“Elitism” and the Culture Machine
At some point, anyone who ventures outside mainstream thought (and further, dares to assert the validity of his/her ideas in any concrete way) becomes accused of snobbery. If these unpopular thoughts cross simple subject boundaries, or become programmatic in any way, then the person graduates to elitist. Beyond simple name calling, this is problematic because, in a culture that (theoretically) worships democracy and common good, the idea of “elitism” is used to ghettoize those labeled elitist.(1) In our peculiarly American culture wars, “elitist” is one of the most dangerous bullets in the gun: if you can stick this label on your enemy, then he is neutralized. This discussion is about elitism from the perspective of those who often face the accusation.
There are many different sub-cultural markers in America, some trivial, some not: everything signifies, from race, religion, and sex, through fashion and aesthetic tastes, all the way down to beer preference. The aesthetic realm, specifically music, is a good place to start analysis, since aesthetic choices are (ostensibly) the most freely personal choices anyone makes. And, though relating aesthetic theories to anything beyond the strict boundaries of the aesthetic is pretty damn far from fashionable these days, it is clear that this discussion is functional from more than just an aesthetic viewpoint.
The darts of elitism that have been tossed our way are easy to define: we turn our backs on the mainstream of music, so we create our own little “elitist” clique that turns its back on the mainstream of the populace. We, however, pronounce our own populist leanings at the very same time we denounce the mainstream. Our reasoning is simple: those who manipulate the mainstream have the true power, are the true elites. Too often the populace glosses over the obvious question “what does this serve?” simply because they assume that, since a majority claims to see benefit out of something, the majority is served. The fact of the matter is that power serves power, and the culture machine is not designed to serve the populace, it is meant to propagate itself. The machine controls everything from the relatively innocuous (say, the shoes we wear) to the very way we see the world. Far from being elitist, “lone wolf” aesthetics are often more populist than their manufactured mainstream counterparts.
Re: Elitism
It is a mistake to equate the populace with the majority. “Populace” is a simple, amorphous concept, a simple descriptor, while “majority” requires a precondition, an external something which defines it, as well as a “minority” which opposes it. A populace is a simple description of a group of things which occupy a given space, while a majority is a group of things occupying a given space defined by a specific characteristic which makes them the largest subset of the set “populace”. “Populist” concepts should be thought of as concepts pertaining to the good of the populace; they really don’t have anything to do with majority or minority. Now, given our political ideas of democracy, we tend to let the majority define what is good for the populace, but sometimes, the majority is wrong. The most obvious of examples would include slavery and women’s suffrage: the majority resisted changes to the status quo in both cases; yet, ultimately, it was from a grassroots minority that these movements eventually became populist causes. Perhaps it’s a long way from dehumanizing oppression to popular aesthetic values, but it’s important to see that populist notions are not necessarily held by the majority, and that if the minority would dare claim it knows more about the good of the populace than the majority, then accusations of elitism will start flying around . . . and, though the accusations may or may not be accurate, the proof can not be deduced simply by the sheer number of people holding a given view.
Money for Nothing, Words for Free
We outsiders can disrespect the music industry all we want, but there will always be one factor continually thrown back at us: popular acts are popular simply because more people like them. It is, after all, one of those self-evident truths. It is also why I spent so much time separating the concept of “majority” from the concept of “populace”, so much so that I will assume you can anticipate the first argument I have against mainstream aesthetics: the majority doesn’t necessarily know its own best interests.(2) And, you can probably anticipate that I believe to say that may be arrogant, but it is not elitist. Still, dismissing popularity so easily is wrong: there has to be an understanding of the why, an understanding of the mechanisms behind the (self)deception, if that is what it is.
Anyone who has made it this far into this discussion would probably agree that there is nothing but crap on the radio. To say that Beyonce Knowles’s new crap is less crappy than Nelly’s new crap is meaningless: crap is still crap. But, the crap is undeniably popular . . . I hate to site the honorable senator from the commonwealth of Kentucky on this, but, as Mitch McConnell says, sometimes money does equal speech, at least in the wonderful world of commerce. The popularity of the crap is reinforced by those who “say” it is good by buying it & listening to it; so, this is how money, identified here as speech, becomes the marker of popularity, which in turn defines the popular aesthetic.
The first point that needs to be made here is that, in this situation, money has more than become speech, it has actually replaced it, become prioritized over it. What record company really cares that its artists are critical successes, as long as they make money? The critic here is the one with the voice, the one who exercises speech in the original sense; and while her/his voice may exert influence over those who would spend money on the project, it is ultimately the money that matters . . . speech is secondary to money, money has replaced speech.
Now, in the past, there have been many slings and arrows rightfully directed at critics: there is a long history of critics as the priests of culture, as elitist gatekeepers of what is good and right, and revolting against the priests of culture is certainly a populist concept. It is true that high profile critics in the mainstream media have privileged positions, and that their voices carry more weight than the average member of the populace, but that in no way restores any weight to speech in this equation, since the primacy of their positions is dictated by money. Think of it this way: I consider myself as articulate and well informed as most music writers, I have a pricey university education and a pretty fair size portfolio of music writing, but what are the chances that I could hold on to a position as a music writer at Rolling Stone given my musical values? Uh, before you think about that one too long, the answer is NOT ONE CHANCE IN HELL. The media is a part of the music industry, and the media will tolerate dissent to the degree that it creates a mask called “objectivity” (and, in the case of “hip” publications such as Rolling Stone, the media will tolerate dissent to the degree that creates the illusion of rebelliousness considered de rigueur for youth culture marketing since the sixties). Anyone with decidedly outsider values breaks out of the industry loop & has no place in mainstream music media. And, though media seems to be speech with a capital “s”, it is speech layered over a foundation of money, or speech totally dependant on money for its very existence . . . remember, magazines have to sell ads as much as radio stations do.
So money has replaced speech: how does that affect the fact that popular music makes more money, and is therefore more valued by the general populace? Well, for one thing, if you have two dollars, and I only have one, then you have twice the value that I do in our little popular music aesthetics scheme. It is here that the honorable Mitch McConnell’s assertion that money = speech breaks down, or, more accurately, exposes itself for the dangerously anti-populist notion that it is. I have spent a fair amount of time so far on the assertion that a majority notion is not necessarily a populist notion, but it shouldn’t take any more effort to show that any notion which prioritizes one part of the populace over another is anti-populist.
The whole problem becomes even more serpentine since money has value above and beyond being a simple signifier in the way that speech signifies: money puts food on the table, speech does not (unless, of course, you get paid to speak, such as the critic discussed above). It is not the same thing to strive for artistic goals as it is to earn money. Considering the musician an artist, her/his goal (in an obscenely general way) is to create work that reaches an audience & in some way contributes to the general knowledge of said audience. The audience in turn expresses their level of understanding and appreciation of the artist’s work by speaking: at this level, the transaction is at a purely cultural/aesthetic level, and leads to a dialogue between the artist and the audience . . . every following work will acknowledge the audience, even if negatively (“damn philistines have no idea what real genius is, so screw them”). Now, it’s a given that we all need money to live, so when money replaces speech in the artist - audience equation, the motivations become different (“screw art, I gotta eat”). The art resulting from this equation has nothing to do with the attainment of truth, beauty, or anything else covered in the aesthetic realm: it instead is an exercise in conditioning audience behavior (i.e., forking over the dough). While achieving artistic goals and making money are not mutually exclusive, neither do they have any real relationship to each other . . . for conscious artists trying to make a living with their art and strive for aesthetic goals at the same time, it becomes (at best) an uneasy negotiation between art and commerce.
So far, we’ve not really talked specifically about the music industry . . . I’ll get to that in the next section: but let’s anticipate a little bit & maybe ramp up to the next section by discussing the industry in terms of money production. There’s an old saw that says “it takes money to make money”: the original sentiment described by that cliche has to do with the capitalization of production, which doesn’t seem to apply to the music industry; but seen a different way, it very much does concern the music industry.
In The Affluent Society, John Kenneth Galbraith discusses a concept called “the manufacturing of desire”. Basically, the idea is this: in any given industry, there is a type of production that doesn’t really produce anything. This type of production is sales & marketing, or the manufacturing of desire: it is the activity that creates a market for the items produced. Now, there may or may not be an existing market for the product . . . it is the job of the marketing department to produce a desire (or market) for the product. It is important to see here that THERE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE A PRE-EXISTING NEED FOR THE PRODUCT if the marketing department does a good job of manufacturing desire for the product. It also gives lie to the old truism that the way to get rich is to find a need and then fulfill that need (we can modify it this way: create a need, and then fulfill it).
Money comes up again this way: manufacturing desire is a money intensive activity which produces no concrete things . . . it is essentially cost added on to the production of an existing product. In the case of music, which has almost negligible production costs, the cost of manufacturing desire completely overwhelms the actual cost of production. So, if we can say that a successful sales campaign leads to good sales which leads to lots of money earned on the product, then it’s clear that “money makes money”. And, in this equation, it is clear that money is a corrupt variable, since it appears on both sides of the equation & essentially negates any other factor in the equation: money = money is not a simple reductio ad absurdum, it is a feedback loop.
Manufacturing Mainstream Aesthetics: the Feedback Loop
Behold the feedback loop, the snake that eats its tail: the manufacture of mainstream aesthetic is a simple feedback loop. We may not know where it begins and ends, but we can trace its meanderings by starting at any point in the process.
Act A is popular & making tons of money for his bosses. Act A then becomes a template for his bosses to reproduce their success using act B. So, act B steps into the mold of act A (with minor differences for branding purposes). Act B becomes a copy of act A, but not an identical copy; there will always be a slight decomposition with each generation, a slight degeneration with each successive copy. Act B then becomes the mold for act C, and the degeneration continues.
At the same time the music industry pushes into the world with act A, the world responds to act A, therefore becoming the other arc of the feedback loop. The audience speaks (spends money) its approval, therefore shaping the blueprint for act B.(3) But, again, the copy will not be exact: it is up to the industry to decide what it is that made money the first time around, and recreate that instant with act B. Act A may have had a hit because they had a heavily requested video, and the video may have been heavily requested because it had “hot chicks”; but if the aesthetic powers-that-be think the song was a hit because of a hooky chorus, then act B gets the chorus (of course, they hedge their bets by always putting hot chicks in the video). And again the audience speaks (spends money), maybe not as much, or maybe even more, but nonetheless reinforcing the loop. As a matter of course, along comes act C, another degenerated copy.
So here we see the production side of the feedback loop: but how does the audience get caught up in the loop? Quite simply, the audience is not really given a choice to escape the loop, since the industry will only manufacture that which makes it money.(4) As a consumer, you may be given the choice between beets, broccoli, and spinach, so when you choose broccoli, the industry has labeled you a “broccoli lover”, even if you chose broccoli because it is the only one of the three that you can get down without gagging . . . they don’t even give you a chance to love peas, or beans, or . . . well, you get the idea (by the way, is this still sounding annoyingly like American politics?). In this way you become identified as an entity called a target group with a pre-defined set of desires which may or may not have any correspondence with your real desires.(5)
Also, consider the process of manufacturing desire in the sense that Galbraith discusses it: the music industry doesn’t really ask the public if an act is good so much as tell the public the act is good. The logic runs this way: you bought act A, so act A is good. Act B is like act A, so act B is good, based on what you think is good. The problem is that you may not want a degenerated copy of act A, so you think act B sucks . . . but what choice do you have? Not much really, because the industry is focused on making money the only way they know how, and act A is the way that they know how, so you are doomed to (de)generations of act A. Furthermore, you are conditioned to like the copies of A, since it is A that names the game. You tell them what you like, but you like what they tell you to like . . . that, friends, is the feedback loop. It has come to such an absurd level that all the consumer has to do is buy something on Amazon.com, and you will immediately prompted on what to buy next . . . the feedback loop has become automatic & instantaneous!
Theodor Adorno May Have Been a Jazz Hating Putz, but He Wasn’t All Wrong
The change in the function of music involves the basic conditions of
the relations between art and society. The more inexorably the principle
of exchange value destroys use values for human beings, the more deeply
does exchange value disguise itself as the object of enjoyment.When the feelings seize on exchange value it is no mystical transubstantiation.
It corresponds to the prisoner who loves his cell because he has been left
nothing else to love.(6)
Adorno’s biggest problem is a high art/low art stumbling block. His “high art” ideas are apollonian, his “low art” ideas are dionysian, but (like the academics that Nietzsche savaged years before) he prioritizes the classical, or apollonian, aspects of art. Sure, he gives a certain lip service to the aesthetic possibilities of low art, but ultimately he equates jazz with “all the swarming forms of the banal”.(7) For the sake of this discussion, let’s give Theodor a break on the specifics of his aesthetics, and instead pay head to his structural analysis of the “industry of culture”. From what I’ve read, it boils down to this: the “culture industry” doesn’t produce music that is meant to be understood, appreciated, or even enjoyed; it produces music to be consumed. Any music produced is valuable only for its exchange value: that is, it is valuable only in terms of dollars it will produce.
Ultimately, we have to admit that most music we encounter is prioritized by exchange value. This music may or may not have use value (aesthetic validity, for the purposes of this discussion), but if it has exchange value, our culture industry labels it as “good music”. Further, aesthetic judgement itself is a commodity that may be bought and sold (once again revisiting Galbraith’s concept of manufacturing desire, or creating a need to fulfill, with cash money being the prime mover of desire). Commodification has been popularly characterized as the quest for the “lowest common denominator”, but it is important to see that “the lowest common denominator” doesn’t refer to the wants, needs, or ideals of the populace; rather, it refers to the wants, needs, and ideals of the majority of the power, or the majority of the money, which is in the hands of 10 % of the populace. So, mainstream aesthetics is not designed for people, it is designed for cash.(8)
The unfortunate discipline that exchange value forces on us becomes accelerated into a religious superstructure buttressing our culture. Everything becomes oriented by exchange value:
The culture industry intentionally integrates its consumers from above.
To the detriment of both it forces together the spheres of high and low
art, separated for thousands of years. The seriousness of high art is
destroyed in speculation about its efficacy; the seriousness of the lower
perishes with the civilizational constraints imposed on the rebellious
resistance inherent within it as long as social control was not yet total.(9)
Everything is homogenized, tamed, and oriented toward consumption. That which is “valued” is demarcated solely by exchange value & becomes the model for the art that follows. The musician who would produce “valuable” music is robbed of an audience, which has been replaced by a target group . . . the individual has been replaced by an objectified, degraded model, which is then collectivized, forming the target group . . . “The liquidation of the individual is the real signature of the new musical situation”.10
And further, we adopt the constraints of the culture machine as our own, so if we should decide to rebel, our rebellion is constrained by the culture machine. Popular “rebellion” (I use the term very loosely) tends to become a pre-defined choice: “I am a punker”, or “hip hop defines the reality of the streets”, etc. Too often, we are prisoners of the machine that would define us, and we choose the rebellion that they offer us, ignorant of the fact that it is not really rebellion at all. We love our cells because we have been left nothing else to love.
There is no “I” in “Target Group”
Once again to the feedback loop: it is not only the artist that is dehumanized by the cultural machine, it is the audience. The audience, homogenized and objectified, is deprived of a fully actualized artist, an artist that deals with vision & celebration instead of marketing. And, the artist is deprived of the dialogue that could positively shape and inform his/her work.
Individuality is not possible within the cultural machine.(11) The only way to re-humanize is to step outside the cultural machine: for the artist, the only way possible is to tell the truth (whatever that means), to fight for a personal vision with as little taint from the machine as possible. For their part, the audience must seek their own personal truths in the art of others, and demand honesty from anyone who would call themselves an artist. That, or start their own band, and define the aesthetic on their own.
And, we should be done with the idea of the “third estate” in art: we should eliminate the role of the critic. Or, we should expand it: we are all critics. Criticism is the art of meaningful dialogue. Just as listening should be a creative (analytical) activity, so should criticism be creative . . . finally, perhaps, we could establish another feedback loop, one that is expansive & creative instead of reductive & dehumanizing. We are all an audience, we are all critics. What we owe our culture is truth & honesty, a truth & honesty which can only be defined individually. Maybe we don’t even necessarily have to turn our backs on all the detritus of the culture industry; but we do have to disable the industry that creates it. We must refuse to become a target group, we must reclaim the use value of music, we must individually define what is important to us.
Now, it is easy to fall back into a trap because of a debased dual meaning that has been associated with the idea of “importance”: we call music important because of the number of people who listen to it, giving it a sort of base socio-cultural importance (and, of course, linking importance with exchange value). But, at the same time, we use “important” in a qualitative sense (implying use value). The blurring of the two aspects of importance serves the motivations of the culture industry because they are actively trying to supplant (or equate) use value with exchange value.(12) Look at the following statement: Nelly is perhaps the most important musician working now. On one level, that is absolutely correct: but only on the level of Nelly as social phenomena, not on Nelly as an artist. Nelly’s exchange value is demonstrably huge; his use value is questionable at best. American Idol also is important in a socio-cultural sense, as well as horrific in a qualitative sense.(13) We must, at the risk of accusations of arrogance and elitism, establish our own will against the machine. We must define importance in a very rigorous personal way, with no reference to exchange value or the desires of the machine.
The Arrogance of the “Elite”
Here is the arrogance of the “elite”: it is arrogant to turn your back on that which is valued by the majority of the populace. It is arrogant to say that you know better. It is arrogant to blatantly savage the aesthetic that defines them. But, given the dehumanizing aspect of the culture industry, this rebellion is a populist move, no matter how few see it. We welcome dialogue, we welcome the chance to be proven wrong. We welcome the arrogance of the individual in the face of the cultural machine. We welcome you to define the minutiae that puts the qualitative back into “important”. And, while we may dispute your conclusions, we will only attack your methods if they cling to the slave mentality of the dominant culture.
True elitism serves the true elite. It is the elite that run our culture industry, the elite that run our country, and this elite is served by the majority, a majority which willfully participates in its own oppression because it identifies itself with the elite.14 It is the majority that is elitist. We do not serve these masters. We are not elitist. We may be arrogant, but we are not elitist.
And Now, a Memo from the Department of Things You Already Knew
None of this discussion is particularly revelatory: we are all familiar with the concept of “selling out” . . . it is one of the most overwhelming critiques that can be dumped on a musician. Musicians in general try to do their best to realize a personal vision of some sort, while at the same time providing a thing of value for our audience. This discussion has been pointed at the second part of that equation: the whole problem is how music gets valued; it is here that the trap of our culture gets sprung.
The culture machine is huge, multi-faceted, and nefarious. The most obvious act of producing art for money and prestige is doomed to failure by the contradictions of the image-producing machine (see the reference to fake rebellion sited on page three above)(15), so we must dig deep to flush out all the various mainstreaming (re-terratorilizing) aspects of the machine. For instance, the whole Wynton Marsalis school of new classical jazz has nothing to do with cash money, but it definitely does tie itself to the culture machine, and it has, as an explicit goal, the idea that jazz has to “be something” that defines a certain place in the culture, a certain place that is pre-defined, easily digestible, and an important part of the dominant culture. Marsalis may see this as the legitimization of black culture; I see it as a capitulation to the cultural machine.(16) Whether or not this is an accurate critique, it is important to see that the concept of “selling out” is not as easy as following the money: there are myriad ways to capitulate to power.
On the flip side, any musician can be defended on an individual basis. The point is (and here postmodernism, in its most positive sense, slips in) that we can value things for a lot of different personal reasons, and if this valuation is honest, then it is legitimate. “Honest” here becomes a loaded code term: for it is the motivations of the critique that are important, not the specifics. This is, for many, a hard pill to swallow, prioritizing critique over creation, but it surges to the very core of the issue: how do we see the world, and how does this worldview affect the whole of culture (here separated from the culture machine)?
A Spanner for the Works
Those who run the culture machine have become very sophisticated in manipulating the populace, and rhetoric has become one of their primary weapons. Their ability to segregate those who buck the tide by tagging them “elitist” is one of the older tricks they utilize, but still one of the most effective. We, as conscious individuals, must always question the rhetoric of the rulers, must always try to answer the question “What does this serve?” This, not the tyranny of the majority, is the true marker of democracy, the thorn in the side of the true elites.
Of course, the vagaries and manipulations of musical tastes don’t really equate directly to social justice. The next great revolutionary may prefer Kenny G to John Coltrane, and ultimately that would mean little. However, anyone who thinks that this discussion is totally irrelevant outside the realm of music is invited (again) to substitute “politics” for “music” in the discussion above. The music industry is a model for the machine that runs our culture, and our response to the industry can be a model for our response to the broader cultural machine.
The original source of this essay is titled “The Arrogance of Noise” (2003) and can be found at www.thebelgianwaffles.com
1 Okay, we’re already in trouble here: our schizophrenic culture simultaneously celebrates the democratic (“the average guy”) and the individual. These ideas are not mutually exclusive, but they are two of those unexamined obvious concepts that often butt heads. Pulling on these two threads is not my project here, though it would be interesting.
2 How do aesthetics serve anybody’s interest? What, ultimately does it matter? Well, that’s a lot more than a simple footnote will cover. Let’s just say for now that, in a general sense, aesthetics do matter to the degree that they shape our world view and how we respond to our reality. It is more than a mere lifestyle choice, it is the way we see.
3 For the moment, we will ignore any pressure brought to bear on act A to re-enforce what the industry considers “positive” (i. e., commercially successful) behavior. We can assume that act A is a fully willing participant in the manufacture of desire, though that is often not the case.
4 Yes, of course there are always choices, but we are talking about mainstream aesthetics here.
5 There was recently a (very) minor public furor when one of the local NPR affiliates changed its afternoon music format from “jazz” to “triple-A”. There were cries from “jazz lovers” city wide “to make our voices heard!”. Though I listen to Johnny Cash as I write this, I would consider “jazz lover” as a marginally accurate label for one aspect of my musical tastes. However, I found the jazz shows on that station, in at least the year before the format change, to be horrible. And yet, people around me thought that I should stand on some sort of principle, or that I should somehow lower my standards for the sake of “the survival of jazz programming”, that I should settle for crappy jazz for the sake of jazz in general . . . again, the degeneration of music through the feedback loop, only this time in a context which markets itself as an “alternative” to mainstream aesthetics.
6 Adorno, “On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening”, The Culture Industry, p. 39 and 40.
7 Adorno, The Culture Industry, p. 34
8 I’m guessing I own almost as many CD’s and records as Bill Gates . . . the concept that the recording industry works for money is more complex than a simple one-to-one correspondence between audience and dollars: it has to fit in to a whole network of cultural control, a whole industry of aesthetic value which includes movies, music, television, visual design, writing, etc. . . . it has to identify a mainstream, defined by money, and sell to it. That mainstream will always be related in a general sense to power, which can be defined by money. The specifics of the target audience may be idiosyncratic, but the general goal is always the same.
9 Adorno, The Culture Industry, “The Culture Industry Reconsidered”, pp 98-99. If you want to do a quick read through Adorno, pick up this book & read “On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening”, “The Culture Industry Reconsidered”, and editor J. M. Bernstein’s excellent introduction . . . that will give a decent overview.
10 Adorno, p. 35
11 Perhaps the obliteration of the individual is not necessarily bad per se. Strong in our culture is the weight of ritual, which holds at its core the dissolution of the individual in sacrifice to a greater consciousness. If so, then just think of what god we are being sacrificed to . . .
12 See Adorno, p. 102
13 American Idol is an absolutely fundamental window into the culture industry. This is a “reality show” in the truest sense of the word. The fact that we would consider any of this music “good” in a qualitative sense shows just how far the culture industry has destroyed any resistance. And judging by various interviews done by Simon Cowell, he really seems to realize just how far from good any of this is (he tends to wax rhapsodic over Ella, Frank, and Billie). Shame on him for being an enabler.
14 If you want to be powerful, you must act powerful . . . it seems that, in a sort of wholesale denial that is particularly American, if you act like you have power, if you deny your own oppression, then you become a member of the oppressors.
15 This statement is over-simplified: as evidenced by American Idol, going for the cash is not currently as taboo as it was for the late boomers raised on hippy rock, or gen X’ers or Y’ers raised on punk rock & hip hop. And, to be fair, music produced for commercial purposes is not automatically worthless (or, for the purposes of this discussion, exchange valued): I personally could mount a serious defense of Hoagy Carmichael, Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach, and maybe even Madonna.
16 It is, after all, the winners who write the histories. Marsalis’s sell out is the fact that he is determined that his vision of black culture be included in this history. While there is an aspect to this that is definitely honorable, it is also very much against the spirit of jazz, as I see it. And, it also aligns him with the power that I fight.