The Beat aesthetic described in Leland's Hip: the History is one that does not focus on the present or the past but embraces what happens in the moment, so it's pretty forgiving of mistakes and flaws. This kind of attitude can be seen in different aspects of our media. With one event happening after another and all of these things taking place within seconds on the internet, many news items or YouTube videos become old news within minutes as viewers move onto the next thing. Celebrity goofs and blunders are constantly popping up in the news and are forgotten about as soon as the next big thing to fire up the nation occurs. From the shirt storm controversy to Gamergate and Trayvon Martin to Michael Brown to Freddie Gray. The internet does care about all of these events and individuals but seems to move on relatively quickly after said events happen. The Internet does care about all of these events and individuals but seems to move on relatively quickly after said events happen. This seems particularly true with celebrities as the Internet has moved on from collectively hating Avril Lavigne's Hello Kitty.
Perhaps this applies more to celebrities that we happens to like for the most part. Though this is a bit of an older example, we seem to have a cultural acceptance for Trent Reznor, the sole member of Nine Inch Nails, as he won both an Oscar and a Golden Globe award for his soundtrack in The Social Network in 2011 and was nominated for a Golden Globe for his soundtrack in Gone Girl this year. He's had a bit of a bumpy history as he's had problems with addiction and depression. One of his first albums The Downward Spiral focused on the downfall of an addict, which ended up becoming strangely prophetic. His most recent album Hesitation Marks focuses on coming out alive after recovering from an addiction. I would say that Downward Spiral is more of a worship of flaws and living in the moment. Closer, the most popular track from the album, discusses sex addition and bluntly describes the desire within the moment with the line “I want to f—k you like an animal.” Later on in All Time Low, one of the more popular tracks from Hesitation Marks, he seems to have stepped away from the Beat aesthetic somewhat has he describes addition with this line “Get down on the floor/ Shut the goddamn door/ You've done this all before/ You're coming back for more.” This particular line has removed the worship of the present, which makes sense as living in the moment proved to be destructive to him. It could be said that Kurt Cobain was a victim of allowing the Beat aesthetic to move too far through his art and his way of life and that was partially what lead to his downfall as he was unable to come to terms with different life events as he continued to barrel past them in his practice of living in the moment. Beat aesthetic can help with forgetting what happened in the past, but sometimes we aren't ready to forget about those things. Sometimes our flaws are wonderful at doing us in.
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