Suspicious Packaging
I've been doing sort of lazy research for a few years now about a phenomenon I refer to as a "cultural spike." A change in the perception of a culture brought about usually through the exposition of some artistic phenomenon by the major media outlets. (Think punk rock or grunge, here.)
If you look at a cultural timeline of my life (and probably the lives of the few of you reading this) there are, so far, only two real cultural spikes on that line; Punk in 1977 when I was one year old and grunge in 1991 when I was fifteen. The music, art, movies and writing that has meant something in my short time here is tied up with these two cultural blips. Seventies punk being a significantly larger blip than grunge but more on that later.
The gist of the "spike" is this: Culture is cyclical. And I don't mean culture only in regard to art/music/literature/film etc. I mean the whole of social thought and perception. Since the dawn of modern communication changes and shifts in mass culture have been telegraphed by art, music, literature, etc.
Long before science has the right to say that the earth is not the center of the universe, artists have the freedom to express themselves in ways that were up to that point relatively taboo. Michelangelois the forebear of Galileo, Picasso is the forebear of Einstein, etc. The artistic eventually reflects in the social and ultimately pays off in the scientific, etc.
The reality of the situation is not that artistic people only come out of the woodwork every so often and that their work is only great enough to be noticed by the populace at large every fifteen years. That idea is patently absurd.
However, the idea that the business of art and its effect on culture follow this kind of cycle seems pretty obvious given even the most cursory observation. Media finds relatively decent/valid art/music/etc. and markets it to the people who aren't so eagerly buying pop records and bad hip hop inspired clothing. Media markets the art of someone who wants to get paid to do what they think they are best at.
But how can media deliver an idea? And let's face it, most art/music/etc. is bound by some kind of idea. In general, they don't market the idea. They market the artist. More to the point, they market what the artist looks like. Anyone remember the rabid interest in the way grunge rockers dressed? How flannel ended up in Vogue and suddenly every kid from Rapid City to Tallahassee wore flannel and didn't wash their hair every day? Makes it kind of easy to imagine that someone might get upset at seeing their own personal style and wardrobe aped by millions. Might make you believe that your idea was ruined by the masses and that this idea no longer had any power. Might make you think you needed to react to your own idea. But how do you do that when you haven't even borne the first idea out to fruition? Most of the time you don't. Or at least you don't do it well.
Maybe it's better when your genius isn't discovered by the masses. Maybe you actually have more power in obscurity, anonymity than you do as a mega-star.
Think about it. Hip hop is so marginalized as an artform by its own success that it essentially has no power. It's moved on up to the East Side so well that it doesn't care about destroying the system anymore. It's part of the system now.
I mean, in general artists and musicians who get paid to produce are slaves to the company that pays them to do so. They don't want to have to go back to their day job, right? In the record industry, being signed to a major label will get music out to the most people but it also puts artists in debt by default. (Steve Albini wrote a pretty nice piece about this for some rag way back when...) Doesn't it make sense that art you'd pay to make for the sake of making it is usually better than music you have to make to get paid anyway? There's a big difference between aesthetic quality and technical quality. I don't think anyone would disagree that there are great technical guitarists out there that can't put a bit of soul into their own work. Just like there are records that are technically better recorded than the demos of the same songs but that somehow lack the raw power or feeling that the less professionally recorded demos possess.
Making art to sell effectively castrates your art by making the sale the ultimate end of the art. And they sell the art by sellingYOU!
By owning your artwork in the traditional way you've already made it impotent. Your own ego, the same thing that probably makes that art good has made it powerless the second anyone attaches the artwork to your physical appearance. Your ideas take a backseat to the jacket photo on the back of your novel, the member list inside your CD cover, the press kit sitting on the gallery's front desk, the website and its accompanying bio page. People want to buy you, your success and your confidence, the supposed product is a nice freebie that comes with the packaging. And these days, a lot of the art/music/etc. isn't even packaged! It's downloaded. It's not even physical. It doesn't actually exist in a physical world. The artists are the only products now.
We're ripe for a spike. It's inevitable. The only question that needs to be answered is whether the spike is controlled by the people or the people who collect our money.
If you look at a cultural timeline of my life (and probably the lives of the few of you reading this) there are, so far, only two real cultural spikes on that line; Punk in 1977 when I was one year old and grunge in 1991 when I was fifteen. The music, art, movies and writing that has meant something in my short time here is tied up with these two cultural blips. Seventies punk being a significantly larger blip than grunge but more on that later.
The gist of the "spike" is this: Culture is cyclical. And I don't mean culture only in regard to art/music/literature/film etc. I mean the whole of social thought and perception. Since the dawn of modern communication changes and shifts in mass culture have been telegraphed by art, music, literature, etc.
Long before science has the right to say that the earth is not the center of the universe, artists have the freedom to express themselves in ways that were up to that point relatively taboo. Michelangelois the forebear of Galileo, Picasso is the forebear of Einstein, etc. The artistic eventually reflects in the social and ultimately pays off in the scientific, etc.
The reality of the situation is not that artistic people only come out of the woodwork every so often and that their work is only great enough to be noticed by the populace at large every fifteen years. That idea is patently absurd.
However, the idea that the business of art and its effect on culture follow this kind of cycle seems pretty obvious given even the most cursory observation. Media finds relatively decent/valid art/music/etc. and markets it to the people who aren't so eagerly buying pop records and bad hip hop inspired clothing. Media markets the art of someone who wants to get paid to do what they think they are best at.
But how can media deliver an idea? And let's face it, most art/music/etc. is bound by some kind of idea. In general, they don't market the idea. They market the artist. More to the point, they market what the artist looks like. Anyone remember the rabid interest in the way grunge rockers dressed? How flannel ended up in Vogue and suddenly every kid from Rapid City to Tallahassee wore flannel and didn't wash their hair every day? Makes it kind of easy to imagine that someone might get upset at seeing their own personal style and wardrobe aped by millions. Might make you believe that your idea was ruined by the masses and that this idea no longer had any power. Might make you think you needed to react to your own idea. But how do you do that when you haven't even borne the first idea out to fruition? Most of the time you don't. Or at least you don't do it well.
Maybe it's better when your genius isn't discovered by the masses. Maybe you actually have more power in obscurity, anonymity than you do as a mega-star.
Think about it. Hip hop is so marginalized as an artform by its own success that it essentially has no power. It's moved on up to the East Side so well that it doesn't care about destroying the system anymore. It's part of the system now.
I mean, in general artists and musicians who get paid to produce are slaves to the company that pays them to do so. They don't want to have to go back to their day job, right? In the record industry, being signed to a major label will get music out to the most people but it also puts artists in debt by default. (Steve Albini wrote a pretty nice piece about this for some rag way back when...) Doesn't it make sense that art you'd pay to make for the sake of making it is usually better than music you have to make to get paid anyway? There's a big difference between aesthetic quality and technical quality. I don't think anyone would disagree that there are great technical guitarists out there that can't put a bit of soul into their own work. Just like there are records that are technically better recorded than the demos of the same songs but that somehow lack the raw power or feeling that the less professionally recorded demos possess.
Making art to sell effectively castrates your art by making the sale the ultimate end of the art. And they sell the art by sellingYOU!
By owning your artwork in the traditional way you've already made it impotent. Your own ego, the same thing that probably makes that art good has made it powerless the second anyone attaches the artwork to your physical appearance. Your ideas take a backseat to the jacket photo on the back of your novel, the member list inside your CD cover, the press kit sitting on the gallery's front desk, the website and its accompanying bio page. People want to buy you, your success and your confidence, the supposed product is a nice freebie that comes with the packaging. And these days, a lot of the art/music/etc. isn't even packaged! It's downloaded. It's not even physical. It doesn't actually exist in a physical world. The artists are the only products now.
We're ripe for a spike. It's inevitable. The only question that needs to be answered is whether the spike is controlled by the people or the people who collect our money.
posted by The Transit Nomad at Wednesday, February 08, 2006
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