Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.06.2009, Page 8

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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 7 — 2009
Opinion | Valur Gunnarsson Opinion | Oddur Sturluson
It goes like this: I get an email from “Mugi
Mugison” saying that the Icelandic pop
star is in Seattle, and that we need to meet
for “bears.”
A couple hours later, I get the phone
call. Mugison is performing at, of all
places, the single gaudiest, least graceful
structure ever fabricated: the Experience
Music Project. He doesn't have a phone,
but I should just call the Director of Icelan-
dair and swing by the performance, which
is part of the introduction of the Seattle to
Keflavík direct f lights.
And so I go to this hideous building.
And I can't find an entrance and eventu-
ally, strangely, the Director of Icelandair
answers his phone and greets me warmly,
and walks me over, and there's Mugison.
We drink a couple beers. He smokes
cigarettes. We look at a crowd of 300 in-
f luential people. There are a lot of short
movies about Iceland being screened.
There are speeches. There are women in
traditional Icelandic garb.
“This is going to be a rough audience,”
Mugi says.
I nod. The bartender nods. And Mugi
wanders up to the stage.
When he says “So I used to watch a
lot of porn when I was 17,” half the wait
staff runs over to me and says “Does your
friend know who he's talking to?” I shrug.
I'm pretty sure he does.
“And so because Jesus's mother never
got to come, I figured when I was seven-
teen she put a curse on all women that
when they came, you know, when they
came during sex, they would say her son's
name.”
That's the climax to Mugi's joke, or the
point when my new friend the waitstaff of
EMP declares “Holy shit, that was amaz-
ing.”
Through brilliant seating arrange-
ments, one of the most influential DJs in
town doesn't see the scowls. Kevin Cole of
KEXP will later write in his blog “I ner-
vously looked around at the audience of
travel industry-types, but thankfully, they
were just as charmed by this handsome,
polite Icelandic musician, and thought it
was hilarious, too.”
From where I was standing, there was a
lot more nervousness than laughter. There
was some tisking. Fuck, Mugi pissed of
90 percent of a crowd of 300 extremely
influential people in five sentences.
With that joke, though, Mugi hit the
sweet spot. Not the sweet spot God appar-
ently missed when he poked Mary, but the
nerve that makes music feel genuine and
transgressive at once. The moment where
someone can step into the most banal
of situations – a massive banquet in this
case, I guess Elvis going on Ed Sullivan
would be similar – and connect an honest
and disarming note to those few who are
willing to listen.
I've known Mugi a while – it's been five
years since I featured him in an Icelandic
magazine as the poster boy for awe shucks
small town Icelandic brilliance. While I
liked him, I felt his f law was his interest in
pleasing everyone.
Now, he's hit his stride. He's the dude
that will walk into a building created by
the elite of Seattle that resembles the stool
you would pass if you ate chewing gum,
barbed wire and silly putty for a week, and
he drops the Hail Mary of Vagina Mono-
logues in their laps.
There are two ends to the night. First,
Mugi agrees to play another show for the
people in the crowd really interested in
music, and he takes them to the men's
room and puts on a hell of an acoustic set
– staring us down and throwing out tunes
like a true bluesman. That blows the mu-
sic fans away, as it should.
The second ending is that I take Mugi
out for a drink; assorted friends meet up
and ask him if he's ever met Björk or some
such Iceland questions. Just as I'm about
to introduce one friend who happens to
have been a Christian missionary, he ex-
plains the Jesus joke one more time.
Later, she will tell me she was
charmed.
Story | Bart Cameron
Political Activism
In Iceland
Hypocrisy Reaches New Heights
Where Is The
Icelandic Gandhi?
When You Open With
Blasphemous Orgasms...
Mugison Visits Seattle
At first sight, Iceland and India have a lot in
common. For one thing, they both start with
the letter “I”. And while one may be the world’s
largest democracy and the other one of the
smallest, neither really supports equal rights for its
citizens.
In India, the Congress Party has played a major part in the
country’s struggle for independence, and has since then been
the dominant party in politics. It’s almost as if people are afraid
to vote for anyone else, as if that might bring the Brits back. The
party itself has been dominated by the same Gandhi family, not
actually descended from Mahatma Gandhi but which took his
name in his honour. They are currently led by their forth Gandhi,
a widow of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
Much the same applied to the Independence Party here,
which actually took its name from an older party that had rather
more to do with Iceland’s independence. Nevertheless, ever
since full Independence in 1944, it has been the dominant party.
It took an economic collapse and a peaceful revolution to finally
get people to seriously consider other options.
For all of the flaws of India’s democracy, its greatest structural
problem is the Caste system. While opposed by Gandhi and the
government of independent India, it still remains in place under
the surface and ensures that many can never rise above the
station they are born to.

How Icelandic of them
In Iceland, corruption is everywhere. This goes beyond the
healthy corruption of hiring your own relatives to do jobs they
are not qualified for to hiring the relatives of your friends to do
jobs they are not qualified for. It even goes beyond to hiring
the relatives of people you don’t even know, the rationale being
that if they have ancestors who practice a craft, then they
themselves must have some talent in that field.
In Iceland, people always start from the supposition that
ability is inherited. In any field, take writing for example, the first
question you will always encounter is: “Are you the son of...”
And if, as it turns out, you are nobody’s son, then you have a
long and difficult road ahead.
Corruption is everywhere. It is not only politicians who, say,
appoint their offspring as Supreme Court judges or give them
fat government contracts. The leading actors in the economic
collapse were companies run by father and son, and this goes
all the way down to the factory floors. University professors
have been known to hire their children as assistant teachers,
even if they are studying in a different department. The media
plays along, trumpeting every new generation of artists who
“have it in their blood,” while ignoring others.
Sons and daughters
In fact, it can be said that everyone benefits from this system
in some way. Most Icelanders get their first summer job through
their parents or uncles of friends thereof. Of course, what kind
of job you get depends on their social standing, rather than your
own ability. And so this rigid caste system remains in place. Not
only is this system unfair to the individuals who are passed
over in favour of young princes, but it also leads to society as
a whole being less well run than it should be. We all know the
consequences.
Great strides have been made in recent years regarding
women’s opportunity to seek employment. But a system where
people hire their sons and daughters, rather than just their sons,
is a marginal improvement at best.
One of the demands of the January revolution was that
competent professionals be instated as ministers as a reflex
against the old cronyism. Some were. If the same criteria
were applied everywhere, there is little doubt we would have
a far better functioning society. But perhaps we need a new
revolution for that. Or at least an Icelandic Gandhi.
Depending on who you are, either a lot or
practically nothing at all has changed in
recent months. For the regular Joe who
has little to no interest in politics, money
is still hard to come by, work still sucks and
a government of people he feels no real attachment
with manages to find ways to make his life even more
unbearable. For politicians, reporters, people with an
interest in politics and middle class kids with a huge
sense of entitlement and a rudimentary knowledge of
outdated political rhetoric, however, the earth has spun
off its axis and Iceland is headed for either a fate of grey
totalitarianism and violence or a sunny utopia where
Everyone Will Get Along (but we’ll still have a governing
elite, of course).
It's exactly the kind of environment that spawns a class
of political fanatics – lo and behold: political fanaticism
has arrived. Self-described political activists have become
more daring and aggressive than ever, spurred on by
people's displeasure with the government. Demonstrations
have involved hanging effigies of men in suits, throwing
rocks, burning public property and splashing green skyr
on people they disagree with. Although throwing skyr at
somebody may not sound like a truly vicious act, it's the
malice behind the act accompanied with the underlying
message that makes it an effective weapon. “We could
have thrown anything we wanted at you, and you wouldn't
have been able to stop us. This time it was skyr, keep
angering us and who knows what we might throw next
time?”
Aftaka.org, one of a number of websites dedicated to
the anarchist “movement” in Iceland, gives an interesting
insight into what exactly it is that these activists are trying
to achieve. Destroying capitalism, fighting “injustice” (i.e.
what they perceive as injustice), and complimenting each
other on their extreme intellectual and moral superiority
seem to be the key factors and, really, the only things
they can completely agree upon. Interestingly, those
factors are also all things that Nazis, Soviets and Islamic
Fundamentalists have in common – along with a hostile
disregard for other people's opinions and safety that is.
Aftaka's manifesto clearly states that they do not care
about others’ opinions, that they state what they want
tillitslaust (e. inconsiderately) and umburðarlyndislaust
(e. intolerantly), and that they reject the idea of neutrality.
In other words: you are either with them or against them.
An attitude made very clear on their comment boards,
where a number of people who dared to ask questions or
cast doubts on anything written by the authors have been
threatened with violence.
All the above leads to the obvious question: How do
you intend to fight tyranny by acting like a tyrant?
“We could have thrown anything
we wanted at you, and you wouldn't
have been able to stop us. This time
it was skyr, keep angering us and
who knows what we might throw
next time?”