Tangerine
Tangerinei does a good job of telling a story that has no reason to be told about some "people" who that have no reason to exist. These are, in no particular order :
- The druggie "pimp" and "dealer", direct descendant of Jayii. His "place of business" is a donut shop, the minimum-wage earning cashier of which stands with him in the exact same relation schoolteacher stands with pupil, police with ghetto "citizen" and prison guard with inmate.iii
- The self-deluded prostitute. A man pretending to be a woman ; at the same time a worm pretending to be a person, a nobody pretending to importance and so on. Mentally, the universe it projects is vaguely reminiscent of a public highschool in a poor neighbourhood, with its typical fixation on order pecking and utter disregard of objective reality, or any sort of sense. You should see this thing strut around concrete pavement it didn't make, not a cent in its pockets nor the notion that this is an emergency and it'd better go work butt off until the problem is fixed in its head. Baboon will show the world!!11
- The other self deluded prostitute. Another man pretending to be a woman ; at the same time another worm pretending to be a person, except on the more hipster side of things. This one's "sensible" and goes through the motions of limiting "drama". Also goes through the motions of doing something with itself, in the form of paying a dive to let her sing (absolutely no talent or voice), and also personally delivering handbills to random people with an insistent entreat for them to show up (they do not).
- The third self-deluded prostitute. Ugly, lanky, old crack whore, who is picked by the hair by random angry invader of the improvised brothel she inhabits. Nobody notices and nobody cares, yet she puts in the effort to walk (still barefoot) back however miles on Los Angeles pavement (she also didn't make) only to be told that she's been replaced and "just hang, okay ?". All the while, to quote, "See, I know a lot about the music industry. I know a lot of people in the music industry. I myself sing."
- The married cab driver / whoremonger. His wife loves him, and he loves her kid. She doesn't love him enough to put the obnoxious fat old woman in her place. He doesn't love her enough to solve this problem correctly. So he blows off steam with the gunk above, while the wife just boils by herself, pressure slowly increasing, and the old nag pursues unhindered her delusions of relevancy and importance. For all its stupidity, this type is incredibly common, especially historically, and as a result sort-of anchors the nonsense, if you're generous.
The entire menagerie depicted, as well as the depiction and the consumption of that depiction exist strictly as epiphenomena of an overgenerous welfare state. They carry no value and no importance, they do not speak to or of mankind, their presence is exactly equivalent to the eerie blue of Cherenkov radiation : a sad epitaph of a certain kind of context hostile to human life.
———- 2015, by Sean Baker, with a bunch of unremarkable trannies. [↩]
- You recall,
Fuck, fuck, fuck, mother motherfuck mother motherfuck fuck motherfuck motherfuck. Noise, noise, noise 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4 noise, noise noise. Shmokin'weed shmoking wizz doin' coke, drinkin' beers. Drinkin' beers, beers, beers. Rollin' fatties, smokin' blunts. Who smokes the blunts? We smoke the blunts! Rollin' blunts and smokin'-
(Uh, lemme get a nickel bag)
15 Bucks, little man, put that shit in my hand. If that money doesnt show then you owe me owe me owe.
while propping the wall of a convenience store they weren't welcome patrons of. [↩]
- No, this doesn't mean "boss" or anything of that human nature. It simply means "zoo keeper", human lost among the monkeys trying desperately to keep pants on. A fundamentally comedic role. [↩]
