Bulldada
A fine distinction or a useful conceptual category is something to be treasured. Some examples.
One night I was up with my daughter, then only a few months old, waiting for her to fall asleep. She was in my lap, I was channel surfing for something we could both tolerate. We briefly paused on professional wrestling. Vince McMahon drew a distinction between sports and sports-entertainment. I realized that the distinction generalized to one between music and music-entertainment. Suddenly I understood MTV and Britney Spears. Thanks, Vince.
Another example, from a book, Snow Crash (if I recall correctly). In the book people spoke of many flavors of porn, and suddenly I understood television. Crime-porn. Disaster-porn. Celebrity-porn. Food-porn. It all made sense.
A final example, the word bulldada. The word originates with the Church of the SubGenius, but perhaps the Wiktionary definition is easier to understand.
Bulldada is used to describe the worth of an object or a concept (such as a movie, a speech, a book, or a song) that is presented to the world as something completely serious…yet it provokes unintentional laughter due to its campiness or high ironic content.
The term “bulldada” can be used as a substitution for the profanity bullshit. It can be seen as a combination of “bull” (used as an descriptive noun or adjective — “That’s a load of bull!”) with the term dada, which refers to the use of chaos, anarchy, and “weirdness” as a form of art.
My take is that bulldada is that which is so bad it is good. Bad in this context is an aethestic rather than moral judgement.
So where is this going? I want to thank Gateway Pundit for leading me to the ineffable bulldada at Bash Back! Radical Trans and Queer Convergence Update.
On Saturday, April 5th radical Trans and Queer people from the midwest and beyond will be gathering for a series of workshops about regarding the strategy for the RNC, queer/trans militant history, current radical trans/queer/anarcha-feminist resistance, self defense, diy sex toys, etc.
Members of Bash Back! must agree to:
1. Fight for liberation. Nothing more, nothing less. State recognition in
the form of oppressive institutions such as marriage and militarism are
not steps toward liberation but rather towards heteronormative
assimilation.2. A rejection of Capitalism, Imperialism, and all forms of State power.
3. Actively oppose oppression both in and out of the “movement.” Racism,
Patriarchy, Heterosexism, Sexism, Transphobia, and all oppressive behavior
is not to be tolerated.4. Respect a diversity of tactics in the struggle for liberation. Do not
solely condemn an action on the grounds that the State deems it to be
illegal.
I had no idea that Trans and Queer people had a violent anarchist thing going on. Party on.
Posted on April 3rd, 2008 by pwyll
Filed under: culture, politics
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With any luck they will all move to Ybor City just an instant before they change the name to Armageddon.
I feel brutalized, robbed, raped and ripped off. I just visited The Church of the SubGenius, and it is clear he got his ideas from me. We at the Church of Everlasting Tooth Preservation have found a way of curing gum disease and freeing people of the ravages of tooth decay and getting around paying taxes all the while. We have no fees for our services just suggested donations and contributions to the Church. Those who make appropriate donations are deconized and allowed to sit in a dental chair where I exorcise their demons.
I think Bob from the Church of the SubGenius is a copycat and a blasphemor. May the tooth gods have mercy on his enamel.
Amen.
Everyone feels that way after being (metaphorically) sodomized by the Avenging Fist of Truth.
“My take is that bulldada is that which is so bad it is good.”
That would be ‘kitsch,’ would it not? I think bulldada transcends even that.
Bulldada most certainly transcends mere kitsch. “Kitsch” typically refers to bad and derivative art, whereas bulldada encompasses the entire world of ideas.