One world, one operating system
May. 8th, 2004 12:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusI very much agree with what John Harris says in his article in today's Guardian, The Bland Play On. Selected highlights of the piece:
'Anglo-American popular music is among globalisation's most useful props. Never mind the nitpicking fixations with interview rhetoric and stylistic nuance that concern its hardcore enthusiasts - away from its home turf, mainstream music, whether it's metal, rap, teen-pop or indie-rock, cannot help but stand for a depressingly conservative set of values: conspicuous consumption, the primacy of the English language, the implicit acknowledgement that America is probably best.'
'Though the output of MTV, VH1 and the snowballing number of radio stations owned by Clear Channel might be dressed up in pop's customary language of diversity and individualism, the music they pump out is now standardised to the point of tedium.'
'In 2004, there are but a handful of international musical superstars: Beyoncé, 50 Cent, Justin Timberlake, Eminem, Norah Jones, Coldplay. To characterise the process behind their global success as top-down is something of an understatement. MTV may have initially been marketed with the superficially empowering slogan, "I want my MTV"; more recently, with billions gladly hooked up, it has used the flatly sinister, "One planet, one music". Those four words beg one question: who decides?'
'Two factors hardened pop into the hegemonic monolith it is today. Firstly, though the transatlantic cultural exchange brought pop a new artistic richness, it failed to repeat the trick elsewhere. With a few notable exceptions, continental Europe has long been barred from offsetting an ongoing deluge of Anglo-American imports with any lasting worldwide successes of its own; even the popular music of Africa, where the fusion of regional styles with western pop has long been inspirational, seems unable to snare our attention. And then there is the aforementioned domination of a once chaotic industry by those lumbering corporations. Whither such examples of creative autonomy as Chess, Tamla Motown, Island and Creation? Long since gobbled up, like so many of the western world's more interesting elements.'
'Underlying that picture is a tragic irony indeed: music founded in a spirit of spontaneity and self-expression ending up at the core of an ever-more standardised planet.'
Read the whole article...
'Anglo-American popular music is among globalisation's most useful props. Never mind the nitpicking fixations with interview rhetoric and stylistic nuance that concern its hardcore enthusiasts - away from its home turf, mainstream music, whether it's metal, rap, teen-pop or indie-rock, cannot help but stand for a depressingly conservative set of values: conspicuous consumption, the primacy of the English language, the implicit acknowledgement that America is probably best.'
'Though the output of MTV, VH1 and the snowballing number of radio stations owned by Clear Channel might be dressed up in pop's customary language of diversity and individualism, the music they pump out is now standardised to the point of tedium.'
'In 2004, there are but a handful of international musical superstars: Beyoncé, 50 Cent, Justin Timberlake, Eminem, Norah Jones, Coldplay. To characterise the process behind their global success as top-down is something of an understatement. MTV may have initially been marketed with the superficially empowering slogan, "I want my MTV"; more recently, with billions gladly hooked up, it has used the flatly sinister, "One planet, one music". Those four words beg one question: who decides?'
'Two factors hardened pop into the hegemonic monolith it is today. Firstly, though the transatlantic cultural exchange brought pop a new artistic richness, it failed to repeat the trick elsewhere. With a few notable exceptions, continental Europe has long been barred from offsetting an ongoing deluge of Anglo-American imports with any lasting worldwide successes of its own; even the popular music of Africa, where the fusion of regional styles with western pop has long been inspirational, seems unable to snare our attention. And then there is the aforementioned domination of a once chaotic industry by those lumbering corporations. Whither such examples of creative autonomy as Chess, Tamla Motown, Island and Creation? Long since gobbled up, like so many of the western world's more interesting elements.'
'Underlying that picture is a tragic irony indeed: music founded in a spirit of spontaneity and self-expression ending up at the core of an ever-more standardised planet.'
Read the whole article...
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Date: 2004-05-09 01:03 am (UTC)It seems that we read the swastika differently. For me, the meaning that seeps through in the graphic above from the swastika shape (which is different from what would come through from a swastika on its own) is "big, terrifying, violent, and very, very bad". Or, to be a little more poetic about it, "fire machine ass rape". It conveys nothing to me of governmental philosophy, especially with the stars and stripes hogging the floor on that point, and only very, very faintly - as a sort of charicature - does it evoke the historical Nazis. The net effect of the stars and stripes swastika for me is something like "big, terrifying, violent, and very, very bad America-Democracy-Freedom-Patriotism".
In this case (my case), a particular, historically situated meaning of the swastika has been abstracted into certain characteristics of it's referent in that historical situation. If I'm not mistaken, this kind of movement occurs all the time in language. There's probably even a name for it.
The meaning of the swastika is often presented as the polar opposite of the meaning of the American flag. I find it very interesting, and very plausible, that some people could assign to the flag *some* of the same meanings that we (that is, I) assign to the swastika.
Consider MTV as the spokesperson for big, terrifying, violent America-Democracy et al ... it seems to me like a good illustration of the article, and a fairly reasonable point.
Notions of what is or is not in bad taste are culturally based (we can probably agree), and perhaps I may be permitted to point out that I am a (treasonous) American while you are Greek (I think) and that I am a goy (as far as I know) while you are a Jew (more or less). It seems to make intuitive sense that we might read the graphic differently - the flag means things to me that I doubt it means to you, or means them more emphatically - vice-versa with the swastika - and if my comments have not indicated such, let me say that I respect your reading, whether or not I understand it correctly.