[Marxism] Michael Berube on Thomas Frank

["Charles Brown" <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

From: Louis Proyect 

-clip-

Salon: Right, so your real problem is with the kind of cultural-studies 

intellectual who believes that pop culture really is subversive.

Frank: Yes, exactly. The cultural studies people read these products of 

capitalism as face value. They see fake rebellion as the real thing. To put 

it in very vulgar terms, thats the argument.

---

CB: My sentiments substantially. I'm working on a critique of hip hop
"culture" somewhat in the same vein.

There may be " real impetus behind the transgressive, hip hop lifestyle, "
in the form of reaction to capitalist poverty and racism, and youth
expressions of rebellion against same. But at this point it would seem that
the entertainment corporations have successfully perverted it into its
opposite: "training" to become gangsters, i.e. lumpen proletarians or
captialists-in-embryo.

As an American teenage genre, which tradition began, I would say, with rock
'n roll, hip hop has had its day , and stayed too long at the party. By my
count, hip hop has stayed around for twenty years, thus robbing the new
demi-generation of youth of the opportunity to create their own music and
lifestyle. Hiphop is now dogmatic and hogmatic, conservative, oppressive. 








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