> More interesting is the fact that a lot of white male studio types have
> found destablizing heterosexual norms and patriarchy to be a lucrative
> project for fun and profit. Capitalism is often an unwittingly
> progressive force in certain cultural areas, mostly because it profits so
> much from general destabilization and new markets. Of course, it's core
> reproduction of labor is arguably endangered by threats to the nuclear
> family, so you have a lovely intermural capitalist tension between
> "liberal" cultural capitalists in Hollywood and the record industry
> exploiting markets for the destabilization of norms and traditional
> capitalists worried about how to keep the nuclear family down on the
> farm/in the cubicle after they've seen Paris.
It's not just "'liberal' cultural capitalists in Hollywood and the record industry" who are destabilizing norms -- traditional capitalists have done a great deal of it themselves. After all, they started it all with the breakup of the extended family.
As Stephanie Coontz argues in *The Way We Really Are*, the entry of women into the marketplace is simply the latest strategy for upward mobility (or at least keeping your head above water), thus showing quite clearly how capitalism itself is destabilizing the family.
Consumerism in general makes its biggest inroads by appealing to the young (that's when critical thinking is least developed and lifelong loyalties are formed), which of course depends on subverting the authority of parents. For example, there's some brilliant passages about in *McLibel* (about the trial of the same name), out last spring, concerning how McDonalds targets children 2-8 (but not older), when they’re most trusting and least critical, mobilizing “pester power” to get the family to McDonald’s. (BTW, The judge DID rule that McDonald’s exploits children.)
So, in short, I whjile there may be some truth to Nathan's observation, I think the larger truth is that, once again, we are faced with the internal contradictions of capitalism itself, more fundamentally than a conflict between the specific interests of different sectors of the capitalist class.
p.s. (reverting to the Mother Thread)
Paula wrote:
> Why can't we get these girrrls to listen to Loretta Lynn or Chrisie Hyde or
> Etta James,now those are feminists. It just breaks my heart.
At 8 years old???
Give them a break!
No one's saying the Spice Girls are the revolution.
Look, I've never even HEARD a whole song by them, so it's a bit ludicrous to be defending them. But I'm not. I'm defending 8 year old girls who are being pummelled with a pop culture machine that doesn't see much point in exposing them constantly to Chrisie Hynde of Etta James (or Billie Holiday, who I was fortunate enough to grow up on). Basically, I trust their 8-year old powers of resistence and appropriation. Not blindly, but enough to see the Spice Girls as basically useful to them.
-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net
"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"