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Let's start on a happy
note, shall we? Strange that while Antonio Gramsci was scribbling
away in gaol under Mussolini's fascist dictatorship he produced
work which was subtly in touch with the possibilities of popular
culture. In contrast, Theodor Adorno, the leading light of the Frankfurt
School, having escaped Hitler's Germany for what one would think
were the more tolerant and forgiving climes of California and Los
Angeles went all to pot. He perceived mass culture as an individuality
draining, art devaluing, machine, turning us all into sheep like
worshippers at the altar of Hollywood and the consumer society.
I am parodying of course, but it has always been a mystery why all
that laid back Californian vibe seemed to set Adorno off in such
a tizz. Then again, looking at the Spice Girls, manufactured pop
created solely as a market led money making device, one can see
the point. Furthermore, the classic Marxist strandpoint on this,
that the capitalist culture industry takes on board rebellious art
and defuses it, turns it into a product in the service of capitalism,
might be borne out by the appearance of aging anarchist-punks Chumbawamba
at the record industry's annual corporate backslapper, the Brit
Awards. Or maybe they are subverting the system from within? At
least the Spice Girls don't pretend to be anything other than a
money generating machince
More
seriously, 'high' culture (which usually means whatever the upper
classes like) is always presented by the powerful within society
as a repository of moral values. The experience of the Nazi dictatorship
- run by men who prided themselves on their appreciation of the
fine arts - showed how there was nothing inherently 'humane and
universal' in the work of Wagner or Goethe. Concentration camp commandants
had orchestras play highbrow classical music whilst they supervised
the murder of their victims. Anthropologists were directly involved
in identifying Jews and Gypsies for transportation to the camps.
Doctors carried out murderous medical experiments on them. The Frankfurt
School were one of the few sociological schools of thought to seriously
take on board what the Holocaust represented. It gave us new knowledge
of what human beings are capable of, in the light of which our unspoken
assumptions of the value of science or high culture are going to
look very hollow indeed.
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