Is a counterculture still possible?

john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
padraig (u.s.) said:
however I absolutely agree it's impossible to discuss without looking at mass culture

obviously there must first be a culture for something to counter

tho I don't see why counterculture needs be unified or en masse? the counter is the key element.

and that has to do with imagination. there's some mythic element in it, an origin story in counter to the origin story of hegemony.

i.e. black metal of early 90s
Click to expand...

I think for me a counter culture suggests a degree of scale which is greater than what you got with black metal.

If there is an actual challenge to mainstream culture then there has to be large numbers of people involved. So hippies or rave culture in Europe and the US. Maybe rastafari in Jamaica...

Obviously within all these things there a different tensions - so with rave you have actual contestation going on with free parties but at the same time as that you have entrepreneurs like Pete Tong.

Punk was DIY, fanzines and squat parties and a safety pin through the Queen's nose. But also Malcolm McLaren's "Rock n Roll Swindle" and "Cash From Chaos".
 
T

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
blissblogger said:
punk as conservative / postpunk as radical

depends how you look at it

musically for sure, postpunk was more radical and forward-looking

but attitudinally or as a politics....

in its purest form, punk was purely nihilistic, self-destructive, wanton, apocalyptic - the inversion of all values - omni-directional rage blasting and burning all before it, then expiring leaving nothing behind

postpunk by comparison was constructive, progressive, thoughtful - reformist.
Click to expand...

hot contention: feel free to ridicule. abslute nihilism is the opiate of the reactionary. what i like about acid was it's attack on the petrified values of the past, but also in a dialectical way connecting back to drumming circles and the earliest forms of trance music - the pipe/drone and the drums. which also connects back to the astute observation that danny made last night. in london and essex there was a massive working class soul/jazz funk/boogie scene pre acid. there was always that malcolm mclaren element in the punk philosophy wasn't there. like i call myself a techno punk in my twitter bio but I wish I could ditch the term really lol. and sure anarcho punk and ii love subhumans and crass as much as anyone but it all seemed to be trapped in never fully breaking from rock music. why didn't free thrash anarcho punk exist diversed from all rhythmic continuity? probably because it would've been seen as not prole enough and bourgeois decadence. this is always the problem with the 'we wanna educate da workerzzz fru moozik' oxbridge ideal. in fact i think rare groove despite its exclusivity and snobbishness probably did more to mix white and black ppl in clubs than punk ever did.
 
Last edited:
T

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
padraig (u.s.) said:
I think you're simplifying punk, post-punk, and their relation to each other and conservatism a bit

but I would agree that that modality is far more important than the art itself, exist to the extent to which the form of the art itself embodies or comments on that modality

I think one could hypothesize in general that scenes of people with more relative cultural privilege are more resistant to commodification

i.e. they can better afford not capitalize, in monetary or other terms, on their cultural production
Click to expand...

I mean my alt history take is what would have happened if 1950s radio played hardbop rather than showtunes and musicals?
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
blissblogger said:
the commodification phase
- is that in fact the measure of a successful revolution? one that actually gets out there into everyday life and affects ordinary people
Click to expand...
is it?

I think that's excellent measure of the extent to which revolution succeeds in being revolutionary

but is revolution a necessary terminus of counterculture, or is it sufficient just to exist in counter?

you and John both regard scale as a prerequisite. I don't, and I don't see why it need be.

I'm strongly of the opinion that none of the examples cited, or any others that might be cited, have been a real "challenge" to mainstream culture, in any way, at any point

anything legitimately challenging is almost instantly defanged, sanitized, and sold back to you

so to me a counterculture doesn't need reach a critical mass to be legitimate or successful

the key element is the counter, the tension of existing in counter
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
that's what I mean by a problem of imagination

you still have to do all the work to establish a thing, but you have to be able to imagine it first

is it possible to imagine a counterculture that exists outside of what is now?

that's why I thought Danny's mention of 4chan etc was so interesting, because he's right, it does have in it that tension

if anything alt right culture has been massively more successful in changing mainstream culture than any counterculture I can think of

maybe it's because reaction is inherently more resistant to recuperation and commodification, because it is intrinsically deeply uncool
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
like, Richard Spencer etc may know how to market their ideas in a cool (i.e., appealing to their target demographic) way

but the ideas themselves are stodgy, constrictive, fearful

i.e. not cool
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
padraig (u.s.) said:
doesn't need reach a critical mass to be legitimate or successful
Click to expand...
I should be more clear

a critical mass, yes - to go from conception to codification a counterculture, or a subculture, needs to reach a critical mass of people and participation

but that critical mass doesn't need to be large, tho it can be. the key quality is intensity.
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
one interesting thing this thread is foregrounding is counterculture's lack of inherent moral quality

which I guess is obvious, but I at least usually associate it with "good" things
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
"trapped" implies wanting to break free but being unable to, and I think it's largely inaccurate here

what's the reason to break from music? because you want to. what if you don't want to? why would you?

Crass was among other things a great weird rock band. When the balance tipped too far in favor of weird, later in their career, they became a much lesser band. See also, Flux.

That doesn't happen to everyone. Sometimes bands or producers get better the weirder they get. It's just not an imperative for everyone to break free.
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
using the music itself to judge whether or not something is culturally or philosophically revolutionary is strange to me
 
other_life

other_life

bioconfused
(dumb question) is a counterculture still desired? or desirable? what is culture to be countered to begin with? what the fuck is going on
 
pattycakes_

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
Most culture because its almost all corporate.

There are some cultures which will probably never be coopted like psytrance and goth but on the whole it looks like anything that appeals to the youth in a rebellious or underground way will be engulfed by the corps and Internet tribes within seconds of its birth these days. So maybe a good question is is there a way of hacking that and coming up with something that couldn't be coopted while not being as cheesy as the aforementioned?
 
T

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
padraig (u.s.) said:
I would ask, was/is that the ultimate purpose of punk? or for that matter, of rare groove?
Click to expand...

I don't think these things have ultimate purposes. they start off as ad hoc mercantilism to begin with so the commodification phase is insipient from the outset, though it takes time for the energy field to escape this merchant level nexus and go full national/transnational...
 
woops

woops

is not like other people
pattycakes_ said:
anything that appeals to the youth in a rebellious or underground way will be engulfed by the corps and Internet tribes within seconds of its birth these days.
Click to expand...

this is what Debord called recuperation. He foresaw it happening to the Situationist movement itself
 
D

DannyL

Wild Horses
padraig (u.s.) said:
that's what I mean by a problem of imagination

if anything alt right culture has been massively more successful in changing mainstream culture than any counterculture I can think of

maybe it's because reaction is inherently more resistant to recuperation and commodification, because it is intrinsically deeply uncool
Click to expand...

Been offline and on holiday so just catching up.... I disagree with your point somewhat - if we focus out on the big picture and don't focus in on any one counterculture, I think "the Left" in a really broad sense has set an agenda in a lot of ways. Angela Nagle (in the book I mentioned, Kill All Normies) makes the point, quoting someone else (I forgot who}, that if the Right won economically (from Thatcher/Reagan onwards) the Left won culturally. The values of a whole generation or two of young people. the politics, the art and music made heavily reflected a leftish bias, opposition to conservative values and sexual mores, openness to equality on a variety of fronts etc etc. In a way this is so much our intellectual wallpaper we can't imagine not having it. This is why the 4 Chan/alt right shit is so shocking - to hear young people breaking with this unrecognised set of conventions.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top