reorienting of the West’s perception in the American mind, Peckinpah helped to birth the Acid Western.”
“What is perhaps most remarkable about the rise of Nirvana — and the industry’s hastily assembled appellation “alternative rock” — is the belief by many at the time that it had come from nowhere…”
“The characters in ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains,’ ‘Smithereens’ and ‘Suburbia’ find in punk rock a convenient shorthand for authenticity, a posture which presages its eventual absorption into the very mechanisms it sets out to oppose.”
“There is little doubt that ‘Gabriel Over the White House’ was a test balloon of sorts, priming the audience for a discussion on the merits of the strongman leader, asking them what they would be willing to sacrifice in order to ameliorate the national plight.”
Vague Visages Short Stories #13: iamdifid: by D.M. Palmer (Sheffield, UK)
“In its own histrionic way, the ‘Maniac’ cycle presages a wave of reaction that would draw its power from the patriarchal fear of dispossession.”
