I go with Harlem Renaissance as a site for the explosion of lasting signs of cosmopolitanism, innovation, improvisation, and joy.
Slavery was written into the effing US Constitution. The American system of democracy was founded on the principle that most persons were not fully human. The generation of W.E.B. Dubois, Cab Calloway, Josephine Baker, Zora Neale Hurston etc. etc. etc. was all: "Fuck that!"
Their method of argumentation was to render their humanity incandescent, indelible and irrefutable. They set a standard of articulation and categorical disruption that continues to inform and guide social and cultural transformation throughout the world.
I had a bunch to say about this thread while I was riding the bus to work, pondering the Nike Store window display, which uses the language of art to speak in commerce. But now my thoughts have dissipated and I can't make them have a point. "Was and will make me ill. I take a gramme and only am."
Like Mike, I think the secret to my personal artisto-finanicial success will only be if I can hack the commercial system. I see the beautiful Nike video and think, I should be making those gorgeous montages of athleticism. I can rage against the machine, but it's only my personal lack of social skills that stops me from trying to enter the commercial art world. My ego is in the way. I wish I could work as a commercial or graphic designer, and believe I have the technical skills of craftsmanship and process-oriented thinking, but somehow find the idea of subordinating my own expression threatening.
Last night, I thought of a personal project I have had brewing for years. Kind of the t-shirt and stickers business. But my heart broke when I thought of making junk. Making more junk to kill the world.
I was under the impression that the mass migration north of black people around the turn of the century was largely due to the end of Reconstruction and the beginning of what we'd think of as the Real Serious Southern Post-Slavery Racist Times.
I was under the impression that the mass migration north of black people around the turn of the century was largely due to the end of Reconstruction and the beginning of what we'd think of as the Real Serious Southern Post-Slavery Racist Times.
During Reconstruction (1860s to 1880s or something?) there were BLACK FUCKING SENATORS, CONGRESSMEN, AND STATE LEGISLATORS. Like, there were probably more black people in the U.S. government than there are today.
That is true. Did you know that?
Reconstruction was a time when the federal government (aka Abe Lincoln) sent TROOPS into the south to basically forcibly make the south conform to the north's idea of what a society should be like (or whatever. Not like the north was all utopian and non-racist but at least they were like "probably shouldn't actively OWN HUMANS," which was a big step up). This was a great fucking time for black people in the south (well "great" being a relative term, of course). With the fall of reconstruction and the exit of the federal troops and any federal support for forced integration and everything, it all fell apart and that's when the first wave of really gnarly lynchings/establishment of the KKK/all that started getting going.
Isn't this what instigated the great migration?? Am I forgetting my history
*not the most historically accurate thread UHX has ever produced.
**i have been reading a lot of history lately, and amazed at how inconsistent and biased it often is. we are actually doing pretty well, comparatively.
"I can rage against the machine, but it's only my personal lack of social skills that stops me from trying to enter the commercial art world."
My personal experience with trying to work in an "agency" office was that it felt just as weird and alienating as I always assumed it would. They paid me a lot of money, but I haven't been as stressed out in years.
"So instead of building public institutions, government is nowadays called on mainly to preside over the excruciating task of shutting them down."
A government agency is like any large corporation, it has to continually adapt, and focus on customer service. The W L Gore Company limits the size of divisions to 150 people. I think government can do great work, but it has to focus on execution and focus on PR publicizing execution and customer service.
So along the same lines, is there an upper limit to the size of a fanbase that keeps it authentic?
Here is the video that got me thinking about this. It's more developed than the NYT article, and I think stands up better. It also got a few chuckles from the audience.
"I won't call them hipsters because hipsters don't like being called hipsters." "You know... the hats, the skinny jeans, the wall to wall tattoos." "I'll just call them millennials."
His talk seems to be just speaking his article. No additional insight.
He perceives politeness as a weakness, which is a shitty attitude. He doesn't understand fashion/style as anything other than affectation. His one insight about how everyone wants to start a business is interesting and none of his analysis about it is. I watched 10 minutes... that's all I could stand.
He's such a negative nancy. "Ooh, boo hoo, everyone wants to be nice and self-reliant!"
Yes irritating in a way, but worth sticking to to the end of the main talk at 28:00. Yes an expansion of the article, but more detail and responds to objections by the readers of the original article. The weakness is that he is making an abstraction of a population segment, on the other hand, he encountered many of that segment teaching at Yale.
totally more than irritating if a guy starts off the way mike describes, with very apparent lack of respect for the "subjects" of his observations, how can i think he is anything remotely near un-biased in his conclusions
i wont call them n***ers/sluts/fa**ots/kikes/wetbacks/ching-chong-chinamen because ni**ers/sluts/fa**ots/kikes/wetbacks/ching-chong-chinamen hate being called that! but you know what im talking about! with the slanty eyes and wide woven hats and funny kung fu clothing and stinky fish smell
But I'm skipping to 26 minutes and giving it another chance. OPEN MINDED!
First question from my friend Jason is great! "So, what's your idea?"
His response, "I'm a critic, not a prognosticator."
FUCK YOU!
He is obsessed with this idea of a meaningful counter-culture. But who cares? I'm not interested in fighting the system. I don't want to be a beatnik, hippie, or a punk, or anything else. If you want to call me a "hipster" then fuck you. I don't identify with that, and neither does ANYONE I know. Hipster's aren't real. The hipster is a lazy stereotype for insecure people.
"I'm not here to say everything is terrible." Oh... really? Huh.
@Dr_William_Hayward Can you boil down to his thesis? I feel like you have less of a kneejerk reaction and I do acknowledge that there might be something of value here... I just can't help hating him long enough to hear it! :)
Christ, give the guy a break. Sure there are irritating things about him, but there is some truth in his ugly way of speaking. You can't judge a 50 minute talk by watching 10 minutes*, and although the hipster thing is annoying, there is an ocean of difference between using derogatory names for social groups and using ones for race. Have a bit of patience, and see a little nuance.
I think his essential point is that people aren't ambitious enough because they are worried too much about selling, and we are re-engineering and recycling old ideas more now than in previous generations. The first half of that I think is pretty true minus a couple of instances. The second half is kinda wrong and dumb and blind.
*was writing this before you went and watched the rest KMM
I appreciate DrBill's contributions here (on the UHX) though I think we'll have some interesting arguments one of these days (interesting to some, anyway). For this reason, I wholly intend to watch the whole video (pretty soon!).
I think there are insights, weaknesses, and the talk is not as focused as it could be on what he wants, just criticism of now against a proposed past. (Stuff I added) This is my sort of transcript/notes of the talk:
(Each generation has a minority of creatives that challenge the status quo and their image is captured as inspirational to their peers and to society.)
Characterize cultural thought leaders of the avant garde by 1 Emotion 2 Who do you want to be/make, what is the social form? (This is a classic current-style branding)
They may later become influential individuals. (Beats influenced Wired magazine, hippies Steve Jobs? - I made that up)
1950s Beats - rebellion against suburbanization and post WW2 growth 1 ecstasy 2 individual transcendence
1960s Hippies - (rebellion against material culture and Vietnam War?) 1 love 2 utopia
1970s Punks - (rebellion against commercialization of music, class stratification, economic contraction?) 1 anger 2 nihilism / destruction
1980s Gen X/ Slackers - rebellion against what?? (the American dream, more economic contraction, internalization, Jimmy Carter - no idea) 1 disaffection/ angst/ apathy 2 withdrawal from commitment
1990s Gen Y/ Millennials/ Hipsters/ "generation sell/ make/ fix" - no rebellion, first Internet generation, selling self, hipsters=generation sell 1 emotion: nice, post ironic, self deprecating, no ambition, no anger/ no edge/ no ego, post emotional 2 expressed as entrepreneurship and small business including non-profits
Proposes it to be a terminal state for foreseeable generations in their teens and 20's, 30's.
(Maybe Occupy will turn into something that is the next cultural movement)
Weakness of everything as selling and entrepreneurship:
1 Selling inherently corruptive, illusion.
2 Claim that social networks make it better. No they make it worse. Commercial values infiltrate personal relationships. "Buy my stuff"
3 Authenticity on social media solves all because people are great BS detectors. No commerce is based on people being bad BS detectors. Authenticity on the web is more insidious commercialism. The pitch clothed as anti pitch - not really authentic.
4 What if you are an awesome creative but don't like to sell? What if you are crap creative but good at selling?
5 Selling corrupts the product itself. Selling to change the world contradictory. To sell you have to be affable. Loss of the avante garde (as defined as art / culture that offers resistance to it's audience) (Note to self Gene Youngblood communication theory) Same in academic thought /ideas / style - fashion/ novelists, all affable, not world changing.
6 Nicholas Carr small bore innovation example: Instagram. Products are designed for consumer vs large scale programs like the electric grid, space program. Little basic science research. Now universities do applied tech for tech transfer - MIT media lab is the dream to be emulated by other universities. (note to self: relaunch Baffler article)
Now creativity=technology=products.
Avant garde is not mobilizing us as citizens to change things. Our society based on consumption on every level. Small business and consumer business is just inventing cooler ways to do what we are already doing.
Unlike hippie fashion = love; punk fashion = confrontation, hipster style just says "I'm hip". From the 90's on, fashion is just sampling previous eras.
Ethos of DIY social engagement goes with withdrawal from politics. Because we hate conflict and large institutions (also other generations hate it).
Politics and economics are bad and getting worse.
Against immense power of concentrated wealth, small business model doesn't amount to much.
Can't change system by working within or dropping out, only confronting it directly.
Overheard in the office..... "It's just been crazy. When is it all going to settle down?" "It isn't. We're all going to have to learn how to run faster."
An interesting idea, and yet, don't we already work more hours (in the US) than in other countries?
yes. In Europe they think we are insane. France gets like six weeks paid vacation a year or something. The entire country takes the entire month of August off and they all go to the coast. It's awesome.
It feels to me that the 70s / 80s disaffection with Reagan and Thatcherism found expression in the super earnest political punk feelings and that, after feeling sort of disaffected about seeing the seven inches pile up to no particular positive political avail, the whole idea of trying to change a macro-culture with fashion and music started to feel a little silly, and thus opened the door to a more purely disaffected slackerism of the 90s. Like, the machine is rolling on whether we protest or not, might as well chill and just mock it quietly amongst ourselves.
Then I feel like in the 00s or aughts or whatever the fuck, the mockery got very specific. Like, let's not mock capitalism, let's mock how terrible specific products are, or how terrible TV is, or how terrible, you know, late 90s fashion is, or the marketing of consumer electronics. Digital disaffected mockery. See Dis Magazine.
I feel this sort of mockery everywhere within our counterculture. It feels even stronger than the entrepreneurial vibe. But here's the thing. For me, the urge to harness capitalism and hustle a little culture / artisanal business feels like a very pure and important change, and is a very good response to the tuned-out despair of the 90s and 00's countercultures. It's like, ok, you think corporate culture sucks? Why don't you do something about it? I don't know, make some expensive peanut butter or photo print bikini tops and sell them on Etsy? I think it's a good thing. We can make better peanut butter, y'all. It's actually a response to the counter culture's historic trajectory in some ways. What other counter culture since the 60s has tried to earnestly demonstrate its own vision of utopia?
Sure, starting a small culture-oriented business will never be as ideologically honest or pure as putting out a noise album. Using capitalism as a medium is a relatively dirty business. But I'd rather the counterculture learn to use it than leave it entirely in the hands of old white men.
I feel like so many Americans *want* to be "too busy". It's really harsh. So many times I will end up on projects where several people are injecting WAY MORE stress than necessary. We can do the project without acting like the world depends on whatever silly thing we are doing.
My friends were playing in a festie last weekend and I went along with them. Their time slot was early in the day and no one had really showed up yet. The lady running the festie was SO STRESSED about "what to do," and of course the answer was just play the set a little later, nbd, only 15-20 people saw it in the end anyways.
Why kill yourself with stress over a performance that 15-20 people saw? Take pride in your work, do your best, but stay humble and realize the priority is to feel good about life. That's my steeze. JAH, RASTAFARI.
@DrWH: I like your notes when they aren't trying to encapsulate the various youth styles. Since I still haven't watched the video, I assume the things I don't like about the youth stance notes are not your fault, they are just stuff the guy said.
I resist those notes because of their very high fiction content. They are so reduced to abbreviations as to be something very different than the world of lived experience. I know what the dude is talking about but I also know how much of the meat he is missing. How does someone speak of The Beats without using the word Jazz? For example. And how does one engage the context of Jazz (particularly in the Beat-era) without engaging imperialism and race? (See Harlem Renaissance)
That's why I haven't watched the "Nightly News" in a few years. I prefer to get my fiction elsewhere (from more imaginative writers). Those encapsulations seem just as wrong and half-truthy as the news in exactly the same way. Maybe they were written by the same photo-caption editors?
After that, the notes and the questions they raise are more interesting.
Looking at that list again, I think another problem I have with it, and maybe this is a consequence of my late-blooming Marxist-ness, but I think it is odd that he has broken all the styles into discrete units. This makes it seem like all these 'movements' were different things and his list of attributes is just that, a long list of all kinds of different things kids have resisted over the years. The job he has given himself is to draw a trendline. This seems like another fiction to me.
I think I see the same kind of process (capitalism) and resistance to it rolling through different times.
And like, were The Beatles affable? Squares in 1963 didn't think so. Was James Brown affable? Or was he avant-garde? Was he a Beatnik? Was Rock and Roll avant-garde?
It all kind of depends on who is making the judgements and for what purpose, right?
I think reality is a multiplicity.
Maybe all history is happening everywhere all the time?
"Maybe all history is happening everywhere all the time?"
This is sort of how I feel. Like right now people (and kids/youth culture/whatever) have a choice to be punk or hippie, or whatever. I am not convinced of his call that this entrepreneurship-ism is the same thing as those things were when they were invented. I think the entrepreneurship is both older than "youth culture" and also more a reaction to how jobs work now. So while it's an interesting thing to note, he's making entirely the wrong claims about it.
What I wrote is pretty close to a transcription. People requested the cliff notes so they didn't have to be irritated-time sunk to listen to the vid. I'm time sensitive on vidoe material, so agree. I added some things in () for clarity. He did mention jazz. He did not mention disco or hip hop or EDM. No discussion of African Americans.
I'm going to hold my criticism for a while. Liked Marcus' comments and KMM's last one.
I went back and read this thread from the beginning. It is pretty great.
Guess what? I even got around to reading the NYT article that launched it!
The guy gets some major stuff wrong* and has a bad ear (David Brooks and his eff-ing 'bobo') but he is trying to float a fairly subtle social theory and measure how he feels about it with a fair degree of sensitivity. I think he does get at something, but I also think Mikey gets it too, and without as many dubious steps.
But I have to hand it to him. The guy nails a place where a lot of my imaginative energy is going lately: maybe something like: 'critical entrepreneurialism'. And I'm in awe of what, for example, somebody like Frogtor is accomplishing in this field.
* "Hip-hop, punk’s younger brother, was all about rage and nihilism, too, at least until it turned to a vision of individual aggrandizement."
Wha'? I'm having a hard time fitting Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa, in fact almost everything before NWA, into this weird little box of rhetoric.
Not a new strategy: but being dumb and fun and repetitive seems to work. Watched two 7 year old girls dig this out of the internet last night. Looked like the sprouting seeds of the next dominant iteration of global society.
It also helps to be somebody's kids. This is Barry Gordy Jr. and a cousin, Skyler Gordy.
Via WikiP- "Party Rock Anthem" is a hit song performed by American electro recording duo LMFAO (Stefan and Skyler Gordy), featuring British singer Lauren Bennett and GoonRock. It was released as the first single from their second album Sorry for Party Rocking in 2011. It interpolates lyrics from Rick Ross' song "Hustlin".[1] The single has gone to number one in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. It also reached the top five in Norway and Italy. Certified 11x Platinum, it is the second highest-selling single of all time in Australia, behind only Elton John's "Candle in the Wind 1997".
"The activist website IndyMedia.com published nine pages from How to Protest Intelligently...
"Spray paint so that if the authorities attack us, we can spray paint the visors of their helmets and the windshields of the armored trucks, blocking their vision and hindering their movement.
"If a can of spray paint can be a tool in the struggle for democracy, then maybe it's not a fantasy to imagine that small-scale change can be achieved through urban interventions and arts activism."
I like the poster project that puts posters up on empty structures saying that some cool thing is moving into that space. Although not incredibly effective, and a lie, it does show nearby residents a cool possibility and in theory would get the building owners excited by the market created by the resident excitement. Who knows, maybe it will make a difference. It would be cool to do a similar project in Portland for all ages music venues. You know, just make a poster that says a venue is moving in, and post it on all the abandoned spaces you can find in Portland until maybe someone actually does it.
i would like to give this thread a big round of applause if you were an mp3 album i would consider purchasing you, then see how little money i have to spend on such frivolous things then google your name plus mediafire and download your shit for free and rock it in my car for maybe a week before moving on and never thinking about you again
Well I will try to put the youtube clip here later but Chilly Gonzales impressed me with an interview in which he eloquently argues that it is an artist's responsibility to seek any potential income. He has a certain integrity, but I think he is also nihilistic and self-serving in his professional philosophy. I would probably not turn down any such offer, because I love TV. But every time I think of a certain local ad agency, I am full of scorn, for they seek to embed wicked desires within the populace, as they are servants of the evil empire. But if given the chance, surely I would discard my bravery, for want of one dollar for another day. So in this way, I consider myself lucky that I will never be given the option of S****** O**. But let you be now warned, if I ever did get that chance, I will turn into the most terrible egomaniac, due to the combined pressures of a lifetime of fears and desires.
LT: I find what you say to be super interesting, I had yet to hear this from a Portlander, and it's almost like you are whispering it. I have a theory that the young creative minds who work for hip ad agencies are sort of playing tag. Some of them are too aware that they are serving corporations they would have been completely, totally against in their youth, at a time when comfort and a steady income was not that important and their ideals were more black and white. Now they've been tagged, and to draw in another creative mind makes them feel a little better about their work. To have an artist they love and respect join in sort of muffles the concerns they've been having. Everybody's doing it! Advertising is an art! You need to pay the bills! Look in your fridge, your house, you are already supporting corporations! It's impossible to be pure! The company who's paying for the ad just wants my skills! It's like I am a forklift driver on a TV set! No big whoop!
I agree that it's impossible to be pure, but I also think it's important to be proud.
Yes! Psychologically, I think you have hit upon an important dynamic with regards to the type of community nepotism that must happen as a consequence of degrading one's own past moral boundaries. "I agree that it's impossible to be pure, but I also think it's important to be proud." I love it. For better or worse, I am the type of person who finds happiness in my principles. I know that when I violate my principles, I am very unhappy, yet when I stand by them when tested, I am very proud indeed, even when it costs me something material. Maybe especially if it costs me something, in fact. But that is why I think all the responsibility for this decision doesn't rest on the individual. Comparatively we have little power and have to make decisions based on survival. If the choice is take a grant or let someone use your image for their own gain, and it's the same amount of money, it is an easy choice perhaps, or not, depening on what kind of audience you want to reach.
You know, I think part of the reason why I am often further on one end of the spectrum than most of the people I know when it comes to making such decisions is because of my dad. My dad quit going to school when he was still in Junior High back in the seventies. He lacked interest, ambition, and was a total stoner. The guidance councilor took him to an art school nearby to motivate him, and it only worked temporarily. When I was fifteen my dad warned me not to take the path of survival, but the path of passion (his words, in English). He is a self-employed house-painter, cannot last in jobs where he works for other people, and often struggles in the winter when not too many houses need restoration. He said "Joey, stick to your ideals, do the things you do because you believe in them, not because you are worried about money." and his Wiccan beliefs convinced the both of us that things would work out for me. And in my opinion they have.
When a person takes that $10 000, or whatever it is ad agencies pay you, they often say something like "I can produce more art, make stuff happen for my friends with this money." and I know I am exaggerating here, but when you've "corrupted" your belief system/art, don't you feel like you need a treat to make yourself feel better about it, to make you celebrate the arrival of all this money? More than a few people I know with successful Kickstarters drove straight to the mall the next day, or Ikea, or some other place where you can make your life look better. Before the ad work is done, before the final decision is made, you hear of "a downpayment on a house", "releasing our own/our friends records" and in reality, years later, none of that stuff has happened. The people I know who have taken this direction just have nicer, newer clothes and more records, books, furniture.
By the way, when I got more money (from different sources) I also bought better clothes, furniture, kitchen things, records, books, and stamps for my collection. I am just as much of a human as anyone else.
Comments
Slavery was written into the effing US Constitution. The American system of democracy was founded on the principle that most persons were not fully human. The generation of W.E.B. Dubois, Cab Calloway, Josephine Baker, Zora Neale Hurston etc. etc. etc. was all: "Fuck that!"
Their method of argumentation was to render their humanity incandescent, indelible and irrefutable. They set a standard of articulation and categorical disruption that continues to inform and guide social and cultural transformation throughout the world.
I mean specifically: all the good stuff.
The work isn't done.
"Fuck the Man's bullshit!"
Truth & Energy!
fuck the Man!
I had a bunch to say about this thread while I was riding the bus to work, pondering the Nike Store window display, which uses the language of art to speak in commerce. But now my thoughts have dissipated and I can't make them have a point. "Was and will make me ill. I take a gramme and only am."
Like Mike, I think the secret to my personal artisto-finanicial success will only be if I can hack the commercial system. I see the beautiful Nike video and think, I should be making those gorgeous montages of athleticism. I can rage against the machine, but it's only my personal lack of social skills that stops me from trying to enter the commercial art world. My ego is in the way. I wish I could work as a commercial or graphic designer, and believe I have the technical skills of craftsmanship and process-oriented thinking, but somehow find the idea of subordinating my own expression threatening.
Last night, I thought of a personal project I have had brewing for years. Kind of the t-shirt and stickers business. But my heart broke when I thought of making junk. Making more junk to kill the world.
Has your BS meter shot up yet?
Namaste
During
During Reconstruction (1860s to 1880s or something?) there were BLACK FUCKING SENATORS, CONGRESSMEN, AND STATE LEGISLATORS. Like, there were probably more black people in the U.S. government than there are today.
That is true. Did you know that?
Reconstruction was a time when the federal government (aka Abe Lincoln) sent TROOPS into the south to basically forcibly make the south conform to the north's idea of what a society should be like (or whatever. Not like the north was all utopian and non-racist but at least they were like "probably shouldn't actively OWN HUMANS," which was a big step up). This was a great fucking time for black people in the south (well "great" being a relative term, of course). With the fall of reconstruction and the exit of the federal troops and any federal support for forced integration and everything, it all fell apart and that's when the first wave of really gnarly lynchings/establishment of the KKK/all that started getting going.
Isn't this what instigated the great migration?? Am I forgetting my history
wouldn't be surprised
This seems true. And dark.
http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/07/26/us-science-music-idINBRE86P0R820120726
**i have been reading a lot of history lately, and amazed at how inconsistent and biased it often is. we are actually doing pretty well, comparatively.
My personal experience with trying to work in an "agency" office was that it felt just as weird and alienating as I always assumed it would. They paid me a lot of money, but I haven't been as stressed out in years.
A government agency is like any large corporation, it has to continually adapt, and focus on customer service. The W L Gore Company limits the size of divisions to 150 people. I think government can do great work, but it has to focus on execution and focus on PR publicizing execution and customer service.
So along the same lines, is there an upper limit to the size of a fanbase that keeps it authentic?
Here is the video that got me thinking about this. It's more developed than the NYT article, and I think stands up better. It also got a few chuckles from the audience.
Portland/CreativeMornings - William Deresiewicz
"I won't call them hipsters because hipsters don't like being called hipsters."
"You know... the hats, the skinny jeans, the wall to wall tattoos."
"I'll just call them millennials."
His talk seems to be just speaking his article. No additional insight.
He perceives politeness as a weakness, which is a shitty attitude. He doesn't understand fashion/style as anything other than affectation. His one insight about how everyone wants to start a business is interesting and none of his analysis about it is. I watched 10 minutes... that's all I could stand.
He's such a negative nancy. "Ooh, boo hoo, everyone wants to be nice and self-reliant!"
if a guy starts off the way mike describes, with very apparent lack of respect for the "subjects" of his observations, how can i think he is anything remotely near un-biased in his conclusions
i wont call them n***ers/sluts/fa**ots/kikes/wetbacks/ching-chong-chinamen because ni**ers/sluts/fa**ots/kikes/wetbacks/ching-chong-chinamen hate being called that!
but you know what im talking about! with the slanty eyes and wide woven hats and funny kung fu clothing and stinky fish smell
im like
imma NOT let u finish, dogg
But I'm skipping to 26 minutes and giving it another chance. OPEN MINDED!
First question from my friend Jason is great! "So, what's your idea?"
His response, "I'm a critic, not a prognosticator."
FUCK YOU!
He is obsessed with this idea of a meaningful counter-culture. But who cares? I'm not interested in fighting the system. I don't want to be a beatnik, hippie, or a punk, or anything else. If you want to call me a "hipster" then fuck you. I don't identify with that, and neither does ANYONE I know. Hipster's aren't real. The hipster is a lazy stereotype for insecure people.
"I'm not here to say everything is terrible." Oh... really? Huh.
@Dr_William_Hayward Can you boil down to his thesis? I feel like you have less of a kneejerk reaction and I do acknowledge that there might be something of value here... I just can't help hating him long enough to hear it! :)
I think his essential point is that people aren't ambitious enough because they are worried too much about selling, and we are re-engineering and recycling old ideas more now than in previous generations. The first half of that I think is pretty true minus a couple of instances. The second half is kinda wrong and dumb and blind.
*was writing this before you went and watched the rest KMM
But I don't trust anyone who doesn't want to fight the system either.
The fetishization of entrepreneuriship---that is real and pretty effing dumb.
(Each generation has a minority of creatives that challenge the status quo and their image is captured as inspirational to their peers and to society.)
Characterize cultural thought leaders of the avant garde by
1 Emotion
2 Who do you want to be/make, what is the social form?
(This is a classic current-style branding)
They may later become influential individuals. (Beats influenced Wired magazine, hippies Steve Jobs? - I made that up)
1950s Beats - rebellion against suburbanization and post WW2 growth
1 ecstasy
2 individual transcendence
1960s Hippies - (rebellion against material culture and Vietnam War?)
1 love
2 utopia
1970s Punks - (rebellion against commercialization of music, class stratification, economic contraction?)
1 anger
2 nihilism / destruction
1980s Gen X/ Slackers - rebellion against what?? (the American dream, more economic contraction, internalization, Jimmy Carter - no idea)
1 disaffection/ angst/ apathy
2 withdrawal from commitment
1990s Gen Y/ Millennials/ Hipsters/ "generation sell/ make/ fix" - no rebellion, first Internet generation, selling self, hipsters=generation sell
1 emotion: nice, post ironic, self deprecating, no ambition, no anger/ no edge/ no ego, post emotional
2 expressed as entrepreneurship and small business including non-profits
Proposes it to be a terminal state for foreseeable generations in their teens and 20's, 30's.
(Maybe Occupy will turn into something that is the next cultural movement)
Weakness of everything as selling and entrepreneurship:
1 Selling inherently corruptive, illusion.
2 Claim that social networks make it better. No they make it worse. Commercial values infiltrate personal relationships. "Buy my stuff"
3 Authenticity on social media solves all because people are great BS detectors. No commerce is based on people being bad BS detectors. Authenticity on the web is more insidious commercialism. The pitch clothed as anti pitch - not really authentic.
4 What if you are an awesome creative but don't like to sell? What if you are crap creative but good at selling?
5 Selling corrupts the product itself. Selling to change the world contradictory. To sell you have to be affable. Loss of the avante garde (as defined as art / culture that offers resistance to it's audience) (Note to self Gene Youngblood communication theory) Same in academic thought /ideas / style - fashion/ novelists, all affable, not world changing.
6 Nicholas Carr small bore innovation example: Instagram. Products are designed for consumer vs large scale programs like the electric grid, space program. Little basic science research. Now universities do applied tech for tech transfer - MIT media lab is the dream to be emulated by other universities. (note to self: relaunch Baffler article)
Now creativity=technology=products.
Avant garde is not mobilizing us as citizens to change things. Our society based on consumption on every level. Small business and consumer business is just inventing cooler ways to do what we are already doing.
Unlike hippie fashion = love; punk fashion = confrontation, hipster style just says "I'm hip". From the 90's on, fashion is just sampling previous eras.
Ethos of DIY social engagement goes with withdrawal from politics. Because we hate conflict and large institutions (also other generations hate it).
Politics and economics are bad and getting worse.
Against immense power of concentrated wealth, small business model doesn't amount to much.
Can't change system by working within or dropping out, only confronting it directly.
"It's just been crazy. When is it all going to settle down?"
"It isn't. We're all going to have to learn how to run faster."
An interesting idea, and yet, don't we already work more hours (in the US) than in other countries?
Then I feel like in the 00s or aughts or whatever the fuck, the mockery got very specific. Like, let's not mock capitalism, let's mock how terrible specific products are, or how terrible TV is, or how terrible, you know, late 90s fashion is, or the marketing of consumer electronics. Digital disaffected mockery. See Dis Magazine.
I feel this sort of mockery everywhere within our counterculture. It feels even stronger than the entrepreneurial vibe. But here's the thing. For me, the urge to harness capitalism and hustle a little culture / artisanal business feels like a very pure and important change, and is a very good response to the tuned-out despair of the 90s and 00's countercultures. It's like, ok, you think corporate culture sucks? Why don't you do something about it? I don't know, make some expensive peanut butter or photo print bikini tops and sell them on Etsy? I think it's a good thing. We can make better peanut butter, y'all. It's actually a response to the counter culture's historic trajectory in some ways. What other counter culture since the 60s has tried to earnestly demonstrate its own vision of utopia?
Sure, starting a small culture-oriented business will never be as ideologically honest or pure as putting out a noise album. Using capitalism as a medium is a relatively dirty business. But I'd rather the counterculture learn to use it than leave it entirely in the hands of old white men.
My friends were playing in a festie last weekend and I went along with them. Their time slot was early in the day and no one had really showed up yet. The lady running the festie was SO STRESSED about "what to do," and of course the answer was just play the set a little later, nbd, only 15-20 people saw it in the end anyways.
Why kill yourself with stress over a performance that 15-20 people saw? Take pride in your work, do your best, but stay humble and realize the priority is to feel good about life. That's my steeze. JAH, RASTAFARI.
I resist those notes because of their very high fiction content. They are so reduced to abbreviations as to be something very different than the world of lived experience. I know what the dude is talking about but I also know how much of the meat he is missing. How does someone speak of The Beats without using the word Jazz? For example. And how does one engage the context of Jazz (particularly in the Beat-era) without engaging imperialism and race? (See Harlem Renaissance)
That's why I haven't watched the "Nightly News" in a few years. I prefer to get my fiction elsewhere (from more imaginative writers). Those encapsulations seem just as wrong and half-truthy as the news in exactly the same way. Maybe they were written by the same photo-caption editors?
After that, the notes and the questions they raise are more interesting.
Looking at that list again, I think another problem I have with it, and maybe this is a consequence of my late-blooming Marxist-ness, but I think it is odd that he has broken all the styles into discrete units. This makes it seem like all these 'movements' were different things and his list of attributes is just that, a long list of all kinds of different things kids have resisted over the years. The job he has given himself is to draw a trendline. This seems like another fiction to me.
I think I see the same kind of process (capitalism) and resistance to it rolling through different times.
And like, were The Beatles affable? Squares in 1963 didn't think so. Was James Brown affable? Or was he avant-garde? Was he a Beatnik? Was Rock and Roll avant-garde?
It all kind of depends on who is making the judgements and for what purpose, right?
I think reality is a multiplicity.
Maybe all history is happening everywhere all the time?
This is sort of how I feel. Like right now people (and kids/youth culture/whatever) have a choice to be punk or hippie, or whatever. I am not convinced of his call that this entrepreneurship-ism is the same thing as those things were when they were invented. I think the entrepreneurship is both older than "youth culture" and also more a reaction to how jobs work now. So while it's an interesting thing to note, he's making entirely the wrong claims about it.
Nothing feels better than agreement with Mike!
I'm going to hold my criticism for a while. Liked Marcus' comments and KMM's last one.
Guess what? I even got around to reading the NYT article that launched it!
The guy gets some major stuff wrong* and has a bad ear (David Brooks and his eff-ing 'bobo') but he is trying to float a fairly subtle social theory and measure how he feels about it with a fair degree of sensitivity. I think he does get at something, but I also think Mikey gets it too, and without as many dubious steps.
But I have to hand it to him. The guy nails a place where a lot of my imaginative energy is going lately: maybe something like: 'critical entrepreneurialism'. And I'm in awe of what, for example, somebody like Frogtor is accomplishing in this field.
Wha'? I'm having a hard time fitting Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa, in fact almost everything before NWA, into this weird little box of rhetoric.
The Interventionist's Toolkit:
part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4
a lot of stuff about struggling (and some not so struggling) creatives coming up with work for themselves.
It also helps to be somebody's kids. This is Barry Gordy Jr. and a cousin, Skyler Gordy.
“I’m developing my own brand... The brand is developing a brand. So my brand is a development of developing brands.”
"Spray paint so that if the authorities attack us, we can spray paint the visors of their helmets and the windshields of the armored trucks, blocking their vision and hindering their movement.
"If a can of spray paint can be a tool in the struggle for democracy, then maybe it's not a fantasy to imagine that small-scale change can be achieved through urban interventions and arts activism."
From the Interventionist's Toolkit
But what about the carbon footprint?
(sorry, just had to be a pest)
if you were an mp3 album i would consider purchasing you, then see how little money i have to spend on such frivolous things then google your name plus mediafire and download your shit for free and rock it in my car for maybe a week before moving on and never thinking about you again
which is to say: i like it!
Chilly Gonzales impressed me with an interview in which he eloquently argues that it is an artist's responsibility to seek any potential income. He has a certain integrity, but I think he is also nihilistic and self-serving in his professional philosophy. I would probably not turn down any such offer, because I love TV. But every time I think of a certain local ad agency, I am full of scorn, for they seek to embed wicked desires within the populace, as they are servants of the evil empire. But if given the chance, surely I would discard my bravery, for want of one dollar for another day. So in this way, I consider myself lucky that I will never be given the option of S****** O**. But let you be now warned, if I ever did get that chance, I will turn into the most terrible egomaniac, due to the combined pressures of a lifetime of fears and desires.
Now they've been tagged, and to draw in another creative mind makes them feel a little better about their work. To have an artist they love and respect join in sort of muffles the concerns they've been having. Everybody's doing it! Advertising is an art! You need to pay the bills! Look in your fridge, your house, you are already supporting corporations! It's impossible to be pure! The company who's paying for the ad just wants my skills! It's like I am a forklift driver on a TV set! No big whoop!
I agree that it's impossible to be pure, but I also think it's important to be proud.
When I was fifteen my dad warned me not to take the path of survival, but the path of passion (his words, in English). He is a self-employed house-painter, cannot last in jobs where he works for other people, and often struggles in the winter when not too many houses need restoration. He said "Joey, stick to your ideals, do the things you do because you believe in them, not because you are worried about money." and his Wiccan beliefs convinced the both of us that things would work out for me.
And in my opinion they have.
When a person takes that $10 000, or whatever it is ad agencies pay you, they often say something like "I can produce more art, make stuff happen for my friends with this money." and I know I am exaggerating here, but when you've "corrupted" your belief system/art, don't you feel like you need a treat to make yourself feel better about it, to make you celebrate the arrival of all this money? More than a few people I know with successful Kickstarters drove straight to the mall the next day, or Ikea, or some other place where you can make your life look better. Before the ad work is done, before the final decision is made, you hear of "a downpayment on a house", "releasing our own/our friends records" and in reality, years later, none of that stuff has happened. The people I know who have taken this direction just have nicer, newer clothes and more records, books, furniture.
I am just as much of a human as anyone else.