Martin Dust
Techno Zen Master
Who can say, I'm just not a fan of the ole rose tinted view.
Reynolds on planet-mu
- Thread starter wonk_vitesse
- Start date
Who can say, I'm just not a fan of the ole rose tinted view.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Sure, and I'm certainly not saying it was an unalloyed success - I'm just questioning the assumption that it was an unalloyed failure!
Martin Dust
Techno Zen Master
That's a fair point we've just be talking about what we'd be using to measure the success/failure. I'll try and reply later (renders have finished).
noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
There's a bit in the Woodstock movie, and you'd hear it at raves and festivals, words to the effect of 'we're building a new society here'. And, I'd always wonder what they all thought they were going to eat and where they were going to shit when all the payed workers went home. Or rather people were still being exploited / exploiting themselves to make the cozy little TAZ possible.
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noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
I can see the headlines now.
The Counter Culture - NOT AN UNALLOYED FAILURE - Agree Several Dissensoids.
NOOOO, don't say that, you'll put me off the stuff for life!
I can't help but link what you're saying here about ecstasy to what you said in another thread about The Simpsons. Isn't it enough to just enjoy something for what it is without setting yourself up for disappointment by expecting to miraculously change the world, at which it'll inevitably fail? And as bassnation says, it's perfectly possible for ecstasy to change your* world. I think it changed me (for the better), too.
*not yours personally, of course, I mean "one's"
But that is not what we are talking about, is it?
The counter-culture is successful only in securing its own perpetuation within the body of culture at large, incorporated, unchallenging as it was always phrased in terms of the liberating potentiality of pleasure which is all too easily absorbed within late Capital. Its irrelevant whether it changes the individual consumer's world to me. As with the so-called sexual revolution, a few orgasms are hardly going to wreak a real politcal change, are they?
The counter-culture is an unmitigated failure except in terms of perpetuating the rights of the pleasure-seeking individual.
bassnation
the abyss
ha ha! you cynic!
bassnation
the abyss
there have been enormous step forwards in peoples lives because of the sexual revolution, contraceptives, a womans right to abort etc.
i'm bemused by the idea that the only kind of revolution that counts in peoples minds on dissensus seem to be big marxist ones, e.g. exactly the kind of revolution that will never happen. that seems to me to be a typical catholic view to interpret the winning of hard-to-come-by rights for women as nothing more than "perpetuating the rights of the pleasure-seeking individual".
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Martin Dust
Techno Zen Master
It didn't come about by doing E/LSD/Dope tho did it, that's the point. Emily Pankhurst didn't find herself at the fridge wondering why she was there and just gibber crap, man.
bassnation
the abyss
ha ha! no, i guess not. but like i said, we've got some great art to show for it and i know how much value you place on that for changing peoples lives.
Martin Dust
Techno Zen Master
Sure I do, but we aren't talking about individuals - what I'm saying is that if E was an attitude it would probably be "I'll do it tomorrow".
Exactly. On a personal level I have seen people destroyed and elevated (if only temporarily) by Ecstasy, but we aren't talking about that. Theoretically pleasure outside of productivity could be oppositional to Capital, but in effect it becomes a reward that you buy in exchange for wage labour, a part of the leisure system.
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bassnation
the abyss
jeez, didn't realise i was propping up capitalism every time i got pleasure from some activity out of work.
Martin Dust
Techno Zen Master
Well only as much as most of everything else you/I/anyone does! Look its not bad, its fine, its fun and all, but it ain't revolutionary. Which isn't usually worthy of much comment, except for the fact that the rave "moment" and its accompanying rhetoric is frequently phrased in revolutionary, Utopian terms. So Martin and I were discussing why the Utopian feeling, the purported revelatory empathogenic charge of E plus the anti-establishment positioning of Rave as movement never spilled out into a broader wave of social change outside of the scene, outside of the drugs etc... and the most obvious answer is that it is a pretend revolution, a parallel one which has no real effect outside of itself, a stand in for what people want but are denied under the terms of their current reality. Which doesn't mean it isn't interesting or worthwhile, merely that it functioned (like a lot of other phenomena) as a harmless release for people denied the liberation they desired.
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mistersloane
heavy heavy monster sound
Depends how much Wilhelm Reich or Joe Orton you read.
mistersloane
heavy heavy monster sound
Reading this book at the moment which is interesting about youth movements and cultural resistance in Serbia, Georgia and the Ukraine
http://www.timeout.com/london/music/review/book/437/matthew_collin_the_time_of_the_rebel.html
swears
preppy-kei
re: electronic music and revolution...
I'm too young to have gone to any of the original early 90s raves, but I have to admit that as a teenager electronic music represented this strange, alien, exciting thing that seemed to be the antithesis of everything dull and mindless about the 90s mainstream of laddism, consumerism and prosaic normality*. Dunno if it ever made me want to start blasting tory MPs with an AK-47, but it definitely rewired my whole way of thinking about society, popular culture, and how I consumed it.
*Not that things have improved in the meantime, obvs.
I'm too young to have gone to any of the original early 90s raves, but I have to admit that as a teenager electronic music represented this strange, alien, exciting thing that seemed to be the antithesis of everything dull and mindless about the 90s mainstream of laddism, consumerism and prosaic normality*. Dunno if it ever made me want to start blasting tory MPs with an AK-47, but it definitely rewired my whole way of thinking about society, popular culture, and how I consumed it.
*Not that things have improved in the meantime, obvs.
bassnation
the abyss
well, when you put it like that i'm inclined to agree. but why, in that case, do you think the authorities attempted to clamp down so hard on it? castlemorton and all that. but i do accept even in the case of castlemorton, people were fighting for their right to party, rather than anything else. but i also think lots of good came out of it even if you are right in saying it wasn't revolutionary.
Martin Dust
Techno Zen Master
The short answer to this is that authorites have always seen dancing as the devils work, from Elvis to spinning on your head.