Megan Fox is the most significant intellectual of our age. Many people feel this intuitively. The star was quoted in GQ as saying: “The other day, I said I eat a lot of cake, and that was the top story on Yahoo!” There is a two-pronged reason people flock to a story like that, namely that these people are trying to reconcile the image of Fox’s sweaty slender body bending over a car with that of her stuffing her face with baked goods; and the expectation that she will be quoted with a poignant commentary which eases the struggle with our bodies. In this case it was really just a story about gaining weight for a role, but the popularity of the story says something about what people have come to expect from her public statements.
Do Great Thinkers need to be aging men? From http://www.flickr.com/photos/megan-fox/
Last year, Fethullah Gülen was named the top living intellectual of the world by Prospect Magazine, above many other well-known names such as Jürgen Habermas, Umberto Eco, Noam Chomsky, Vaclav Havel and Slavoj Zizek. Let’s look at two quotes by Fethullah Gülen, each compared to a quote by Megan Fox:
“Today, people are talking about many things: the danger of war and frequent clashes, water and air pollution, hunger, the increasing erosion of moral values, and so on. As a result, many other concerns have come to the fore: peace, contentment, ecology, justice, tolerance, and dialogue. Unfortunately, despite certain promising precautions, those who should be tackling these problems tend to do so by seeking further ways to conquer and control nature and produce more lethal weapons.” (Fountain, Volume 3, Issue 31, 2000, pp. 4-9)
In other words: “Today, people are talking about many problems they have always talked about. As a result, people also talk about solutions to these problems, as they always have. Unfortunately, apart from some efforts here and there, the problems have obviously remained and only technology progresses, as has been stated by many 15-year-olds throughout the ages.” There is no merit to the quote. It tells us what we have never forgotten, and in the least radical terms available. Compare this to Megan Fox:
“I just sort of exist and survive.” (Elle, June 2009)
This blows any other current intellectual out of the water. Where philosophers, writers and other thinkers proclaim in 1001 ways that the only way to save the world is when humanity just stops being so darn human, Megan Fox acknowledges that we need to start thinking on a more basic level. She knows you can only tell people to do what they’re already doing. She knows that individually we’re just coping with life. She aptly evokes the limitations of human beings to create an ideal society, but simultaneously provides a call to arms. Wake up: your icons are busy just sort of existing, so don’t depend on them. She says all this and more in 7 words. Words that are heard and understood by everyone. Most intellectuals preach to the choir, Megan Fox addresses us all. She does so in dentist waiting rooms, online forums, your friend’s toilet, and at the Oscar coverage.
Wisdom comes from unsuspected places. From http://www.flickr.com/photos/megan-fox/
“Goodness, beauty, truthfulness, honesty, and being virtuous are the essence of the world. Whatever happens, the world will one day find this essence, for no one can prevent such an event.” (The Victory of Goodness and Beauty)
In other words: “Good things are what I like. I don’t like bad things. Whatever happens, one day there will be only good things, because there just will.” The world will one day find the essence, which is the essence of the world? Sorry, but there’s a female thinker over here who is being more lucid:
“I used to sit back and think, ‘Please, Britney Spears has the best life ever—she has everything she could ever want!’ But she has one of the worst lives. Her life is a living fucking nightmare. I have panic attacks thinking about her life.” (Entertainment Weekly, June 2009)
Megan Fox does not claim a perfect world is coming, like Gülen does, and she does not define this ‘perfect’ world. She raises questions, makes you think, puts you on a different track, gets one-on-one with your mind. What is your idea of a perfect life and if you would attain it, would you really appreciate it as such? The idea has been raised before, but have you really given this question thought? Living. Fucking. Nightmare. This is Fox trying to get through to your hermetically sealed little dome of preconceptions. She’s not asking you to give up ambition. She’s asking you to use your mind rather than let others dictate what is a desirable life.
These were just two of Megan Fox’s pregnant quotes and it was hard enough to condense all that flows from them into single paragraphs and I know I have failed in this respect. Imagine, until now people have asked the questions of Fox that one would ask a ‘pretty but dumb moviestar’, but what would result if someone begged her opinion on globalisation, the afterlife, or what it’s like living in a world where 2 girls 1 cup is a reality? Even better, what if we could interview her on a variety of more or less serious questions and pose those same exact questions to a more traditional intellectual such as Gülen?
Team Dinosaur wonders: what would you ask Megan Fox?
“so we’ll live, / And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh / At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues / Talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too” (King Lear, Act V, Sc. 3)
[...] This post was Twitted by JonPTaylor [...]