William S. Burroughs went through life being celebrated and reviled often in the same sentence. Countless people considered him one of the most important writers of the 20th century. Transgressive writing maintains a writer’s interest for only so long. After a while the most daring thing you can do is not describe doing heroin but selling out to the Fox Kids channel.
Decades in the avant-garde writing circles taught William nothing about selling out. He was sick of living in some boring-ass part of Kansas. Fishing might be fun he reckoned. Living in Los Angeles getting fucked up and writing the most offensively stupid show ever sounded better. Taking his things, he hit the big, sprawling depraved decadent destroyed douchebag capital of the world. William was sure they’d love his pitch.
Creative types sat eagerly awaiting William’s presentation. William nervously paced outside. Never had he needed to describe his art to anyone. Sitting there he’d crank it out the way he wanted. Suddenly he re-thought his idea about selling out this hard. Did he even have the potential to earn money off of his material? All these questions popped into his head like so many euphemisms for dildos. Perhaps another YUPPIE band would use a dildo’s name in vain like they did in the 70s.
People stared at him, this gaunt old man in front of a room of eager, hopeful twenty and thirty something losers. William knew the type. They looked like Tea Heads, the kind who’d sell you up the river to the cops because they were weak. Coughing onto one of the corporate types without covering his mouth he began:
“The Might Morphine Power Rangers are a group of superheroes living in Wholesome, America. Gaining their powers through the ingestion of vast quantities of morphine they manage to fight off vivid hallucinations from their nightmares from destroying their families. When they aren’t fighting they earn money by beating up drunks on subways and buses late at night. Morphine is their entire life; it perpetuates their fighting and not feeling any pain from the consequences of their actions. By doing Morphine they live in a constant sustained lower part of a downward spiral. No ups or downs exist in this bleak environment.”
Upon completion of his pitch, William sat down to rapturous applause. Never one for smiling a slight smirk emerged on his face. Finally he’d sold the suckers a taste of their own medicine. The Trojan horse had arrived in Los Angeles. Inside their disgusting city he’d burn it to the ground, no questions asked.
A few revisions came up. Slowly these revisions became full-on rewrites. William expected some changes but nothing to the extent they purposed. Gradually a certain pit grew in his stomach which he jumped into headfirst.
First, they wanted the heroes to be full heroes, not the anti-heroes William suggested. ‘Morphine’ got shortened down to ‘Morphin’ to indicate the Rangers had normal lives outside of being super heroes. Morphing into superheroes appealed to family viewers more than watching freaked out drug addicts fight off hallucinations. No longer were these teenagers saddled with a debilitating drug habit. Instead, they fought in the name of love. Tangible, non-imaginary foes became the villains as the executives stripped away more of Burroughs’ flight of fancy. Parts of his offensive ideas made it into the show particularly the utter lack of a coherent plot or purpose.
Dejected would describe Burroughs’ mood upon hearing these changes. Happy would describe him after he received his first paycheck. Reviews of the show met his expectations so he decided to stay with it. Among the his favorite reviews were “Pointlessly violent and offensively stupid”, “Offensively violent and pointlessly stupid”, “this is a hallmark in children’s television programming”, “I’m more disturbing by the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers than I am by Naked Lunch”, “Wait, how old is Burroughs, doesn’t he do a ton of heroin, how did he survive this long?”, “this challenges what the word ‘entertainment’ means”, and “I guess this is why Burroughs joined ‘the church of the subgenius’”.
Living in Los Angeles brought its own joy. Finally Burroughs was surrounded by people he hated. Being around people who adored getting spat upon made his life complete. Ending it watching his acclaimed program while out of his mind: Priceless.
No comments:
Post a Comment