Michael Hicks's Reviews > Wake Up and Open Your Eyes
Wake Up and Open Your Eyes
by
by
One would be hard pressed to have a more perfectly timed and topical release than Clay McLeod Champan's latest. Landing in bookstores roughly two weeks prior to the inauguration of Donald Trump's second term in office, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes might be the most spot-on summation of this November's election results, in which 76 million voters chose to Make America Hate Again, and the widespread effectiveness of far-right propaganda as filtered and sanitized through mainstream media.
In the weeks following Thanksgiving, Noah's parents have grown progressively, and troublingly, more conservative thanks to their steady diet of Fax News. They've become incredibly open in their racism and transphobia, spouting conspiracy theories as facts around the dinner table, and demanding that certain segments of the population -- people like Noah's dark-skinned wife -- get the hell out of their country. It's not just Noah's parents, though. His brother and his brother's wife and children are also growing more deranged. So are an awful lot of other people in the country, as school shootings grow more and more widespread, spouses begin killing one another en masse, and neighbors attack one another. After being unable to reach his parents, and unable to rely on his brother to check on them, Noah leaves his family to check on Mom and Dad. What he finds beyond the once-safe confines of his liberal enclave is a country that has gone completely insane, driven to madness and violence, and possessed thoroughly by an almost demonic level of hate and fear.
At the center of this burgeoning American apocalypse is the right-wing news channel, Fax News, and its arrogant, blowhard anchors and commentators who spout endless litanies of grievances and all the things wrong about our country. Chapman doesn't end there, though, widening the scope of his widescreen horror show to encompass Internet influencers and clout chasers and catchy kids' songs, like the cloyingly, sweetly familiar "Baby Ghost" that has amassed billions of YouTube clicks. The end of the world as we know it has become a viral meme encouraging soft-minded viewers to wake up and open their eyes, and to do so in the deadliest ways possible.
Chapman spares no expense in plumbing the horrors here, with the entire country plunging into self-made, war-torn chaos. Impromptu mass orgies turn cannibalistic as the party of family values get their real freak on. Motor vehicles become two-ton assault carriers and battle rams, school children turn to social media to learn how to craft improvised explosives, and kitchen utensils are harnessed as gut-churningly deadly weapons as Chapman does for pizza slicers and blenders what Evil Dead Rise did for cheese graters.
Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is a violent assault upon the senses, but its social themes and commentary are what really stung the most. Seeing Noah's family fall from grace rang bitingly true and familiar, as they grow overwhelmed by and fall victim to a much-too steady diet of right-wing news. Having grown up in a conservative household where Rush Limbaugh was constantly spouting off through the car's stereo speakers and Fox News was by and large the only TV station that existed in my parent's world, I couldn't help but sympathize with Noah, especially as he sees the changes in his parents begin to slowly accumulate over the years and eventually make them unrecognizable. My father, in particular, was a victim of Fox News brain rot, exacerbated further by worsening dementia, and I had to watch as he steadily grew from a Democrat to Reagan Republican to devout Limbaugh listener, becoming ever more racist and conspiracy-minded as the years went on, descending into a full-throated, Trump-worshipping fascist.
While Chapman goes to the extremes in his development of what becomes known as "Fax News Brain Rot," its real-world corollary is certainly a concern for those of us who appreciated American democracy, civility, kindness, ethics, and basic human morality, values that have apparently gone entirely by the wayside for half the country in the hopes for cheaper eggs. And while Chapman rightly, properly, and necessarily skewers right-wing politics, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is hardly a liberal hagiography. While the right descends into chaos and murder, the left are largely depicted as selfish and clueless. Take, for instance, a small group of survivors armed with guns they have no idea how to use, and dressed in eye-achingly brightly colored hunting gear. Chapman's final denouement is about as much of downbeat beatdown of American liberals as one can conjure, not that it's exactly fair and balanced given the wider scope of the narrative at play here, nor are right-wing snowflakes likely to even make it that far before they toss this book aside and decry it for being "woke."
Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is a perfectly timed takedown of right versus left politics, particularly given the disastrous election results we'll all be paying for over the next few years. Rightfully angry, violently cathartic, at times squirm-inducingly and anxiety-spikingly so, Chapman goes hard and full-speed ahead with this truly American horror story.
In the weeks following Thanksgiving, Noah's parents have grown progressively, and troublingly, more conservative thanks to their steady diet of Fax News. They've become incredibly open in their racism and transphobia, spouting conspiracy theories as facts around the dinner table, and demanding that certain segments of the population -- people like Noah's dark-skinned wife -- get the hell out of their country. It's not just Noah's parents, though. His brother and his brother's wife and children are also growing more deranged. So are an awful lot of other people in the country, as school shootings grow more and more widespread, spouses begin killing one another en masse, and neighbors attack one another. After being unable to reach his parents, and unable to rely on his brother to check on them, Noah leaves his family to check on Mom and Dad. What he finds beyond the once-safe confines of his liberal enclave is a country that has gone completely insane, driven to madness and violence, and possessed thoroughly by an almost demonic level of hate and fear.
At the center of this burgeoning American apocalypse is the right-wing news channel, Fax News, and its arrogant, blowhard anchors and commentators who spout endless litanies of grievances and all the things wrong about our country. Chapman doesn't end there, though, widening the scope of his widescreen horror show to encompass Internet influencers and clout chasers and catchy kids' songs, like the cloyingly, sweetly familiar "Baby Ghost" that has amassed billions of YouTube clicks. The end of the world as we know it has become a viral meme encouraging soft-minded viewers to wake up and open their eyes, and to do so in the deadliest ways possible.
Chapman spares no expense in plumbing the horrors here, with the entire country plunging into self-made, war-torn chaos. Impromptu mass orgies turn cannibalistic as the party of family values get their real freak on. Motor vehicles become two-ton assault carriers and battle rams, school children turn to social media to learn how to craft improvised explosives, and kitchen utensils are harnessed as gut-churningly deadly weapons as Chapman does for pizza slicers and blenders what Evil Dead Rise did for cheese graters.
Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is a violent assault upon the senses, but its social themes and commentary are what really stung the most. Seeing Noah's family fall from grace rang bitingly true and familiar, as they grow overwhelmed by and fall victim to a much-too steady diet of right-wing news. Having grown up in a conservative household where Rush Limbaugh was constantly spouting off through the car's stereo speakers and Fox News was by and large the only TV station that existed in my parent's world, I couldn't help but sympathize with Noah, especially as he sees the changes in his parents begin to slowly accumulate over the years and eventually make them unrecognizable. My father, in particular, was a victim of Fox News brain rot, exacerbated further by worsening dementia, and I had to watch as he steadily grew from a Democrat to Reagan Republican to devout Limbaugh listener, becoming ever more racist and conspiracy-minded as the years went on, descending into a full-throated, Trump-worshipping fascist.
While Chapman goes to the extremes in his development of what becomes known as "Fax News Brain Rot," its real-world corollary is certainly a concern for those of us who appreciated American democracy, civility, kindness, ethics, and basic human morality, values that have apparently gone entirely by the wayside for half the country in the hopes for cheaper eggs. And while Chapman rightly, properly, and necessarily skewers right-wing politics, Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is hardly a liberal hagiography. While the right descends into chaos and murder, the left are largely depicted as selfish and clueless. Take, for instance, a small group of survivors armed with guns they have no idea how to use, and dressed in eye-achingly brightly colored hunting gear. Chapman's final denouement is about as much of downbeat beatdown of American liberals as one can conjure, not that it's exactly fair and balanced given the wider scope of the narrative at play here, nor are right-wing snowflakes likely to even make it that far before they toss this book aside and decry it for being "woke."
Wake Up and Open Your Eyes is a perfectly timed takedown of right versus left politics, particularly given the disastrous election results we'll all be paying for over the next few years. Rightfully angry, violently cathartic, at times squirm-inducingly and anxiety-spikingly so, Chapman goes hard and full-speed ahead with this truly American horror story.
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