what do you mean by popular culture and what culture produced within a capitalist socioeconomic system wouldn't be an expression of capitalism?
― gong mad (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 21 May 2015 16:48 (nine years ago) link
LOL yes plz start that thread. Nearly all pop is capitalist propoganda.
― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, 21 May 2015 16:53 (nine years ago) link
You can make non-capitalist culture but it doesn't take long for it to be commodified. But you can certainly go to Kinkos and print out anarchist lit or something.
― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, 21 May 2015 16:54 (nine years ago) link
Yeah, I can see how that was maybe not so clear but I don't mean that I want cultural products (!) that are somehow disconnected from capitalism, but there seems to be a difference in the way capitalism expresses itself when some hardcore punk band does a diy tape release and when Taylor Swift sells millions of copies of something and while I enjoy "I Knew You Were Trouble" as a great pop song I also kind of resent the commercialism of it all? And when rappers celebrate their riches I can enjoy it as genre characteristics, and actually also from a marxist perspective if it represents power to the lower classes, but the glorification of success & money in itself, not so cool?
― niels, Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:07 (nine years ago) link
i wd maybe read some Marx
― gong mad (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:07 (nine years ago) link
or probably William Morris in this case
― gong mad (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:08 (nine years ago) link
Nearly all pop is capitalist propoganda.
― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, May 21, 2015 5:53 PM
I agree and find this kind of problematic
― niels, Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:09 (nine years ago) link
Formalism is a reactionary bourgeois aesthetic btw
― gong mad (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:12 (nine years ago) link
I'm not totally sure I understand your point - is the idea of popism formalist and therefore bourgeois and therefore not cool from a marxist perspective?
Also, will reading William Morris soothe my soul or convince me that there can be marxist pop and is it a real recommendation or do you just mean my "analysis" overlooks that there's a lot of leftist pop?
― niels, Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:15 (nine years ago) link
can you please not say "marxist pop?" i'm pretty sure that's the "summon Momus" card
― ultimate american sock (mh), Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:16 (nine years ago) link
slightly off-topic of marxism and pop culture
http://www.filmcomment.com/entry/bombast-pop-pop-pop-popular Popism/Poptimism and movies(art-house faves and blockbusters) and music
― curmudgeon, Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:22 (nine years ago) link
briefly: there is no single Marxian analysis of culture but drawing divisions like popular/elitist feels broadly antithetical to the spirit
Morris advocated a form of hand-crafted artisanal moralism that feels closer to this kind of argument
any critique of culture that centres meaning in the object itself is a bit rubbish
the size of your market is no real indicator of how capitalist yr product is
+ culture that situates itself oppositionally to the hegemony is still an expression of the hegemony in many many ways
― gong mad (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:23 (nine years ago) link
oh and Marx really wasn't anti industrialization
― gong mad (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:24 (nine years ago) link
and it's okay not to like stuff, you don't need a theory for it
― gong mad (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:25 (nine years ago) link
i like the idea that resistance to capitalism could possible emerge spontaneously within a broadly popular capitalist process but it seems more likely that if resistance does exist it does so outside the industry. rockism was never simply about resisting corporate sponsored music tho bc plenty of rockist canon artists are pretty capitalistically situated
― Mordy, Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:28 (nine years ago) link
Haven't read much Marx actually, I really need to rectify that soon.
I have been reading a book called "Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism" and came upon this point:
Both radical feminists and socialist feminists agree that patriarchy precedes capitalism, whereas Marxists believe that patriarchy arose with capitalism. Patriarchy today, the power of the male through sexual roles in capitalism, is institutionalized in the nuclear family. -- Eisenstein, pp 24-25
Maybe a bit off-topic but the sexual division w women dominating pop and men domination rock probably has a lot of implications wrt undercurrents in rockism/popism. Certainly exploitation of artists seem to fall along traditional gender lines.
― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:34 (nine years ago) link
Just knock yourself out dude, it's now possible to enjoy that Taylor Swift album to your heart's content without giving a single penny to a capitalist entity (except the ones who created the technology on which you're listening to it and even then I'd be more worried about, say, the Congolese tin in yr smartphone rather than what liking Taylor says about your Marxist credentials.)
Unless you get similar pangs of contradiction every time you enjoy a coffee / a beer / a KitKat then I'm going to assume you're trying to rationalise a socially acceptable reason not to like pop music. It's okay just not to like it!
― Matt DC, Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:54 (nine years ago) link
So the question we are trying to answer here is "How does one reconcile the West's history of oppression with one's desire to shout 'I love Britney Spears and hate Oasis!!!' at everyone?" right?
― example (crüt), Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:56 (nine years ago) link
xp but my problem is that I like pop music! It's just that if you try and figure out the ideology of pop it's not very nice...
― niels, Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:58 (nine years ago) link
marxism has been so effectively commoditized by post-colonialism that in a heartbeat the conversation turned to Congolese tin and the 'West's history of oppression.'
― Mordy, Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:58 (nine years ago) link
well i've never read marx tbh
― example (crüt), Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:59 (nine years ago) link
and yeah, I do get pangs when I buy stuff in general but this is a special kind of pang, maybe more similar to the pang I get when I really enjoy a Woody Allen movie and then I realize maybe he sexually abused his adopted daughter.
― niels, Thursday, 21 May 2015 18:00 (nine years ago) link
i have no sensitivity left to my participation in capitalism except for the anxiety that gnaws away at me as a participant + the fear that there isn't enough
― Mordy, Thursday, 21 May 2015 18:03 (nine years ago) link
Popism does seem to value quantity over quality, a short shelf life, so that the pop can be disposed and a new product purchased as replacement. This is even seen in the more long-lasting stars like Madonna and David Bowie who constantly must "reinvent" themselves, killing off the old model to make way for the new. The many phases of Britney. The tabloid tear-down/redemption culture.
― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, 21 May 2015 18:07 (nine years ago) link
wrt drawing divisions like popular/elitist I think it's fair to suggest that popism can be framed as in line with "critical theory" (note the quotation marks, I realize that all of these concepts are problematic) because it legitimizes the taste of a "lower class" (contradictory as that may sound) but then again it's not very good for a critical theory when you consider the ideology of pop
― niels, Thursday, 21 May 2015 18:08 (nine years ago) link
yeah even as a pretty dedicated Bowie fan I find his business-like approach to music a bit repulsive...
― niels, Thursday, 21 May 2015 18:11 (nine years ago) link
or at least it saddens and confuses me since I really like the product but cannot identify with the commercial message it's sending
― niels, Thursday, 21 May 2015 18:12 (nine years ago) link
"any critique of culture that centres meaning in the object itself is a bit rubbish"
any critique of an object that centres meaning in the culture it came from rather than that object is equally so tbh
― thoughts you made second posts about (darraghmac), Thursday, 21 May 2015 18:31 (nine years ago) link
NV otm upthread (darragh otm too)
i’m not anti-capitalist
critic of but not anti-
― drash, Thursday, 21 May 2015 18:45 (nine years ago) link
this comes down to aesthetic compromise, really - and strength of aesthetic. it is entirely possible for pop to manifest in an uncompromised aesthetic that the critic regards as strong. personally i find plenty of pop aesthetics weak, but i find many strong as well. i even find a few compromised strong aesthetics to remain strong, although of course compromise weakens the aesthetic in almost every case. what am i on about. flag my post.
― an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Thursday, 21 May 2015 18:50 (nine years ago) link
been drinking cherry wine on an empty stomach all day
― an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Thursday, 21 May 2015 18:51 (nine years ago) link
is that a strong, weak or compromised aesthetic
fortified
― drash, Thursday, 21 May 2015 18:53 (nine years ago) link
this is a little off-topic but i was just thinking yesterday that while there are lots of movies, music, art etc that i find emotionally + aesthetically resonant, these art forms rarely do much for me on a political, ethical or philosophical level. sometimes there are exceptions but even the biggest exceptions ime access one of these other dimensions through their aesthetics and not in a direct confrontation. literature can be a little better at handling those questions but really despite its pretensions to leading the broadsides of politics, the -arts- rarely have anything particularly sophisticated to say.
― Mordy, Thursday, 21 May 2015 18:58 (nine years ago) link
i think that the very best music infers a sort of state of mind which could approach politics and ethics in a productive and interesting way. and that's the most primal & instinctive art form (imo) - film and literature can obviously be more didactic, and i find that sometimes it is so successfully.
― an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Thursday, 21 May 2015 19:01 (nine years ago) link
i wouldn't disagree w/ an assertion that the arts are more important than politics/ethics/philosophy, or that they reach a deeper, more subliminal state of human consciousness. just that when they speak to these other things (and esp when they explicitly try) it doesn't work for me.
― Mordy, Thursday, 21 May 2015 19:03 (nine years ago) link
it is entirely possible that politics/ethics/philosophy are rationalist contentions forged in an esoteric thought-web of artistic immersion, but the process of forging need not be entirely subliminal. of course i would agree that the arts are more important, insofar as they can be separated - even they depend upon decision, aesthetic remove, possession of stance
― an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Thursday, 21 May 2015 19:06 (nine years ago) link
fuck i'm wasted
for me, aesthetics and morality are linked in a demisublime and often very inscrutable manner
― an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Thursday, 21 May 2015 19:07 (nine years ago) link
Go back to the pub.
― Matt DC, Thursday, 21 May 2015 19:08 (nine years ago) link
i'm at the computer drinking at home and i intend to be here all evening, lucky for you i'm writing my frankly amazing novel mostly
― an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Thursday, 21 May 2015 19:11 (nine years ago) link
i was more interested in the apprehending subject tbh but still, the privilege of the thing itself outside of context is cobblers
― gong mad (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 21 May 2015 19:12 (nine years ago) link
ah man it's good to have you back
― thoughts you made second posts about (darraghmac), Thursday, 21 May 2015 19:31 (nine years ago) link
its all down to the object and the subject of the object obv
― thoughts you made second posts about (darraghmac), Thursday, 21 May 2015 19:32 (nine years ago) link
not sure most worthwhile objects even have a subject but this is getting ridiculous
on the other hand given the circumstances
― gong mad (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 21 May 2015 19:34 (nine years ago) link
unrelated to what's happening itt right now, but i have a memory of a zine piece from ages ago (hermenaut, i think?) from a guy who was going thru architecture school, and was on a serious anti-modernist, anti function-as-form kick, and one of his projects was to design a mausoleum. of course the rest of the class came back with these grim slablike designs, half wright, half maya lin. but he had a simple open structure dwarfed by a towering mess of neon and statuary bolted on top, maybe (iirc) giving the pagan intent away with some kind of sphinx-like embodiment of the deceased. he tried to say that it was honest and celebratory (and by extension everyone else's were cowardly and ideologically constrained) but everyone incl the instructor looked at him like he was losing his mind.
so yeah no there are far fewer advocates for popism/poptimism related to art forms OTHER than music, it's true. except maybe TV.
― goole, Thursday, 21 May 2015 20:45 (nine years ago) link
I know of nothing better than the Appassionata and could listen to it every day. What astonishing, superhuman music! It always makes me proud, perhaps with a childish naiveté, to think that people can work such miracles! … But I can’t listen to music very often, it affects my nerves. I want to say sweet, silly things, and pat the little heads of people who, living in a filthy hell, can create such beauty. These days, one can’t pat anyone on the head nowadays, they might bite your hand off. Hence, you have to beat people's little heads, beat mercilessly, although ideally we are against doing any violence to people. Hm — what a devilishly difficult job!
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, 21 May 2015 21:22 (nine years ago) link
I like pop music but I don't like economic inequality, and I will be very surprised if it's controversial to suggest that most pop stars are rich and most fans are not rich.
I don't think pop music or pop stars are to blame for this and I realize there's probably a lot more rich record label people than pop stars (and even more rich warmongers etc.), but as a pop fan I still find it problematic - maybe because it legitimizes inequality, maybe because it's just weird, like I don't idolize CEOs, fuck CEOs, but I like Jay Z what's up with that I don't know.
When I've come across thinkpieces/discussions/reviews that maybe could have been labeled "popist" I've been impressed with how engaged with the world the writing has been when for instance focusing on politics of race and gender, and it seems like it would be logical for "popist" criticism to engage with pop economics (apart from reviewing sales, billboard chratings etc.)
I dunno, maybe there's nothing to be said, maybe it just kind of sucks and then you get on with enjoying great pop.
― niels, Sunday, 24 May 2015 17:15 (nine years ago) link
I enjoy pop music and dog-fighting
― thoughts you made second posts about (darraghmac), Sunday, 24 May 2015 17:51 (nine years ago) link
my interests include pop music and antisemitism