My manifesto
?The only beauty that will be left in the world will be accidental?
~~~ Sabina from Unberable Lightness of Being
I noticed in our blog word-count table that three of use are clustered pretty close to the top. Well, to steal from Matt?Kati and David, ?ha-cha!!!?
Last week got some good discourse going between blogs, so hopefully someone reads this and responds to it, at least the first 2,784 words that I write about the Culture Industry. This was straight rant format, so I hope there?s nothing overly stupid in it. I also hope I understood Adorno and Horkheimer to at least some degree. It?s rough reading Germans who use 40 page chapters and paragraph breaks every two or three pages. I also recognize that if I ever run for public office, this blog post will surface, and I?ll have to have an affair with the sultry campaign film editor (a la John Edwards) to distract the public from the ?elitist? scandal.
Here goes:
I loved and hated Adorno and Horkheimer?s The Culture Industry. As I?ve said before, I consider myself an elitist (in the best possible sense of the word), and I wear that label with pride. I have no respect for most of mass culture. The fact that ?Two and a Half Men? is entering its sixth season and ?Arrested Development? struggled through three mostly unwatched seasons, makes me fear for humanity more than anything President Bush ever did. I look over our cultural landscape and see what Adorno and Horkheimer see. I see mass culture that strangles quality. I see mass production and homogenization that asks us to listen to what the radio tells us to listen to. I see summer blockbuster that require less thought than single scenes in some of my favorite movies, movies that nobody watched. I see it and it angers me.
I believe in the divide between high and low. I believe high is better than low. I can be a relativist when it comes to some things, but I think that in art, relativism not only takes the fun out of it, it destroy the power of art. The phrase I hate most in the entire world is ?it?s a matter of taste, and you can?t argue taste.? Bullshit. You can argue taste. We come from a wonderful Western tradition of criticism that ranges from Samuel Jonson to Matthew Arnold, to John Ruskin, to Walter Pater, all the way to someone like Roger Ebert (an underrated critic). Our culture accepts critics because our culture wants to pretend it cares about art. The masses might pick up magazines that review media, read the reviews, while thinking in their heads, ?those elitists told me to go to Brick over Beverly Hill?s Chihuaha? Bastards.? I have no respect for it. I wear my elitist badge with honor because those of use who have the capacity, and by that I mean everyone in our class, the people at our intellectual level, have a responsibility not to capitulate to the will of the masses. We have to maintain the beauty in the world; we have to maintain the high art that asks people to be more than automatons, the high art that refuses to blend itself in with crap in a relativist world
Like the authors say, the masses are homogenized when it comes to art. They like the inferior, mass produced, catchy pop of Rihanna, the intellectually void sitcoms of network television, the tear jearker movies that say ?she has cancer---cry. You must cry!? They wash themselves in this cultural capital just as Adorno and Horkheimer say they do. They create basic plots and then follow them, and if you stray too far from conventions (Before Sunset, Persepolis, Arrested Development, etc.) you are relegated to artistic art rather than commercial art and doomed to skate by on minimum budgets or have to return to the Renaissance idea of patronage. The fact we even recognize such divides support The Culture Industry?s claims that we have homogenized our culture through media.
Now here is where I absolutely disagree with Adorno and Horkheimer. They take a Marxist view of the issue; they see our mass homogenization, our mass mediocrity as a product of the dominant classes? control over the masses. I see the mass mediocrity and the longing for homogenization as a condemnation of the masses and their expectations. I know people are going to disagree with me, and I know this argument might not be completely coherent. One particular argument I think some might take up with me regards power, especially with what I am about to say: The Culture Industry does not use its power to form the masses into homogenized, unintelligent, unquestioning masses. On the contrary, the masses use their power to form the culture industry into a provider of crap. The market wants to make money. If the masses chose to expand their horizons, if they decided to bump Fantistic Four with The Constant Gardener, the cultural industry would respond out of its own self interest, a term we denigrate. Self interest is not always bad. The easy alternative is selflessness, which translates into absence of self. I would rely on people?s self interest much before I would rely on people lack self. The cultural industry should not be selfless when it comes to the masses. IT should provide them with the mindless narcotics the masses ask for.
To reiterate, Adorno bitches about how the masses are controlled by the market. I disagree. The masses control the markets. The masses long for Independence Day, they spit in the face of The Secret Lives of Others. They call indie films elitist and foreign films out of touch. Well, indie films ( at least the good ones) are elitists because they are superior to the movies that make tons of money. Foreign films are out of touch because they make us thing about different world views in an often artistically avante garde way. There are exceptions of course, those bizarre moments when real, daring art becomes something popular, but those examples are few and far between (Robinson?s Gilead, Didion?s Year of Magical Thinking, Radiohead, South Park).
In Academia we pretend we fight the class wars on behalf of the masses. We are the bespectacled generals battling dominance while reproducing the power divide through our tenure and hiring practices. How do we fight for the masses? We employ scholars who rise above the masses on an intellectual level. Whether we take my argument that the masses long for their mediocrity or whether we take a Marxist view that it?s forced upon them by the dominant culture industry, it doesn?t change the elitisms. I address my elitism in the immediately following paragraphs. I address the elitism of the Marxist critic later in my rant.
I am elitist because I denigrate the capital choices of the masses. I make conscious effort to search for new, avante garde cinema, new experiemental music, new wonderful literature. I put effort into my consumption. I hear people say that older music is better because they compare Led Zeppelin to Lynkn Park. I compare Led Zeppelin to of Montreal, Tv on the Radio, Neutral Milk Hotel, Ted Leo, Fleet foxes, The national, and Gogol Bordello. I never would have found any of these bands on the Billboard top 10. I had to put the extra effort to find these bands and give them the benefit of the doubt that, while their music isn?t as immediately accessible as a Black Eyed Peas chorus about dry humping, it is technically better, artistically more daring and more important, more revolutionary. And more worthwhile.
It?s a sad state of affairs that when I think of a movie that is different, a piece of art that attempts to transcend our expectations of what love is, what pain is, (movies such as Maria Full of Grace, Once, Lost in Transaction, Away From Her, Venus etc.) I know, even as I watch them that they are too good to be popular. What does that phrase mean? Well not that exact phrase because only I probably postulate it in such a brunt manner, but what does it mean when we look at something and know it?s too good to ever reach a mass audience? As members of the intellectual elite, we face this all the time; how do we reconcile the fact? Do we say, Arrested Development failed because of marketing or do we say Arrested development failed simply because it asked too much from its audience. The show demanded thought, it asked for sarcasm and daring in a culture where artistic daring, artistic superiority is this cute little antiquated ideal studios hang on to from a feeling of guilt, possible PR potential, and even more often, as a carrot to throw to artists/entertainers. Famous movie stars are now basically forced to enter inferior, well funded products, to get thrown a bone and a ten million $ budget they want to use to make high art. George Clooney made his softcore porno batman movie so the studios would finance Syriana. Brad Pitt made the more entertaining than it should be Mr. and Mrs. Smith so that he could coproduce Babel and star in his wonderfully underappreciated Assassination of Jesse James by that Coward Robert Ford.
Returning to my argument with Adorno and Horkheimer, I don?t direct my polemic at the culture industry; I direct it at the masses. I understand they live hard lives and want diversion, but I don?t think that excuses devolving into mindlessnesses in their leisure time. I work 90 hours a week. On my free time I read to make myself better. I never stop looking for the next beautiful thing that will change my life. In the Internet age, that next big thing is always out there. We have myspace music pages, local bands we can listen to in India (turning local on its head), we have sites like metacritic that compile all critical review of a movie, album, film, or book, which I think is the greatest antidote to the cultural information overload we face everyday. I don?t mean we should go onto metacritric, take the crtics? words as gospel, and choose to like the music. I do think we should go on metacritic, see what the best minds in the field recommend and start there. You won?t like all of it, but you will have the chance to separate the wheat from the chaff. The chance to find art is still there. You just have to look
All this is an incoherent rant that leads me back to my main problem that is the tenet of the The Cultural Industry. I look at the mass culture landscape and agree with the authors on a superficial level. I agree that high art is in real danger of being relegated into elitist exceptions not worth studying (Jacob and I had this argument at the bar? guess which side I took). I disagree with their understanding of the relations between cultural industry and consumer in a market society. The market can be used, just like the Internet, biotechnology, digital music, etc. to oppress or battle the elites. The market is not inherently political. The Culture Industry markets goods to homogenize consumers because homogenized consumers are easier to market to later and less likely to rise up against the structures in place. Ultimately though, you can?t market anything there is not a market for (except for diamonds). If the Culture industry decided to shape mass culture in this way, mass culture welcomed it with open arms. They found goods they could understand, goods that distracted them, goods that made them feel good about themselves, goods that reinforced their stereotypes. They eat it up. They love their reality tv, so if reality tv is ruining our culture than it sign of a culture begging to be ruined. You have always had your Matthew Arnolds and people like me who argue that it is not just a matter of taste, and we fight against the apathy of the consumer, but it?s a losing battle. It?s a battle trying to make people do what they don?t want to do. These aren?t battles that are often won.
To go back to the Marxism, Culture Industry does not just use the proletariat as production, it has shifted the proletariat from producer to consumer. Conversely, the proletariat uses the culture industry as producer. The proletariat willingly assimilates stereotypes and inferior programming into life to the point where life becomes inferior in a way. Once again, this is not just the culture industry working against the masses, it is the masses finding and consuming what they want. There is a long history of great art that was ignored by peers who reveled in inferiority. Van Gogh sold one painting, My So Called Life lasted one season, Sonic Youth never went gold. Even back in earlier centuries, Briggs and Burkes described a historical situation where people started buying up trashy print novels that outsold the higher literature of the time. The only way to avoid this conundrum is to remove purchase powers from the masses and return to a system of patronage. Some of the greatest works of art in the world were paid for by art connoisseurs for private collections. Left to the whims of the masses of the Renaissance, do you think Michaelangelo?s Twilight, Night, and Day in the Medici chapel would have been preserved, or would some minor work of art of no real importance that happened to pander and make people forget their work day be attracting crowds in Florence? I don?t think this is a new thing.
To continue my neverending rant. It?s elitism no matter how we look at it. I say mass culture is often comprised of people who do not operate on our intellectual plain, who do not analyze because of a combination of apathy and inability. I know this sounds harsh, but the average IQ in this country is 100 with a standard deviation of 15. I know IQ is a flawed system, but it is not flawed to the point where it doesn?t show strong correlational results. If the average IQ is 100 with a standard deviation of 15, This is not a diatribe against the average (well maybe it is, but I don?t mean it as extreme as it sounds). I see the reality of the situation and see no way out. I wholeheartedly don?t believe that mass culture consumes what they consume solely because the culture industry uses its power as dominant class to make them so do. If left to their?own devices, do you think Rushmore would make more money than High School musical 1- ?? I dont think so.
Now, my near final point, hopefully. I have my eltitism, which I will hopefully reedit for coherence and clarity. At least, I am willing to call a dog a dog. The Marxist critics like Adorno have their elitism that calls a dog a subservient pet operating under the inescapable hegemony of the dominant class. Elitism is elitism though. I don?t disagree that the masses are fed homogenization and inferiority by the Cultural Industry . But if the cultural controls are so strong and the masses cannot break out, then what are these guys doing analyzing these controls? They have obviously broken out of the trap. They have obviously attained an elite status above the masses; they are obviously able to look at the situation and see it as it is. They are obviously the elite in a culture that abhors elites. We have two systems, mine where I posit that the masses get what they want because they don?t want much, which posits my intellect and my artistic tastes above theirs, or we have a system where they do not get what they want and don?t realize what they want, which still places the Marxist critics above the masses because the Marxist critics recognizes it. Either way, we don?t have equality. Whether it be nature or nurture that makes us what we are, and I think it?s a combination of both, there is something that makes people at our level capable of holding discussions that would make Joe the Plummer?s head explode. And it should be that way. Our idea of deliberative discouse means accommodating apathy, it means accommodating those who cannot tell the difference between the art of Godfather I and II and the sensual flashiness of Scarface. Does that not scare anyone?
My final point comes for a novel of course. In The Fountainhead, Gayl Windand is a media mogul, ruling the most powerful paper in NY city. In Rand?s terms he is the ?man that could have been, but did not know it.?He builds an empire pandering to the public telling them what to believe, what they should think is worth hearing. He is the most powerful man in NY. At the end of the novel he comes to the tragic conclusion that the power he thought he had was illusory. Rather than dictating public opinion, public opinion dictated him. He finally tries to change their opinion on an important issue and he is crushed. He finds that his power was never real power. He never had the power to tell the public what they want. The public just wanted trash. When he tried to leave behind the trash the public left him and his paper crashed. I think there are strong parallels here. The Culture Industry can pretend it controls the masses and the decisions they make, and no doubt they do to a point, but when the public will changes the public destroys the culture industry. The culture industry might control power for the time the market lets it control power, but when public opinion changes and sales drop, the dominant class becomes subservient to the public will. People buy what they want. To a degree, corporations can tell them what to buy. Don?t overstate that degree though. The interaction is weighted more heavily to the culture industry to be sure, but that weight does not mean full control. If you believe it?s full control, you leave the technological determinism we hate so much and fall into a market determinism with the same principles, only less tenable and more questionable.
Rant over. Tear me apart.
Originally, I was going to write a long blog post about Mcluhan. I?ve already dominated the previous longest blog post though, so I?m going to show some restraint.
I like Mcluhan. I like how he writes. I like that he throws out cool saying that I highlight without fully agreeing with. I agree with him when he says that his writings came at the kairotic moment when it became appropriate to analyze the book as a medium because of the shift into television and radio as mediums. I disagree when he says that examining your current technological period is a waste of time. Even if someone looks back on our blog posts about digital media and snickers, at least we provide primary documents that show how society accepted new media. To look back the way Mcluhan did, he has to have something to look back on. He has to have contemporary reactions so he can understand how the book shaped culture. If we all sat around and shut up until the next thing comes around, then history becomes a worthless study. Studying a battle like Waterloo means more than looking back and saying ?Napolean lost because??. History should involve looking back and saying ?Napolean lost because he thought??
Man, there is so much more I want to say about Mcluhan. He discusses how market culture changed books, which ties itself nicely to the earlier part of my post. I?m trusting the rest of you to post more thoroughly on Mcluhan because, love him or hate him, he has a lot to say about new media even if he was focusing on the analog over the digital. Go for it, and I look forward to reading it.
One final note on mcluhan, he?s overly complicated, overly vague, but such a cool writer with some many pithy statements, so I have to like him. It bothers me that academics have gone so far out of their way to discredit him because while his is deterministic and slightly extreme, he isn?t as deterministic or as extreme as some say. I also noted that Hayles hardly mentions him in Writing Machines, but there are lines in the two articles we read today that could have been titles for her chapters. Why is that?
Moving much too quickly to Benjamin, I want to point out a minor quote in his article that interested me. He quotes Marinetti, who I spoke about in some detail in my presentation, as saying ?War in beautiful because it initiates the dreamt of metallization of the human body.? This doesn?t have much to do with the readings, but is an interesting early conception of man as cyborg. The Futurists chose the wrong side historically, but I think we would be well served reexamining them.
Back to Benjamin. If anyone is interested in Benjamin or Mcluhan?s argument that the market system made literature (for my argument, art), spend some time studying Andy Warhol. Andy Warhol took these ideas and made him a defining (and often overlooked) philosopher of the 20th century. Not only was Warhol the first artist to embrace his commercialism, he also embraced art as an object of mass production. Think of his series? on Marilyn Monroe or Jackie O and the way he reproduced the images over and over again, sometimes on the same canvas. If you?re interested in Benjamin, turn to Warhol.
Last note, Benjamin writes, "in Western Europe the capitalistic exploitation of the film denies consideration to modern man?s desire to being reproduced.? He?s write, the film does deny that consideration. What he can?t see coming is the Television, which reproduces modern man, especially contemporary television, like no media could before. And even more, he can?t see the ?my girlfriend cheated on me, WAAAAAAAH WAHHHHHHH? posts on youtube. This brings me back to something else Benjamin says. He says that every form reaches a critical stage where it cannot bring about the effects it desires without some technological change. Do we think the rapid response the internet abd youtube are that change and that the reality TV stage of television was the medium in the throes of searching for a new interactive breakthrough?
Final word count: 3,828. Beat that David and Kati.