cultural imperialism

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Sun Nov 18 12:27:31 PST 2001


Carl Remick wrote:


>Can't say I didn't ask for this. There is no way to cock your snoot
>at contemporary US popular culture without coming across like
>William Bennett, Hilton Kramer or just some tiresome boomer old
>fart. But again, I think schlock has gotten much schlockier in the
>last few decades, and I think US-led turbocharged global capitalism
>is the reason for this degeneration. Particularly irritating are
>recent apologias -- with at least pretensions to high-dome status --
>that rationalize and even celebrate this market-driven debasement of
>taste, e.g., John Seabrook's _Nobrow: The Culture of Marketing, the
>Marketing of Culture_.

And there's always Tom Lehrer's quip that the reason folk music sucks is that it's produced by the people.

One of the things that bothers me about this sort of critique of pop culture is that it accepts the industry's notion of what popular culture is - the stuff produced and marketed by the culture industry. Some of that stuff is good, don't get me wrong - I like Madonna, as list veterans know. But there's all kinds of other stuff going on, too - bands, videos, zines, whatever - produced by real people and distributed outside the culture industry's channels. I remember the first time I saw an issue of Factsheet Five, about 10 years ago - I had no idea that all that odd and interesting stuff was being produced. There are still plenty of exiles on Main St.

Doug



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