Just reading capitalist realism and listened to his talk that was linked in the current perusall reading series and I'd like to start a discussion about his ideas.
One major theme of Fisher seems to be the assessment, that culture has lost its forward momentum, that technology has progressed but culture stalled "we're basically watching 20th century entertainment on ever increasing resolution" or in regards to music that "the terms retro and nostalgia have lost their meaning, because now there is nothing else but them". And I'm not quite sure what to make out of this. One one hand I think this is somewhat plausible that a world, in which everything is instantly accessible and arbitrarily copy-able, would be overwhelmed by nostalgia for a time when there was still new and authentic stuff.
On the other hand, is this really the case? "In 15 years we went from the beatles to punk rock". Starting around 2000 somewhat staying in the genre we went from nu-metal to indie-soft-rock to ... whatever we have now. Idk if this is a good example. But to me this seems less self evident and more like a sort of vibe-ology. A mix of hipster-hopelessness and boomer "back in the day we had real ..." sentiment.
Please share your thoughts!
I think Fisher, especially with his music examples, is just poorly illustrating Frederic Jameson’s description of cultural production under postmodernism:
Postmodern cultural productions therefore amount to "the cannibalization of all the styles of the past, the play of random stylistic allusion, and in general what Henri Lefebvre has called the increasing primacy of the 'neo'"
Fisher making actual judgement calls about the quality of music being created now compared to what was happening when he was a lad is boring and distracts from what he’s trying to say.
That book is 85 % great insight, 15 % absolute boomer whinging, and sometimes it's hard to tell which part is which.
Wait till you get to the maoist-struggle-session-style performance reviews :agony-consuming:
Ok, in all seriousness, I have an ambivalent relationship to what he's doing there. I get what he's doing, it's provocative, catchy and gets his point across (if you read the chapter). And I'm not much of a "tankie" so criticize Stalin, I have no problem with that. But he's definitely drawing from western tropes (rather than nuanced historical analysis) which is annoying, even if not per se false.
If I get to put a sign on my boss and yell at them, I’m in.
We can dream :Care-Comrade:
You should definitely read it. (It is freely available on archive and more pamphlet than book length). I don't generally buy "the march of history", most of the time I think history is an aimless meanderer. But of course liberals and many which could be called postmodernists are ardent incrementalists!
okay I've only ever read like half the book, but I remember behind all his opinions on art and music, his point was that there is today a prevalent feeling of there being no future, so people increasingly look backwards to a time when things were better and there was more hope.
And then I think he believes culture has stalled because it is hard to move forward when there is no vision of the future.
It's hard for me to discern his "Slow Cancellation of the Future" thesis from the mess that is trying to value older *art against newer art in general.
Musically, it sure feels like a lot more happened before I was born and from my childhood to my late teens than it feels is happening now. But one of the main caveats of that is that there are still loads of interesting artists doing interesting and novel things. What it really seems to be more is that the mainstream has gotten clogged by a MCM' circuit that demands a low-risk investment, and I think that's even more true for film. Not only do you have the profit motive but the major consolidation of large new releases under just a few franchises. I find it hard to believe that the executives of these franchises will be willing to sign off on anything groundbreaking.
One of the hardest results is not that there's no good art, but you have to take time and energy to get away from the easiest stuff, and it can be lonely if you don't have a community doing the same.
I also wonder if saturation doesn't play a pretty big role. Nowadays I can open Netflix, scroll through thousands of movies and shows, and feel eh about all of them since they're all so cheap and so available from my perspective. If any one of those movies were the only movie I had access to after a few years without, I'm sure I could find something interesting and entertaining in it.
It’s hard for me to discern his “Slow Cancellation of the Future” thesis from the mess that is trying to value older music against newer art in general.
Yes. And I do think he does himself a disservice by not limiting himself to use music/culture as just an example but by doing his analysis through the lens of music and popular culture, because this sometimes obfuscates his point if your outlook on popculture is somewhat different.
it sure feels like a lot more happened before I was born and from my childhood to my late teens than it feels is happening now
I believe that this is mostly due to how we experience time, and how we perceive events at different times of our life. When I was in school, music/taste in music was a more important and identity generating aspect of my life, much less so now. (And I assume this is a common experience). Though there could still be truth to this notion
Yeah I agree, and I think I meant to articulate that in my first sentence. Is there really a bigger gap from 1980 to 2000 than from 2000 to 2020, or is it just my brain?
That being said having just finished Giovanni Arrighi's Long Twentieth Century I also don't find it too hard to entertain the thesis that the financialization of capital in the imperial core, and the movement away from investment in production or even trade (just look at Tesla being the highest value car company to see how stark this is) has had disastrous effects on creativity in the arts.
I also want to invoke the ghost of McLuhan, who said that each new media acts as a container of the old. I.e. TV was a container for film. We can read into this further and ask how does new media (like new music, movies, apps, whatever) act as containers for the old. Instagram uses filters that replicate the “film” look, and through this is deeply insincere. Its a facade of “nostalgia” for something that never existed in the first place, a simulation of a referent that doesnt exist
This makes incredible sense to me, since the new container is specifically made for or at least while the old media is pervasive.
Read Jameson, Lyotard, and Baudrillard
Thanks, will add them to my list
the thesis that the left has accepted “the end of history” as a given and refuse to use their political imagination (I.e. not be anticommunist) is correct
I'm under the impression that he himself is very much included in that
as I have gotten older I have seen my childhood cannibalized and resold to me as a cheaper, shitty, nostalgic commodity
I think this leaves out how the experiences of one's childhood were largely cheap, shitty, and commercialized already -- we were just kids and it was all new (to us) and cool, so we didn't notice.
The part about how modern protests are focused on things like "no cuts to Medicare" instead of organizing to push for improvements and expansion of those programs... I think about that alot.
I think there's been a proliferation of genres and subgenres, but at the expense of their development. Stuff from the 60's and 70's is so good because it's the culmination of the decades of refinement of just a few genres. Today there is a ton of experimentation, but few genres receive anywhere near as much attention and development as those which have rise to the Beatles. Basically every Beatles song was drawing on a set of mature musical ideas and getting support from an equally mature music industry, whereas today it feels like artists are having to start from scratch a lot more. The labels don't help them as much. You won't see stuff like Sgt. Pepper's because honestly who is going to be able to write and produce that?
His music example isn't amazing but look at mainstream music. Here's the nominations for best rock album grammy: AC/DC, Chris Cornell, Foo Fighters, Black Pumas and Paul McCartney. Some of them are literally dead and all are creatively dead. Turn on a radio, stuff sounds exactly like it did 20 years ago, or a purposeful pastiche of what music sounded like 40 years ago.
Movies are the same, all based on 40 year old comics. I think he's pretty on the money.
Does a Grammy nomination really reflect the actual variety of new and interesting music out there though?
No not at all, but it's certainly symptomatic of what he's describing. Ultimately music has had it's barrier of entry lowered so much that there still is wild, exploratory music coming out, but music as it exists for probably 90% of the population is just top 40 so it's worth examining and reasonable to reach this conclusion.
I think movies make for a better example of cultural stagnation.
well, no sir you can't copy that nft! No, Stop! :garfield-trespass: :NOOOOO:
I think the point he's making follows along his idea of hauntology, echoes of the past swirling around. There is new music sure, but his idea as I understand it is that there aren't really new synthesis in musical pop culture, just the rearranging and mashing of that which already existed by the mid 90s. From an artistic perspective, I think there's some truth to that, but as others have noted, he sort of gets lost in the sauce on this one. His writing on culture and media is pretty eclectic though, might be interesting in its own right.
nah he said a criticism of social justice so he's a chud wrecker and his suicide should be celebrated
