So, I made the mistake of picking a performing arts degree, so I spend most of my days pondering how pointless of a degree it is. I did manage to pick a module about performance protest, and while some of it gets a bit bullshitty, there's been other parts like looking at native American performance/protest at the Dakota pipeline and stuff, which have been interesting and useful.
Yesterday there was some group work. It was a bit of a brainstorming exercise but as a group we settled on the idea of spamming the illegal immigrant report line/letterbox with shit so that new reports wont go through. Ok, it's nothing amazing, but it served the purpose of the exercise we were given.
Then this girl speaks up. Previously her contribution to class has been telling everyone about how she culturally enriched herself by going on holiday in places where poor people exist.
On our idea, she says that it might be illegal to do, so we should create a fake website and have people fill that in as a symbolic message.
A FAKE WEBSITE FILLED IN AS A SYMBOLIC MESSAGE
At that moment I realised why the arts seem so useless at changing things. It's jam packed with trust fund kiddies.
that is complete insanity. what could possibly drive someone to have that thought at my young age? To remove all potency from the tiniest little act. Seriously ghoulish.
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Holy shit I hate how accurate that is
i saw a zizek interview that talked about this more generally, i know hes hit and miss but i thought he had a good point on this
that back in the day you bought your commodities that you needed or wanted and that was an act you would feel ethically neutral or bad about (especially if it was an unnecessary treat). and you (as joe middleclass) would absolve your guilt separately by donating to charity or whatever - still in a commodified way, but entirely separately. whereas now with green capitalism (or other "ethical" capitalism), the two become intertwined in the same action, and purchasing these commodities becomes the good deed in and of itself - absolving the consumer of the perceived need to do anything else and also absolving any sense of a guilty, wasteful purchase. buying commodities becomes the way you save the planet. he was talking about rainforest friendly chocolate bars or something as the example, but the principle is the same.