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Where Marxists and conservatives meet:A critique of pop culture(thread):- Popular culture sucks. Pop art,music and movies today aren't examples of staggerring originality any more. They're examples of stagerring mediocrity and lethargy(1/n)
I'm not going to tell you anecdotes. According to this peer reviewed paper, uniformity and decreasing "instrumental complexity" is directly correlated with how popular it is. (2/n) https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0115255#s4
Formulaic music sells. The trends point towards " less variety in pitch transitions, towards a consistent homogenization of the timbral palette and towards louder and, in the end, potentially poorer volume dynamics"(3/n) https://www.nature.com/articles/srep00521
That music is becoming predictable is further re-inforced by the fact that AI has been able to successfully predict hit songs.(4/n) https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bmvxvm/a-machine-successfully-predicted-the-hit-dance-songs-of-2015
The fact that pop music sounds the same not only instrumentally but lyrically has to do with the fact that pop singers employ roughly the same set of writers to pen the lyrics. (4/n) https://nypost.com/2015/10/04/your-favorite-song-on-the-radio-was-probably-written-by-these-two/
Now that we've established "sameness" and "dumbness" sells when it comes to music, is it the same with movies? Are most, if not all, international blockbusters "homogenous"? This shouldn't be hard to guess. (5/n) https://www.seatsmart.com/blog/lyric-intelligence/
If you check out the highest grossing movies in the world of the last 19 years, you'll find that 10 of them are part of a franchise, 5 of them are superhero movies and 3 of them are animated movies(2 of which are also part of franchise) and all of them use CGI effects(6/n)
The popularity of franchise movies as well as superhero movies shows the reluctance of people to encounter the individual as well as the reluctance of studios to produce original ideas(7/n)
These movies essentially have the same settings,the same characters, the same plot(superhero fights supervillian. Superhero wins), the same action scenes and the same music with just enough modification to give you the illusion of difference(8/n)
The famous comic book writer Alan Moore(his work includes The Killing Joke,V For Vendetta&Watchmen) thinks the popularity of superheroes among adults is " tremendously embarrassing". Comic books were initially aimed at 12-13 year olds(9/n) https://alanmooreworld.blogspot.com/2019/11/moore-on-jerusalem-eternalism-anarchy.html
Acc to him, comic books abbett an adult audience which does not wish to "relinquish their relatively reassuring childhood". The popularity of these movies/music/art points towards a "cultural stasis" and "self imposed state of emotional arrest".(10/n)
This roughly resembles the psychological condition of "Arrested Emotional Development". The legendary conservative philosopher Roger Scruton hinted at the problem of pop culture decades ago(11/n)
He points out tht pop music is generated from a "point outside", namely the machine. Thus, "When bass and drum enter,they dont force on to the music any rhythm that is alien to it,but pick up the existing beat."There is little to no internal variation(12/n) https://www.roger-scruton.com/about/music/understanding-music/175-the-cultural-significance-of-pop
Why exactly are we being forced to treat art only as a means to escape? Why are we exposed to sameness? Because of its commercialization and "commodification"(Scruton).In his docu "Why Beauty Matters",he talks about the problem with trying to find utility in art.(13/n)
What is the use of art? In the age of late capitalism, art's primary use seems to be only to provide us with a means to escape. Thus what difference is there between the Avengers movies and those made by Tarkovsky?This makes us refuse to appreciate art for art's sake(14/n)
This conservative critique of pop culture is strikingly similar to the critique made by those associated with the Frankfurt School(derogatively termed as founders of "cultural Marxism"). Adorno and Horkheimer wrote in 1947 that "culture is infecting everything with sameness"
They termed this as the "culture industry". The capitalist society turns individuals into machines. It values "utility" and profit more than originality. Studios don't care whether the movie is original or not. They care about its capacity to make profit(15/n)
This line of criticism is directly influenced by Marx who argued that capitalism makes the individual "automatic motor of a fractional operation"(16/n)
One would assume that these "cultural Marxists" will naturally care more about the collective instead of the individual, that their solution to the problem of "culture industry" would be its replacement with a culture industry that promotes communism, right?(17/n)
Nope. Adorno&Horkheimer's problem with the culture industry is exactly its devaluation of the individual in favor of the status quo. The culture industry converts the individual to a "mere puppet"{their words}. (18/n)
The status quo shuns the individual. The artist's urge to express himself is minimized(Ibid). The studios "think on the actor's behalf"(Robert Downey Jr. in JRE). Experimentation is discouraged. How did Ray, Tarkovsky&Kubrick manage to make timeless works of art?(19/n)
Because they defied the status quo. Kubrick famously almost bullied the studio into accepting his own terms(Stanley Kubrick:A Life in pictures) while Ray&Tarkovsky were independent film-makers.(20/n)
This critique may sound like the "old days were good, the contemporary age is decadent". It isn't. Instead it recognizes that talented artists exist today as they did in the old days. The status quo just doesn't give them the exposure they deserve(21/n)
I made this thread to point out that often we are more similar than we'd like to admit. That there are many points over which both the left and the right can rally together. The lack of nuance is extremely harmful to the state of our political discourse. (22/22)
You might want to read this @vivekagnihotri
