A Safe Space for the Provocateurs

19 May 2022

I was a horrible teenager. One of those pricks who loved an argument, browsed 4chan, watched Christopher Hitchens debates on YouTube, and said some things that make my toes curl when I think back to them. The most appropriate term would be ‘edgelord’ (a word that makes me feel viscerally unwell; the same feeling that millennials will lie and tell you that they feel when they hear the word ‘moist’. (All of them bullshitters by the way)).

I, thankfully, got off this pipeline early, like many of that crowd do once they leave school, get jobs, pay bills, and understand the world isn’t what the Internet makes it out to be. However, I always did have a soft spot for those artists who never seemed to grow out of this childish mindset. Those who take a big stick and prod the bear.

This defiance peaked for me during the late 90s, and the examples I’m going to use best describe the sort of artist I’m talking about. I don’t want people to think I’m defending the “can’t say anything these days” ilk of Morgan, Gervais, and Carlson; these people who you’ve never actively sought out but can’t seem to escape. The clueless morons who’ve made a career spewing stale piss from their mouths to an audience of braindead dinosaurs who just want their misguided opinions reinforced. I wish that cancel culture was real so I would never have to see Gervais shrug his shoulders while saying “Oh, come on” after making a witty joke about a baby being raped or something. These are not who I’m talking about here, I just wanted to get that out the way.

For me, the ultimate turn of the century provocateur is Danish film director Lars Von Trier. The co-creator of the Dogme 95 manifesto and director of the fun family hit Nymphomaniac, the greatest first date movie of all time; Antichrist, and the feel-good hit of the summer; Melancholia. In 1998, Von Trier premiered Idioterne (The Idiots) at Cannes, famously evoking a

walk-out from Mark Kermode who yelled “Il est merde!” before being thrown out of the cinema. The film being about a group of adults, for the most part, pretending to be mentally disabled, and then having hardcore sex. I side with Kermode; it is a shit film. Personally, I think the other half of the Dogme 95 movement, Thomas Vinterberg is ten times the director Von Trier is. However, you simply cannot overlook the hilarity that is audience reaction to these types of films. I love it. It’s authentically offensive. You can practically see Von Trier’s shit-eating grin plastered on the reels of film. The film has so very little to say, you can read it as anti-establishment, but for the most part, Idioterne is a masterclass in offense and, as an ex-edgelord, I love it. Von Trier was later banned from Cannes Film Festival in 2011 for saying he “sympathises with [Hitler]” during a press conference for Melancholia, in what I take to be a poorly judged, deeply European joke. Later, wearing a t-shirt reading ‘PERSONA NON GRATA’ at Berlin Film Festival in 2014, cementing that not only does cancel culture not exist, white male privilege is real, but Von Trier’s attitude towards this shit is as unwaveringly smug and unbearably juvenile as it ever was – I can’t help but find it funny. It’s only a shame he turned out to be a sexual offender, who’d have guessed?

The soundtrack to turn of the century teenagers and 90s kids alike was undoubtedly Eminem. For me, being born in 1998, my Eminem album was 2009’s Relapse. The lead single ‘We Made You’ got so much radio play I knew the lyrics off by heart just from hearing it in the car on my way to school. However, his debut The Slim Shady LP, released in 1999 (a couple of months before the Columbine shooting) defined the ‘fuck you Mom’ attitude of the era. Eminem’s name in my house, ran by my hard-core Jehovah’s Witness parents, was mud. He was the bogeyman of the prudish, sensible and God fearing. And as a child surrounded by Christian morality, I couldn’t get enough. I re-listened to this LP yesterday, and I’ll be honest, it holds up. I thought it may be an American Pie situation, a piece you thought as the time was the most offensive and funny shit you’d ever seen, but upon rewatch; disappointingly tame. But no, it’s gloriously filthy, offensive, and downright mean spirited in places. Some of the lyrics on ‘Guilty Conscience’, ’97 Bonnie and Clyde’ and ‘Role Model’ are so violent it still makes me uncomfortable. Direct references in lyrics to rape, murder, drugs make my stomach churn nowadays, but as a rebellious little Christian boy, it was pathos from the Abrahamic mundanity of my existence. It’s a less authentic type of provocation, I’ll give you that. You can tell by the skits on the album, his main goal was to offend your parents and make 13-year-olds laugh, but you must hand it to him; it worked. I mean, again, it’s kind of lazy, cheap, and easy but so am I. It’s a fun, offensive album that has its place in the zeitgeist.

Finally, my favourite of them all. 1998’s My Bed, an art piece by my hometown’s most famous export; Tracey Emin. A filthy, disgusting, depraved display of female sexuality and depression. And it’s fucking wonderful. Her unmade bed, complete with stains, period blood-soaked panties, used condoms and a pair of slippers. It’s a perfect piece of art in my opinion. It forced the audience to stare reality down without breaking eye contact. People hate eye contact. And growing up in her hometown, Margate, everyone despised it and its links to the town. Which made me love it even more. Long live Emin, she’s a hero.

I want to reiterate; I don’t enjoy edgy jokes for the sake of edgy jokes. I simply feel that art that makes people upset does have its place in the culture. I’m an annoyingly woke, leftist, snowflakes, I simply fear we will lose the provocateurs to the right-wing podcast hosts. Me and my teenager self both pray we don’t. Sometimes, the best way to answer a question is the stick your middle finger up.