Re: Kulturindustrie

[Gelder@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

*Kulturindustrie and Social psychology* (2)


Mr. Dumain has now conceded what last week he contested hotly
and with much vitipuration: that a judgement on individual genres in
the mass media is hardly credible without including the political
background of the institutions we're dealing with. Let's see if we
can shift him on the next principle he defended with so much verve:
aesthetics and social psychology are two worlds, having nothing to
do with one another.

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> From the standpoint of those who have a different
> history and a different scale of comparison, Adorno's complaints about jazz
> seem as quaint today as Breton's surrealism: by American standards these
> people are all so small and tame.

small and tame? This invites psychoanalytic reflections on just who
is, in Mr. Dumain's view, large, tough and wild.

> It is comical for people brought up on
> African and Latin rhythms to learn that rhythm is fascist.  If you want to
> hear fascism, spend some time with young ghetto male riffraff listening to
> their hiphop shit.  Black folks have always loved to turn up the bass,
> having a taste for its percussive qualities going back to Africa, but if
> you want to witness a regression in listening, just listen to these kids
> crank up the bass to deafening levels drowning out everything else, and
> what do you hear, not African polyrhythms, but an endlessly repetitive
> CLUNK, DA-CLUNK, DA-CLUNK.  _This_, my friend, is the culture of fascism.

Friend? I stick to people who don't smash up the furniture when
they're criticised.
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Dr. Frederik van Gelder
Institut fuer Sozialforschung
Frankfurt University
Senckenberganlage 26
60325 Frankfurt am Main

Gelder@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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