Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Sundance's "Iconoclasts" Curiously Lacking Iconoclasm

I love the show Iconoclasts, but why the hell is it called "Icono- clasts"? Open your diction- aries: 1) One who attacks and seeks to overthrow traditional or popular ideas or institutions. 2) One who destroys sacred religious images. Consider some of the show's guests: Samuel L. Jackson - bad actor and hollywood conformist. Bill Russell - what?! Tom Ford - seamstress (makes icons doesn't destroy them). Jeff Koons - the opposite of an iconoclast. Brian Grazer - he is tradition. Sumner Redstone - not. Renée Zellweger - creepy nothing like an iconoclast. Mario Batali - cooks italian food, not an iconoclast. Michael Stipe - maybe a little. Robert Redford and Paul Newman - so well known for their assault on tradition and the church. Quentin Tarantino - maybe a little. Isabella Rossellini - model, nothing iconoclastic. Dean Kamen - yeah, a little. Lorne Michaels - iconoclast. Dave Chapelle and Maya Angelou - okay, they're iconoclasts. Mike Meyers - lol. Alicia Keys - love her, but not even in the iconoclast universe. Wynton Marsalis - not. Ashley Judd - time to rename the show. Don't get me wrong, I adore most of the guests they've had, but why not call the show "Paired Genius"? I'll end with a quote from the ultimate iconoclast, Mencken: "The iconoclast proves enough when he proves by his blasphemy that this or that idol is defectively convincing - that at least one visitor to the shrine is left full of doubts. The liberation of the human mind has been best furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe - that the god in the sanctuary was a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms."

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