04-25-2017, 07:11 AM
A possible analogue in serious music is the great Dmitri Shostakovich, what one would expect in a repressive order in which one must register dissent subtly -- perhaps presenting it as a struggle with something that one is permitted to have a struggle with (like drugs, alcohol, or organic disease). If one is clever enough one might put some dissonance into superficial praise of political and economic leadership. Much unlike the 1930s, which America got through with its democracy intact, I cannot be sure that democracy will survive the Trump era.
Light-hearted, superficial entertainment might be exactly the pap that the elites offer as the 'opiate of the masses' -- maybe with some sports thrown in. Gladiatorial games? Maybe if things get nasty enough we could have the Roman spectacle of damnatio bestiae for people seen as the worst of the worst. Getting to watch some wretch devoured by a crocodile? If we go that bad, then we deserve the Huns.
But back to music. The elites do not want the masses to think. Anti-intellectualism is essential to any dictatorial regime. I can imagine conscience-informed music by the likes of Pete Seeger or Woodie Guthrie forced underground, if not formally banned. Perform such music, and there just might be no places in which to perform it. I expect the economic elites to foster a sentimental, mindless mass culture that befits a scenario like Fahrenheit 451. Nobody needs to burn books, but people will have to be content with tabloid fare. There might be some ironic promotion of diversity -- to divide and conquer by region, sect, and ethnicity. Count on the likes of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez being relegated to the scrap heap of culture once they are gone (they are now old): conscience is the nemesis of an undemocratic order.
We need remind ourselves that the mass culture of the late 1930s in America was really, really good. Big Band music may have been the best popular music ever. American cinema of the late 1930s and into 1940 and 1941 holds up well. The omnibus entertainment of the late 1930s had to be accessible to children and not offend the sensibilities of smart adults, sophisticated atheists and religious fundamentalists, people of New England and of the Deep South at the same time. The family typically went together to the movie house and had only one radio. Can you imagine that if there were but one source of entertainment for a whole family that whole families would listen to the comedy of the late Sam Kinison?
I see some trends toward homogenization of culture and omnibus entertainment. It may be possible to splinter the movie audience with low-budget fare (often direct-to-video) -- but contrast Pixar and Studio Ghibli. Disney can sell its animated fare at a premium while slasher fare goes from full-price to bargain-bin quickly.
We do not have the political reality of American life in the late 1930s. This time the monsters are on Main Street.
Light-hearted, superficial entertainment might be exactly the pap that the elites offer as the 'opiate of the masses' -- maybe with some sports thrown in. Gladiatorial games? Maybe if things get nasty enough we could have the Roman spectacle of damnatio bestiae for people seen as the worst of the worst. Getting to watch some wretch devoured by a crocodile? If we go that bad, then we deserve the Huns.
But back to music. The elites do not want the masses to think. Anti-intellectualism is essential to any dictatorial regime. I can imagine conscience-informed music by the likes of Pete Seeger or Woodie Guthrie forced underground, if not formally banned. Perform such music, and there just might be no places in which to perform it. I expect the economic elites to foster a sentimental, mindless mass culture that befits a scenario like Fahrenheit 451. Nobody needs to burn books, but people will have to be content with tabloid fare. There might be some ironic promotion of diversity -- to divide and conquer by region, sect, and ethnicity. Count on the likes of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez being relegated to the scrap heap of culture once they are gone (they are now old): conscience is the nemesis of an undemocratic order.
We need remind ourselves that the mass culture of the late 1930s in America was really, really good. Big Band music may have been the best popular music ever. American cinema of the late 1930s and into 1940 and 1941 holds up well. The omnibus entertainment of the late 1930s had to be accessible to children and not offend the sensibilities of smart adults, sophisticated atheists and religious fundamentalists, people of New England and of the Deep South at the same time. The family typically went together to the movie house and had only one radio. Can you imagine that if there were but one source of entertainment for a whole family that whole families would listen to the comedy of the late Sam Kinison?
I see some trends toward homogenization of culture and omnibus entertainment. It may be possible to splinter the movie audience with low-budget fare (often direct-to-video) -- but contrast Pixar and Studio Ghibli. Disney can sell its animated fare at a premium while slasher fare goes from full-price to bargain-bin quickly.
We do not have the political reality of American life in the late 1930s. This time the monsters are on Main Street.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.