Straw Men and the Popular Press

I was doing a bit of research this week about anti-consumerism, since part of my dissertation has to do with the consumption practices surrounding a culture (rock music) that has at times at least paid lip service to anti-consumerist sentiments. I stumbled across the wikipedia article for "anti-consumerism" and was amused to find that the section "Criticism of anti-consumerism" consisted of exactly two sentences. Those two sentences reference an article by James Twitchell (a great name) from a 2000 issue of Reason magazine. And, sorry to beat on something so old, but Twitchell's arguments were outdated even in the year 2000.

I think that much of our current refusal to consider the liberating role of consumption is the result of who has been doing the describing. Since the 1960s, the primary "readers" of the commercial "text" have been the well-tended and -tenured members of the academy. For any number of reasons--the most obvious being their low levels of disposable income, average age, and gender, and the fact that these critics are selling a competing product, high-cult (which is also coated with its own dream values)--the academy has casually passed off as "hegemonic brainwashing" what seems to me, at least, a self-evident truth about human nature: We like having stuff.

In place of the obvious, they have substituted an interpretation that they themselves often call vulgar Marxism. It is supposedly vulgar in the sense that it is not as sophisticated as the real stuff, but it has enough spin on it to be more appropriately called Marxism lite. Go into almost any cultural studies course in this country and you will hear the condemnation of consumerism expounded: What we see in the marketplace is the result of the manipulation of the many for the profit of the few. Consumers are led around by the nose. We live in a squirrel cage. Left alone we would read Wordsworth, eat lots of salad, and have meetings to discuss Really Important Subjects.

So, a couple of things. This isn't vulgar Marxism. And vulgar Marxism isn't vulgar in the sense that it's "unwashed" or "unsophisticated." I'm not anything close to being an expert on all the various strands of Marxism, but I can at least tell you what vulgar Marxism is: it's Marxism that assumes a 1:1 ratio between base economic conditions and superstructure (the shape of institutions, artistic forms, etc.) with no mediation involved.

And secondly, if you go into any cultural studies class, you will not "will hear the condemnation of consumerism expounded," as Twitchell suggests. In fact, if anything, you might hear the opposite. You'll hear about "remaking," "remixing," "appropriating," items from consumer culture to express personal and cultural meanings. I mean, even 9 years ago when this article was published, how many years after Dick Hebdige and Henry Jenkins was Twitchell writing? These have become accepted ideas. I think that just about every scholar of popular culture (professor or grad student) hangs onto this fundamental tension: that there is a "culture industry" that exercises enormous control over consumers but that the act of consumption can (at the very least, seem to) be an act of empowerment for consumers. In my teaching of themes of globalization, technology, and popular music to a classroom full of undergards, I always try to hang onto a bit of ambiguity in my lectures and our discussions. And I think this sort of humility and an unwillingness to preach to our students is pretty common in liberal arts classrooms, in general. (But maybe things are really THAT BAD and we should be preaching to our students, screaming at them to get out there and make a difference. I don't know. But I don't think I'd make a good preacher.) Twitchell's account of what is happening in the academic study of popular culture is unconvincing, to say the least.

So what's at fault here for such a shoddy argument? Is it Twitchell? Reason magazine? The inherent space and style limits of writing for the popular press? As a blogger, consumer of the popular press, and someone not entirely satisfied with the way the academic press works, I hope that there are alternative forums available for important and serious discussion. The internet, as they say, should hopefully be one of these places, since concerns over space and money should be drastically reduced here. I'll refrain here from philosophizing about the promises and challenges of the internet, because I think that most of that writing (probably any that I would attempt, as well) is so light that it will just float away in the breeze of our collected laptop fans. But what I mean to say is that if you're looking for an interesting negative look at anti-consumerism, it ain't in this article.

Money, Money, Money, Money . . . MONEY!

Let's play devil's advocate here. Or just devil. Or just plain advocate.

The Times has an article about the controversy following Brandeis University's decision to sell off the collection from its Rose Art Museum to bolster its finances, which have taken an enormous hit in the wake of the recession (and, indirectly, the Madoff scandal). The reaction seems to be uniformly negative: how could Brandeis do such a thing, surely this portends terrible events to come when universities treat these priceless objects as vulgar commodities . . .

This reminds me of Lee Rosenbaum's talk at Penn's ethnohistory colloquium series last year. Much of her talk concerned the selling of artworks, archeological finds, and other assorted objects by institutions in search of funds. (And this was before the current recession!) There was a disapproving tone throughout her entire talk, along with more than a vague air of elitism. How could institutions in charge of protecting all that is good and holy fall victim to such crass concerns of money? The conversation of course also turned to the Gross Clinic debacle. For those of you not in Philly, Thomas Jefferson University sold a Thomas Eakins painting to one of the Wal-Mart heirs (which seemed to be the real offense) in order to finance building new dorms. A storm of protest ensued, appeals were sent out, and many otherwise-reasonable Philadelphians donated money so that the painting could be purchased by a consortium of Philadelphia-based museums, keeping it in the city (and not going to a new museum in Arkansas, perish the thought).

But let me ask a question, because the reactions to the Gross clinic fiasco, Rosenbaum's talk in general, and the current Brandeis controversy leave me wondering: is it ever OK for an institution to sell an object from its collection in order to finance other projects? I understand if there are legal issues about selling things that may have been bequeathed in wills, etc. But let's imagine all of those things are sorted out. Is it still "wrong" or "bad" for Thomas Jefferson or Brandeis to decide that it has other priorities for its assets? In a perfect world, everyone would have art museums, dorms, state-of-the-art facilities, and tenure-track jobs. (Actually, I'm not sure that a perfect world would have art museums, at least the way they are now, but that's another conversation.) So short of living in a perfect world, institutions make choices. And we should argue about those choices, advocate for the causes we believe are most improtant, absolutely. But I don't know why the selling of art works has to be immediately off the table and protected as something existing in a rarified realm, above petty concerns. Actually, I think that ideology of art is incredibly damaging both for art and society as a whole. In the current job market, if Brandeis can keep the lights on and maybe hire some more professors with the money to be gained from selling off its art collection, I don't know why I'm supposed reflexively be against that as a matter of principle. Maybe it's a good idea, maybe it isn't. But let's argue about it constructively rather than just dismissing it out of hand. Am I missing something here?

Hardly Blue Anymore

File this one under "Surprised, Pleasantly."

I neglected to blog about the 50th anniversary edition of Kind of Blue by Miles Davis when it came out last year. Mostly, because I was kind of pissed at Columbia for releasing YET ANOTHER version of this album without much new content, but with a hefty price tag. (And because the 50th anniversary edition came out a year early. Come on, guys. If you're going to do this, do it right.) As I wrote earlier about Bob Dylan's Tell Tale Signs, these special editions are a great way of squeezing more money out of an artist's devoted fans, bundling limited new content with lots of older or otherwise available content, and charging a fortune for the whole thing. That seemed to be the case with the Kind of Blue 50th anniversary edition. The new content was limited to some relatively unenlightening studio outtakes (which are described in Ashley Kahn's book, anyway). And Columbia tried to pass off recordings of the same band from 1958 as "new" when in fact they had been available on '58 Sessions for quite a while. ('58 Sessions, by the way, is brilliant. Maybe even as good as Kind of Blue itself.)

So it was nice to see that Columbia wised up a little bit and released a 2-CD set with the studio outtakes, the '58 Sessions recordings, along with the original album for a far more reasonable price. And it was especially nice to hear something else they included with this 2-CD set: a 17-minute live version of "So What" from Miles's Spring 1960 European tour. This is definitely worth the price of admission (especially if somehow you don't already own Kind of Blue). And the good news is that even if you do, you can buy the live version of "So What" from the Amazon music store for 99 cents.

And seriously, you owe it to yourself to listen to this track any way you can. Coltrane plays his ass off on this version. Really, it's one of his best solos on record to my ears, on par with his solos on "Someday My Prince Will Come," "Stella by Starlight," and "India," to name just a few of my favorite solos of his off the top of my head. If you've listened to the Live at Birdland album or Impressions (or any one of many other Coltrane live recordings now available), you know that Coltrane live can be a revelation. His solo on this track definitely qualifies on that front.

Sing us a Song

You're right, Ron, this is an odd moment to bring up Billy Joel.

Ron Rosenbaum has a take-down of Billy Joel in Slate. Rosenbaum seems to focus mostly on Billy Joel's ever-present contempt for "phoniness" and the fact that it can't obscure that he himself, Billy Joel, is a phony. Rosenbaum takes particular issue with Joel's apparently unconvincing defenses of the authenticity of the workingman's experience, though this is complicated by the fact that Rosenbaum also finds the time to praise Bruce Springsteen, for whom a similar criticism could be easily made.

Anyway, I don't really have a dog in this fight. But I do like these little polemics when they show up in the popular press. (Another classic example is this piece by Jon Pareles about Coldplay.) As Rosenbaum rightly points out, the opposite kind of article is far more common to encounter.

Plus, there's always the chance we'll see another of those "career re-evaluation" essays that places like the New York Times Sunday "Arts & Leisure" section are fond of running about the Barry Manilows of the world. The kind of piece in which we'd discover that Billy's actually "gritty," "unfairly marginalized" by hipsters; that his work is profoundly expressive of late-20^th-century alienation ("Captain Jack"); that his hackneyed, misogynist hymns to love are actually filled with sophisticated erotic angst; that his "distillations of disillusion," to use the patois of such pieces, over the artist's role ("Piano Man," "The Entertainer," "Say Goodbye to Hollywood," etc.) are in fact "preternaturally self-conscious," not just shallow, Holden Caulfield-esque denunciations of "phonies," but mentionable in the same breath as works by great artists.

(Indeed Chuck Klosterman has a piece exactly like this about Billy Joel, which I'm sort of surprised Rosenbaum didn't mention.)

Also interesting for me is that there is NO MENTION AT ALL of musical setting (arrangement, solos, melodies, rhythms, tunes) in this article. Rosenbaum only finds the time to criticize Joel for his lyrics. You could have almost forgot that Joel is a musician and that his music might be a worthwhile thing to look at when making a broadsided rant against his artistic worth. But then again, that's just me speaking as a musician and ethnomusicologist. What's the chorus of his most popular song, anyway? Is it "Tell us a story, you're the poet"?

Territorial Pissings

One of the perils of being in a foreign country is, despite the advances of the internet, you miss out on certain news items that, while perhaps not having large popular appeal, are certainly worth your attention. So apologies for being two months late on this, but here goes. Evidently a Jersey City city councilman peed from the balcony of the 9:30 Club in D.C. onto the audience below at (wait for it) a Dark Star Orchestra concert. Dark Star Orchestra is a Grateful Dead tribute band, and one of the most commercially successful tribute bands in the United States. I don't even really like the Grateful Dead that much, but I have to admit to quite enjoying the Dark Star Orchestra concert that I saw this past summer at Penn's Peak (outside of Philly). One of my theories about the popularity of tribute band concerts is that, for an audience mostly made up of aging baby-boomers, they are far more comfortable experiences than conventional rock shows: the acoustics are better, people aren't smoking pot around them, the seats are more comfortable, they often take place in the suburbs, 25 year-old kids aren't spilling beer on them. However, that theory bites the dust if public urination from elected officials is going to become a part of the tribute band experience. Let's hope, for all of us not seated in the balcony, that it doesn't.

Penalty and Repentance

William Zantziger, a.k.a. William Zanziger, a.k.a. the subject of one of Bob Dylan's best early songs, "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," died a week ago at the age of 69 in a nursing home in Maryland.

Resisting an Obvious Pun or Reference (an example)

Here's a thought, kids. Let's have a column discussing Caroline Kennedy's Senate candidacy that DOESN'T make reference to a certain song by Neil Diamond. I know it's hard out there, editors of the world, but let's try to do better than Maureen Dowd and Cal Thomas.

Don't Believe The Hype

Or, actually, do believe the hype. Because it's true. Dear Science by TV on the Radio is a brilliant record, one of the best things to come out in 2008. Too bad I first heard it in 2009. Well, I'm usually a little late on these things.