[Marxism] The politics of neo-liberal culture: a review of Beautiful things in popular culture

[<g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I am currently reading through Alan McKeeâs Beautiful Things in Popular 
Culture. I work along side McKee in the Creative Industries Faculty at QUT here 
in Brisbane.  This is I think an important book in the sense that reading it 
gives one a viable sample from which one can construct a reliable index of the 
state of  contemporary cultural studies. McKeeâs own introduction sets the 
tone for the entire volume.  It begins with the de rigeur personal anecdote, in 
this case the story of how he bought his mother the wrong historical romance 
novel and was shocked to find that there were good and bad historical romance 
novels. 

From this McKee leaps to a consideration of the quality problem in aesthetics.  
He discovers it has already been solved.  All one has to do is to ask the 
fan/consumer what they think is good or bad in the particular domain or market 
niche they inhabit. Crucially there can be no comparisons between the niches. 
Thus it is forbidden to consider whether Thomas McLaughlinâs spiritual 
experience   (sic) when watching Michael Jordan is of the same order of the 
experience of watching say King Lear. So the book proceeds to take us through a 
variety of market niches or domains ranging from Batman comics to Nike shoes.  
In every article an academic turned  fan speaks forth of the moment of 
enlightenment when he or she linked up with the commodity of a life time. 

The academic as critic is no more.  Thus Claire Gould tells us of how she fell 
in love with Nike Air Max Classic TW and went steady all her life. The deeply 
felt moment of personal epiphany is usually accompanied with details of the 
monetary significance of the commodity. I suspect the latter is provided to 
reassure us that although the posture of the author is this collection is often 
quite radical, at heart he or she is just another jolly harmless if a little 
nutty consumer.

Of course it is the link to the market that gives us the key to understanding 
McKeeâs âaestheticsâ.  The walls of modernism have crumbled.  Artâs 
hard won autonomy from capitalist values is no more. Rather we have not only 
the fulsome embrace of market values, and this is crucial to understand, the 
very substitution of these values for art. Consumption now is god.  Anything 
which interferes with this is to be scorned and eliminated.  The notion of 
transcendence is unthinkable.  Occasionally as in Mark McClellandâs hymn to 
the joys of anonymous sex there is an outright attack on the political 
alternative, in this case the gay movement.  This is bad because it is boring 
and takes precious time away for the essential purpose of life - anonymous 
gobbling (Mc:Lelland, 2007: 84-5). To be gay it seems is so 70s.  Perish the 
thought that one would not be trendy and up with the latest fashion.

But of course McLellandâs moves here, as in his call for the appointment of a 
Minister for Public Sex, are designed to shock and scandalize and outrage. 
Moreover that is really the purpose of this little volume. The authors 
accompany their worship and fetishization of the commodity and thus their total 
conformity to capitalist values with the gesture calculated to shock and 
outrage the old and those whose commitment to consumption has somehow wavered 
or weakened. McKee is of course the clown prince of these enfants terribles â 
these 30 something year olds who are all going on 15. But despite the risk of 
being caricatured as a âgrumpy old manâ one needs to point out that he and 
his contributors are all born under the sign of TINA- there is no alternative.  
They are all Thatcherâs children. Their ideas and their careers are 
impossible to imagine without the total victory of neo-liberal economics in the 
Western world.

But there is a world outside the text.  Though if this were the only book to 
survive then admittedly it would be impossible to reconstruct the world of the 
early part of the 21st Century. The future reader of this text would have no 
idea of the struggles that are taking place all over this planet now, to save 
the world from the environmental devastation caused by unbridled and unplanned 
industrial production. Nor would the future reader know of the thousands of 
children who die every day for wanting of something as simple as clean water.  
Nor would the future reader know of those who have rejected the notion of TINA 
and who continue to struggle for a better and more peaceful world.

Let me however imitate now the contributors to this volume and insert the 
personal anecdote.  It is good Friday 2007.  The date has no religious 
significance for me but for millions around the world it does.  So perhaps it 
is not a bad time to think of things beyond consumption. In any case this 
morning I logged unto <palestinianpundit.blogspot.com> a site run by a 
Palestinian Tony Sayegh.  There I found a photo of two little girls screaming 
in terror and covered in blood. Below there is a cartoon which places the same 
girls on a ferris wheel which is spinning around both them and the trappings of 
modern war fare.  The author of the cartoon has attempted to place the horror 
of the girls within a context.  He has tried to make an eloquent cry for a 
world where little girls will not know the terror of blood and brutal death. As 
a cartoonist his is a popular art. But here the word popular retains something 
of the meaning of coming from the people and being for the people. It has none 
of the connotations that drive McKeeâs work.  Value here is not determined by 
the market but rather by a commitment to the welfare of the people. The photo 
and the picture both take us a long way from Mckeeâs anthology with its hymns 
of praise to motor bikes, nike shoes and glory holes. The cartoon and the photo 
take us to the real world and the contemplation of human suffering and the 
imperative to do something about it.

regards

Gary

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