Daffy Duck and the Upanishads

[Hartwin Alfred Gebhardt]

daffmarc writes on why TRP includes pop 'crap':

> At 10:26 PM 6/29/96 +0200, you wrote:
> >Andrew Dinn writes:
> >
> >>                                   I think the inclusion of pop `crap'
> >> serves some other purposes.
> >> 
> >> One is to reject snobbish claims for high-brow culture by showing that
> >[...]
> >> Another is to point to the difference between old traditions and new
> >[...]
> >
> >And a third one, I'd say, is a complication of the first one. The ahistorical 
> >cultural consciousness of contemporary American society is a direct 
> >corollary of the cinematic construction thereof, and while it most 
> >democratically conflates high and low culture, thus denying the 
> >authoritative pretensions of high culture and associated political 
> >interests, it also allows both the increasingly effective re-creation of the 
> >past and the autocratically controlled creation of the present and future. 
> >TRP, quite aware of the fundamentally manufactured nature of myth, 
> >history and reality is not positing that some historical essence is lost this 
> >way, but rather that the power to create the myths inscribing human 
> >identity is increasingly concentrated in the hands of certain inanimate 
> >concerns. For him, there is no question of truth in myth or history; 
> >what matters rather is what use it is put to. TRP rejects the high / low 
> >culture division because he rejects the political power dynamic it represents. 
> >Yet he also recognizes that so-called low culture (TV, film, pop music) has 
> >become, (certainly post-sixties), the very control mechanism employed by 
> >Them to first configure and then control the preterite. In a society where 
> >strict class divisions and accompanying upper class priviledges are maintained 
> >by the gun, preterite culture is a clear expression and indictment of that 
> >oppressive social devide, and also a possible refuge from the political 
> >realities maintaining that gap - because of both the persistence of subversive 
> >ancient mythologies and the fairly chaotic nature of the generation of
> preterite 
> >culture. Now, though (i.e. in Vineland's eighties) the power of the media has 
> >become the main engine of cultural manufacture - and the tube has no 
> >revolutionary agenda.
> >
> Here's a fourth reason: TRP uses pop culture references because he's enjoyed
> them for at least as long as he's been familiar with the work of Spike Jones.
> 
> And a fifth:  TRP uses pop culture references because he loves and discovers
> value in all manner of human expression.

The point is that pop culture is less and less 'human' expression. 
Please read what was said before you start your old "Aw shucks, I'm 
just a peasant" routine, Sir.

hg
hag at iafrica.com