Kobe Bryant’s “Musecage” Is a PSA for Hate-Fueled Childhood Domination
Or is it something more?
Finally, someone is stepping up and teaching our kids how to be winners. Participation trophies? Do you think Kobe Bryant ever put a participation trophy on his dresser? Of course not. There was no room next to all the trophies he got for actually winning. Do you think Kobe Bryant ever went to a postseason pizza party to receive a “thanks for playing” medal? No! Championship athletes would never pollute their bodies with excess carbs and dairy. Kobe is a winner — a REAL winner. And it’s high time a REAL winner told our kids how to get motivated.
So how does Kobe suggest kids get motivated? By using a musecage, duh.
Do you have a musecage? In some fashion or another, we all do. They’re the actual physical spaces that we design to maximize our creative tailwind. Musecages ignite inspiration and remind us what we’re striving for. According to Kobe, these spaces are filled with “light” (happy, aspirational) musings and “dark” (hateful, fearful) musings and the dark ones are the best ones.
My musecage is filled with posters of great athletes and musicians and books from my favorite writers. Yours might have pictures of your family and a candle-laden shrine to Jesus, or maybe yours has posters of exotic BDSM practices and a mirror on the ceiling. Trump’s is lined with paintings of Orangutans, a fireplace for burning books and dozens of TVs showing reruns of old Miss Universe pageants — or so I’ve heard. We all have musecages. They inspire us, like Kobe says in his two part animated short, to “stay focused and motivated.”
People have created these cages since the beginning of humanity. Cave people drew images of Woolly Mammoths and Saber-toothed Tigers — the “musecave”. Ancient Greek philosophers would go to the town center, the trading floor of ideas, or to gymnasiums filled with naked wrestlers. Today, people have posters and books and pictures and shrines and mirrors on the ceiling.
A musecage is not a new idea. A demon-summoning musecage for kids though, that’s new.
With player-driven sports content finding it’s footing in a dynamic media landscape, Kobe made a bold move going the animated-short-film route. Exactly which demographic he was trying to reach with this visual ode to fury is unclear. “Children between the ages of five and ten” is a good guess. These kids don’t know what a muse is. If they looked around their room and listed the things they have on display it might include a few participation “twophies” and an iPad playing Moana. They are taught to “play nice” at school and to help their friends up when they fall down. Which is why Kobe’s work is so groundbreaking and so important.
Kids shouldn’t be “playing nice.” They should be dominating and destroying. They should be filling their rooms with pictures of people they hate and stewing over them during long bouts of meditation and self-administered masochistic rituals. They should be boiling their participation trophies into liquid metal to use for paving their path to world domination.
That’s the thesis of Kobe’s Musecage — kids should channel their inner darkness to lay waste to their foes. Of all the causes Kobe could champion, this is the Kobe-est. It makes sense.
Remember this signature face that Kobe would make after scoring a big bucket?
This is the face of a man who spent the night before the game burning pictures of his opponents in a small bonfire in his hotel room then using the ash to make ink to tattoo himself with using sewing needles. This is the face of a man who rocks himself to sleep with the first verse of “Hit Em Up” playing on repeat in his headphones. This is the face of a man with a dark musecage.
You’re probably thinking, “Wow this guy is sick. Is he saying kids should be practicing Satanist witchcraft and plotting the downfall of everyone who stands in their way?” Exactly. That’s exactly what I’m saying. Rather, that’s exactly what Kobe is saying. And he’s right. But I’m not anti-kid. I want them to be the best they can be.
For example, kids shouldn’t have to pay for school lunch… with money. They should pay with blood sweat and tears. Not their own; the blood sweat and tears of their classmates who were too weak to flight for their food. If a kid isn’t willing to gouge another kid’s eye out with a plastic spork, then that kid doesn’t deserve the sustenance our tax dollars provide. Educational nuances like these would help to tilt the arc of American history toward greatness, just as Kobe is suggesting.
The most important question begged by Kobe’s Musecage is “Why?” Why did Kobe make these videos? Was he simply moved, from the bottom of his cold dark heart, to advise the youth on the nature of domination? Was it merely an act of public service? Or was it something more?
The cynical among us might posit that Kobe is plotting his revenge on the NBA players that are poised to surpass his hoops greatness — the Westbrooks, Hardens, Durants and Currys. Maybe Kobe, the ultimate competitor, is trying to motivate the world’s youth to break the records of the guys that are breaking his. A subtle “if I’m going down, we’re all going down” approach.
Maybe he has dreams of his own home renovation show on HGTV in which he remodels kids’ rooms.
In all likelihood, Kobe simply wanted to be on camera and perpetuate the legend of his competitiveness.
Whatever his motivation, if it leads to more eyebrow-raising, twitter finger-twitching content like this, good. If that content teaches the young snowflakes of our nation to stop crying when they spill their kale smoothies and start laughing when they dump them over the heads of their pants-peeing peers (this kid gets it), even better.
Muse on, Mamba. Muse on.
