Pop Culture & THEM

[MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu]

On hag, Craig and others bandying about this notion of--pop--culture, I concur w/ 
the point hag is trying to make.   When is pop no longer pop?  It is in the nature of 
at least our particularly nefarious brand of capitalism, perhaps all capitalism, that it 
is wonderfully adept at co-opting any and all aspects of culture which might 
conceivably aid the counterforce, denuding and defanging them when it does.  
Hence, once denim bellbottoms were scrounged from Army/Navy stores as an act 
of--pace Gingrich--counterculture--but was Jordache far behind?  Hence feminists 
once burned their bras in protest of male harnessing and--soon the no-bra look was 
all the rage.  Hence, I once saw an ad on a bus for a--Revolutionary--(Their version) 
new eyeliner w/ the model dressed a la Patty Hearst from her symbionese 
liberation front days.  U.S.W.  Can we posit that the evil They, sniffing the 
potentially healthy air of--pop--culture, have simply lassoed it, as They do 
everything which night offer a whiff of freedom, of thought if nothing else, to all 
us poor slobs?  Hence my fear of Disney . . .(Hey, it's just fun for the--kids!!!)

john m

>Craig sez:
>
>>               . Think of the Proles in
>> Orwell's _1984_, or their immediate literary ancestors, the Yahoos
>> in Swift's _Gulliver's Travels_. Debased, yeah. Dedicated to trivia,
>> sure. Embodying everything that's worst in their culture, obviously. But
>> still, when all's said and done, there's hope and vitality in them. 
>> That's what Swift and Orwell recognise and celebrate. Pynchon does 
>> too.  
>
>I was saying that the proles' (or preterite) culture was less and less 
>vital, alive, a refuge from Their stamped and approved and dead 
>culture, since the preterite are now themselves, with the help of the 
>tube, configured, 'made over' in Their image, and so is most of the 
>garbage they churn out in response to their, ahh, situation. So what 
>appears as cultural democracy in action, a long-awaited conflation of the 
>high/low devide, takes on much more sinister implications. The gun 
>behind the moving image is now hidden, and thus more effective. Maybe 
>the Lotion thing can be explained in these terms (TRP celebrating a 
>band which might not be very good, but which is at least some kind of 
>'genuine article', music not totally predetermined by its market niche - and 
>thus somewhat of a rarity).
>
>hg
>hag at iafrica.com
>
>