Musical De-Politicization, Nostalgia, and Moral Outrage

I'd like to continue and elaborate on some of the points I made in my piece about canonization.

In Kevin Phinney's piece "Souled American" there was a quote that really caught my attention:

"African Americans are more interested in discovering the Next Big Thing than in riding a fad past its relevance to daily life. Certainly there's no reason for black Americans to romanticize their experience here. This country hasn't provided any good old days for people of color."

Phinney then went on to discuss how white people "perceive black derived culture as threatening their status quo," and compared "white music" to "an old lamp," referring to its sentimentality and nostalgia. While I do think this is a bit of an over-generalization, I also think there is some truth to it. To understand why, it is important to discuss the ways in which black musical forms have political origins.

Many, many historically black musical forms have been political in some way. Rap is an obvious example, and it's also very easy to hear political sentiment expressed in reggae, soul, and even largely instrumental musical forms like jazz. And in all of the musical forms listed above, race plays a hugely important role in the musical politics. From Louis Armstong's "Black and Blue" to Curtis Mayfield's "Don't Worry (If There's a Hell Below)" to The Abbyssinians' "Black Man's Strain" to Public Enemy's "Fight The Power," countless black musicians have used music as a way to challenge racism and oppression. And these musicians have often received incredibly harsh criticism for doing so.

Many articles about pop music discuss the initial reaction of many white people to black musical forms. Nick Bromell, in his piece "The Blues and the Veil," discussed the negative reaction to early rock music, and Phinney does as well, in addition to discussing the reactions many whites have had to rap music. Many white cultural critics have dismissed rock as well as rap in the name of "morals," condemning these musical forms as being too sexual and immoral. It is completely possible to read these criticisms as being reflective of stereotypes that equate blackness with sexuality, and while I definitely think that argument is true, I also don't think it's the only factor involved. I would like to argue that these negative, racist responses are also a reaction to the political aspects of these musical forms, whether they are explicit or implicit.

I'd like to go back to the Phinney quote about how white people can "perceive black derived culture as threatening their status quo." Both rock and rap have threatened the status quo of white political power. With rap it's easy to see why; many of the most popular and influential rap songs have lyrics that are directly, explicitly critical of white hegemony. While the lyrics of early rock songs were in no way as explicitly political, there was still a political aspect to the popularity of rock music. Like jazz before it, rock was an originally black musical form that became popular among white people, which in itself threatened the white status quo (even though white people combated this by elevating Elvis to his popularity). It makes sense that the conservative (and sometimes liberal) white people who criticize(d) these musical forms would do so as a reaction to their threatened status quo, even if they used other reasons to justify their criticism. To phrase it differently, many of the white cultural critics who condemn black musical forms are afraid of the popularity of these forms and want to hold on to their power.

But where does nostalgia fit in to this discussion? Phinney also discussed how there has been a historical pattern of black people innovating a musical form and white people profiting off of it. While many black musical forms have had political origins, these forms have often lost their explicitly political meaning in the eyes of white America when they have been appropriated and turned mainstream. When music challenges whiteness it is obviously hard for white people to listen to it, and many white people have intense reactions to it. But when it is appropriated, transformed, and marketed to a new audience, it loses much of its political potency. Jazz and rock were originally condemned by the mainstream media, but are now part of it. And this is where I feel nostalgia plays a role.

Many people who have condemned rap music have also referenced the "good old days" of jazz or rock, completely unaware of their hypocrisy. I'd like to argue that the reason many white people are fixated on the "good old days" has everything to do with power. When rap started to come under fire from the mainstream media, rock and jazz had already been de-politicized. The "good old days" were referenced because there was a desire to hold on to music that had less political power than it used to, and less political power than more contemporary musical forms that had not been de-politicized. Again, we can see history repeat itself. When looking at music from a historical perspective, we can see a pattern that goes something like this:

Innovative and sometimes explicitly political black music becomes popular

A lot of white people condemn this new music (although white people are not always the only ones who do so)

This music is appropriated, commercialized, and de-politicized by other white people (as in the case of Elvis or Clapton)

Said music becomes mainstream

A new form of music appears, and the process repeats itself, with people lamenting the waning popularity of the music that used to be political and hated

To quote Stuart Hall, "This year's radical symbol or slogan will be neutralised into next year's fashion; the year after, it will be the object of a profound cultural nostalgia." You could also add "then it will be referenced in opposition to a new radical form."

Righteous Anger: "Food Inc."

Before I begin, this is going to be a little rant-y and digressive and angry as far as reviews go, and I have a strong feeling that this reaction is exactly what the filmmakers wanted. But the question is, how to direct the anger? Make a big change and start buying local produce? Go after the agribusiness conglomerates? Go completely off the grid (as one friend is doing), as it were, living entirely vegan off of fruits and berries? I choose the other option, namely blogging about it for the internet to read, and then letting everyone make their own decisions after I've criticized their ways. I think a movie review is in order before the ranting begins. "Food Inc." is our subject for today, a documentary with heavy input from both Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan and a tone somewhere in between. It's wide-reaching in its specifics, but the basic target is agribusiness and how our food has become so preposterously mechanized and industrialized. This takes on a merry cinematic assault on the various large corporations and their evils: inhumane conditions for animals, inhumane conditions for workers, putting chemicals into food, lack of sustainable farming practices, and a general deviation from all that is natural and good. Unfortunately, that's a lot of subjects for a single movie to hold, especially one that I remember clocked in at about ninety minutes. This leads to a kind of disjointed feeling in the otherwise logical presentation of arguments. However, the arguments are all pretty simple- by looking for cheaper and easier food, we've managed to tacitly induce a world in which agribusiness corporations milk us for our money in exchange for environmental aberrations and food that doesn't make us much healthier. A few of the segments are especially good, though, such as one in which the Monsanto corporation is exposed; they managed to patent a gene in soybeans (which, in addition to corn, make up the vast majority of our food, says the film) that made the soybeans resistant to pesticide. Because they patented a gene, they've made it so that if a farmer saves seeds from non-patented soybeans, the farmer can legally be charged with patent infringement. Evil shit right there. There's also the sad story of a young boy who died from e. coli as a result of agribusiness negligence, the standard tales of how we are breeding chickens and cows to grow unnaturally large, so large that they basically are grown like plants (because the poor animals can't walk or move on their own accord). And then the animals get to be mistreated on their way to slaughter, which takes place in all of eleven (I think it was eleven, in any rate some preposterously small number) slaughterhouses in the country. The bad guys largely remain faceless, except for some semi-morally ambiguous characters (a farmer perfectly content to make money off of unnatural chickens, Wall-Mart execs expanding into organic food), and the heroes are many: farmers fighting the power, being abused, or simply shaking their heads sadly about the decline of their noble profession. The best are one semi-nutty farmer in Virginia, who takes a rather gung-ho approach to growing the best food he can naturally and locally, and another farmer who sadly bemoans the state of soybean growing, but offers the closing words of hope in such a rousing manner that I couldn't help but be moved to cheer inside. But for all the heroes, stories, angering statistics and discussions with Eric and Michael, the film still doesn't offer much new advice. Basically we know it all: buy locally, read labels, learn what's in your food, and every one can make a difference. I guess after all that stored indignation I was prepared for more of a manifesto, a shared plan for the audiences to meet up and rebel, schematics for kidnapping money-grubbing execs, but instead it's just the same schtick that we grew up hearing. Anyways, my final judgment here is that this is a standard documentary, a little boring in some of the CGI infographics but with above-average interviews; while the end message is not new, it is still hopeful, which is important, and the powerful drive that the film arouses in viewers can definitely be put to a good use, so long as viewers aren't overwhelmed and fail to do anything. Review vastly too long and now over. Now, almost a week later, I don't have as much ranting and bile within me for the "how to change the world" proposed section of this post, so here's the short and sweet version: watching "Food, Inc," the obvious solution to me was the bleakest one: there are just way too many people on this planet for us to continue living in this way. And by "living in this way," I'd like to imply that there is a huge cultural aspect to the general world-is-ending problem, but specifically in the problem addressed by "Food, Inc." Basically, I see it boiling down to an American cultural desire and belief that everyone can achieve whatever they want, which is all fine and good until people start expecting to be able to eat whatever they want all the time, and cheaply. This leads to weird shit, like tomatoes in winter and fresh swordfish in the Midwest. Which would be fine if people wanted to pay the exorbitant costs of being able to eat what would be considered luxury food items in a natural world. But instead, agribusiness sees the opportunity to make a little cash and, using the power of capital to invest and coordination of transportation and all sorts of technology, manages to provide these food items (which should be considered artificially occurring) for a relatively cheap cost. Then lots of people buy them (because everyone wants to be able to do whatever they want whenever they want) and agribusiness gets very rich and can use this capital to keep on perpetuating the system. The people are happy because they can have sushi in North fucking Dakota and get food for vastly cheaper, freeing up more money to spend on useless shit like cable TV with nothing on and third cars and what have you. I'm starting to lose it here, but I hope you catch my drift. Main points: people want whatever they see everyone else having, especially the wealthy. They also want cheap things. Agribusiness uses their clout and all sorts of unnatural production and transportation measures (read bad for the planet) to provide what the people want for less. Then agribusiness profits while the people are contented, and the cycle perpetuates. Of course, that doesn't even begin to get at the problem in its entirety, because everything connects. In order to deal with this problem in its entirety, we'd have to solve for poverty, a way for people in large urban areas to get food directly from the farmers, a way for the price of good food to go down, a way to get people to listen, and oh my god my brain just short circuited from not being able to deal with this mess that we've managed to get ourselves into. A practical solution is for people to just realize, culturally, that if you live in the Northern hemisphere, you can eat tomatoes in the summer, and can preserve them for the rest of the year. Or that certain foods should be really expensive because of the energy that goes into producing them, like beef. Little things like that. I'm finding myself turning into a crotchety old man these days, and one of my favorite refrains is for a return to pre-industrialized revolution society, when there was no globalization and you only worked when there was work needing to be done. I realize it's an impractical ideal, and that there was mad plague back then, but there's something to be said for living a more natural lifestyle, one where we ate what was in season or around, and didn't haul food from all the corners of the globe to fill our ravenous western appetites. I think that if we can manage to think (as Michael Pollan says, bringing it all home) about where the food comes from, and realize that if certain foods don't make sense (like non-seasonal fruits and veggies), we probably shouldn't be eating them, then we'd be on a clear track to fixing this problem of food ceasing to be real food. And the impractical solution? Jack up the price of gas, vastly improve public/rail transportation, and bring back a village lifestyle to rural communities. People would have to focus on eating locally (too expensive to transport lots of food all over the goddamn place), and farming villages would be able to provide the food by rail to the major urban areas. Also, village life seems so cool. Go read "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and tell me that's not how we should all be living (minus the incest). And hopefully the pandemic won't come around just yet, because that will be nature's solution to this problem, reducing the number of motherfuckers on the planet demanding more food than they could possibly need, and eliminating the number of dudes out there who start blog posts and don't finish them for a week, thus forgetting everything they wanted to say and consequentially ranting aimlessly to the finish.