Is it possible to critique (and disparage) the production and
consumption of contemporary youth pop culture without sounding like a
crank, a grandfatherly gadfly, a curmudgeon, a technophobe dandy fop
contenting herself with a blank room and a Victrola, who speaks only
from a perspective of just-not-getting-it and the power of a certain
age and class? Does it matter—does my crankiness distort my meaning and
message? There are sharp distinctions among the owners, the creators,
and the consumers. Many teens create their own media and meanings,
which are sometimes owned by corporations. I think there is more of a
perception of democratic production than a reality. Throughout, my
voice will be lamenting, rambling, nostalgic, self-righteous, aged, I
know. I come to this as a not-quite-recovered teenager and someone who
spends my workday with young people. The dangers of “those kids today”
conversations are well documented. Every generation distrusts and
despises the one after it, they say; either we are on a treacherous
path of cultural deterioration or we are unable to lucidly view youth
culture from the distance of our old age. Is there cultural superiority
of my—or anyone’s— youth? Does my ownership of time and experience
invest the past with unearned personal meaning?
However, my disdain is well-worn attire, not a new pose. I had disdain
for ‘90s mainstream culture as a teen, and craved weird subcultural
corners. This seemed to me a rebellion against conformist oppressive
middle class status. I didn’t realize at the time the oppressions by
punks, radicals, indie rockers—that culture jamming was enacted by the
sons and daughters of the system, the recipients of all kinds of
privilege. Counterculture teens weren’t interested in ending the
game—they just wanted to upend it and assert their dominance and
superiority of the underclasses. I place myself here, hidden by a black
wing and not being smart enough to end the hierarchy but to win the
subcultural version.
Through the passage of time, even mainstream culture in its
obsolescence adopts a patina of cool (see the obsession with “old
school” and “vintage” everything). There’s the shambling clutch of
cassette tapes and pay phones and water fountains—these things that
have been taken from us. I recently saw Liz Phair play her “Exile in
Guyville” show, an objective failure that was really meaningful to me
because of how her music sparked feelings of feminism and pale defiance
of nose thumbing (no rock in a cop’s face) in my high school years. Is
this narcissism? “Everything in my own immediate experience supports my
deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realest,
most vivid and important person in existence”?
http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html.
Listening to “Exile in Guyville,” reading eBayed Sassy Magazines,
watching My So-Called Life—even as I now realize their poor little
white girl failings—still resonates adolescently with my eternal
internal outsiderness, unrealized ambitions and my ineffable
hopefulness about the future. Megan judged people’s worthiness by their
shoes and we all judged people by their music taste. Growing up among
mostly white middle class suburban Christians, we separated out by
stylistic minutiae. Where it wasn’t always safe to proclaim your
political beliefs, we asserted them with hair color and safety pins,
which carried their own risks. Remember, this was in the late 1990s
when students wearing trench coats (the former uniform of the 1950s
white collar worker) were suspended for their subversive murderous
dress.
I’ve killed my TV and home Internet access and I listen to music mostly
on a blue Hello Kitty walkman or record player (hoping this doesn’t
sound annoying even though it’s true...) and therefore have a tenuous
grasp of what mainstream teens like. It’s weird to be personally
uninterested in mainstream culture and yet work a job that requires
this knowledge. Countercultural aesthetics that once signified ideals,
values, identities, and affiliations have been commodified. We live in
shallow vagueness and shadows. How to know what people really mean when
irony and gossip rules? David Foster Wallace wrote precisely about the
problem with irony: "Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time,
it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy the cage. This is
because irony, entertaining as it is, serves an almost exclusively
negative function. It’s critical and destructive, a ground-clearing.”
Earnestness, enthusiasm, reverence, and seriousness are obscured by
irony, gossip, and the pose of rebellion. I remember in the '90s people
took selling out a look more seriously. The Internet has further
commodified countercultures. Finding information on Riot Grrrl and
buying green nail polish were challenging. Zines were traded like
samizdat (perhaps a risky hyperbole) and while the underground was
lively, it wasn’t as accessible as it is now, in its weakened state.
The democratization of the underground opens up subcultural expression
to disadvantaged socioeconomic classes but also to poseurs.
Intersections among politics, interests, affiliations, identities, and
aesthetics have faded until they simply reinforce social hierarchy and
class superiority. Fashion does not offer many points of resistance in
the US. While I fondly remember late ‘80s and early ‘90s music and
fashion, this era represents the beginning of the end, when youth
counterculture for the first time was sold simultaneous with its
production, where the hype became mediated by products and not
substance, as Naomi Klein points out. Our postures and styles are now
substitutes for meaningful action. We can’t wear our activism or
correctly identify our politics with our aesthetics. Everything has
been sold.
Posted by: Kati Nolfi