I remember once commenting to a friend that for all punk's supposed "transformative" and "revolutionary" properties I was hard pressed to find how the years since 1977 could've gone better for the power we were supposedly fighting against.
It was an interesting and enjoyable read! But with all these cultural analysis pieces I feel that it falls into the old alt culture trap of "There must be something to resist". Young arabs in totalitarian countries toppling autocrats to replace them with populist Islamist are rebelling. Suburban kids listening to weird music have had nothing real to rebel against for generations.
Is the world perfect? of course not. Is western middle class life so incredibly comfortable and alluring that people will almost universally prefer it to any reasonable alternative given enough time (and age)? evidently.
The "Man" is a centralized authority more fitting in a soviet era society when things are centrally planed. In the modern liberal capitalist world you are fighting cultural streams. There is no one building to burn to change the world, you would literally need to convince billions with your idea and by definition to become mainstream.
In my small sample size of my life most "alternative" people do not reject the mainstream initially. At young age for one reason or another they are rejected or are a misfit in the mainstream and looking for acceptance and comradery they find another group. Later they build their personality around the alternative music, financial system, family structure, etc that is defining that group. They just want somewhere to belong. And as they age and become more "mainstream" themselves they realize that they do not hate general society as much as they thought. and some people are just contrarians by nature, that also happens :)
This does not detract from the fact that there are powerful people trying to benefit from cultural movements, but they are as influenced by the movements as they are influencing them. Trump was created by the culture shock of Obama. Is he manipulating people? sure. is he also molded and guided by the zeitgeist? arguably more so.
Not really in art, but in the last year or so we started to see the system trying to do the same thing to the degrowth subculture (?) (of which eXtinction Rebellion might or might not be a visible offshoot ?).
That one might be hard to absorb... maybe that's why there recently has been a clash between it and the """blue hairs""" (over issues of artificial reproduction and medically-assisted transsexualilty ; anything cyber- is anathema to degrowthers) ?
The figure of the burned out 30-something engineer (couple) that has decided to retire to the country (after accumulating enough money in their old job) and live frugally seems becoming a cliché by now... at least they are well aware that this comes with hardship (one of Degrowth's recent editorials is titled "You can't survive on a garden" (alone)).
I know we usually ignore recommendations from strangers online but I'm pretty fucking sure you would love to watch the barely one-hour documentary called "The Merchants of Cool". Maybe you've seen it before but if you haven't, it's a must watch. You can easily find it with a Google search.
For decades I've been mulling over corporate co-optation of subversiveness, the relationship between authenticity and expressions of rebellion in art and popular culture and I came to the conclusion that it's all fake. All of it. We've been duped. It's all an act. It's all performative. Always was.
Not just the music but all forms of art. If you sell a cultural or artistic product, you're a product yourself. A brand. I don't care how edgy or contrarian or outside the norm you purport to be. The thing is: artists know it's all an act, the majority of fans know it's all an act and no one really cares. Only the suckers like me care. And, apparently, you too.
I came to the conclusion that all the "too cool for school" bands and artists who riffed on the mainstream did so not because they were against the mainstream per se but precisely because they weren't part of the mainstream. They weren't motivated by anti-conformity or an unwavering sense of authenticity... but by resentment and envy.
It's easy to have morals when you have no money and no fame. In my country we have a saying: money doesn't corrupt people, money reveals people.
Cool. For as long as this has been a problem, there has been an antidote: No Pity For The Majority (Wax Trax)
Seriously though, the antidote has always been a very local one: to drop out of *culture* while opposing the system, instead of the other way around, and to make your own culture as much as possible. Write, rather than read, play an instrument, rather than listen to one, paint, rather than look at images. It doesn't solve the unsolvable problem of there being a mass culture, or of capitalism being almost everything, but it does solve the problem for oneself in particular.
I think it is very hard for counter culture in general to accept that it is a half measure. The full measure is revolution. We're echoing the deeds and ways of much older movements, like the English Dissenters, American revolutionaries, Renaissance and Enlightenment thinkers, early scientists, early Christians, even the proper soviet communists. But all of these things, for all their flaws, got their shit together, got up early in the morning, had boring meetings, made concrete plans, and *completely replaced earlier systems*. They were all counter culture, but also *so much more*, and so much more lasting.
I remember once commenting to a friend that for all punk's supposed "transformative" and "revolutionary" properties I was hard pressed to find how the years since 1977 could've gone better for the power we were supposedly fighting against.
Fantastic as usual.
It was an interesting and enjoyable read! But with all these cultural analysis pieces I feel that it falls into the old alt culture trap of "There must be something to resist". Young arabs in totalitarian countries toppling autocrats to replace them with populist Islamist are rebelling. Suburban kids listening to weird music have had nothing real to rebel against for generations.
Is the world perfect? of course not. Is western middle class life so incredibly comfortable and alluring that people will almost universally prefer it to any reasonable alternative given enough time (and age)? evidently.
The "Man" is a centralized authority more fitting in a soviet era society when things are centrally planed. In the modern liberal capitalist world you are fighting cultural streams. There is no one building to burn to change the world, you would literally need to convince billions with your idea and by definition to become mainstream.
In my small sample size of my life most "alternative" people do not reject the mainstream initially. At young age for one reason or another they are rejected or are a misfit in the mainstream and looking for acceptance and comradery they find another group. Later they build their personality around the alternative music, financial system, family structure, etc that is defining that group. They just want somewhere to belong. And as they age and become more "mainstream" themselves they realize that they do not hate general society as much as they thought. and some people are just contrarians by nature, that also happens :)
This does not detract from the fact that there are powerful people trying to benefit from cultural movements, but they are as influenced by the movements as they are influencing them. Trump was created by the culture shock of Obama. Is he manipulating people? sure. is he also molded and guided by the zeitgeist? arguably more so.
My own addition to the incoming tl;dr gags:
tl;dr
SLC Punk
Not really in art, but in the last year or so we started to see the system trying to do the same thing to the degrowth subculture (?) (of which eXtinction Rebellion might or might not be a visible offshoot ?).
That one might be hard to absorb... maybe that's why there recently has been a clash between it and the """blue hairs""" (over issues of artificial reproduction and medically-assisted transsexualilty ; anything cyber- is anathema to degrowthers) ?
The figure of the burned out 30-something engineer (couple) that has decided to retire to the country (after accumulating enough money in their old job) and live frugally seems becoming a cliché by now... at least they are well aware that this comes with hardship (one of Degrowth's recent editorials is titled "You can't survive on a garden" (alone)).
I know we usually ignore recommendations from strangers online but I'm pretty fucking sure you would love to watch the barely one-hour documentary called "The Merchants of Cool". Maybe you've seen it before but if you haven't, it's a must watch. You can easily find it with a Google search.
For decades I've been mulling over corporate co-optation of subversiveness, the relationship between authenticity and expressions of rebellion in art and popular culture and I came to the conclusion that it's all fake. All of it. We've been duped. It's all an act. It's all performative. Always was.
Not just the music but all forms of art. If you sell a cultural or artistic product, you're a product yourself. A brand. I don't care how edgy or contrarian or outside the norm you purport to be. The thing is: artists know it's all an act, the majority of fans know it's all an act and no one really cares. Only the suckers like me care. And, apparently, you too.
I came to the conclusion that all the "too cool for school" bands and artists who riffed on the mainstream did so not because they were against the mainstream per se but precisely because they weren't part of the mainstream. They weren't motivated by anti-conformity or an unwavering sense of authenticity... but by resentment and envy.
It's easy to have morals when you have no money and no fame. In my country we have a saying: money doesn't corrupt people, money reveals people.
tldr; Pop Will Eat Itself (RCA).
Cool. For as long as this has been a problem, there has been an antidote: No Pity For The Majority (Wax Trax)
Seriously though, the antidote has always been a very local one: to drop out of *culture* while opposing the system, instead of the other way around, and to make your own culture as much as possible. Write, rather than read, play an instrument, rather than listen to one, paint, rather than look at images. It doesn't solve the unsolvable problem of there being a mass culture, or of capitalism being almost everything, but it does solve the problem for oneself in particular.
I think it is very hard for counter culture in general to accept that it is a half measure. The full measure is revolution. We're echoing the deeds and ways of much older movements, like the English Dissenters, American revolutionaries, Renaissance and Enlightenment thinkers, early scientists, early Christians, even the proper soviet communists. But all of these things, for all their flaws, got their shit together, got up early in the morning, had boring meetings, made concrete plans, and *completely replaced earlier systems*. They were all counter culture, but also *so much more*, and so much more lasting.
I know at least two people who will instantly read the 1200-pager! After all, how will you top the dragon?