Popular
Culture is Romantic…
Most world, or
globalized, popular culture is romantic… irredeemably so. For we are all,
still, late Romantics… Yet, how can this be the case?
To
begin with we might ask… can the term, ‘romantic’, really include the contents
of popular cultures from all corners of the world? Romanticism, after all, is
associated with the 18-19th century art cultures of the West. Yet
the term is apposite in two senses: first, in most cultures, we find some
variant of a ‘Nature first’ philosophy or ideology (Natural Law, ‘essence’,
‘natural feeling’) - the big idea which lies at the basis of ‘Romantic Thought’
- usually combined with the prevailing forms of religion (Natural Law as Divine
Law), and which in some localities is still found bound together with certain
forms of Nature worship inherited from tribal times. Second, if we then put
these inherited local factors together with the cultural globalization due to
urbanization and economic globalization combined (in some cases going back to
the influence of Western Romanticism on the art cultures of India, China and
Japan), then we have a ready welcome for the romantic habits of thought and
feeling that I am going to suggest dominate not only many aspects of our ‘art
culture’ (the ‘religion of culture’ or ‘culture’ as replacing ‘religion’), but
also our popular culture.
Furthermore,
we might also want to ask… what happened to Modernism and Post-modernism? Have
not the cultural epochs (or fashions) moved on beyond those born out of the
late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? And what of the larger picture: are
we all not living in something we like to call, ‘Modernity’, product of the
cumulative (even accelerating) changes began in the Renaissance, resulting in
the Enlightenment and then gathering pace on into our day – influencing life
even at the furthest ends of the earth? But the outlook or mood of early modern
culture was active, forwards looking. Romanticism, however is reactive… that
is, it is beset with a backwards looking obscurantism which is the result of a
reaction against the urban,
commodity, industrial, and scientific revolutions… With many aspects of
modernism –foremost literary modernism- as an extension of this reaction, as
well as a continuing elite reaction to the advent of mass society (that is, to
popular culture). Interestingly, the visual arts reacted more positively, often
celebrating the ‘shock of the new’, as industrial form and new kinds of
space/time (as when Pre-Raphaelite and ‘arts and crafts’ romantic medievalism
and ‘back to nature’ Art Nouveau were followed by Futurism, Constructivism,
Cubism and Art Deco). However the general tendency of all trends was to
continue the critique, generally a reactive ‘critique’, that is a conservative
reaction, to modern changes, just as the more radical experiments and
manifestos of the early part of the twentieth century disappeared in
the conservative reactions that accompanied the arrival of the ‘neo-feudal’
totalitarianisms (as Party and State took the place of the middle and business
class and overtook the nascent organs of popular representation and civil
society along with the market). Whence the popularity of past and future, and above
all, mythic utopias… The past as contrast with the fallen present: this
contrast then becoming the basis for projections into the future.
So
with particular reference to utopic solutions, we note the co-incidence of
pathways, of origins, from romantic politics, left and right (the responses to
the worst fluctuations of the nineteenth century trade cycles) as, whatever the
lip service given to small scale ‘community’, ‘direct democracy’, or tribal,
‘pre-class’, organic unity, in practice we find a heading back to variations on
feudalism-plus-nationalism as the ‘stable solution’ to the capitalist trade
cycle, class antagonisms, fractious government and technological crisis… And
again we note a fondness for the notion of an ‘organic’ society before the fall
into the evils of the City and Industry and the anomic individualism of the
Reformation (another ‘Myth of Pastoral’). Given the preponderance of the look
back, the ideological nostalgia of ‘the Fall’, equally in tune with romantic
reactivity is ‘Medievalism’ as a return to Romance, the heroes and magic of
Romance (revived from Coleridge and Byron to Tennyson). Now again (yet again,
after Wagner, the nineteenth century visual blockbuster) repeated in the return
of the Norse gods, Thor, Loki, etc., in film, and in the universes of Tolkien,
CS Lewis (and the world of Harry Potter) completing the chain from Romantic
revival, to Modern to Post-modern, in the flood of CGI Marvel ‘super heroes’ (a
‘romance’ re-echoed in film ‘realism’ as all action heroes become
indestructible)… together with global television drama ‘blockbusters’ such as
‘Game of Thrones’ and its many imitators. ‘Medievalism’ (ever present as sword
and sorcery) when projected into the future becomes knights in space, the kind
of sci-fi or science fantasy we associate with ‘Star Wars’ - but the ‘nobility’
and ‘aristocracy’ together with implied genetic superiority assumed by all
ruling castes, all are there. Furthermore, in science-fiction films such as
‘Avatar’, we are presented with a universe where good and sentient
(personified, animist) Nature, together with a tribal society (living ’as one’
with Nature) are counter-posed to an evil greed-driven industrial society led
by technology (the allegory is none too subtle).
‘Dune’
is an interesting case in point; an example of a typically medievalist
science-fantasy with ‘Empires’ constituted by noble ’Houses’ and contrasted to
small scale communities, in yet another transplant of ’feudal-type’ relations
to an imagined ’futuristic’ universe. A question we might perhaps wish to ask
here… is this vision the result of the romantic projection, so limiting our
imaginations to the last or previous style, or is it rather a case of political
imagining as limited to these ’opposite’ extremes… (large or ’meta-frame’ State
contrasted against smaller ‘village’ communities - an echo of Rousseau
perhaps). Here it is interesting to note how the (‘aristocratic’) family unit
is socially and politically ‘bigger’ (as the centre
of a fiefdom), than the, more democratic, small scale communities… The role of
the individual then becomes that of the dissenting ‘outsider’ either on the
outskirts of society (forerunner of underclass anti-heroes) or the heroic
leader of the ‘resistance’. Again we note that this limitation is ’romantic’
and that the utopian alternatives which exploded with Romanticism and Modernism
were all fantasy versions of a ‘back to Nature’ type and its combination with
tribal models… (while resting on nationalism and
creating a neo-feudal polity in actuality). Real process-based thinking, that
is real historical imagining in science-fiction, say from Wells to Stapledon to Azimov, features,
not final solutions or future heavens, but a succession of problems… some
exceeding humanity and its reach…
Alternatives… so
often still show the many received -and persisting- layers of romantic
reactivity found together with a thin measure of rational response… but often
just a veneer, impossible to separate from the prejudices of the time… (in the
Enlightenment the ‘savage’ was not yet the ’ideal’, romantic savage of the 19th
century…). Thinking therefore begins with a critique of prior forms and habits,
not only ‘Romantic’, but also those of the ‘Enlightenment’…
So
what we have, along with a rerun of mythic heroes yet again (just as in actual
Myth) ‘saving the world’, is, in effect, a feudal retrieval or revival. A
double turn, a double re-turn, back to an equally mythic feudalism: in the
dream of stability which also points back to tribalism, the eternal ‘before’,
as the dream of original unity with Nature as social stability or ‘oneness’;
and in the desire to see narratives with great leaders and warriors as saviours (rather than as part of the problem). Where right
is might and so might may be safely be thought of as right…
(with this love of ‘might’ as yet another variation
on the idea of the ‘survival of the fittest’ in its popular incarnation
as brute force, echoing the return of biogenetics as ‘Nature’, as ‘what is
natural’ – the science and the ‘Nature’ having as little to do with one another
as a DNA code and its ‘gene expression’ has to do with what we would wish to
believe is our secret ‘essence’ - as ‘it’s only natural’… heaven or gene-given…
‘gift of Nature’ etc., etc…).
Indeed, all of romanticism’s wake in recent culture is about the continuance or
re-assertion of a ‘Nature First’ philosophy where whatever is believed
(culturally inherited conservative codes of behaviour,
morals and aesthetics) or desired (the same but often projected forwards) is
deemed as ‘natural’ (read ‘easier’ to believe in or understand, ‘grounded’,
simplified…). Just as smaller scale societies, face to face communities,
are also regarded as ‘more natural’ - as a source of return to what has been
‘lost’ by civilization, modernity and mass society. Whence the prevalence of
the myth of the Fall, the Myth of Pastoral, of the
Return to Nature, ‘back to the time before’… the return to the ‘essence’ (now
lost), yet again re-packaged as genetics (a ‘return‘, or abuse of science,
which now seems to happen every few decades). The fantasies, of extreme left
and right, recycled and prevalent yet again (as it seems they must be in
response, in reaction, to any prolonged crisis), are based upon such stuff…
But humanity is
cultural, that is we make our own environment, part of which, our beliefs and
habits, our thought of what is ‘natural’, our action on ourselves and on
objects, together with our attitudes to these, fictionalized or incarnate, as
our ‘popular culture’…
With much high
culture too, not least in philosophy, still trapped in its elitist reaction to
popular culture… as in the competing ‘Sublimes’ with, popular Gothic spectacle
versus the melancholic void.
And if popular culture
is globalized, then global high culture is even more so, with, for some decades
now (from the late twentieth century on), art everywhere looking much the same,
a ‘globalised post-conceptualism’ – the world’s first
(and so far ‘last’) global art trend… as art culture reaches its plateau… the
global ‘end of art history’ indeed…
‘Cultural’,
as in ‘man-made; but also as increasingly driven by the part of our culture
that reproduces things and services more efficiently, our technology… So at the same time as reacting
‘against’ many aspects of modernity, our culture is being reshaped by our
technology – the very symbol of modernity – even as it reacts against it.
Moreover, all our cultures, and notably our popular culture, is
increasingly disseminated by this very technology – which in turn demands a
suitable culture to disseminate. Including, the now much publicised
and discussed, but still largely ignored, digital use, provocation or
manipulation of ‘affect’, the harvesting of affect, with the concomitant need
for the consumer to ‘feel’ rather than to ’think’; which provides the new
medias, the new means of communication (of contact, and of information and
entertainment location and retrieval), the information the parent companies
(read Big Capital and Big State) need for advertising revenue and political
management (so putting our secrets up for sale and our lives held hostage by an
AI driven bureaucracy). Together with the prediction of our tastes and behaviour… which means the ability to predict our desires…
to be second guessed by a machine not yet even arrived at self-consciousness…
to be utilized by a shopkeeper or politician, who cannot (or will not)
comprehend the implications of a machine culture they believe they can control…
So the means of transmission
and consumption of popular culture have become faster and more convenient, more
readily under our control and more open to our participation and therefore also
to popular creativity (where not limited by censorship) – but have behind them
a means of storage and calculation not under our control. Two levels to
technology and popular culture; the surface foam where dolphins frolic and the
undertow increasingly dominated by ever larger sharks…
In
this way the Romantic reaction and its attendant cultural flavours
(‘medievalism’, the Gothic, the supernatural, hero worship, sublime landscapes,
doomed but pure ‘romantic love’, the return to Nature worship as ‘essence’ and
as ‘gene’) which was originally part of a high cultural reaction against mass
society, that is nascent popular culture, along with the social formation and
many faceted revolutions that brought it into being, also turned into Modernism
(equally maintaining its distance to the popular) and then Post-modernism
(which co-opted many aspects of popular culture, whilst still maintaining a
‘high’ end in an unsteady alliance with the ‘low’ against the ‘middle brow’ –
no doubt as part of its general appropriation of transgression and shock as
generational markers and as a response to the cultural market). Now become an
integral part of popular culture too, with romantic ideological flavours, medievalism, the supernatural and romantic love,
exoticism and tourism, all accompanying the more purely ideological (read
‘metaphysical’) propositions, such as the priority of ‘Nature’ (often found in
the thought of the Left in the guise of ‘materialism’) and the return to a
Platonic style ‘essence’ differing according to belief and desire…
In effect, we find
ourselves swimming in a culture which, on at least two counts, is a danger to
ourselves: once as a reactive formation, unable to deal rationally with present
day issues (and so a politics to suit); the second as a further infantilisation of everyday consciousness, as demanded by
the software we employ on a daily basis… Now the latter we may employ to good
effect (say in education, research or business where the distractions are
ignored and the advantages appropriated): this option however requires an ever
greater conscious use, a greater distance and an ever bigger picture (just a
little comparative history works wonders here) – not least when most of the
putative ‘cures’ are themselves symptoms of the problem (and clear repetitions
of past mistakes…).
An
epochal error may in this way become perpetual (whilst we swim in a social
system or period we recognise as the same, as
connected and continuous). But then the arrival of this system (and the
eventual reaction we call ‘Romantic’) also produced a culture with the
conflictual music of Beethoven (the Sonata form) and the literature of conflict
and reason called ‘Jacobin’ along with the other literatures of the
Enlightenment that preceded the Romantic turn. Indeed
whilst the Sonata form’s extension in the Symphony, may have become ‘romanticised’ in its content and colouring,
(from later Beethoven to Mahler and beyond) nevertheless it did not become
mono-thematic, nor simply tone ‘landscape’ painting, and if perhaps ebbing away
as an original form after World War 2, nevertheless became ever more popular in
concert performance and in recording. Which suggests that the sonata form and
its built-in conflict as either a meaningful representation of society, or
(more usually), of the experiencing subjectivity, the inner struggle of the
modern subject (self as hero, or subject of the main theme), which in turn
suggests that the struggle on which this musical ‘representation’ was based,
that of the entry into modernity and the struggle with feudalism, once over,
was not succeeded by another analogous ‘class’ struggle or new social form as
the social ‘origin’ of any new impulse in music, but rather that the cultural
forms that attended the birth of our epoch remain valid for our experience -
classical become popular music - become ‘classic’ for our epoch. On the philosophical
front, Hegel may indeed have become a court philosopher (but his private
letters perhaps indicate otherwise) however his praise for the role of the
State may also be read as a recognition that the State may be the only
practical engine of reform - for progress as well as conservatism. Reform at
once of the ‘economy’, and for the population at large its economic
participation and its democratic representation (and not reform in favour of a narrow financial class interest) - in contrast
to the dream of the populace liberated from the State (normally libertarian
individualist, even if, in theory, collectivist and communal). With this latter
idea as perhaps part of the larger reactive fantasy of left/right
‘neo-feudalisms’ born of the current system’s shortcomings and now warmed over
at every crisis in a mindboggling lack of political imagination - or should
that be cynically corrupt political reason… (as well
as the necessary prerequisite of a complete absence of historical memory…).
Thought and feeling once again divide our options…
*
And how interesting that the latest
twenty-first century technology and the fashions of thought and feeling
apposite to the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries fit together so
tidily. The key lies in emotion, the essence, the heart, of one (that takes us
away from ourselves, on a ride, forgetting all) the surface, patina, or veneer
of the other… (where it acts as a lure).
The cult of feeling and its appropriation.
For mass
pop culture as entertainment is primarily emotional, ‘escapism’ in the good
sense, providing pleasure for those tired by the day’s work, or -if from one of
the more unfortunate parts of the world- a relief for those facing daily horror
in their lives - occasionally educational (providing role models and dealing
with everyday problems). But also perhaps… oft-times anti-intellectual (at
least in Anglo-Saxon cultures)?
Furthermore,
popular music may trace its genealogy from the ancient and eternal genre of the
complaint, through the courtly love tradition, revived in the nineteenth
century (poets began to write sonnets again) and continuing on into the
contents of today’s pop lyrics. So from a courtly reaction to the reality of
arranged marriage to a perhaps still similar situation at the time of its
revival as a theme for the romantic lyric (and including the folk lyric, as
part of the process of the movement of people from country to town, as the urbanisation process takes over as driver of popular
culture). In this way creating an urban popular culture,
which then developed from a minority to a mass cultural phenomenon.
Leading to today’s uneasy yet perpetual mix (as an new synthesis or plateau or
stable mass cultural formula) made up of the ever-green complaint (life will
never be perfect) often allied with a dose of ‘knowing‘ cynicism and the staple
emotions underlying the difference of lyric and anthem.
Often overlooked in cultural
criticism is the question of food as key feature of popular culture. Which
brings us to an interesting complementary conflict between tradition (the
‘authentic’) and pluralism (in the UK since the food revolution of the 1970s
with the resulting influx of the world’s foodstuffs in to our supermarkets,
penetrating even the most far-flung village and the ubiquity of the ‘Chinese
take-away’, followed by, dare I say, the, a little more authentic, Chinese and
Indian restaurant) and the resulting obsession with the exotic… (from the ‘vindaloo’ as post pub trail of gastronomic honour to the arrival of Szechuan style cooking – usually
with its trademark spiciness much muted). These latter, exotic choices, of
course, are a key aspect of romantic preference as well as mark of market
cyclic inventiveness… And, again, as so often, despite their apparent
opposition - and indeed actual opposition too (if we consider romantic fashions
as reactive to the capitalist market) then we often find them together - it’s
called, ‘appropriation’ - but then we remember that both came into being
together… (Romantic culture is capitalist culture…). ‘The traditional’,
moreover, we might note, is the exotic, for those not brought up on it…
Indeed,
in the long view, ‘alternative’ fashions also take on a decidedly reactive colouring, as we move thorough ‘Hippie’ to ‘Punk’ to ‘Goth’
and their many variations, not least in the presentation of self, where the
sub-cultures in question appear to owe as much to a mimicry of the imaginary
medieval past, as to a reaction against the mainstream.
So these aspects… exoticism, fashion, rebellion,
transgression - all aspects of our present day debt to Romanticism, have become
an essential part of our popular culture… features of the generational cycle
and perhaps the economic trade cycle too… so still primarily reactive despite
the intense creativity often shown by the most talented practitioners in, say,
popular music. In which category I would include Jazz and ‘Progressive Rock’
and their influence, often thought of as a ‘crossover’, so occupying the
‘middle ground’, between ‘high’ and ‘low’ – as well as (as noted above) the
‘classic’ end of classical music. Indeed a ‘Big Middle’ made up of lifestyle
choices (read, differentiation, ‘distinction’, identity) with the erstwhile extremes
as just two more potential choices, may be the best descriptive model for the
culture of our times: perhaps a less egalitarian or more normative model, would
be the image of a broad pyramid, with mass ‘pop’ repetition as the bottom
(‘LCD’) and the latest ‘avant-garde’ experiment at the top (‘New Music’). Both
of these ways to model and interpret culture go beyond the partly defunct,
‘high/low’ or ‘art/pop’ opposition… Which now seems to work like most
oppositions; when presented with the contrast the difference is ‘obvious’, but
then when we return context, the mass of what lies in between, then the simple
contrastive or oppositional sense vanishes, along with the basis for a viable
model built upon this contrast… the extreme contrast being the result of a
choice made to show maximum contrast… a rhetorical opposition. As famously
found in the contrast of ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ art as ‘expressive’ versus
‘realist’; often encapsulated in the contrast of Chinese (black and white)
‘ink-wash’ style with the moment of the Renaissance when mathematical realism
(in colour) was, briefly, the rage… two utterly
unrepresentative moments or styles (with an eye to history, we might even dare
say that art is broadly representative in content and employing colour as the main means of expression).
Concluding
comment? Given is the massive weight of the received past masquerading as
modern culture (not including the rediscovery of older musics
or literatures or arts as well as their global equivalents, product of academic
or historical research, rising levels of education and market hunger – but
often consumed as an exoticism – but one which, ironically given its reliance
on contrast, does not pretend to be of the ‘now’). Much that espouses a ‘fresh
approach’ or is presented as ‘alternative’ historically turns out to be simply
yet another retread of an already well-worn tyre.
Worn to the point of danger where politics is concerned.
But simply stepping
back to some point ‘before’, also will not do… for, as noted above, past
ideologies are also fully loaded with prejudices inherited from the feudal
epoch as well as from the newly coined nationalisms… this is not a question of
‘before the fall’ but rather the removal of recurring, easy to believe,
emotional reactions, in favour of the clarity of
fact.
Thinking therefore
begins with a critique of prior forms and habits, both ‘Romantic’ and
‘Enlightenment’…
*
Afterword…
or attempt at a prescription… But is not what we call ‘popular culture’ anyway
made up of so much superstition (popular superstition is the popular side of
religion, as also is the popular gothic, the popular sublime – even a popular
sacred) made up of so many unconsidered beliefs and habits, some shared,
inherited, mimetic, some private, personal, and are we not expecting too much,
in imposing our ‘over-educated’ attitudes, when we normatively expect a more
rational approach? But this view itself is patronizing, assuming stupidity
where it does not to exist… demeaning popular forms of beliefs and desires we
all have and which are found expressed more negatively or abstractly in
‘higher’ levels of thought and belief? The issue after all is not emotional
superstition as such (thought it might be good to see more rational behavior in
areas of human experience which entail violence) nor the desire to sacralise our experience of our environment and others (and
indeed ourselves) in an attempt to give them value, but a particular form of
emotive response which lends itself to political manipulation. There is also
the question of what we mean by ‘rational’; one person’s ‘rational decision’
maybe another’s ‘irrational or unthinking response’. It may be a matter of
point of view, of whose thinking, interests and desires are to be taken as
rational and whose are not… (a ‘supporting fact’ criterion will deal with most
obvious falsity, interested statements with no basis in cause and effect, but
subjectively felt desires and strongly held transcendentals
or universals may be harder to avoid – after all we all espouse some of
these…). Descriptive blurs into prescriptive and the later in turn becomes
reified, as the dance of fact and value recommences… And so we are again
reminded that the structure of the argument itself (perhaps like all arguments
or certainly all complex arguments pertaining to real life situations) is diremptive: there is an object-ive
view where we describe the situation of culture as our object, a mode of behaviour as it happens, and a subject-ive
view which asserts, or would like to assert, what is, what should be, culture,
that is, to assert values… Perhaps unrealistically: certainly from an embedded
–so ‘interested’-point of view. Then again, the descriptive,
or objective step may be limited or biased, so subjective, and again the
subjective step may be liable to the criticism of belonging to a privileged
group –educationally speaking- according to a description of its genealogy and
genesis. A balance might be struck where ‘popular superstition’ lingers,
perhaps as a part of an expression of popular desire (even if it is
commercially exploited as such): but in other areas its generalisation
to all aspects and attitudes to life is refused. We witness the attempts to do
this in the ‘culture wars’ and the attempts -largely political- to expand
‘contested areas’ into evermore walks of life by religious ‘leaders’ seeking
publicity or ‘testing’ their converts (this is a problem with the
‘fundamentalist’ forms of religious experience and especially with their
political co-option). In such cases the exploitation of irrationality (with its
attendant and deliberate fictions) is clear.
So
we are returned to the resistance to the reactive as rational (as the means of
avoiding a purely emotive ‘response’…)… As we have seen economic and ‘liberal’
or inclusive solutions to the extremes of religion and politics have worked in
the post war period for counties that can afford them (had reached a given
level of development). But ‘materialist consumptionism’
as the ‘economic solution’ to the problems of belief and unreason works only
while consumerism delivers ‘the goods’; if it cannot (AI, unemployment, low
pay, boredom with work or satiety with ‘goods’, just rising expectations and
the demand for an ever higher social status) then the old reactive gods return,
searching for their mindless vengeance… Much the same can be said for the
inclusive or moderate form of belief in religion (or ideology… ie., nationalism as sensible patriotism, socialism as welfare
reform): once found to be failing in its solutions, to be seen to be ‘weak’ in
the face of other ‘strong beliefs’ or a strong ‘Other’, then the mimetic
‘identification with the aggressor’ (Freud, Girard) takes over and irrational
belief again becomes the order of the day in constructions and assertions of
identity, individual and collective. Once again, one answer to this lies in
education, in the ability to reason, to compare, to remember and to make
judgements. There is also the deployment of what we call ‘civilised
values’ as over and above the single value of the desire for material goods
(‘Good’ as opposed to ‘goods’); this is also the result of a balance, that of
market and community value (or commodity and identity exchange – normally found
fused in modern societies but separable in cases of identity assertion). This
latter often shows itself in a slightly ‘puritan’ or ‘abstentionist’
(or ‘drop-out’) type of approach which may not be for everyone… (and which we often find inflected generationally and
according to held traditions or newly found ideals – ‘environmentalism’ for
example). However, it does fit the need for subject assertion as part of a
resisting identity – nor ‘lifestyle’ (the imagining, or recognition of oneself
as part of an, often imaginary, community). However we look at it, the best
defense against blind reactivity is education and reason… preferably supported
by a sense of what it is to be ‘civilised’ (that is
as individuals: on a social level robust institutions and modern constitutions
constitute the best defense). And either way social policy (targeted at
concrete problems in the economy, technology and society and not in securing an
interest group) is required when laissez faire attitudes (which leave the weak
to the bully) fail…
*
Copyright Peter Nesteruk, 2022