3beebies aka Breakfast

[french frank]

aeolium

See John Skelton's reply for a better formulation of what I was trying to say!

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

but I'd argue that post-modern freedom is a terrible form of unfreedom.

er i quite disagree ..... my parents childhood on Tyneside in the 1910's was a terrible form of unfreedom .... the public or state impulse that they should read, write and live full lives was a mere whisper

my childhood during the 45-55 period was shaped by the 44 Act, the existence of public radio [and yes i did hear the trumpet voluntary sitting in a tiin bath on the floor of what passed for a kitchen in the family apartment] .. caught my mind .... during adolescence the second hand record shops and book shops were supplemantary to the Lps and books from the public library ...where my interest in jazz was both responded to and used by the very nice people who worked there [ i could advise on their purchases of jazz recordings]

my kids are citizens of the planet and live on digital media, no music or literature is denoed their curiosity at the stroking of a keypad ....

what 'unfreedom' is this?

[aeolium]

The ubiquity of a form of mass popular culture itself is fantastically restrictive and is a very successful method of imposition; it disallows something that isn't practically even made available.

In what way? It is not imposed on people and the existence of many different minority cultural interests is testimony to the way many people dissociate themselves from it. What does it disallow that is not made available?

The argument seems to go that the blind masses, although free adults like yourself, are hoodwinked by the evil mass marketers into consuming a tawdry and debased form of popular culture, while you and other right-thinking people can see through their brainwashing. To rectify this, we need a more paternalistic approach so that those masses will be able to make the right choice, as you have done. Don't you see how fantastically patronising that is, to suggest that although you are able to reject the mass popular culture (which in itself suggests that it is not imposed), others are unable to do so?

Isn't some form of paternalism (to use that word) in the sense of giving people a choice by ensuring that they make a choice, that they can't just opt out of choice and accept pre-chosen choices, a pre-condition of freedom?

But how is it that you have not accepted those pre-chosen choices? Are you unique?

Surely in any society there will inevitably be some forms of culture that are more popular than others. In many historical paternalistic societies minority forms have been suppressed (and they still are in some today). Do you think that, even under your paternalistic model in which (for example) the works of Ferneyhough and Lachenmann were presented as choices along with (for example) the songs of Rihanna, the latter would still not emerge as more popular?

[John Skelton]

You can only be curious about something if you are aware of its possible existence, Calum.

I come from a poor London family (if we're going to do this sort of thing) and have no nostalgia for the even more difficult lives my parents' parents had.

The new freedoms you are describing "the existence of public radio" surely belong to the period of a certain 'paternalism', not to the period of free-market 'choice'. I should not, perhaps, have muddied the waters of BBC breakfast by introducing Mark Fisher's book, so will retire from the conversation as gracefully as I can manage .

[John Skelton]

The argument seems to go that the blind masses, although free adults like yourself, are hoodwinked by the evil mass marketers into consuming a tawdry and debased form of popular culture, while you and other right-thinking people can see through their brainwashing. To rectify this, we need a more paternalistic approach so that those masses will be able to make the right choice, as you have done. Don't you see how fantastically patronising that is, to suggest that although you are able to reject the mass popular culture (which in itself suggests that it is not imposed), others are unable to do so?

I can indeed see how "fantastically patronising" it is, which is why I would never say anything of the kind. It's not an argument I've made nor would make. Nor have I said that Ferneyhough or Lachenmann would ever be popular, nor should that matter. I still maintain that from my observation there is a narrowing of the horizons: education is directed to satisfying the job market's (such as it is) requirements and to passing examinations; the great post-modern creed is that everything is equivalent or, crucially, exchangeable. And culture is targetted at specific audiences; mobility of interest is seen one as one way, or, indeed, dumbed 'down'.

And I've not said anything about "right-thinking people." Nor would I. Nor have I advocated suppressing anything. Nor do I.

[aeolium]

Then I am sorry if my post misrepresented your views.

My main point was to challenge your assertion that the mass popular culture was "fantastically restrictive" and a form of imposition. I just don't think it is, and I think there is evidence, not least on these boards, to show that it is not.

[John Skelton]

I'm sure the problem is that I've not presented them well enough!

If what I've written gives the impression that I think popular culture is intrinsically inferior to something else ... classical music, say, then I've misrepresented myself. I don't think that and I think it's a spurious and (falsely) elitist view. I do think an argument can be made that all forms of culture have been homogenised, reduced, made less adventurous. But I'm not setting up a value judgement classical / popular.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i am not being in the least nostalgic, i think that the opportunity to be free and culturally adventurous is immeasurably greater now than a hundred years ago when my pa was born and that poverty while still with us is less of an impediment to exploration and survival than it was, but not much so alas .... nor am i trumpeting being poor all though i do think that matters as we return to wealth distributions last seen some centuries ago ...

my point really is that i find class analysis and notions of inegalitarian or paternalistic practices as irrlevant to the key issue as Mr Davie's marketing nostrums and demographics ... one posits me as a consumer with satisfactions the other as an opressed, misled and betrayed opium smoker .... neither of these metaphors nor others of their ilk will do ... contrast them with MacIntyres notions of virtue as communities of practice with traditions, knowledge, circumstances and futures requring active engagement to create and recreat the community and its practice in a good society ... the sustenance of virtue requires both the didactic this is what it is and the autonomy of discovery ... i do not find it hard to conceive of music, drama, ideas etc as public virtues and communities of practice ... nor hard to feel that the bbc and R3 as publicly funded broadcasting should serve these virtues of the good society by supporting both the didactic informing and the autonomous discovery .... but their mind set is misplaced utilitarian consumerism with some Kantian guilt that they may be stealing from the ordinary to feed the eccentric ...

[aeolium]

I agree, Calum, and I would also add that there are many expressions of popular culture - football matches, for instance, or pop festivals - where that sense of community is sought and recreated, as well as amateur music-making or theatricals. Those are surely not all malign or driven by commercial moneymakers.

I actually think the internet is a force for progress here. There are those who think it will merely descend into an anarchic chaos of ignorant and thoughtless blogging as caricatured in Private Eye, but it is also possible for virtual and virtuous communities of interest to arise, which complement the local communities. The old model of high culture being radiated out from a central broadcasting point rather as electricity used to be provided by a central generating board has I think had its day, and there will in the future be many more distributed points from which people can access music and the arts.

Anyway - must listen to a lunchtime concert broadcast from the Gower Festival earlier this summer

[John Skelton]

I don't think that

the other [posits any individual] as an oppressed, misled and betrayed opium smoker

is accurate, because it isn't a question of standing outside and above other people's lives from a position of enlightenment and rectifying their 'errors', or of being detached from a common problematic; nor do I see why what I have said (or attempted to say) runs contrary to Alasdair MacIntyre on "virtue": or, indeed, contrary to Alasdair MacIntyre's insistence on the animal vulnerability of humans.

(Why "Kantian guilt"?)

[french frank]

I also don't think this has anything/much to do with poverty or being working class. Whereas there has been a long tradition of working class (self-) education right through the 19thc, I was brought up in a comfortable middle class family, devoid of anything cultural. I never saw anyone read a book (we had a bookcase full of book club books, Dornford Yates, Priestley, Laurence Housman) but no one ever read them. Music was on a Sunday afternoon listening to, probably, the Light Programme. Of course, no one went to concerts or the theatre. Newspapers were the Daily Sketch, the Daily Mail, the Pink 'Un and the Green 'Un.

But neither was there any kind of all-pervasive popular culture - pop music, television, blockbuster films and books. And no peer pressure from my friends, no discussion of what they were watching on television (Doctor Who or Neighbours), or reading (Harry Potter), or listening to (Take That!, back again - or Blur). Thank goodness. I feel I really did find my own sphere as I grew older and my experiences widened (no new music, of course, so I still have difficulty with it).

aeolium, you undermine your argument by exaggeration: 'blind masses'? you'll be talking about 'lumpen proles' next. We're all part of the masses these days (well, maybe not vinteuil, and perhaps not Caliban ) in certain aspects of our lives. The masses, at least when I use the term, is contextual-numerical not judgemental. You talk about football and pop festivals as creating a 'sense of community'. Precisely. And as an extension in the broadly artistic area, the same happens. Why do you think that pop charts (even the Specialist Classical Chart) are used as promotional tools by the record industry? Because a lot of people who have less knowledge and discrimination than you have think that the fact that lots of people are buying the CD is a good enough recommendation. We're all in this together.

I don't have that knowledge or discrimination that you have. I just have a particularly heightened suspicion when I feel I'm being (even subtly) pressurised in a certain direction.

[Nick Armstrong]

We're all part of the masses these days (well, maybe not vinteuil, and perhaps not Caliban )

I say, vindebordeaux old bean, what can she mean??

[aeolium]

aeolium, you undermine your argument by exaggeration: 'blind masses'?

I'm aware it was something of a caricature argument but I was only reacting to the idea of people being an amorphous mass rather than (as I was suggesting in an earlier message) individuals each with their own personal reactions to things, and the ability to make judgements about them.

a lot of people who have less knowledge and discrimination than you have think that the fact that lots of people are buying the CD is a good enough recommendation.

Well, I'm naive enough to think that people will mainly buy particular music CDs because they like the music. It's as good a guess as yours about their motives as neither of us has any hard evidence about them. Hell, money is hard enough to come by these days without taking a punt on the music without having heard it (and that's nothing to do with knowledge or discrimination).

[amateur51]

I say, vindebordeaux old bean, what can she mean??

I remember the days quite recently when a certain person would have deemed most of this thread OT and consigned it to the basement.

But I s'pose now she's heavily implicated, she's happy to let it ride

Ou sont les neiges etc

[french frank]

I'm aware it was something of a caricature argument but I was only reacting to the idea of people being an amorphous mass rather than (as I was suggesting in an earlier message) individuals each with their own personal reactions to things, and the ability to make judgements about them.

But they can only make judgements about what they know/hear. And the various forms of commercial/pop culture push themselves in everywhere. It's a bit like the conjuror's trick of 'forcing a card' on someone.

Well, I'm naive enough to think that people will mainly buy particular music CDs because they like the music. It's as good a guess as yours about their motives as neither of us has any hard evidence about them.

But who ever suggested that they would, in any circumstances, be buying the music even if they didn't like it? Never been in a record shop and seen the 'Now Playing' information at the counter? And the charts shows plug the message 'This is the latest thing'. And the popular radio stations have their playlists which play the same tracks a specific number of times a week (up to 20 times for Radio 1). This is about selling records, i.e. commercial.

Hell, money is hard enough to come by these days without taking a punt on the music without having heard it (and that's nothing to do with knowledge or discrimination).

See above.

I say, vindebordeaux old bean, what can she mean??

There's posh!