Long Ass Lennon
The Man The Myth The Legend
December belongs to John Lennon. On December 8th we remember that was assassinated in front of his apartment building. Throughout the month we listen to his Christmas song to his son. This year Get Back was released around Thanksgiving and because it was 8 hours long, the content carried over into December. The month culminated in a meme, as most things do. A picture of John and Yoko, naked, with their butts edited to be both at lot longer and a lot shorter, respectively. This was, to me, a nail in the coffin for everyone to say “I’m done thinking about John Lennon for a long time”
The picture itself is great. It’s a perfect use of photoshop. It’s a perfect fake. More seasoned users, or John Lennon fans, knew immediately that it was fake but weren’t screaming from the hills that it was fake. They were good sports and didn’t spoil anyone’s fun. The rest of us marveled at their butts. Every time this image came across my timeline I studied it. Thinking to myself that it couldn’t be real but I believed that it was. The 70s were a strange time and I would believe that at the time these butts would have gone uncommented on. Most people probably did not want to reveal that they had seen enough ass to know this wasn’t normal or they were too invested in the free love movement to criticize anyone’s body.
In my research I have found the original and while it is less pronounced and obviously Yoko and John’s asses are both bigger and smaller, respectively, it is not but much. This image is the perfect study in changing things just a little bit so they are extreme but still believable. Like the person who got drunk and would edit the Nebraska wikipedia page so it was a little bit bigger every day. Nobody noticed until they told on themselves. This of course was more extreme and worth commenting on and making fun of but very convincing. It was the perfect balance of outrageous and believable. Again, it was the 70s and to the children on the internet, anything was possible then.
We are also at the point where we would believe anything about John Lennon. He is one of the most discussed people in the world. He was even more popular than Jesus at one point. In modern times though it seems like we’re all having or have had the same conversations about John Lennon. In dorm rooms, or at parties, or around the school lunch table, we all seem to puzzling through how to discuss John Lennon. At first we’re told he was a genius and to many the most popular and talented Beatle. Over time we glean more and more of the truth. To the point where it’s even a joke how everyone talks about him. Everyone’s little dark fun fact about John Lennon becomes common knowledge and now anytime anyone brings him up we all have to talk about every part of him. How evil he truly was.
My generation gets our own thrill from telling the men in charge that we don’t care about these abusers. We love to be irreverent about their heroes. We hate John Lennon and Woody Allen and Roman Polanski and all the others. We refuse to separate the art from the artist and it drives The Men in our lives crazy. Both the ones in charge of us and the ones sucking up to the ones in charge of us.
Most of these horrible artists get a treatment of righteous indignation. It’s a serious conversation about why we refuse to respect these people or engage with their art. However when it comes to Lennon, he’s a clown. We refuse to respect him or memorialize him or appreciate him and instead, we also make fun of him. Everything he preached, he didn’t stand by. He’s an inspiration to the worst artists we know and on top of all it, he’s an easy target.
We’ll never stop making fun of John Lennon. I think he’s the only person whose reputation has been effectively tarnished by the teenage girls who came to hate him. It’s the only argument we’ve won because instead of fighting with our hearts on our sleeves or pretending to not understand a man’s impact on the world, we just made fun of him effectively.
Even Beatles fans, the ones who are active participants in the internet anyway, have come around to us. No one talks about John Lennon anymore without caveats. It’s not because they’re afraid of an argument. They’re afraid of getting made fun of. Long Ass Lennon adds another meme to our arsenal. You’re gonna defend the man with the longest ass in the world because he wrote Imagine?
People's legacies in the new age are long and complicated. We know far too much and are absolutely over exposed to everyone. Very few people have enough goodwill to carry them through their entire public life unscathed by public opinion. Even fewer have enough to keep that momentum going after they die. No one could have predicted when The Beatles were playing The Ed Sullivan Show that one of those men would become so hated that people would edit his ass crack to be really long. That we would spend weeks sharing it to continue to defame his image. We would take great pleasure in making fun of him and no one worth listening to would come to his defense. Nothing could prepare anyone for that but I’m glad to be alive to document it.
I enjoy reading your posts lmfao
Yoko made this movie called film number for and it’s just a series of extreme close ups of peoples butts meant to be a petition for world peace. Love to think how these peoples butts can still bring people together some 60 years later.
“This film, in fact, is like an aimless petition signed by people with their anuses. Next time we wish to make an appeal, we should send this film as the signature list.” (Yoko Ono, 1967)