[lbo-talk] Re: over-the-counter-culture

Simon Huxtable jetfromgladiators at yahoo.com
Thu Feb 26 08:57:03 PST 2004


I'm sure that your kulturindustrie argument is really about hip hop ("shouting swear words loudly"), but let's pretend that it isn't.

Your argument presupposes that what is marketed as counter-culture is really, plain and simple, mass-marketed capitalist culture. But all this is doing is calling a spade a spade or, in this case, a marketed counter-culture a marketed culture - something people on this list are more than capable of working out for themselves.

The trouble is, everyone you are criticising in the "counter-culture" crowd, is, like me, going to insist that their case is exempt from the machinations of capital and is really a True Artistic Expression.

In other words, until you do us the service of telling us who you are actually against (apart from cars that go boom) and - why not? - what you are actually for, this critique is worthless, other than to lord your aesthetic superiority over everyone else's.

For your purposes, counter-culture = culture, and that's fine - I am inclined to agree. But please, let us have your definition of what culture should and can be. Again, I will probably agree with you in everything but specifics.

Simon


> From: Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu>
> Subject: [lbo-talk]


> It is difficult to have a reasoned discussion with
> the latter-days
> counter-culture crowd that believes that shouting
> swear words loudly
> trump all arguments.
>
> But what is really pathetic about that crowd,
> though, is that all their
> rebel posturing notwithstanding, they fail to
> realize that their
> "counter-culture" is in fact an
> over-the-counter-culture, a sort of
> mass-marketed McCulture, McMusic, McShowbiz - where
> the production of
> cultural contents has been finally Taylorized and
> relegated to the
> semiskilled disc-flippers, computerized sound
> assembly line workers, and
> marketers pushing that product to kids with little
> or no taste, while
> the record company owners reap most of the profits.
>
> Some "counter culture" indeed. It looks
> suspiciously like the
> Pepsi-generation with more shocking window dressing.
>
> Wojtek

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