An ode to the unmaskers. | Seer. | Tell your story.
Image source: tnooz.
They stand with a colossal smirk, and the power of the truth of mockery flows through them. They have seen it all, inside and out, and are invincible. No celebrity, or power that be, can get the best of them. Even in places where their kind is killed, the world is in awe of them, not their killers. The ones who raise a finger get mocked in return.
They are the deconstructors, the weapons that peel off the glitz and glam, the status, the symbols, the heroes and villains, and lay it all bare, for the thrill of it, and for that innate discomfort you feel, when you realize the shrines of our times are smaller than they seem.
They aren’t the originals, but they’re doing just fine, aloof from the real jokers, and the ones being mocked. Accepting their mockery is a virtue, rejecting it, a vice. Such is their sheer power.
They’ve always been the unexpected heroes of the times, from ancient to now. The most powerful men, with the most powerful means to kill, have to bow to them.
They create art, they write, they make videos, songs, not for themselves, like everyone else. They do it to give more attention to the ones being mocked, and it’s a giant power play. In the end, they know that the mockery may also be a form of affirmation to the mocked, but at least they are giving themselves and to everyone else the thrill of the unmasking. The thrill and the discomfort you feel, when you unmask the glitz and bring them down to look these makeshift kings in the eye and laugh at them, sometimes laugh with them.
They are agents of our nihilistic angst, our only scraps-for-weapons when we feel powerless against makeshift kings. When our individual frustrations don’t make a dent in Providence, they are our consolers who fight on our behalf.
They spare no one, they punch up and down, just to scrape the surface of the ever-elusive, boxed up reality, that is supposed to entertain us but bores us to death. When it stops working, the unmaskers get to work.
Sometimes they work together, sometimes in isolation. They create their own systems to fight the established ones. Sometimes all they have is words, but they outsource the means, and that is enough. It doesn’t matter to them if the edge gets too strong, they are in a relentless pursuit of it.
For sometimes, providence stops working and signals us to get to work. That is when they arise.
Sometimes they tell a story, sometimes they just break open the existing ones, they’re just like you and me but different.
And it may be the great irony of our time that they become the agents of escapism alongside the mocked, but here’s a twist: they leave open the tear, the opening that makes us see from behind the slick window, the big show. And that would be their greatest achievement.
Originally published at www.seermag.com on October 28, 2018.
