- There once was a monoculture, but it's been in steady-ish decline since the mid 1960s AT LEAST. (Greil Marcus, in one of the essays collected in Double Trouble, suggests the monoculture is/was a willed 50s invention, a necessary windbreak after the shattering first half of the century)
- The monoculture is something we cognitively invent by a process of sorting through memories, and thus only perceive as a thing that's passed. i.e. there never was a monoculture.
- (The dialectic of i and ii) There are successive monocultural phases or events amidst a general fragmentation. These are easier to detect with hindsight (because they are driven by different media channels each time), and aren't *really* monocultural in that it's particular niches or cultural forms enjoying a kind of attention share bubble.
Also worth nothing that "monoculture" is going to look different from an American and non-American perspective, as for a lot of the last 50-60 years it's meant "what America exports" over here.
Well, what might be "monocultural" about Britney is that people who barely knew anything about her were still willing to define themselves against each other. I remember a man whose writer's group I was about to join telling me that Britney represented the emptiness of culture, and he hastened to add that he'd never actually heard her music. And in '01 or so the major Denver art's festival touted itself in its promotional literature and banner as being an alternative to Britney Spears.
One reason I don't trust Andrew Sullivan is that he considers Britney and Paris to be cultural detritus (in comparison to Obama, who'd basically been abandoned by his parents and through application and intelligence worked his way up to heading the law review at Harvard etc.).
The word "detritus" being telling in this context, since it literally means debris, fragments, loose particles, and derives from the Latin term for "wearing away."
And of course if you think of Fifties TV as the original "monoculture," Elvis was the guy who fragmented that, or at least signaled the fragmentation that already existed, since he was allowed on TV but with restrictions, implying that on TV he was an alien presence that TV had to carry but wouldn't endorse. The rise of TV actually aided the rise of rock 'n' roll from 1950 or so, since TV became the dominant medium for narrative series, displacing radio, so radio shifted almost exclusively to music, and it was seized by the teenage* netherworld** (which appropriated for itself the r&b of adult blacks, which of course made a lie of the idea of a monoculture quite obvious).
*Or should I say "teen-age."
**The "teenage netherworld" is Tom Wolfe's term from "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby" in '63 or so, about the custom car culture. Of course, Wolfe specialized in writing about cultural forms that were popular but under the radar.
If love is truly going out of fashion forever, which I do not believe, then along with our nurtured indifference to each other will be an even more contemptuous indifference to each other's objects of reverence. I thought it was Iggy Stooge, you thought it was Joni Mitchell or whoever else seemed to speak for your own private, entirely circumscribed situation's many pains and few ecstasies. We will continue to fragment in this manner, because solipsism holds all the cards at present; it is a king whose domain engulfs even Elvis's. But I can guarantee you one thing: we will never again agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis. So I won't bother saying good-bye to his corpse. I will say good-bye to you. --Lester Bangs, "Where Were You When Elvis Died," Village Voice, 29 August 1977
By the way, I don't remember any great agreement on Elvis - or even consistent interest in Elvis. And hyphenating "goodbye" - who the hell does that? - is a clear sign of cultural fragmentation.
An interesting thing about the post-Beatles-On-Ed-Sullivan Sixties (by which I mean February 1964 through mid 1970 or so) is that Elvis really was not much of a cultural presence. I mean, obviously some people about eight to eighteen years older than me would have cared about him, but it was a cinch for someone my age (I turned ten in '64) to not care about him to the point of not bothering even to have an opinion about him. With the TV Special in '68 Elvis began a comeback to cultural prominence, but it wasn't until the early '70s that he was back to being culturally iconic, which he still is (though I'm sure there are lots of people in hip-hop, say, who aren't having strong opinions about him, but I think if someone in hip-hop sampled a popular Elvis tune or wore an Elvis cape or put on Elvis sideburns this would be immediately recognizable even to the ten-year-olds in the audience, whereas I don't think this would have been true in '67)(not that I know much about ten-year-olds in the hip-hop audience).
I think the U.S. is far less culturally fragmented now than when I was growing up, has fewer great divides, but has more cultural subgroups, and it's possible that the older subgroups were more internally monocultural than the new ones are, because, for one reason, people may be more mobile in jumping from subgroup to subgroup and belonging to multiple subgroups. But what I just said in the previous sentence is probably too vague ever to be really testable.
One of Mike's other observations that I do agree with (don't disagree with his insights here, but I haven't really thought as much about this one as his Circus piece (http://idolator.com/5090514/mourning-becomes-britney) from yesterday) is that music-as-an-industry simply needs to accept that it's going to continue getting smaller, which might be part of what allows it to even attempt monoculturalism (if that's a neologism, consider that an informal trademark, but I'm sure someone beat me to it). Of course, the music industry has always been "small" compared to something like, say, the film industry or the television industry or even the videogame industry, all of which -- except maybe the videogame industry -- are getting smaller in their own ways, too. But I guess the important point is that there may be no conception of a purely social monoculture, and the industry's role in making such widespread dissemination even possible is something that I doubt any other network could replicate.
Or maybe monoculturalism is just another way of saying everything was better when you were 12 (http://www.salon.com/comics/boll/2007/06/14/boll/).
it's going to continue getting smaller, which might be part of what allows it to even attempt monoculturalism
Why does its smallness help it to attempt monoculturalism? Are you assuming that anything big will "fragment"? Seems to me that when I was growing up TV was much more a monolith than music, in that the three networks dominated and local stations filled up their own hours with old movies and old network fare that was now in syndication. Whereas you really did have local markets and different markets on the radio. But you only had one type of TV station, not counting Educational TV.
Though you're bringing up a good point about choice -- even the illusion of choice from a huge single media conglomerate will fragment an audience, even if all the money is going to the same place. But weirdly, I feel like with music specifically, something like Disney has been able to create an intense niche culture, approaching something like a musical monoculture for anyone under the age of like 12, precisely because music isn't their first priority. This is something that's changed since Britney/TRL's rise, I think.
of "by the way" and "of course" -- except less civil bcz london-style, which means they are pretty much overtly barefacedly rude, instead of carefully apologetically corrective
I usually use "of course" to mean, "I already know that you already know this but I need to emphasize it anyway" (and then I actually say something that no one including me has ever thought of until that very moment)(or at least one hopes that I do).
Missed this, but to respond in general (if anyone's still reading): I guess monoculture wasn't quite what I had in mind. I remember somebody (Marcus?) said about Eminem that by making his first big single about him being controversial, before anyone even had a chance to call him controversial, he thrust himself into mass culture simply by assuming that he was already part of it. That's the sort of thing I'm talking about here. Not an actual monoculture (which, agreed, is a super-problematic conception that was more true in the 50s but even then there was black culture, gay culture, etc., all of which didn't necessarily interact much with mainstream culture) (in the US anyway) but an effort by pop to present itself as evidence of a monoculture by trying to appeal to a broad swath of people, whether or not it was true. It's almost impossible to tell whether there is a monoculture, but it's easy to see if an artist wants there to be. Dave's comment maybe gets at my intended point better. I see pop music right now as steadily declining in cultural influence, not because of anything it's doing or not doing (and I wouldn't say I'm worried about it necessarily) but because of certain historical/technological/whatever forces out of its control. What's lost in that is the bigness that draws me to pop and that has either been absent lately, or I'm just getting old (creak, crack). In other words, I think the consequence isn't just in how we interact with pop, but in how pop sounds.
Well, it wasn't you who used the term. Was "the rich girls are weeping" in the comments thread. Presumably "the rich girls" didn't coin the term.
Culture (whether mass or sub-) builds itself around controversies and problems, somewhat. So "togetherness" is never meant to be all-inclusive. One of the complexities of "popular culture" is that "challenge the mainstream" is a mainstream concept, so the mainstream is often full of people in search of something mainstream to oppose. Britney was the brat girl disrupting the school, Eminem was disrupting everything, incl. the little girl and boy groups that annoyed him.
It all depends on what one takes to be "cultural influence," but in my lifetime music's most obvious cultural influence comes when sounds seem to be bursting upon us. Which means the sounds are new, or at least seem to be. So, though music may be basic to a lot of people's day-to-day lives in the '00s, its influence (which means its power to shape or warp us) is unnoticed, since the sound of music and - therefore - its way of shaping us is relatively static hence unnoticed, as opposed to when music was warping everything 1964-68 in the fragmented Sixties, or the combined impacts of metal and punk and disco in the fragmented Seventies. Etc. Now in the fragmented '00s the various fragments don't seem to be nearly as much in motion (and I wonder why).
Yeah, in the comments some folks drew out the connection I sort of waved my hands at where TRL pitted metal/punk against pop against hip-hop, in a complicated sort of dance that still included it all. And then Blink-182 makes a video parodying boybands and Eminem takes shots at Xtina but they all still show up in Times Square and square off on the same stage, as it were, which gives this feeling of the whole thing as spectacle rather than as genuine conflict, a thing to locate yourself within rather than people you don't know arguing about things you don't care about. Maybe. As a teenager, of course, it all seemed very very very important.
which gives this feeling of the whole thing as spectacle rather than as genuine conflict
Something's being a spectacle doesn't mean that the conflicts aren't genuine (e.g., Repubs vs. Dems). I think one of the mistakes people make in thinking about culture is that they assume that sharing a culture means "having" values that the members of the culture all "share." Whereas I'd say crucial features of cultures and subcultures are what people in the cultures tend to fight about. So clashes between cultures and between subcultures will often take the form of people not comprehending each other's battles, so conflicts might be over what's worth fighting about.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-11-18 12:44 pm (UTC)Whether this is true or not, it has been a theme in music criticism since about 1968.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-18 12:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-18 12:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-18 01:07 pm (UTC)slouches towards ILM to be born?
no subject
Date: 2008-11-18 12:59 pm (UTC)- There once was a monoculture, but it's been in steady-ish decline since the mid 1960s AT LEAST. (Greil Marcus, in one of the essays collected in Double Trouble, suggests the monoculture is/was a willed 50s invention, a necessary windbreak after the shattering first half of the century)
- The monoculture is something we cognitively invent by a process of sorting through memories, and thus only perceive as a thing that's passed. i.e. there never was a monoculture.
- (The dialectic of i and ii) There are successive monocultural phases or events amidst a general fragmentation. These are easier to detect with hindsight (because they are driven by different media channels each time), and aren't *really* monocultural in that it's particular niches or cultural forms enjoying a kind of attention share bubble.
Also worth nothing that "monoculture" is going to look different from an American and non-American perspective, as for a lot of the last 50-60 years it's meant "what America exports" over here.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-18 01:08 pm (UTC)Which of course means the monoculture is not dead!
no subject
Date: 2008-11-18 01:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-18 01:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-18 01:26 pm (UTC)*Or should I say "teen-age."
**The "teenage netherworld" is Tom Wolfe's term from "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby" in '63 or so, about the custom car culture. Of course, Wolfe specialized in writing about cultural forms that were popular but under the radar.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-18 12:57 pm (UTC)If love is truly going out of fashion forever, which I do not believe, then along with our nurtured indifference to each other will be an even more contemptuous indifference to each other's objects of reverence. I thought it was Iggy Stooge, you thought it was Joni Mitchell or whoever else seemed to speak for your own private, entirely circumscribed situation's many pains and few ecstasies. We will continue to fragment in this manner, because solipsism holds all the cards at present; it is a king whose domain engulfs even Elvis's. But I can guarantee you one thing: we will never again agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis. So I won't bother saying good-bye to his corpse. I will say good-bye to you.
--Lester Bangs, "Where Were You When Elvis Died," Village Voice, 29 August 1977
no subject
Date: 2008-11-18 01:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-18 11:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-19 03:22 pm (UTC)An interesting thing about the post-Beatles-On-Ed-Sullivan Sixties (by which I mean February 1964 through mid 1970 or so) is that Elvis really was not much of a cultural presence. I mean, obviously some people about eight to eighteen years older than me would have cared about him, but it was a cinch for someone my age (I turned ten in '64) to not care about him to the point of not bothering even to have an opinion about him. With the TV Special in '68 Elvis began a comeback to cultural prominence, but it wasn't until the early '70s that he was back to being culturally iconic, which he still is (though I'm sure there are lots of people in hip-hop, say, who aren't having strong opinions about him, but I think if someone in hip-hop sampled a popular Elvis tune or wore an Elvis cape or put on Elvis sideburns this would be immediately recognizable even to the ten-year-olds in the audience, whereas I don't think this would have been true in '67)(not that I know much about ten-year-olds in the hip-hop audience).
Elvis was definitely lamé.
I think the U.S. is far less culturally fragmented now than when I was growing up, has fewer great divides, but has more cultural subgroups, and it's possible that the older subgroups were more internally monocultural than the new ones are, because, for one reason, people may be more mobile in jumping from subgroup to subgroup and belonging to multiple subgroups. But what I just said in the previous sentence is probably too vague ever to be really testable.
american as the peaceable kingdom
Date: 2008-11-18 01:12 pm (UTC)(haha i'm actually in the middle of writing something about the above in ref NARNIA -- anyway i think the ideal is as america)
americA as the peaceable kingdom
Date: 2008-11-18 01:15 pm (UTC)(i like that william penn is see-thru: some kind of uncanny x-men link there)
Re: american as the peaceable kingdom
Date: 2008-11-18 01:26 pm (UTC)One of Mike's other observations that I do agree with (don't disagree with his insights here, but I haven't really thought as much about this one as his Circus piece (http://idolator.com/5090514/mourning-becomes-britney) from yesterday) is that music-as-an-industry simply needs to accept that it's going to continue getting smaller, which might be part of what allows it to even attempt monoculturalism (if that's a neologism, consider that an informal trademark, but I'm sure someone beat me to it). Of course, the music industry has always been "small" compared to something like, say, the film industry or the television industry or even the videogame industry, all of which -- except maybe the videogame industry -- are getting smaller in their own ways, too. But I guess the important point is that there may be no conception of a purely social monoculture, and the industry's role in making such widespread dissemination even possible is something that I doubt any other network could replicate.
Or maybe monoculturalism is just another way of saying everything was better when you were 12 (http://www.salon.com/comics/boll/2007/06/14/boll/).
Re: american as the peaceable kingdom
Date: 2008-11-18 01:36 pm (UTC)Re: american as the peaceable kingdom
Date: 2008-11-18 01:41 pm (UTC)Re: american as the peaceable kingdom
Date: 2008-11-18 11:28 pm (UTC)Re: american as the peaceable kingdom
Date: 2008-11-18 01:48 pm (UTC)Why does its smallness help it to attempt monoculturalism? Are you assuming that anything big will "fragment"? Seems to me that when I was growing up TV was much more a monolith than music, in that the three networks dominated and local stations filled up their own hours with old movies and old network fare that was now in syndication. Whereas you really did have local markets and different markets on the radio. But you only had one type of TV station, not counting Educational TV.
Re: american as the peaceable kingdom
Date: 2008-11-18 01:52 pm (UTC)Re: american as the peaceable kingdom
Date: 2008-11-18 01:56 pm (UTC)Re: american as the peaceable kingdom
Date: 2008-11-19 12:06 am (UTC)He's so predictable
Date: 2008-11-18 01:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-18 01:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-18 01:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-18 01:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-18 02:00 pm (UTC)general response
Date: 2008-11-18 11:35 pm (UTC)Re: general response
Date: 2008-11-18 11:44 pm (UTC)Re: general response
Date: 2008-11-19 06:40 am (UTC)Culture (whether mass or sub-) builds itself around controversies and problems, somewhat. So "togetherness" is never meant to be all-inclusive. One of the complexities of "popular culture" is that "challenge the mainstream" is a mainstream concept, so the mainstream is often full of people in search of something mainstream to oppose. Britney was the brat girl disrupting the school, Eminem was disrupting everything, incl. the little girl and boy groups that annoyed him.
It all depends on what one takes to be "cultural influence," but in my lifetime music's most obvious cultural influence comes when sounds seem to be bursting upon us. Which means the sounds are new, or at least seem to be. So, though music may be basic to a lot of people's day-to-day lives in the '00s, its influence (which means its power to shape or warp us) is unnoticed, since the sound of music and - therefore - its way of shaping us is relatively static hence unnoticed, as opposed to when music was warping everything 1964-68 in the fragmented Sixties, or the combined impacts of metal and punk and disco in the fragmented Seventies. Etc. Now in the fragmented '00s the various fragments don't seem to be nearly as much in motion (and I wonder why).
Re: general response
Date: 2008-11-19 07:35 am (UTC)Re: general response
Date: 2008-11-19 03:03 pm (UTC)Something's being a spectacle doesn't mean that the conflicts aren't genuine (e.g., Repubs vs. Dems). I think one of the mistakes people make in thinking about culture is that they assume that sharing a culture means "having" values that the members of the culture all "share." Whereas I'd say crucial features of cultures and subcultures are what people in the cultures tend to fight about. So clashes between cultures and between subcultures will often take the form of people not comprehending each other's battles, so conflicts might be over what's worth fighting about.