🧠 Jake Paul: Trophy Hunter
Jake Paul does not need to walk. He arrives at the ring in an open top vehicle surrounded by family, friends and a million dollar jacket. Behind him sits a stressed caged bird. A pigeon.
Tyson loves pigeons.
Pigeons were the first loving relationship I ever had. As a matter of fact, when a bully that was antagonizing me killed one of my birds in front of me, I snapped and began fighting him. If it weren’t for this guy hurting my beloved animal, I may not have ever had the desire to fight. By him hurting an innocent being that I loved and cherished, it was the catalyst to the fighter within.
Mike Tyson walks in alone, in his first few steps, he trips, he injured his knee recently, he's wounded. He arrives with no entourage, keeps his eyes down, walking to an execution.
Boxing is a structured, civil sport. The sublimation of base violence into a form appreciated by the highest level cultural elites. Eight rounds of two minutes, strict rules, a small arena. Tyson bites his glove throughout the fight. In his speech he says he has a biting fixation. He famously bit off Holyfields ear in 1997. He bit McBride in his last match in 2005. He is wearing 14oz padded gloves rather than the usual 10oz, sapping power from his punches. He stumbles on his bad knee into the arena. He is defanged, declawed and wounded. He is held back and holding back. Tyson calls himself a natural born killer. He is a caged one.
The fight goes poorly for Tyson. Jake Paul bows to him in the final seconds as his victory is assured, landing four times the blows on Tyson, paying proper respect and reverence to his kill, like any Trophy Hunter. The obvious concerning aesthetics of a white millionaire and his entourage cruising up to a wounded old lion in an open top vehicle with the intent of killing him for fame and glory aside (though they shouldn't be put entirely aside), Jake Paul understands the landscape.
The collapse of chronoception fusing all of culture and history into one present accessible moment allows the powerful of the present to hunt simulacra of historical culture. The phrase "I beat Mike Tyson" is as meaningful as an outdated punk deriding "I pissed on Thatcher". Tyson is still alive, but that Tyson is not, and only ever existed decades ago. To purchase a simulacra of a cultural icon for the pleasure of shattering it in front of 120 million people is in extremely poor taste.
The primary differentiator Old Money has over New Money is taste, and historically New Money has attempted to acquire taste through their superior wealth. European architectural styles were ported over, wholesale, to the Americas by robber barons desperate for some of the Old World patina to rub off and adhere to them. To provide their family dynasties with the essence of longevity and legacy.
Everything the Paul dynasty does is in poor taste by design. They do not seek to replicate the Old Money culture. They do not seek approval from the established norms of high status critics. They are a destructive force out to annihilate everything that the tastemakers of previous generations have held dear. This is, ironically but intentionally, a truer kind of cultural democratic revolution than neoliberalism has been able to offer. Every blow on meritocracy levels the playing field, democratises culture and disperses it amongst the masses. There is no need to uplift the electorate into "high-information voters" when you can, trophy by trophy, demolish pillars of culture until the rubble is no higher than the least informed MAGA cultist.
This is who Jake Paul fights for.
"This night's not about me man, I want to give a shout out to all the real heroes the US military, the Doctors, the Nurses in the ER, the cops, the firefighters, the farmers, the truck drivers, all the people who make this world go around. Thank you America, it's the era of Truth, it's the era of Good, there's a shift in the world and Good is rising, the Truth is rising. I'm just honored to be a part of America and it feels like we're back baby." - Jake Pauls Victory Speech
Jake Paul embodies the frustrations of the (un)living against the dead. Zombies opposing those who last had the right to live and die. Culture has so stagnated, been so remixed and rehashed, presented so little novelty, that all that remains is to dig it up and smash it, leaving nothing in its place. At the end of history culture becomes a non-replenishing resource, fossils to be mined, processed and eventually burned for fuel. Dinosaurs liquefied into crude oil.
Make no mistake, these are yesterday's cultural elites being felled in the temporary service of profit by today's artists. The ruining of existing institutions, whether person, service or franchise is unintentional but fundamental. The vitriolic reclamation of a landscape today's would-be artists will never get to create in. Populist seizure of the means of cultural production via reproduction provides a hollow but powerful satisfaction for a disenfranchised uninspired generation.
The democrats missed this to their catastrophic detriment. Parading a celebrity carousel of every institution complicit in maintaining the pseudomeritocratic superstructure in front of the electorate. MAGA, Trump & Jake Paul are truer representations of the real force opposing neoliberalism today. It's deeply unfortunate that this force is a nihilistic self-serving one co-opting populist rhetoric. Patina degrading into tarnish, a veneer of democratic will over a sucking neoliberal wound.