luka
Well-known member
so you're largely after a paradigm through which to absorb this kind of culture.
as someone who's more comfortable doing so than you (to the point i can actively venerate a certain north atlanta rap trio), i'd say acknowledging it's cultural place doesn't necessarily preclude engagement with it.
so hat adidas one we always talked about that inspired this thread:
1) you first reaction is to distance yourself from it. it's a lie. it's condescending and it's gross. (this is as it happens the position i took)
2) some people might try and acknowledge as if it wasn't adidas music, but that's a bit dumb and pointless. it's meritless on it's own anyway.
3) so i'd suggest that you embrace it's potency as a part of the adidas thing. it is this weird, ostensibly innocuous mantra that follows you round every youtube video you click. it is a completely fictionalised representation of peckham. so embrace the aesthetic of those things; it is scary music. it is uncomfortable. lean into that.
so it's that third perspective that allows me to relish in psychedelic materialsim for example.
What I need to do is register my discomfort with the way subcultures are stripmined and replaced with commodified artificial versions of themselves. the local razed in favour of the universal. I don't think there is anything wrong with saying, in a very straightforward way, I don't like it. theres nothing wrong with recognising the ravages of capitalism, the various ways in which the complexity and variety of reality itself is radically reduced. The homogenising aspect of capitalism. All this stuff is very real.
You can make various counter arguments. You can say the creativity of the underground directly fed by this need to be constantly starting from zero. That without the empire you don't have the Jedi. I think that those are good moves. But it's not the same as cheerleading for empire per se.