I think the reason I have been filled with so much angst lately is because I find myself torn between my producer/consumer identity. While everyone is a consumer, myself included, not everyone is a producer. Producers need to consume because they do not possess a photosynthetic power, although there is a healthy equivalent in the transformative power of their consumption. I feel as though I straddle the line between consumer and producer because while I produce a great many material objects (i.e record/publish music, write novels, short stories, etc), I limit the dissemination on the one hand, and privately publish on the other. Maso-cannibal consumption. People assume it is worthless because I give it away for free, but really I give it away so it won't become a commercial commodity. Also, everything I produce tends to be filtered through, or reprised of consumer objects such as movies, books, "popular" music, etc.
You see, it sounds like I'm trying to rationalize being different, and by the same token, being special or "better than everyone." I'm a snob, which (I guess) is unfavorable in the professional atmosphere. I've been told that what I need is to be in a place with "more interesting people." It just makes me "feel bad" because I don't know why I expect so much out of people, out of myself, and then condemn them for their fallibility. Why do I expect so much out of people/myself? Why am I so unforgiving?
What does this have to do with Producer/Consumer... well, it just seems that the producer hates the consumer, and therefore the producer in me hates the consumer in me as well as the consumer in everyone else. Why does the producer have to hate the consumer though? What is the purpose of it? In a world of non-sustainability it would seem that the producers have every right to hate the consumers for it is the consumers' non-return of production that causes entropy and finally extinction. But it isn't the end of the world, just the end of us...although the universe will meet a similar end.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Culture
I've developed something of a pet peeve when people say they like [such and such a place] because it has Culture. Now I write Culture with a capital "C" because it is being treated like a proper noun as well as some sort of dignified concept. Middle class white people are pathetic when they talk about Culture as though it is something to be achieved, acquired, or obtained. It's like going to a European country and buying a bunch of souvenirs to place on display for all your friends come over to watch the game qualifies as "having Culture."
It's easy to spot a phony in Michigan because all you have to say is "I love Ann Arbor, it has so much Culture," and if they agree you know they are just another standard issue, middle-class yuppie. People used to drink coffee, now they drink tea. It used to be a validating life experience to backpack through Europe, now it's going to Australia. Once everyone wants to study abroad in Australia, some will want to avoid the cliche and head somewhere else and absorb the ideas and practices into their blank-slate middle class identity.
Equally annoying are those who pigeonhole people who are (for lack of better expression) alternative. I don't mean the hipster neo-beats who wish they lived in the '60s, but people who just don't follow commercialized mainstream. Now, I know there are a lot of people who think that they aren't mainstream, and don't think they fall into the category, so I'll do my best to elucidate. If you look at a person and think, "hippie" or "goth" or "artsy," you are an idiot. Why? Because this is pigeonholing, forcing someone into an idealized identity which is the same as profiling.
Middle-class Americans, no matter how hard they try to be unique, genuine, or authentic, will always fail because they don't have their own identities. I include myself in this, for no matter how hard I try to escape, I am still constructing my own identity. The difference is that I understand the dynamic fluidity and plurality of my identity. I know it isn't simple enough to just label me as something because I fit in and fall out of so many different identities simultaneously. Many people do, but there is this 2-dimensionality about most people that is centered around how much shit they've consumed. It is like the plumage on a very tacky, very irritating bird.
If you have too much shit, you're a tool. Not enough and you're a creeper.
Then there is this "alternative" mainstream that has spouted out of the growing popularity in being hipster. A hipster is a person that is too good for the mainstream, listens to indie music, dresses in a mismatched and "worn" style. Thick glasses and Beatles haircuts are also watermarks of these types of people. Beards on the men, short(er) hair on the girls. They like movies like Juno, Nick and Norah's infinite playlist, 500 Days of Summer, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Royal Tenanbaums. They used to like Donnie Darko, but that's not cool anymore because everyone has seen that. They also like David Sedaris and Chuck Palahniuk. They are still consumers, buying their identity and their beliefs through the movies they watch, music they listen to, and clothes they wear. They don't watch TV though, or at least they pride themselves on the fact that they don't own a TV or "never watch TV."
There are exceptions of course, depending on how much gravity one has with their particular group, but the only thing that individualism gets you is alienated. Still, middle-class Americans really believe that they are individuals and that they "are their own person." They are practically cookie-cutter replicas of one another. Even I have a doppelganger! But I don't go around telling people how much Culture I have, and I resent when people say I have Class. Being clean cut, or knowing the customs of countries other than one's own does not make them cultured, nor classy. Pretentious acts of showing off by doing things "the European way" or whatever is not sophisticated, it's annoying. It cheapens what really can be constituted as other cultures by absorbing cultural manifestations into the middle-class. It's neo-imperialism, instead of squashing out the minorities cultures, they decorate themselves from a cultural salad bar. That does not make them citizens of the world.. it makes the full of shit.
It's not that I'm against souvenirs, or travel for that matter, but I am against these things as a means of social currency that can be used to increase one's social value. The search for "Culture" is a fool's errand, and no matter what kind of "cultural collage" that you build while constructing your identity doesn't make you any different from anyone else. In fact, it makes you the same, cliche, standard issue, middle-class asshole that you think you're better than.
It's easy to spot a phony in Michigan because all you have to say is "I love Ann Arbor, it has so much Culture," and if they agree you know they are just another standard issue, middle-class yuppie. People used to drink coffee, now they drink tea. It used to be a validating life experience to backpack through Europe, now it's going to Australia. Once everyone wants to study abroad in Australia, some will want to avoid the cliche and head somewhere else and absorb the ideas and practices into their blank-slate middle class identity.
Equally annoying are those who pigeonhole people who are (for lack of better expression) alternative. I don't mean the hipster neo-beats who wish they lived in the '60s, but people who just don't follow commercialized mainstream. Now, I know there are a lot of people who think that they aren't mainstream, and don't think they fall into the category, so I'll do my best to elucidate. If you look at a person and think, "hippie" or "goth" or "artsy," you are an idiot. Why? Because this is pigeonholing, forcing someone into an idealized identity which is the same as profiling.
Middle-class Americans, no matter how hard they try to be unique, genuine, or authentic, will always fail because they don't have their own identities. I include myself in this, for no matter how hard I try to escape, I am still constructing my own identity. The difference is that I understand the dynamic fluidity and plurality of my identity. I know it isn't simple enough to just label me as something because I fit in and fall out of so many different identities simultaneously. Many people do, but there is this 2-dimensionality about most people that is centered around how much shit they've consumed. It is like the plumage on a very tacky, very irritating bird.
If you have too much shit, you're a tool. Not enough and you're a creeper.
Then there is this "alternative" mainstream that has spouted out of the growing popularity in being hipster. A hipster is a person that is too good for the mainstream, listens to indie music, dresses in a mismatched and "worn" style. Thick glasses and Beatles haircuts are also watermarks of these types of people. Beards on the men, short(er) hair on the girls. They like movies like Juno, Nick and Norah's infinite playlist, 500 Days of Summer, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Royal Tenanbaums. They used to like Donnie Darko, but that's not cool anymore because everyone has seen that. They also like David Sedaris and Chuck Palahniuk. They are still consumers, buying their identity and their beliefs through the movies they watch, music they listen to, and clothes they wear. They don't watch TV though, or at least they pride themselves on the fact that they don't own a TV or "never watch TV."
There are exceptions of course, depending on how much gravity one has with their particular group, but the only thing that individualism gets you is alienated. Still, middle-class Americans really believe that they are individuals and that they "are their own person." They are practically cookie-cutter replicas of one another. Even I have a doppelganger! But I don't go around telling people how much Culture I have, and I resent when people say I have Class. Being clean cut, or knowing the customs of countries other than one's own does not make them cultured, nor classy. Pretentious acts of showing off by doing things "the European way" or whatever is not sophisticated, it's annoying. It cheapens what really can be constituted as other cultures by absorbing cultural manifestations into the middle-class. It's neo-imperialism, instead of squashing out the minorities cultures, they decorate themselves from a cultural salad bar. That does not make them citizens of the world.. it makes the full of shit.
It's not that I'm against souvenirs, or travel for that matter, but I am against these things as a means of social currency that can be used to increase one's social value. The search for "Culture" is a fool's errand, and no matter what kind of "cultural collage" that you build while constructing your identity doesn't make you any different from anyone else. In fact, it makes you the same, cliche, standard issue, middle-class asshole that you think you're better than.
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