Each month I get a notice in my Inbox that the latest Capitol Hill Citizen has arrived. Theres an image of the new front page waiting and, if you like it, you click a link and go to the donation and mailing address page. No data collected. Then a few weeks later (because Im overseas) I receive the latest issue for August/September 2025. Its an old-timey feel in the hands -- ahhh, the smell of ink on newsprint -- like a throwback to the 80s, those halcyon days of MassPIRG, and holding the Bastards to account, as they would otherwise pollute, and sh*t the feathered bed they lolled in, if not made to pay for their corruption and public disdain. PIRG, that was another Nader initiative. Fuckin guys a hero.
Back in the 80s, everyone Left was hating on Ronald Reagan, Mr. Mighty Righty Whitey himself. The Reagan years. Iran/Contra. Keep the hostages until after my inauguration. Treacle down economics. Blue collars suddenly pissing down on the unwashed Lefty undergrads who sang their blues. And for what?! Reagan taunting the Russians: The bombing begins in 5 minutes. Perestroika and glasnost. Tear down this wall. Two Armageddon movies came out (Threads and The Day After), within months of each other, graphically depicting a world-blown apart by nukes.
Then John Lennon got shot in NYC by a JD Salinger-reading MK-Ultra freak (lets just say) and Lennon died, and we on the Left weeped, as if it were Lenin, and the Contras had won. Then Reagan got shot and, because of the Curse of the Bambino (lets call it that), he lived. He lay in his hospital bed with a sh*t-eating grin, looking like a still from the film Bedtime For Bonzo, wherein he played a professor who stresses the effects of environment over heredity. Fuckin irony, right? Folks from his beloved National Enquirer showed up and asked him how he managed to ring Lana Turners postbox twice (or more, lets say) and live to tell about it (unlike John Garfield). The Gipper laughed and said to the tabloid journeys, There you go again. We, on the Left, wore faces that read, What an a**hole.
This months Capitol Hill Citizen has an article on page 40, Negativo Man, accompanied by an image of a satisfied woman with sunnies, and reflected in the glasses are nuclear blast mushrooms. Actually, she wears the expression of Jean Tatlock, humping Oppenheimer while he reads the Gita to her -- in Sanskrit -- and she launches. The Citizen provides a telling lift from the piece:
Confronting reality is a negative process, writes John Ralston Saul in his book The Unconscious Civilization (Free Press, 1995). The corporatism that has overtaken our democracy is an ideology that insists on relentless positivism thats why it opposes criticism and encourages passivity.
I was blown away by this -- the perspicuity, the sheer intention. Grin and bear it. Like you lived in the wet dream of Pangloss from Candide. Grin and bear it. Could be a song. And who would sing that song? Why, it would have to be: Devo.
Devo would wear see-through masks, monkey masks, and even rubber masks of Reagan, like in the film Point Break -- except the parachute didnt open when American democracy jumped heroically for Reaganomics. What is a mask? The old Ancients knew. Ask Aristophanes what good a mask was. I mean, he had folks dressed up as giant penises stomping around on stage. We had Reagan -- and LBJ, who once unzipped, pulled it out, and said, This is why, when asked by a reporter why we were still in Nam if we couldnt win. A mask is literally a persona, gateway to the public world; the face we wear; personality. One day, I reckon, Tom Hanks will star in a film titled, Saving Private Face.
Seemingly out of the lost blue of the Reagan reactionary years, Netflix has released a documentary on the band, Devo. Devo was that band who wore those red plastic energy domes, as hats, claiming that they helped retain the energy ordinarily lost from the brain in its daily processing of the worlds madness. The hats were seen during their MTV music video for their big hit, Whip It.
The band's name, Devo, stood for de-evolution. Some of the band members were art students and they shared a vision of culture succumbing to the white trashing of American Idealism, a bold notion never all that mentally solvent in the first place, what with the slave-whipping forefathers (or framers, as the anti-feminist forefathers, like rise of foreskins, is a thing of the past: the film Barbie is feminisms crowning achievement) mostly slobbering over property values and needing to be forced to include the Bill of Rights by James Madison. There was always a good reason to avoid talking about religion or politics at Thanksgiving dinner. Uncle Joe would inevitably go off. Ma would inevitably say to her brother, Get stuffed.
Devo espoused that based upon their ontological and existential read of the world, civilization was de-evolving not evolving. That Hegelian progress had stalled. That Trickle Down was the new treacle of the bourgeoisie. In Devo, members of the group, especially Seemingly out of the lost blue of the Reagan reactionary years, Netflix has released a documentary on the band Devo. Short for devolution. Devo was that band who wore those red plastic energy domes, as hats, claiming that they helped retain the energy ordinarily lost from the brain in its daily processing of the worlds madness. The hats were seen during their music video for their big hit, Whip It.
The band's name, Devo, stood for de-evolution. Some of the band members were art students and they shared vision of American culture succumbing to the white trashing of American Idealism, never all that mentally solvent in the first place, what with the slave whipping forefathers mostly slobbering over property values and needing to be forced to include the Bill of Rights.
Devos thesis of de-evolution was both absurd and terrifyingly plausible. Borrowing ideas from the 1932 film Island of Lost Soulsin which science devolves humans into animalistic hybridsthe band saw humanity as a species regressing rather than progressing. Are we not men? became their rallying cry, a question laced with irony in a world obsessed with technological and economic progress.
The band believed that civilization was de-volving not evolving. That Hegelian progress had stalled. The Master was whipping the Slave real good. They had their own take on the Human Project. It derived from a chance encounter with a religious tract titled Jocko Homo: The Heaven-Bound King of the Zoo, which led to their first hit, Mongoloid. I went looking for the tract and soon found it on Jerry Falwells website. Another blast from the past, when religion and politics were essentially the same, and Uncle Joe got so mad about the plight of Jerrys Kids that he fistfucked the turkey until it cried, Murder Most Foul, and Ma had to beat it down and baste it once again. Whipped it good.
Devos genesis can be traced back to the campus of Kent State University in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a time of violent upheaval and national disillusionment. The pivotal event that catalyzed Devos philosophyand ultimately the bandwas the May 4, 1970, Kent State shootings, when the Ohio National Guard opened fire on unarmed student protesters, killing four and wounding nine. Four dead in Ohio.
The original lineup of Devo was composed of five members, many of whom were art students at Kent State. Their backgrounds and paths to forming the band reveal the unique blend of influences that shaped Devos vision: Mark Mothersbaugh (vocals, keyboards), Gerald Jerry Casale (bass, vocals), Bob Mothersbaugh (guitar), Bob Casale (guitar, keyboards), and Alan Myers (drums). The Kent State shootings convinced these young artists that the military-industrial complex was willing to turn its weapons on its own citizens, even on a college campus devoted to learning, with few students or citizens of the town outraged for very long. (Although Neil Youngs song became an anthem for the anti-war movement.) This disillusionment fueled the bands philosophy and art, which combined absurdist humor, dystopian imagery, and biting social critique.
They were liked by Brian Eno, John Lennon, Neil Young and Izzy pop and David Bowie. They were influenced by The Velvet Underground and John Waters and Andy Warhol. Alfred Hitchcock. And David Lynch. They may have influenced Talking Heads and the B-52s. They definitely influenced me, a philosophy (existentialism and phenomenology) and literature student.
Devos visuals were steeped in the absurdist ethos of Dada and Surrealism, movements that rejected traditional art forms in favor of chaos, provocation, and irony. Like Marcel Duchamps readymades or Salvador Dals dreamlike imagery, Devo used visual absurdity to critique societal norms and consumer culture. The geometric, industrial design of the red hats reflected the cold, mechanical aesthetics of mass production, a recurring theme in their work, and was an aesthetic response borrowed from Bauhaus. Devo often dressed in matching industrial jumpsuits, emphasizing the loss of individuality in a conformist, mechanized society. The Dadaists use of costuming in performances, combined with 20th-century dystopian imagery (e.g., Fritz Langs Metropolis), inspired Devos aesthetic of robotic uniformity.
And Devos visuals were far more than mere accompaniment to their musicthey were an extension of their philosophy and a weapon of cultural critique. By drawing on influences as diverse as Dada, Pop Art, dystopian science fiction, and John Waters campy transgressions, Devo created a visual language that was as provocative and unsettling as their music. Their imagery forced audiences to confront the absurdity of modern life, making Devo not just a band, but a postmodern art collective that used every medium available to challenge the status quo.
The music video channel MTV started in 1981 and featured budget quality music videos, such as The Buggles hit, Video Killed the Radio Song. And Devos Whip It, off their 1980 album Freedom of Choice, was a regular staple. The video is a surreal pastiche of Americana, featuring cowboys, ranch settings, and the infamous scene of a womans clothes being whipped off. This bizarre, campy imagery satirized the suburban ideal while exposing deeper anxieties about gender, power, and exploitation. The videos camp aesthetic owes much to John Waters films, which exaggerated and mocked American cultural stereotypes.
Devos critique extended to the hideous strength of consumerism and the illusion of satisfaction. Their cover of The Rolling Stones (I Cant Get No) Satisfaction stripped the song of its swagger, transforming it into a Dadaist anti-capital manifesto, for economic growth requires that we never find endpoint satisfaction. Mick Jagger had himself inadvertently pointed out in Start Me Up that the advertisers know how to make a dead man cum -- and never stop.
The bands dystopian vision of capitalism is perhaps best encapsulated in their concept of freedom of choice. On the surface, consumer capitalism offers endless options, but Devo argued that these choices are an illusion, prepackaged and manipulated by corporate interests. The title track of their album Freedom of Choice (1980) critiques this dynamic:
Freedom of choice / Is what you got / Freedom from choice / Is what you want
Here, Devo highlights the paradox of consumer culture: the more choices available, the more paralyzed and controlled the individual becomes. Capitalism, like a virus, thrives by exploiting human vulnerabilityturning desire into dependency and individuality into commodification.
Devos visual aesthetic often featured masks, costumes, and robotic personas, emphasizing the loss of individuality in a conformist society. Their use of transparent and opaque masksmost notably their red energy domes and rubber Reagan maskswas both a literal and metaphorical representation of humanitys de-evolution. In the 21st century, social media has become the digital equivalent of these masks, allowing individuals to curate their identities while obscuring their true selves.
Social media platforms, like the capitalist systems Devo critiqued, operate as viral mechanisms, commodifying identity and feeding off user engagement. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok encourage users to present polished, performative versions of themselves, reducing identity to a series of curated images and personas.
In this sense, social media represents the ultimate realization of Devos dystopian vision: a world where identity is a product, individuality is subsumed by conformity, and the line between human and machine becomes increasingly blurred.
Devos critique of the MIC remains relevant as the lines between militarism, capitalism, and technology blur further in the modern era. The rise of surveillance capitalism, as explored by Shoshana Zuboff in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (2019), demonstrates how corporations and governments use data collection and algorithmic control to manipulate behavior and maintain power. Social media platforms, far from being tools of liberation, have become extensions of the MIC, weaponized to influence elections, spread propaganda, and suppress dissent. Conformity to digitalization. Until everybodys got a fascist heart.
Devos warnings about the dehumanizing effects of technology and conformity are particularly salient in this context. Their dystopian vision, once seen as absurdist satire, now feels disturbingly prophetic. We were trying to warn people, but they thought it was a joke, says Jerry Casale in a 2003 video biography of the group, Devo: The complete truth about de-evolution. Oh, its no joke.
Devos philosophy of de-evolution remains a powerful critique of the modern world, where the MIC, capitalism, and social media have created a dystopian theater of conformity and commodification. Through their music, visuals, and performances, Devo exposed the absurdity of progress and the dangers of unchecked power. In the 21st century, their message is more relevant than ever, as humanity continues to dance to the mechanical rhythms of a society spiraling toward dehumanization. And warmongers strive for Peace prizes.
I quite enjoyed the documentary and you may, too.
Are we not men? No, we are Devo.
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