Bring the Noise

[Ralph Dumain]

At 12:37 PM 8/7/97 +0100, James Schmidt wrote a very informative and
interesting post, including the following:

>One further thought.  Since the Culture Industry embraces both "high" and
>"popular" culture (e.g., both the Three Tenors and the latest pop star),
>could the argument be made that the alternative, autonomous art, does the
>same?  Adorno would deny this (and I'm afraid that explaining why would
>require more of a discussion of the Aesthetic Theory than I'm up to today).
>But perhaps others might want to argue differently.  But notice that this
>might shift the terms of the debate about allegedly "resistant" forms of
>popular culture.  The test, however, would not be whether they have
>emancipatory content, but whether - formally - they offer the same sort of
>resistance that Adorno sees as being offered by the modernist works he
>discusses.  This might be an impossible argument to make - I'm not sure
>that there is any way of claiming that, for example, Hip Hop or Free Jazz
>is anywhere near as "resistant" technically as Beckett or Schoenberg - but
>it would be interesting to see somebody try to make the case.  Of course,
>none of this rules out simply dropping the formal structure of the work as
>the criterion for resistance.  But if one does that, one should be clear
>that the terms of the debate have moved beyond those laid out by Adorno and
>others.

Perhaps this proves that Adorno's framework and obsession with (futile?)
resistance against the all-powerful culture industry is mistaken, including
his grouchy ascetic withdrawal from the world that assumes that he and a few
others like him represent the only glimmer of conscienceness in a world
taken over by the rhinoceri.  Maybe Adorno had justification for thinking
like this in the specific circumstances in which he was formed.  I thought
this way when I was 16 years old, because my social exposure was limited.
Actually, I thought this way by the time I was 6, because I felt an
unbearable shallowness and spiritual deadness in people around me.  Comes
from living in a mechanistic culture, I suppose.  I was lucky enough to be
exposed to more favorable circumstances later on.  Perhaps Adorno was not so
fortunate.  But we don't have to back ourselves into a dead end, do we?  Are
there no seeds of regeneration anywhere?  Sure there are.  The shallow
manipulators just look for it in the wrong places.

"There is a moment in each day that Satan cannot find." -- William Blake