Marx thought that religion was the opium of the people. Penny Arcade reckons cupcakes are the crack cocaine of contemporary society. People are suffering from OCD: Obsessive Cupcake Disorder. Arcade argues that vast swathes of New York are in a diabetic coma, with cupcake shops acting as a barometer for the gentrification of a neighbourhood.
Standing at the microphone with her shock of crimson hair, Arcade rails against Snow White (so bland, so conformist, so cupcake) and identifies instead with the wicked witch. She’s even got the cackle, and if she gets a little tetchy at times then you can’t say she hasn’t earned the right, with a counter-culture career stretching back over 50 years to Andy Warhol and the Factory.
There is something invigorating about seeing a gobby older woman loudly and unashamedly owning the stage. Yep, she shouts quite a lot and there’s plenty of sloganising, most of which doesn’t really bear too deep an examination: “Mediocrity is the new black”; “In 2015, 1984 finally kicked in”; “In a puritanical society, pleasure is sin ”; “Young people have been conditioned to hate history but love vintage.” But there’s something so warm about the way she sprays the verbal bullets that you can’t help nodding along, even if the ultimate message – “own your own life” – sounds suspiciously like something out of a self-help manual.
Arcade sometimes comes across as if she is a merely nostalgic for the past. But she draws a distinction between the wistful sentimentality of nostalgia and longing itself, which she defines as a persistent sense of loss. Longing Lasts Longer is not so much a lament as a human alarm call, to rouse ourselves from the influence of the advertisers and the marketeers, to stop consuming and start doing.
Cupcake-eaters of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chocolate sprinkles.
- At Underbelly until 30 August. Box office: 0131-226 0000.
