Jazz, Hip Hop Etc.

[james schmidt]

Continuing the discussion of A SONG IS BORN, Ralph Dumain wrote:

> Interesting.  I wish my memory of the details were better.  There was
> something about the white woman jazz singer that caught my attention.  The
> profs were fascinated with her not only because of her femininity, and not
> only because of her singing, but because of her lingo, attitude, manners,
> and street smarts, if I recall correctly.  Of course this all could be
> exploitive slumming, but I did not have this reaction at all.  I thought,
> this is sociologically fascinating.  How odd Hollywood would make a film
> like this.

We should probably let this part of the thread drop before everyone else
concludes we have gone nuts, but ... yes, you remember the main plot
right:  the woman (too bad I can't flip over to the Internet Movie
DataBase and snag her name) has to go on the lamb to avoid testifying
against her mobster boyfried, so she moves in with professors and they are
amazed and confused by her.

I guess the point I'd like to make (and this comes from watching the film
with a number of very sharp people doing critical theory and cultural
studies stuff -- I'm typically rather dense on this sort of stuff) is that
it is wrong to assume that all the products of the Culture Industry have
to be (even on Adorno and Horkheimer's accounting) plain dumb stupid.
They HAVE to be clever, have new little twists, etc., to keep us coming.
But none of this alters the fact that they are produced under a rather
fixed schema that is going to foreclose their wandering too far.  They
will never have that capacity to reveal an entirely different world that
Adorno thought he found in great works of art (e.g., the "breakthrough" in
the first movement of the Mahler 1st Sym.).  I think this suggests too
things:  1) just because the products of the culture industry show a
certain amount of cleverness, doesn't mean that they are really
emancipatory (rule of thumb:  the momement you begin to think a culture
industry product is clever, start to worry whether this is a sign that you
yourself have become dumber!) and 2)  just becaue the products of the
culture industry don't open up visions of utopia, doesn't mean that they
don't -- at best -- entertain us (to quote a friend, "The commodity fetish
is the heart of a heartless world.").

Since my cat has climbed onto my desk and is now (I jest not) batting at
the mouse with her paw, I think I had better quit.)