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Our culture has been seized by theater kids
(hexbear.net)
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this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2024
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Yeah for real. I stepped away from the keyboard for a bit to get some fresh air and came to the conclusion that it is just an unfortunate and possibly unavoidable fact that this observable state of affairs can be exploited by bad actors just as it can be critiqued by good actors and the language overlap is very difficult to avoid precisely because fascists have a history of adopting our language and patterns of critique while warping them to their own ends.
So it's not necessarily "my fault" (sorry for the self serving framing here) that my original post vibed the way it did, since there is an active campaign with a lot of apparent mainstream awareness and traction to critique corporate media for this convergent defanging of media. Not because its losing its usefulness as a tool for class consciousness and cultural exploration but because there's less room for anything challenging ie. cultural normalisation of racism and misogyny etc, which is what the right enjoys and wants more of.
Thing is I set myself up for misinterpretation by mentioning Sam Hyde. The fact that his ranting overlapped with the topic of discussion is simply part of the fact that the right wing are taking advantage of this state of affairs to push their own agenda. I should have left that part out of my post since it is immaterial that "coincidentally" fascists are "noticing" this too, while lacking any material analysis in the angle of attack they take.
Sans the Hyde reference, my post would hopefully read more as a defense of theater kids as a phenomenon and that they are being exploited as a convenient source of bland creative labor, not "seizing our culture."
So I just straight fucked up I suppose. But this discussion has been really useful, I appreciate the call out because I realise now that I simply diluted my own point and set a tone for my post which would raise hackles before getting to the point. At least, I figure that's part of it. I'm being a bit presumptuous about the significance of the Hyde shit in how the post was received.
I like your CW'd metaphor, [deleted because I misread. ADHD brained it] no notes.
To agree with you, this phenomena of real observations being used and pushed by bad actors is exactly how things like GamerGate are smuggled into popular culture. In that case, they specifically smuggled in "Games are becoming female and woke." (plus targeted harassment of particular female content creators) from the pretty ubiquitous observation that 'Professional games journalism is pretty much horseshit created to drive sales of increasingly homogenized and poor games, not to critique games and drive improvement of the medium in a way that benefits the consumers or workers in those industries.'
Of course, that was also simply tapping into a misogynistic culture that was already very present and loud, and directing that into 'consumer politics'. It's not like they had much work to actually do.
I agree with this. I do think, also, that it is possible that the "bland media" phenomenon is a result of a lack of class consciousness as well? We seem to put so much stock into trauma-related and dark stuff as "prestige tv", the very things that people who have experienced so much trauma and issues are likely to want to avoid (though of course not always), that the only thing left to do as proper "hard-hitting" media besides that is radical critiques and social commentaries that are positive in tone. And because that has connotations of successful and effective revolution (of many different contexts), that is the only kind of art they are not allowed to do. So the options available to artists under capitalism are basically either venting (but resigned and without catharsis or resolution), purposefully pointless spectacle, or psychic self-harm. It's no wonder basically nothing is compelling, because we have had the actual essence of victory as a concept taken away from our cultural landscape. The only things left are things getting worse, or if we're lucky, stagnancy through struggle ("super hero" stories). In even our most optimistic dreams we've managed to appropriate the appearance of catharsis and relief, but have ousted the thing itself from our collective conception of reality, so its hollow and feels somehow darker than things just getting worse normally.
Wow, yeah. This broadens my thought on the subject a lot. There's a couple of things I feel an impulse to respond to but I'll just pick one. (The other is the suggestion that this is a result of lack of class consciousness, I believe that is also a distinct possibility and that class consciousness may be be being wrung out of the media industry iteratively with each generation of creatives getting further removed from overtly leftist influenced media.) But yeah,
This got me thinking about modern media that I consume and re-consume, that I would still consider transgressive and challenging. I realised there's a couple of running themes- drug addiction, dealing with narcissism and family conflict- or combinations of the three. They'll take shots at capitalism too, but always with the bleak conclusion that "haha go right ahead your struggle only makes me look stronger and my stock price go up."
So there are areas where culture is still waking up to itself and areas where we've turned a blind eye or haven't yet shone much light into the darkness, which provide the material to develop compelling stories. But they're often very individual or interpersonal sorts of issues rather than structural ones and they still hit because these topics are not threatening to the economic structure thus can be explored earnestly with a variety of approaches in terms of level of humour and irony and whatnot by people who are expressing their own lived experiences and traumas. So there's still some "good shit" being made but like the window of acceptable challenging topics is narrowing in on like, "this is why your family is broken" or "this is why you can't keep your friendships going" or "this is why despite being the coolest/smartest dude, you hurt and destroy everything around you" etc.
I'm regularly encountering regular normal retiree (actual) boomer-aged people and not particularly "woke" worker friends using terms like "neurodiverse" now, or coming to realise their own neurodiversity, ruminating on the things "we didn't know" and reflecting on their own and their kids' and grandkids' struggles to thrive effectively in a world not designed for them, raised and educated by people trained to read all abnormal behaviour as disobedience to be punished and brought to heel.
Wait- fuck, those people are the generation mostly still holding the reigns of these corporations, right? I wonder if there's actually a kernel of genuine good will behind making on-the-spectrum friendly media (and so on) so pervasive etc even at the boardroom level. Surely not, though. Right? it's got to be either a coincidence or a consequence of the process we've been exploring. Just maybe I'm recognising the upside to this. Perhaps it takes serious levels of media saturation to effect the kind of social change I'm witnessing in conversation with friends and neighbors and this just happens to be a positive gain that doesn't offset the loss of potential class consciousness raising types of transgressive programming.
I'm remembering what a breath of fresh air Adventure Time was when it came out. There's definitely some good and valuable work being produced within the constraints of the system we've been discussing.
But, like you said, a lot of it continues to lead to hopeless and nihilistic conclusions, as you pointed out. It's cathartic to feel seen and represented. It can help process my traumas to see that I am not a uniquely fucked up individual. Yet still it suggests no solutions. Because like you said, the solution is revolution and we can't have that. (Edit: in fact I'm often left in tears by the end of episodes of these things because it would be much better if my problems were unique and not pervasive, or if I could see characters really make breakthroughs instead of the realistic portrayal of the cyclic nature of trauma and mental illness.)
This post does not add much to the discussion but I want to show appreciation for you expanding the horizon of my thinking on this stuff and helping me recognise some dark patterns in the media that I do still find compelling.