Mindsploitation and the Futility of Knowledge

Anybody graduate college if they have enough money.

They could bribe their professors, donate a few million bucks to re-financing, attend one of those private schools that doesn't have grades, or cheapest of all, they could go major in something evaluated mostly through writing papers and pay somebody to write all their papers for them. An industry of cheaters exists for this purpose. You can buy assignments of all scholastic levels, from grade school to phD, off the internet! Hundreds of sites exist where you can buy made to order, academic papers. There's expensive sites that sell papers ranging from good to ok papers, fair priced sites that sell mediocre to bad papers, and really, unbelievably cheap sites that sell awful papers certain to receive Fs--you'd probably get caught cheating if you were dumb enough to turn it in. Mindsploitation, a new book by Wonder Showzen co-creator, Vernon Chatman, shows how bad those cheap essays really are. Mindsploitation also shows how cheaply knowledge and work are valued in our society. And then the book makes you feel a little cheap for reading it, laughing into the ever growing void of exploitation...

IT'S A BARGAIN!

Mindsploitation works this way--on the left hand pages, Chatman writes a prompt to send to a company that writes essays. These prompts are absurd, surreal, subversive and, at their best, force the cheating professional to confront the stupidity of his job.  Prompts include: eulogies to grandparents funerals, death row consolations, a press release for the Shame Parade, recipes using newborn baby diarrhea, peanutclaw, etc. On the right hand pages, the response essay is printed, unedited and exactly how it is "turned in" (?). Usually, they're weird. Sometimes, they're just dumb. But the best ones are when the people try their hardest to satisfy these impossibly strange requirements.

Chatman's prose is really silly. He uses rhymes, hill billy jive, made up slang and shortenin's, all sorts of zany stuff.  Some prompts were so disjointed and bizarre it reminds me of French surrealists or cut-ups. Lol random. All of the prompts were pretty unsolvable. Basically, the only way to write a response is think of a creative, yet academic appropriate answer.  Here's a choice example of a prompt no one could solve--

Last week my Advanced Mathematics professor came over to the auditorium to watch me wrestle for the first time...Well, now my professor claims that as he lay shivering in a widening pool of his own muck, the Grand And Final Equation Of Life Itself materialized and hovered before him. He told me if I solve it, I'll not only get extra credit, but he might do me a favor and stop screaming in agony in my ear. Here's the equation - balls in your court 

GIVEN THAT: a = Truth b = God c = Mother d = Peanuts e = Logic f = Donkey g = Death 

FIND (e+b)/(a(f-d)+g(c+d) = n [solve for n)

The response for that one is boring. But here's a great response where Chatman forces some poor rube to make up weird advertising slogans

Brogurt -- "Creamy midnight packed in a tub. Finally, yogurt for the black!" The Ouija Squeegee --"Let the arms of the dead work for you with the super and natural power to clean your windscreen!...Remote Controlled Baby Stroller -- "Forget to walk the child when you have better things to do? Have it automatically, it is now possible!"  

Eventually, Chatman's silliness takes a backseat to the strange responses of these sad, soul broken persons.  A lot of the responses are mostly likely written by English language learners, probably working in essay "factories"(?) in foreign countries. I say this because a lot of the grammar mistakes seem English language learner-y (dropped articles, wrong verb tenses, strange passive voice) and many responses stressed the importance of Islam in our lives (amen to that!). The fact that Americans are making money selling cheating assignments overseas should be enough evidence that globalized capitalism a violent joke. American privilege is rooted so firmly that young college students have no qualms selling what they're actually paying for--the opportunity to learn something--to foreign laborers who are completely cut off from their work. They receive nothing by writing introductory assignments to rhetoric classes, just like the students receive nothing by taking them--the whole situation is just toothless gears spinning meaninglessly in the machine of capitalism. So while the book certainly doesn't take itself seriously, Matt Stone (of South Park) blurbs the book as "A stunning tour through Marx's alienation of labor" is totally apt. Everyone is looking for the corner to cut to "succeed" in a capitalist system because actually trying to navigate the system sucks too much.

The fact that this book can exist is the most absurd thing about it.

Some comedian once said (I can't remember who) that Vernon Chatman's greatest comedic strength lies in pulling out good performances from other people. This is undoubtedly true for Wonder Showzen. In that show, Chatman makes little kids say the darnest profound existential truths about the sham of existence. In other shows, Chatman's also pulled out some good comedy from Louis C.K. (he produces Louie), Conan O'Brien (he worked on Late Night) and Chris Rock (you get it). But I think Mindsploitation is most like this weird, soft-core porno Chatman called Final Flesh. In  Mindsploitation's acknowledgement's section, Chatman says of Final Flesh it is, "for which he apologizes most of all." But really, that movie and this book have the same sort of idea thrusting it.

For Final Flesh, Chatman found a company that will make a soft-core porno movie based on your script, so he wrote a script that was basically a Wonder Showzen episode and released it direct to a DVD. That project also found a stupid company that embodies capitalist excess and tried to turn it in upon itself. But if you watch that movie (and I don't necessarily recommend you do), it's really sad because you have to see the sadness in these people's eyes as they are exploited. It's not Chatman's fault; everyone exploits them every day (Chatman just wanted to "satirize"? it). But it's still sad just the same.

Mindsploitation, however, attacks the same target but gives the viewer some distance. It makes you think, "I wonder how that dude who lives in India feels when people sell their education just so they can get a certificate of completion" or "I wonder what it feels like to turn something like this in, with your name on it?" It's also laugh out loud funny/silly/goofy, like Wonder Showzen, but it reminds us about the stupidity of knowledge in a consumerist culture.

In short, I can't recommend the book enough; great for reading in binges but also purges, as it may be the perfect bathroom book. The design/illustrations by David O'Reily, a great cartoonist, makes the  book easy to understand, the pictures are weird, and there's small, secret text that are easier to see when re-reading. Oh also, Louis C.K. writes an introduction for the book, but it's 100% skippable as it is totally unfunny and sucks.

If this book taught me anything it's that it doesn't matter if anybody ever teaches you anything, as long as you learn to love the power of money.