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 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?
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