Sunday, July 12, 2009
Michael Jackson and the Demise of Culture
I've linked to an article that kind of sums up my feelings about the whole Michael Jackson spectacle. My family and I had a discussion the other night about his cultural significance. We all agreed that it actually wasn't much, and David Michael Green hashes out what I was thinking a little further.
I had no problem with Mike, some of his stuff was pretty good, I rocked out to the J-5 as a pre-teen, and he was a damn fine dancer. Other than that, though, I don't see much to him as an artist. I mostly felt sorry for him, and his life was a slow motion car wreck, near as I could see. As Green points out, he actually sums up just how vapid our culture has become.
It really started with the Reagan era. There's good music in any decade, but really, what are the 80's bands remembered most for? Their hairstyles!
I've noticed in listening to my 40-ish friends that when they are reminiscing about the music of their youth, most of the emphasis is on bands that were mostly style, and whose music for the most part is throw away...it stands up only as a curiosity, rather than as a cultural underpinning or continuation.
The 80's was when the establishment regained cultural control by elevating the trivial, and the vapid, in the form of Madonna, big-hair metal bands, and the like. I'm hard pressed to come up with anything loosely pop that was a culture changer in the way Charlie Parker, Dylan or Elvis were. Sting? U2, perhaps. Not much else.
Perhaps rap was the only genre in the 80's that represented true folk culture, and that was quickly co-opted (yep happened to rock and roll in the 70's) and most artists were happy to go along with it and make some bucks. Really, true rap was excoriated for the most part in the 80's anyway.
For all their so called radicalism, the greats of Rock n Roll and 60's Rock were mainly continuing older traditions, from folk to blues to dance hall to Americana.
Also ironic that those leaders calling themselves "conservatives" were actually radicals bent on destroying longtime cultural traditions and replacing them with manipulative, addictive fluff. Or making up fake traditions, like "family values". Cultural fast food as it were.
The reason the late 40's, 50's and 60's (even the 70's!) produced such iconic artists occurred in part because for that brief time the lines between vapid, manipulative pop culture and the deeper folk traditions and true culture were blurred. I don't think the leadership was paying attention, or they were taken by surprise, or they were more enlightened. I doubt that last reason...
The lines were blurred, and on any given day on Top 40 AM you could hear the vapidity of Bobby Vinton intermixed with Dylan, the Beatles, the Stones, the Airplane, the Doors, Motown, Ray Charles, Nat King Cole, James Brown, the blues in general, and country crossover to boot in the form of Creedence, Buffalo Springfield, the Byrds and so much more, all on one radio station. If you were a white kid in the suburbs like I was, you couldn't help but be exposed to some pretty different stuff from what you might see around the neighborhood.
Sure a lot of it was the pop of the day, however most of the musicians mentioned above were basing their work on folk, country, the blues, and so on. There was even a bit of classical and jazz were in the mix. The songwriting was better than average as well, even for fake acts like the Monkees. (To their credit, the Monkees actually rebelled against the pop straight-jacket they were being forced into and ended up being pretty good musicians and pretty funny cultural comedians!)
What began with MJ and Madonna culminated in Britney Spears. Can anyone really name a song she did that is worth remembering? Her whole schtick became her train wreck of a life, just like Michael Jackson. Madonna is to be admired primarily for staying in shape! None of them ever really "lost" creative control, because there wasn't much creativity to begin with!
As usual I digress, but I see hope. The music nowadays, albeit more underground, or "indie" is pretty damn good, and the young musicians are mining and continuing the deep traditions in music. The Decembrists, the Kings of Leon, mattpondpa, heck there are too many to mention.
Perhaps in a tragic, perverse way, MJ's demise represents the beginning of the end of vapid fake pop culture and the return to a more realistic pop culture. One can only hope.
As for MJ himself, I wish him peace. His spirit is no longer trapped in what must have been a living hell of a tortured, distorted life. In that he truly did contribute. The price the Jackson family has paid for success is surely a lesson in the suffering caused by striving after false goals.
May you rest in peace, Michael, and angels dance thee to thy reward....
PS. A quick note about my politics. I am equally frustrated with what is nowadays identified as liberal or conservative. I think both those positions have been co-opted and manipulated in order to manipulate the people into accepting corporate oligarchy. Most of the regular liberals and conservatives I know are good people, who are practicing the universal values that are owned by no party or ideology: responsibility, charity, love, tolerance, community, non-judgment, and freedom. Those are basic human values. We should all hold onto those.
I had no problem with Mike, some of his stuff was pretty good, I rocked out to the J-5 as a pre-teen, and he was a damn fine dancer. Other than that, though, I don't see much to him as an artist. I mostly felt sorry for him, and his life was a slow motion car wreck, near as I could see. As Green points out, he actually sums up just how vapid our culture has become.
It really started with the Reagan era. There's good music in any decade, but really, what are the 80's bands remembered most for? Their hairstyles!
I've noticed in listening to my 40-ish friends that when they are reminiscing about the music of their youth, most of the emphasis is on bands that were mostly style, and whose music for the most part is throw away...it stands up only as a curiosity, rather than as a cultural underpinning or continuation.
The 80's was when the establishment regained cultural control by elevating the trivial, and the vapid, in the form of Madonna, big-hair metal bands, and the like. I'm hard pressed to come up with anything loosely pop that was a culture changer in the way Charlie Parker, Dylan or Elvis were. Sting? U2, perhaps. Not much else.
Perhaps rap was the only genre in the 80's that represented true folk culture, and that was quickly co-opted (yep happened to rock and roll in the 70's) and most artists were happy to go along with it and make some bucks. Really, true rap was excoriated for the most part in the 80's anyway.
For all their so called radicalism, the greats of Rock n Roll and 60's Rock were mainly continuing older traditions, from folk to blues to dance hall to Americana.
Also ironic that those leaders calling themselves "conservatives" were actually radicals bent on destroying longtime cultural traditions and replacing them with manipulative, addictive fluff. Or making up fake traditions, like "family values". Cultural fast food as it were.
The reason the late 40's, 50's and 60's (even the 70's!) produced such iconic artists occurred in part because for that brief time the lines between vapid, manipulative pop culture and the deeper folk traditions and true culture were blurred. I don't think the leadership was paying attention, or they were taken by surprise, or they were more enlightened. I doubt that last reason...
The lines were blurred, and on any given day on Top 40 AM you could hear the vapidity of Bobby Vinton intermixed with Dylan, the Beatles, the Stones, the Airplane, the Doors, Motown, Ray Charles, Nat King Cole, James Brown, the blues in general, and country crossover to boot in the form of Creedence, Buffalo Springfield, the Byrds and so much more, all on one radio station. If you were a white kid in the suburbs like I was, you couldn't help but be exposed to some pretty different stuff from what you might see around the neighborhood.
Sure a lot of it was the pop of the day, however most of the musicians mentioned above were basing their work on folk, country, the blues, and so on. There was even a bit of classical and jazz were in the mix. The songwriting was better than average as well, even for fake acts like the Monkees. (To their credit, the Monkees actually rebelled against the pop straight-jacket they were being forced into and ended up being pretty good musicians and pretty funny cultural comedians!)
What began with MJ and Madonna culminated in Britney Spears. Can anyone really name a song she did that is worth remembering? Her whole schtick became her train wreck of a life, just like Michael Jackson. Madonna is to be admired primarily for staying in shape! None of them ever really "lost" creative control, because there wasn't much creativity to begin with!
As usual I digress, but I see hope. The music nowadays, albeit more underground, or "indie" is pretty damn good, and the young musicians are mining and continuing the deep traditions in music. The Decembrists, the Kings of Leon, mattpondpa, heck there are too many to mention.
Perhaps in a tragic, perverse way, MJ's demise represents the beginning of the end of vapid fake pop culture and the return to a more realistic pop culture. One can only hope.
As for MJ himself, I wish him peace. His spirit is no longer trapped in what must have been a living hell of a tortured, distorted life. In that he truly did contribute. The price the Jackson family has paid for success is surely a lesson in the suffering caused by striving after false goals.
May you rest in peace, Michael, and angels dance thee to thy reward....
PS. A quick note about my politics. I am equally frustrated with what is nowadays identified as liberal or conservative. I think both those positions have been co-opted and manipulated in order to manipulate the people into accepting corporate oligarchy. Most of the regular liberals and conservatives I know are good people, who are practicing the universal values that are owned by no party or ideology: responsibility, charity, love, tolerance, community, non-judgment, and freedom. Those are basic human values. We should all hold onto those.
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