Volume 1
The inaugural REJECTED newsletter launches with some very mild, casual feelings about what's been profitable in the arts these last few years. (Is it any wonder this got rejected?) And a 'toon.
Advice For Succeeding in Today’s Artistic Climate
TV & Movies
As you may have noticed, trauma is a hot commodity at the moment and Hollywood is just as game to exploit it as we are to consume it. For us the audience, there’s nothing like working hard all day long, finally getting the kids to bed, and turning on the TV to relax with a show about a man who blew up his family. We’re really not trying to escape anymore as much as we’re trying to turn the volume up on our central nervous systems as high as it will go at all times. Anything less, and we’ll be scrolling on our phones as your show plays in the background. Themes that feel good, like a romance between two people that works out, or musicals that make us smile and nothing else, or just an alternate universe where a family is generally happy, we no longer want to see. We want media that reminds us it’s a privilege just to be alive. We want romance that ends with both people dead in a ditch. We demand a family drama where they all end up murdered on Christmas. We need to see a dozen children drowned in a lake. We require TV that absolutely obliterates the idea that entertainment should be fun. If you can make a show that’s an enhanced rendering of the news we read about at breakfast, we’ll binge it for hours.
Music
Music is another great medium for packaging trauma into consumable content. Unless you are writing music for Trolls: World Tour, do not expect that anything cheerful you create will be popular. We demand to hear you wail. Popular music should no longer be celebratory because we are miserable. Make sure your music sounds manically empowering, like you have just launched yourself into space for a solo trip after leaving a bad relationship or make sure it sounds truly gut wrenching, like you can barely brush your teeth in the morning after leaving a bad relationship.
If you’d like us to dance to your music, we prefer that it sounds vaguely angry, like the sex we have with the stranger we grinded up behind at a party instead of asking her to dance directly. It’s important that the melodies are influenced by Xanax, not by the beauty of the world around us. This music will be played in all Ubers and all hair salons and all DSW’s. It will surround us at all times and we will not be able to escape it, so please make it sound as joyless as possible.
Comedy
You wouldn’t think that combining jokes with stories of trauma could make you successful at stand-up, but let us assure you that it can. Please make sure we know exactly how fucked up you are. It’s important to us to know that you’re a mess. Bipolar? Dead dad? Sex addiction? Hate your body? Too much wine? The great thing about trauma is that anything difficult that happens to you counts, be it a rude stranger or combat. Reach for whatever it takes to persuade us that you have been absolutely ravaged by society. If you’d like a Netflix special, we suggest you also confess to us in detail about your rotten bowels and gruesome sexual exploits. Hopefully, you’ll convince us of the adversity you’ve faced despite the privilege of getting up onstage to do a set instead of cleaning up the stage after one inside of a country that is not participating in any civil wars.
Writing
If you can’t sing, act, or joke about your trauma, it really is best if you just write it down. While we’re in the bathtub or on the train going to work or at the beach, we revel in getting cozy with a memoir about how you’ve been brutally victimized. If you didn’t grow up in a landfill or sell your teeth to save your dad from the circus, you will not get a book deal (unless you’re a celebrity whose life story we already know). But, you can still write essays about your worst moments and none of your best and publish them on the internet. If you’re lucky, the story of your stillbirth will go viral, and you’ll enjoy all the spoils of fame for two weeks. You may even get noticed by an agent and asked to write a book about any other stillbirths you might have had, and then everyone involved will get rich. The more trauma you can manufacture for us, the thirstier for it we get, so we insist that you bleed yourself dry.
