
The National Film Awards, Face-Shapewear, and Why Nothing Makes Sense
It's possible that the idea of a nuclear bomb itself flattened everything in its wake.

Present Tense is The Swaddle Team's stream of consciousness response to the world's madness.
Kim Kardashian has launched yet another shapewear line – this time for the face. Is that so terrible? Maybe. Is it worth discussing? In this hyper-discussion world, we tend to forget that the consumer's best revenge is to simply not do anything about disagreeable products. We can simply refrain from buying the face corset or the eugenics-coded jeans.
And Just Like That..., the fabled Sex and the City reboot, has been unexpectedly cancelled after three seasons. Everyone is kind of sad but also relieved. The show used to be iconic at a time when nothing much happened and loud, raunchy sex talk was enough to get dopamine from TV. Can uncomplicated TV survive in the age of reels? Everything these days is awards-bait or guilty-pleasure trash but few succeed in hitting that sweet spot where something that requires low cognitive effort is also worth critical acclaim for being exactly that.
We live in a world where everything always has to be something and words and labels are thrown around to make headlines and then subsequently debated ad nauseum. Like, for instance, Piers Morgan claiming that Beyoncé "appropriated" Marilyn Monroe in a Levi's campaign. We've now had just about enough of both the word appropriation and jeans as a concept. At least till the next rage-bait ad series.
Speaking of things not making sense, the 71st National Film Awards have just awarded noteworthy achievers in cinema across languages in India. The Kerala Story won stuff. So did Animal. We're not saying anything! Certainly not the obvious. Perhaps if you wade through the trash for long enough, you'll find the news about Rahul Gandhi's bombshell revelation – that the Karnataka election was, allegedly, rigged. This should be a scandal that rises to the level of Watergate in terms of the cultural reverberations decades from now, but it isn't because nothing ever is anymore. There is truly nothing that can shock or surprise us about the world, or even provide a teeny tiny jolt out of this poisonous reverie.
All this does raise the question of why The Culture, as it were, is so banal right now. When did this big, gaping void develop at the center of all our conversations and shared references, a void that sucks all levity and meaning out of all familiar signs and signifiers? Our hypothesis: this is the natural consequence of a post-nuclear society. August 6th this week marked the 80th anniversary of America bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki to oblivion. It was pitched as the bomb to end all wars. And yet the wars continue – now with the additional threat of mutually assured destruction looming over everything.
It's possible that the idea of a nuclear bomb itself flattened everything in its wake. Things we enjoy are now infused with the certain knowledge that the human race has already invented a sure-shot method to wipe itself off the face of the Earth. We're getting a live taster of it at this very moment in Gaza, a region we have spent two years talking about with nothing changing and the world carrying on with the album launches and the reality TV and the dating rumours and the blockbuster movies and the red carpets and the book launches and the many successes and joys that piece a society together. The world feels hollow because it is.
And so, Benjamin Netanyahu has announced his cabinet's plan to "take control" of Gaza, whatever that means. How much more control can you have? The US President, possibly the only other person who can reign in the madness, is – checks notes – praising Sydney Sweeney's jeans on Truth Social. Culture and politics really do come full circle, if that circle is a snake devouring its own tail.
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