culture war
i posted the thread below on the fediverse yesterday, i was following a train of thought and i'm not sure how coherent it was overall. mostly i'm just angry about the cultural vandalism of neoliberalism, the thwarted artistic ambitions of working class people, just the sheer loss of unique voices and ideas.
i don't think it's a coincidence that as this unnoffical system of subsidising the arts via the dole and grants was removed there was a flattening of culture. that's not to say that there aren't new and interesting things being created, i don't want this to be mistaken for a curmudgeonly 'things were better in my day' rant. things weren't better they were just different and those differences gave working class people the space to explore and experiment and push things forward.
mark fisher made this point more than once, this is what he had to say in an interview with crack magazine -
'One of the things we haven’t talked about is the class domination of things like popular culture and popular music. The absurd number of ex-private school kids who are now dominating the indie scene or whatever. Because only they can afford it; only they can afford to get into the networks where culture happens. The absurd myth of neoliberalism is that creativity is this infinite well-spring which is equally distributed amongst human beings and it’s only blocked by the state or socialists. But of course, it’s the exact opposite. The creativity only happens when there are the conditions for it and collective conditions of one kind or another, and it’s those collective conditions and that critical admixture which has been systematically dismantled.'
the references to blur vs oasis and guy ritchie were supposed to give an idea of when this was set in motion, roughly mid to late 90s. the challenge for us is to take the artistic possibilities from the recent past, incorporate them into a positive vision of the future and make it a reality.
anyway here's the thread -
thinking about how in the 70s and 80s, hell even the early 90s, if you were a musician, artist, actor you could sign onto the dole or go to college on a grant and work on your music, art, whatever without having to worry too much about how you were going to afford to live.
in the KLF book the manual (how to have a number one the easy way) which came out in 1988 they actually recommend signing onto the dole so that you can focus all your attention on making a number on record, imagine being able to do that now.
what's wild about this is that it was under tory governments, it was tony blair who introduced the 'new deal' where if you were on the dole and didn't accept a job you were offered you lost all your benefits. now the cultural landscape has been overun by the middle and upper classes.
we've lost an entire generation of working class weirdos while the establishment pushes the idea of working class people as being real and authentic because they don't have the time or money to be indulging in artistic expression, art is for phoneys not real people, blur vs oasis is sold as art school wankers vs real salt of the earth working people, which is how you end up with privately educated guy ritchie cosplaying as a cockney wideboy, what could be realer than that.
just remembered this article from a few weeks back, it's not confined to the arts either, talking up your working class credentials is a national pastime at this point, especially when it comes to justifying racism https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2021/jan/22/how-actors-love-of-a-humble-origin-story-may-worsen-the-arts-class-crisis
notes -
you can read the full version of mark fisher's interview in crack – https://crackmagazine.net/article/long-reads/mark-fisher-interviewed/
stuart maconie: the privileged are taking over the arts – without the grit, pop culture is doomed https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2015/01/privileged-are-taking-over-arts-without-grit-pop-culture-doomed
the manual (how to have a number one the easy way) by the KLF https://archive.org/details/TheManualHowToHaveANumber1TheEasyWay