Cults & Cult Figures
Remember that these articles are several years old and the information in them may not be entirely up-to-date.
Bill
Simon and Other Arbitrary Cult Figures
(From S@TP #4, Mid-March,
1995)
Occasionally I select an Arbitrary Cult Figure, a picture of a person chosen for no apparent reason that I use for collages and mail art purposes. I become temporarily obsessed with these images, and they become themes in my artwork for a period of time.
To understand Bill Simon you must first understand Johnny Mann, who actually is famous. He had a TV show in the 1960's, and he put out dozens of records. These days he has a troupe of singers and dancers who tour around America singing patriotic songs and dancing around in red, white and blue spandex jumpsuits (actually, they don't really sing, they lip-sync the songs). My friend Jay worked technical crew for one of these shows in 1986 at his high school, and he took a whole stack of programs that had big pictures of Johnny on them. We used these in a series of collages we were making for the cover of a catalog of "underground books" he was selling through the mail. I became obsessed with his picture. Maybe it was that stupid grin, or maybe it was his tie, or his name... I don't know. I had tiny color stickers made up, a giant poster, and hundreds of copies of his picture, and I cut out his head and put it over the heads of people in posters. He just seems so damn... well, enthusiastic! I had twelve different names under his picture, from "Salmon P. Chase" to "Ernest Borgnine" to "Sylvester Stallone," mostly because nobody knew who he was anyway... well, except for my dad who asked me what I was doing with all the pictures of Johnny Mann.
So what about Bill Simon? He was the roommate of a close friend of mine in college. I didn't like Bill too much when I met him because he seemed pretty arrogant and cocky. One day Bill left his high school yearbook picture out on his desk, and I borrowed it and made up a sheet of pictures of him. I started putting them up in the dorm building with the slogan "Get to Know Me!" written on them. Bill's friends were amused, but Bill was kind of mad about it and tore them all down. This made me more determined. Bill's picture soon appeared on bulletin boards all around campus. October was heralded as International Bill Simon Month. To celebrate Bill's month, we took a whole stack of pictures of him to New York City and handed them out to passers-by, which was photographically documented in the "Book of Bill." (That's my friend Mark in the picture, by the way, who also gave me the recipe for "Pasta Sauce to End All Time.") I asked Bill's permission before I made up the T-shirts because for a while he was talking about bringing me up on harassment charges after people started calling him up to find out why his picture was everywhere. He laughs about it now, but I think it really pissed him off for a while. Actually, he doesn't look much like the picture any more. He lives in Illinois now, I think. If you see him, say "hi."
Tie-dye artist and Deadhead-in-denial Emmett Hollander came from an article in a car magazine about Volkswagen vans and the people that drive them. I picked out the picture because it was pretty weird to begin with, and even though he followed the Grateful Dead around, he denied being a deadhead. After the treatment I gave it, Emmett became a kind of Jesus-looking guy (He dyed for your sins?).
Some people seem to have trouble separating a symbol from what it represents, that is to see is as just a representation. Money is nothing but paper, the crucifix is just a piece of wood or plastic or metal, but it is the meaning assigned to these arbitrary things that is important to us, and I think this whole cult figure thing is a reflection on this. If someone is portrayed as an important figure, people seem to think of them as one, even if they are unknown. Disposable icons are perfect for our throwaway culture. Just pick a picture of someone, and make up stories about them. Invent your own folklore. Does anybody really think that Jesus was a pasty-looking northern European type? He was from the Middle East, for cryin' out loud! Somebody somewhere picked that image for him and millions of people believe it now.
Pick a picture of someone from a magazine, blow it up and declare him or her the messiah, and chances are good that someone will believe it. Organize your friends into a cult group based on this image. Write a book, like the Church of the Subgenius people did. The Book of the Subgenius is just a bunch of mail-art type collages and bizarre psychotic essays. They have a whole "religion" based on J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, a guy smoking a pipe whose picture looks like something they cut out of a magazine from the 1950's. To see the reach of the Subgenius, one only need to watch The Late Show with David Letterman. If you look carefully in the backdrop, right behind where Dave does the monologue, there's a picture of half of Bob Dobbs' face, under a big "E."
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This article is a work of fiction as well as the result of an overactive imagination and does not reflect the actual goals or policies of the good people at the California Clock Co., who have given the world a wonderful product at a reasonable price for over 50 years. Kit Cat and the Kit Cat Clock are registered trademarks of the California Clock Co.
It all seems innocent enough... a Felix-like cat with a clock in it's stomach, with eyes and a tail that move back and forth... but there is something darker lurking beneath the surface of the jolly and seemingly harmless Kit Cat Clock. Behind those sinister moving eyes lurk a great enigma, perhaps one that will never be fully understood. There's a dark cult with a hidden agenda based on the mesmerizing eyes of this clock. How many naive people have fallen prey to the Kit Cat Cult? Perhaps we will never know. The numbers are growing, however, because according to the company, every three minutes for the past 50 years, someone has bought a Kit Cat clock. I only hope this story reaches you and your loved ones in time.
My first experience with a Kit Cat clock came in 1991 when I was working in Aunt Elvis's "Artist Marketplace and Gift Emporium". While a co-worker and I were rummaging in the supply closet and throwing out old empty boxes, I found the clock. I was struck immediately by those eyes... eyes that seem to stare right through your soul. Since the clock was missing it's tail, I was allowed to keep it as it could not be sold in that condition.
Happily I took the clock home and plugged it in. At once the eyes started moving. At first it seems amusing, but after a while it becomes genuinely disconcerting to see the movement of cat's eyes when one is alone in the room. It took quite a while to get used to, and while I was getting used to it, I could feel a change coming over me... I was becoming more and more interested in the clock, finding myself staring at those rolling eyes for long periods of time...
Several days later, rummaging through the same closet at work, we found several copies of Smile, the bimonthly "official newsletter of the Kit Cat fan club". This concept intrigued me... a fan club for a clock. The newsletter itself was almost as odd as the clock. It's eight pages of really strange people gushing about how the clock makes them smile and feel good. The word "smile" appears in virtually every sentence. There's all sorts of simple-minded "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" philosophy, but they neglect to say what it is, exactly, about this clock that makes them feel so good.
The editor and fan club president, Joan Tillman, talks about how important it is to renew your $3 per year subscription because "surely you'll want to keep receiving this positive resource", and because this newsletter is "our labor of love. It's our way of sending a smile into your home; so no matter what life throws in your way, you know you can always count on a 'SMILE'" (Things can't really be too bad for people who can afford to spend $40 on a clock, and $10 to join a fan club for that clock).
The newsletter features a monthly riddle contest, as well as a "Crazy Caption" contest, where they print a cartoon of Kit Cat and readers send in captions. For instance, for the picture of Kit Cat in the bath tub, people sent in captions like "Clean as a whistle in a tub full of bubbles, keeps you smilin' and fresh-- forgettin' your troubles." (this was the grand prize winner) or honorable mention winners "I'm forever ducking bubbles with a smile" and "Bubble-Double your cares away", (what on earth does "Bubble-Double" mean?). In some of the issues, honorable mention winners were obviously captions for the wrong picture on the same page or for a cartoon from a past issue, but they win 10% discount coupons anyway. This made me a bit suspicious, because it seems that anyone who even enters wins honorable mention. For example, in the honorable mention section for a cartoon of Kit-Cat proposing to his female Kit-Cat counterpart, someone got honorable mention for "Your smile will make my puzzled heart complete", obviously referring to a different cartoon printed several months before (Kit Cat putting together a heart-shaped puzzle with one piece missing).
It all falls into place on the last page- Kit Cat merchandise! Direct from the company at full retail price, including special "limited edition" colors of the clocks! The fan club is just a merchandising front for the clock company, so they can make more money! And the winners of the various contest only get coupons for a percentage off of the merchandise, so even with the grand prize coupon (50% off) they still make a decent profit, (standard retail markup being 100% of wholesale price, so a Kit Cat clock that sells for $40 costs the store $20, and probably costs the company only about $9 to manufacture). Labor of love indeed! And, they make you pay $3 a year for their glorified catalogs!
I shrugged them off as a greedy corporation with a lot of flaky customers. Then one day, we got a new shipment of the clocks at the store, in the swanky display case featuring the Kit Cat Creed, and there were clocks with tails! We set up one on the counter that we couldn't hook up a tail to, so I immediately took the tail home for my incomplete clock. I carefully attached it, and hung the clock up on the wall. It was at this point that I guess I blacked out or something because the next thing I knew I was still standing there three days later muttering the Kit Cat Creed over and over to myself.
I had joined the Kit Cat Cult. Obviously the combination of the tail and eyes moving in beautiful syncopation was more powerful than I first had imagined. The simple elegance of it, the ballet of timekeeping, the simple black and white hypnosis of the clock had me enthralled. I immediately sent out my $10 check to join the legion of the doomed, lured like Kit Cat's other mindless minions with the promise of a bonanza of Kit Cat Merchandise ("a $25 retail value!") and a year's fix of Kit Cat propaganda in the pages of Smile.
After 4 weeks, a box arrived with my membership card, a bunch of stickers of Kit Cat in various un-cat-like settings (water skiing, playing the piano, baking cookies, hang gliding), and a swanky Kit Cat T-shirt (bearing the "Brings out the Smile in you!" logo). I gave up my previous identity to become member #4436, but it was worth it to have the Creed on the back of a wallet-size card so I could read those reassuring words in times of great distress, when my faith in Kit Cat was shaken.
Were there really 4,500 of us? Were we the only hard-core Kit Cat junkies? And what of the countless thousands who never found the fan club? People who bought the clock second-hand, so they didn't get the handy membership form in the box? Unable to share their inexplicable obsession with others of a like mind, living lives in the shadow of fear that people will realize that they are under the spell of a plastic timepiece.
Despite the urgings of fellow cult members, I finally conquered the call of the clock in 1994, with six weeks of heavy deprogramming, a diet of pork products, and large doses of peyote and laxatives.
Is this Cult capable of harming others? It's hard to say. The Manson Family was known to smile constantly, and seemed harmless enough to many who knew them, but the insane stare of their leader made them commit murder. At this time the company seems content to simply make money from their clock-induced zombies, but who knows where their dark ambitions will lead? The elimination of other clock companies? Mickey Mouse found slain gangland-style in his Orlando, Florida home? Or perhaps the mysterious disappearance of arch-rival Felix the cat? Only Joan Tillman and California Clock Company know for sure.
(from the July/August 1993 "What's News" column of Smile, Volume 9, Number 4, Page 1)
Over the years we have sold thousands of Kit Cat Beach Towels. The Beach Towels are a great, colorful way to introduce others to the excitement of living with a positive attitude.Have any of you with a Kit Cat Beach Towel ever experienced this:
"Hey, is that a Felix beach towel?"
"Felix? No way! It's Kit Cat! You've seen the cat clock with the eyes and tail that go back and forth, right?"
"Sure! I think they're so cute!"
"Well, I'm a member of the Kit Cat fan club, who's Creed is: Put a smile on everyone's face; Love in everyone's heart; Energy in everyone's body; And be a positive force in everyone's life!"
Ken Miller remains in hiding following threats from anonymous callers, who promised to "punch his clock" and "find out what makes him tick".
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Ben Robey is building skateboards, or at least he was in an exercise on page 188 (section 7-4) of a pre-algebra text book. This picture and name sparked a revolution in 1991 when Tim Leasher and his friends began making up facts about Ben and recording them in three volumes. These homemade, photocopied books each contain 1000 facts, in-jokes, song lyrics, existential truths and cliches turned upside-down about the legendary and multi-faceted Mr. Robey. These testimonies to the greatness of Ben were never released to the general public- readership was restricted to contributors and close friends, but through an anonymous liaison, "Madame X", with contacts on the inside of the hyper-secretive Robey organization, I have become privy to all three volumes. Contained this issue of S@TP are the general public's first glimpses of these strange and hilarious books. Madame X has risked life and limb to spirit them away from her sister (a Robyite) in the dead of night to my eager eyes. Presented here, despite death threats, ominous copyright notices and a veil of secrecy, are excerpts from Every Ben Robey Fact Known to Man, Every Other Ben Robey Fact Known to Man, and The Revenge of Ben Robey, with apologies to Mr. Leasher and due respect to the almighty Benjamin Clayton Rudy Gus Muhammad Nebuchadnezzar Robey.
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Much like the Kit Cat article, this article is a work of fiction as well as the result of an overactive imagination and does not reflect the actual goals or policies of the good people at Big Boy Restaurants. "Big Boy" and the Big Boy figurre are registered trademarks.
A few months ago, I stopped with some friends at a rest stop along I-95 and we ate at Bob's Big Boy restaurant. On the way out, Mary picked up a Big Boy comic book from a pile near the door. At first it seemed like any other restaurant coloring and comic book provided to placate restless children, but as we read on, we realized that it was more than that... much more.
There's a club you can join, jokes and drawings from club members, messages written in secret code, and a pen pal club. It's almost like Highlights, except any kid can pick up a copy of Highlights and get the jokes without the use of a secret code cipher.
Page one of the comic book features letters from children which are supposedly answered by the mythical Big Boy and his assistant Dolly (he's a busy boy, after all, mowing the lawn, making burgers... hey, wash your hands before you give me that, will ya?) The letters are written by friendly children who have no idea that they are writing to a huge corporation, telling "Big Boy" about their lives and how they would like to have pen pals. Some of them contain odd passages in code, like "A OG OGODVO. A OG WHAPADL PE UEI PE." Many of the responses (most actually signed "Big Boy") completely ignore what the children have written and berate them for not having their parents sign the letter (this is required for your name to be included in the pen pal list). An Example:
...Hi Pal, how are you doing? I would like very much for you to please send me a copy of your latest comic book, or at least a copy of your pen pal list. Our neighborhood Big Boy restaurant closed over two months ago, so I have trouble getting my favorite comic book. I'm asking for the comic book so that, if my name appears, I'll have it for a treasured souvenir. I would appreciate it so very much. Hope to hear from you soon!
Your Pal,
Akira TerrySince we can't send you the book (it goes from the printer directly to the restaurants), do what a lot of eager readers do: ask all older cousins, aunts and uncles to stop in at any Big Boy restaurant they come across, and pick up the latest issue of the comic for you!
Dolly
There's a "Club Page" with jokes and cartoons from the members of the club (better run out to Big Boy with your folks to get a copy of the one you're in), with the punch lines in secret "Big Boy Code." Later, there's a full page ad for the Big Boy Club, which is free and only for kids under the age of 13. It has a headline written in secret code, that through many hours of careful decoding, proved to read "Big Boy is your Friend." Some friend! Won't even send you a copy of his free comic book!
The comics with Big Boy as the main character are a goldmine for voice balloons with the phrase "Big Boy" in them. In one entitled "Nugget is the Hero!", Big Boy and his dog Nugget go up in the space shuttle for no apparent reason. Don't just think that this is lackluster writing because it's made for kids either, because in the most unforeseeable twist in the history of literature, Big Boy's dog ends up saving the shuttle and all the astronauts.
On the surface, this appears to be a great way to keep your precocious toddlers entertained with a bit of fun, but beyond that it's a marketing scheme geared towards getting kids to drag their parents to the restaurant because, what parent wouldn't want their kid to see her or his name in print? And what of the evil aspects of Big Boy? Not only a long time advocate of red meat consumption, Big Boy bears a striking resemblance to both Ronald Reagan AND Rush Limbaugh. He wears red suspenders, long known as a symbol of Nazi Skinheads. Is this jovial foodservice icon actually a mouthpiece for the radical right? Are the children of America and Canada his primary targets? Beware the dark children of the Big Boy!!! BEWARE!!!!
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As I write this, there are large corporations spending millions of dollars advertising on TV trying to get you to go and look at their website, which they spent millions of dollars developing. Websites which do nothing but provide free services on the internet have sold for billions of dollars, simply because a lot of people visit them. Companies will even spend millions bidding for the address of an easy-to-remember domain name.
Unfortunately for them one of the most popular websites of 1999 (with nearly 3 million hits as of this writing) was a free website without a "dot com" address set up for a Turkish man with little knowledge of English and a penchant for playing the accordion.
Not only is Mahir Cagri an unlikely celebrity, he was also the victim of a prank. Back in 1998 he asked a friend of his to set up a website for his snapshots. He doesn't speak English, so his friend translated it from Turkish, and a legend was born. The page begins with these immortal words:
This is my page .......WELCOME TO MY HOME PAGE !!!!!!!!!
I KISS YOU !!!!!
Few people noticed this momentus event, however, and his site was simply another personal page in a sea of personal pages. Then, in 1999, a prankster found Mahir's homepage and played a little joke on him. The prankster set up a copy of Mahir's website at a different address and added some new text. Right after the next part of the page, which reads:
I like music , I have many many musicenstrumans my home I can playI like sport , swiming , basketball ,tenis , volayball , walk .........
The prankster added a little gem of his own:
I like sex
The prankster also added a bit at the end about liking to photograph "nice nude models" and added the classic line
Who is want to come TURKEY I can invitate ..... She can stay my home ........
The prankster is someone who should really be hired by all these new internet companies because in manner of weeks, he turned Mahir from an anonymous Turkish journalist and ping pong player into a superstar, and it all happened by word-of-mouth.
By early November, the "prank" site had hundreds of thousands of hits from people who had heard about it from friends, and from there it only escalated. Mahir had posted his phone number on the original website, and his first indication that something was afoot came on November 4th when his phone wouldn't stop ringing. He writes on his new homepage, "Many people from Turkiye and all over the world were calling me to tell their thoughts about my homepage at internet. Many of them were congratulating me for my page saying it was good; some congratulated me for my courage; and a small group from Turkiye criticized it. There were even some people criticizing my English. I was confused of what was happennig."
Soon, Mahir had a large following around the world. There were fan clubs, message boards, tribute sites and parodies by the dozen (there was even a website called mahircentral.com to keep track of them--one of the best parody sites has the same text but pictures of Bill Clinton). There was a song called "She Can Stay My Home" posted on the MP3 website (essentially a reading of his website accompanied by cheesy electronic music), animations, and artistic statements. In a matter of weeks he was a genuine news item around the world. He fielded a movie offer and made a tour of the United States during which he was recieved as a celebrity. He attended the premier of the movie Man on the Moon and appeared on Roseanne's talk show.
The explosion of his popularity also had a negative side--many, many people saw money to be made and tried to make it. Merchandise suddenly appeared with his image (supposedly proceeds would go to Mahir himself, or to charity, but I kind of doubt it) and people trying to get a piece of Mahir's fame made up their own parody websites and set out to ride his glory. Many businesses also saw a chance for free advertising and would send Mahir a picture of themselves holding signs which say "We Kiss You" and their web address, which Mahir posted on his website. Mahir himself could have easily made a quick buck off of his sudden popularity, but instead he opted to spread a message of peace and love:
-How many children are starving all through the world?-How many children lose their families, or are violated or become disabled during the wars that they even don't know why it happened?
-How many children are being sold, or made to work and fight?
-Do you know what is happening in CHECENIA
-How many people in the world die of cold and hunger?
-How many people are prisoned or violated because of the way they think or wear?
-How many animals are being killed by the people, or how many are in the danger of extinction?
-How the environment is ruined?
-How many people are made to take drugs?
-How many guns are provided in the firms and how many people are being killed with those guns? Just think of yourselves, what do you do to solve all these problems? What do you plan to do for those people?
Why is Mahir so popular? Simply put, his refreshing honesty and awkwardness seem so out of place in the slick commercial world of the Internet that one cannot help but be touched to see someone admit that they play the accordion.
Mahir
Links:
Gridcosm:
The Mahir Borg
Kiyotei's
Mahir Tribute
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