In short, the polyamorous marriage between media ideology and industrial imagination goes back to Plato’s Cave, at least, and in Lynn, Massachusetts, to shoe-manufacturing profiteers who paid those lousy wages for perimetric and static use of something we call “labour-power at work.”
Funk parallels Jimmy Hoffa, Wattstax, the death of Henry Ford’s crony Harry Bennett, the arguments of Jefferson Cowrie’s Last Days of the Working Class, Dock Ellis throwing a perfect game on LSD, the goddamned Deer Hunter, Paul Schrader’s Blue Collar, stagflation, the threat of nuclear annihilation and concerts mounted against such, pro-labor PACs, Betty Davis’s “Politician Man,” two energy crises, the Business Roundtable Lobby, Bootsy Collins dropping acid and flipping over the handlebars of his road bike in the middle of the woods thus triggering an out-of-body experience, and good ol’ monetarist theory.
Psychosomatic Netflix binges, off-notification sexting on Signal, ranking Grubhub delivery options by how likely or not will be your engagement with humanity, or clicking “Report” on the trust-fund-enabled sponsored content behind a cyborg-influencer’s Instagram post about detox tummy tone wraps, are all such immaterial allusions as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded with a sleep (or, as well like to call it, Suspend to RAM mode).