Beauty Week 6: Global and local

[imomus]

Here's artist and musician Jarboe (quoted on the excellent Peripherus Max blog): "Why does anyone in the age of internet technology and also readily available physical travel define themselves as a one town artist, or an artist from/in a particular place? I am a GLOBAL artist. Yes, I resided in the belly of the beast, NYC, for many years but I also travel and have traveled extensively for my work as an artist for 21 + years. If anyone has their head in a dark space, it is any artist who views themselves as pertaining to one small place in this world. No matter what the name of that place may be. Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition."



This question of whether art (and by extension beauty) is global or local is one that concerns me. In some ways I feel like a global artist, having worked in London, Paris, New York, Berlin, Tokyo and so on. In others, I feel like I'm basically a storyteller, tied to the English language, and that my "art" works only where English is spoken. Even my activities in visual art venues are really just an extension of what I've always done, which is language art, storytelling. That relies heavily on English, which in turn limits my career to places where English is spoken. I'm also politically troubled by the idea of English as an international lingua franca. I'm a cultural relativist and proud of it, and I want to see cultural diversity and difference preserved, including linguistic difference. I'm also not such a fan of capitalism that I think the free market looks after everything in the best interests of diversity and cultural preservation. There's an interesting passage on David Byrne's blog journal Don't Call It A Blog in which he talks about finding out that Talking Heads' "Burning Down The House" had been supported by payola, and how realizing that systematic bribes of "cash, coke and women" controlled the radio he'd grown up with made him question his whole identity:

"I wondered if every pop song that had moved me on the radio, from when I was in my teens, had been paid for. Oh jeez! Therefore, other than a few free-form stations around at that time I was being treated like a Pavlovian dog — what I had believed were my subjective passions and discoveries were actually the result of a concerted program to pound certain tunes into my innocent brain. I had been totally manipulated! What I thought were decisions and loves that were mine and mine alone had been planted in my head by sleazy characters I could barely imagine. Free will? Hah! My entire past was called into question. Who am I? Am I not partly what I like? And if those things I like were not completely of my own choosing, then what am I?"

Byrne's identity crisis is really just an individual consumer waking up to something economist J.K.Galbraith puts like this: "The modern industrial society, or that part of it which is composed of the large corporations, is in all essentials a planned economy. By that I mean that production decisions are taken not in response to consumer demand as expressed in the market, rather, they are taken by producers."



If Galbraith is right that consumer economies are just as "planned" as anything decreed by government bureaus, why should we object to governments intervening in cultural markets to protect the local language and preserve cultural diversity? This is a debate that's been going on in France for ten years, but is only now becoming a hot issue here in Germany. It was in 1996 that Jacques Toubon, France's Culture Minister, imposed language quotas on French radio:

"In 1996, when the culture minister of the time, Jacques Toubon, decreed that French radio must devote at least 4 per cent of its airplay to French-language pop music, with 20 per cent consisting of new French music, the loi Toubon became the definitive statement of French anxiety about the impact of the US on French identity. On the radio, la chanson française was in, and anything remotely resembling British rock or American R&B was out. The law was adjusted slightly in 2000, in response to complaints from radio stations, and the percentage breakdown between non-French music, French music and new French talent now varies, depending on whether you are an adult radio station, an adult/youth station or a youth station. Essentially, though, it serves the same purpose: to protect French heritage and nurture French culture."

In 2004, the same debate (and Jacques Toubon too) hit Germany, as Deutsche-Welle reported:

"Music industry officials estimate that only 10 percent of German radio's play lists is sung in German, falling way short of France, Italy and Spain's 50 percent native language ratio. That's why a chorus of music industry leaders have gone to the German parliament to sing the praises of a law, like France's, which would make sure their sound keeps getting pumped around the nation. However, the government is cautious... the public stations, naturally, don't want to be told what to do."

"Over 500 artists signed a plea against what they dubbed "scandalous under-representation" of German-speaking artists in a radio format carved out of "the Anglo-American mainstream and the usual oldies." Supporting them was Jacques Toubon, former French culture minister, brainchild of France's quota. He told the parliamentary committee that thanks to his law, French music sales have picked up and new French artists are no longer trees falling in the forest that nobody hears."



Marxy tells me that in Japan "the charts are pretty much all Japanese music, but the market is like 80-20 or maybe 70-30 Japanese/Int'l at this point" and that "the Japanese pop market changed from primarily Western to primarily Japanese in 1967, which is a pretty good marker for when Japanese "pop culture" really started to move."

I think I resolve this question of whether art should be global or local with an "and/and" answer. The more you travel, the more you actually want places to have a local flavour. Why else bother even going to the airport? Stay-at-homes have an interest in the local becoming international, so that they can experience exoticism without the hassle of travelling (going to their local foodcourt, say, or surfing the internet). But travellers want the foreign to remain relatively foreign.

But I also think that the synthetic way people represent their local cultures to others is the way they increasingly view themselves: cultural self-consciousness is a result of exposure to the Other; The Japanese are almost Japanese. And I rather enjoy the trend of the last few decades for things like US culture and the English language to be replaced, in the privileged position of "the designated particular that represents the universal", by each country's own narcissistic, alienated, rebranded, plasticized, other-directed, self-image. An export (or "American-friendly") version of our own culture is made to stand, instead of America itself, for "the universal". Instead of trying to "be America" we are all now trying to see ourselves as America sees us, which in many cases (including the enemies of America) means constructing ourselves as "the Other" and consuming our own culture as virtual strangers. I think this applies to Japan as much as it applies to Islamic fundamentalism.

We're all different and that difference is always beautiful... if we're at peace. The world is at peace right now, isn't it? Oh, okay, it's not. Back to the idea of "my nation's values are better, more advanced and more universal than yours'," I guess.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

True, travellers like the unspoilt (be they Diesel adverts or other foreigners) and rootsy homespun culture (sometimes owned by foreigners eg Japanese freeholders of Carnaby Street keen to preserve its 'mod' London feel). So if you buy a skinhead t-shirt and Doc Martins there you may be being 'planned' toward a nationalist look by foreigners! This is the modern world.

[henryperri.livejournal.com]

This is a tough issue. While I don't like the idea of governments imposing rules on private stations and their listeners, I do think that it is a government's job to try to protect their national identity.

French artist sales might be up after this rule was enacted, but I wonder about overall music sales? If you force new artists on the public, they will probably be embraced to some degree. Any music, repeated enough, will create some kind of following. The question is whether or not this following is as big as it was for the int'l artists they replaced.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, you know, I would comment, but what's the point? Last time I was ignored. I suppose that might have had something to do with my having shown you to be talking out of your arse.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, one teeny little bit of joshing about Carrie from Sex and the City, and you have a little mardy!

[(Anonymous)]

...tell me more
it's not big, being obscure!

[(Anonymous)]

Bacck again. You obsequious worm.

[(Anonymous)]

me too cuddly mittens

Galbraith

[(Anonymous)]

I like when you quote Galbraith. Maybe we've found an academic who commands our mutually-respect.

Just a side note if you're interested: the Expos and World Fairs used to be about countries selling themselves to the world with fancy architecture, but this new Aichi Banpaku is all about adapting international flavors to the Japanese palate. Egypt's not trying to be super-Egypt as much as sell "Egypt curry" that is just Japanese curry with a different name. I suspect it's mostly because no one cares anymore about such festivals except the Japanese hosts, but it's an interesting phenomena to consider.

Marxy

Re: Galbraith

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Thank God, a sane man!

I like when you quote Galbraith. Maybe we've found an academic who commands our mutually-respect.

I thought we also both rated Bourdieu? And, er, Karl Marx?

I think if the thesis in my second last para is right, it doesn't make much difference whether expos are designed for domestic or international consumption, since the Japanese (like everyone else) are now consuming internally an export version of their own culture alongside export versions of everyone else's. So "selling yourself to the world" and "selling the world to yourself" are sort of the same thing.

bampaku

[(Anonymous)]

has marxy tried the coffee upstairs at the italian pavilion. Someone tell me a place in tokyo where the cappuccino goes anywhere near that..

[butterflyrobert.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't worry too much about Germany's music being mostly english language. The english language evolved from Low German. Low German as spoken by the Anglo-Saxons became Old English. In other words, English sounds fairly natural to native Germans. As an example, one German friend of mine describes English as "a baby language" because "it's just like German, but more simplistic." And, from a scholarly point of view, that's a fairly accurate assessment. The only difference with English is that there are more "foreign root groups" than in German.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we were discussing this, ahem, elsewhere today and I wrote:

"I think there's a band of cultures (the US, the UK, Holland, Scandinavia, Germany) which, although they've been at war with each other at certain points in history, also share some important cultural bonds, like Saxon linguistic forms and Protestantism. I think this makes Germans feel less threatened by English-language pop music than French or Italians or Spaniards. Basically, I agree with you that this is an "ingrained cultural bias", and that Japan shares it and has organised its markets accordingly (without explicit government intervention)."

wikipediaism

[petit-paradis.livejournal.com]

just started reading edward said orientalism study I browsed the net for some information and found this on their page about orientalism:

"many sholars now use said's work to overturn long-held, often taken-for granted western ideological biases regarding non-westernerss in scholarly thought. some post-colonial scholars ould even say that the west's idea of itself was constructed largely by saying what others were not. if "europe" evolved out of "christendom" as the ""non-byzantium," early modern europe in the late 16th century (see battle of lepanto) certainly defined itself as the "not-turkey. "

Re: wikipediaism

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yes, that feels right! I often think that many of my problems with England stem from it thinking of itself too rigidly as the "Not-France". We Scots are much more relaxed about our inner Frenchman.

Franz Boas.

[peripherus-max.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your kind mention above, Nick. I'm thinking a lot of Franz Boas, the pioneer anthropologist, in stumbling to draft a decent response to what you've written. Here's a quote, from Robert Pirsig, which expresses something along the same lines as Boas: “The culture in which we live hands us a set of intellectual glasses to interpret experience with, and the concept of the primacy of subjects and objects is built right into these glasses. If someone sees thing through a somewhat different set of glasses, or, God help him, takes his glasses off, the natural tendency of those who still have their glasses on is to regard his statements as somewhat weird, if not actually crazy." - from 'Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals.'

I get the feeling that you gravitate towards environments in which "cultural relativism" seems rather natural in the minds and hearts of the surrounding populace. You're also so persuasive in your arguments that I now find myself wanting to move to Berlin, where rents, it seems, are cheaper than rural Alabama!

Your ideas seem increasingly anthropological, though. If Phaidon were keeping it's eyes open, they'd commission a series of books from you on each of the cities that you've lived in.

Speaking of Paris...

I'm staging a collaboration with your friend Gilles late this fall there, and I barely speak of word of French. Given what you've said about the '96 language quotas, I'm really fearful of letting my Appalachian twang loose. What is a non-linguistic way to convey an allegiance in all that you've said above on the streets of Paris? I probably shouldn't care. I should just be myself. But, hey, I'll admit that I'm an insecure person and I don't have as original a fashion sense as you. I tend to dress like an economist.

But, I would like to wear a different set of 'intellectual glasses' in France than I wear here in America... it just seems like it would be a completely different experience now knowing the language in Paris than say Tokyo, Berlin, or even Lisbon. Of course, that preconception may simply stem from an overexposure to Fox News.

Re: Franz Boas.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Parisians might like it if you dress in tweeds, or like a Tom Wolfe-style southern gentleman. There's no use trying to learn French, because if you don't speak it perfectly they'll pretend not to understand a word. And anyway, knowing French would just allow you to understand how rude the taxi driver was being to you.

Re: Franz Boas.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

I'd 'pull a Franklin'--you'll soon find yourself on every teacup in France:

"When Franklin was sent to Paris as ambassador to France in 1776, he created quite a stir when he arrived without the fancy silk and velvet attire normally associated with diplomats. Instead, he showed up wearing a beaver-skin cap, which quickly became known in fashion-conscious Paris as "le chapeau à la Franklin." Soon, beaver-skin caps became all the rage in Europe, almost to the point of threatening extinction of the animals in the new world. French aristocrats and intellectuals embraced Franklin as the personification of the New World Enlightenment. His likeness appeared on medallions, rings, watches, and snuffboxes, while fashionable ladies adopted the coiffure a la Franklin in imitation of the fur cap he wore instead of a wig. In the late 1700's, the English potter Josiah Wedgwood produced a ceramic pin containing Franklin's likeness. It quickly became one of the hottest-selling items in Europe."

W

HEY MOME!/ZIZEK MEME!

[instant-c.livejournal.com]

http://www.lacan.com/coalition.htm

MEL GIBSON!
Radical Individualsm=regulation!
Those Poor Liberals!

[mskapol.livejournal.com]

BTW, you sneer at Steven Vincent in a true cultural relativist fashion while the corpse is still warm. Congrats, you must be proud.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I simply link to Steven Vincent and paraphrase his arguments, which I would never even have heard if he hadn't been killed. Anyone who knows my views and knows Vincent's views will see that we could never, ever agree, in life or in death. (And yes, when I'm dead, please continue engaging with my ideas. Speak your mind.)

Here's a chunk of an interview (http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16214) Vincent did with Front Page magazine:

"This—along with an unwillingness to support the Bush Administration in anything—explains in large part the silence of the Left as Islamofascists repeatedly violate their core beliefs of secularism, human rights and creative freedom (where are the outcries about the murder of Theo van Gogh? They come mostly from the Right). I remember my Iraqi friend Naseer telling me how impressed his mother was to see American women soldiers. His mom didn’t realize such gender equality was possible, or that women could interact so easily with their male counterparts—and millions of other women across Iraq are learning similar feminist lessons. The Left has got to accept one fact that has stuck in their craw since the Vietnam War: where the American military goes, so goes human freedom."

This is complete nonsense. First of all, it's likely that women had more freedom under Saddam's secular and nominally socialist regime than under the Islamic regime which will be the almost inevitable end result of the American invasion of Iraq. Secondly, what kind of image of feminism is it to see female soldiers in an invading army? Thirdly, how does pre-emptive war based on imaginary WMDs bring "human freedom" wherever it goes? Fourthly, didn't he think it a bit ironic to cite the Vietnam War in that sentence? Fifthly, it's also ironic that he makes common cause with Theo Van Gogh, whose anti-Muslim provocations (daubing verses of the Koran on semi-naked women wearing hijabs) also got him killed. A little cultural relativism and respect for the Other would have saved not only these men's lives, but the lives of hundreds of soldiers, interpreters, and civilians. These people (Van Gogh, Vincent, Pim Fortuyn, as well as more "mainstream" non-relativists like Tony Blair and the neocons) are initiating vicious circles of hardening and polarisation which have dragged us all into an outright culture war with the Islamic world. We owe them no thanks, however intelligently or eloquently they express themselves (as Vincent did).