POLITICS
OF POPULAR CULTURE: SOME REFLECTIONS
Prof. R. K. Singh
One cannot
live on a myth in the present; the tradition is being constantly transformed;
old is giving way to new in ways more than one. The new changes, or the crossover of trends and fashions, may be
generating a feeling of existential urgency; the sublime seems to be melding
with the trivial and the creative with the conventional. A sort of re-orientation is going-on so
rapidly that the classical concepts of culture appear out-dated.
It is also a
fact that the greatest number of new ideas in contemporary art, literature and
culture have been coming out from the west.
Western artists and cultural leaders have been extending the concept of
what constitutes contemporary art. It
is important to take note of a convergence of new attitudes, especially as
there has been a marked shift from the idealist to the materialist view.
The fabric of
popular culture, now a celebratory, is interwoven with change in the world of
media, along side too much soap Operas, MTV music, Mcdonald fast food, sexist
jokes, designer-label jeans, and aerobic sports-wear-all with a view to
maintaining ‘standards’. The so called
‘Cultural industries’ have been denigrated as tools of the hegemonic classes to
impose a passive subservience on the majority of people, be it Europe, America,
Asia or Africa. They manipulate the
multi-layered site of contemporary consumerist culture as well as the emerging
hybridisation of cultural identity.
A scrutiny of
the ‘popular’, its texts and practices, should help us in negotiating the
profound shifts in culture studies as also in relating post-modernist orthodoxy
to the post-cold war developments (in the erstwhile soviet bloc, and/or East
European countries), post-apartheid development ( in south Africa and elsewhere
on the African continent), post-colonial developments (in Asian and African
countries), and more recently, post - Sept11, 2001 development (in south/south-east/west
Asia, middle East, USA, and Europe).
The politics
of popular culture, howsoever post-modernist or post-colonial, is essentially
the politics of the ways in which we see ourselves, just as the culture, the
social, and the economic are hardly easily distinguishable from each
other. The relationship between popular
culture and its two arms, commerce and profit, is highly problematic. Instead of passively consuming a product,
users now actively absorb it and reworth it to construct their own meaning of
self, of social identity, and group cohesion.
After the
Sept 11 terrorist attack on American soil, there has been a greater American
hegemonic political and economic presence in every country: TV programmes, news
papers and magazines have been replete with American style and vision. Gradually, the American domination here,
there and anywhere, has resulted in a struggle by the subordinate and subaltern
forces, even terrorist forces, to demolish it.
A slow
ideological indoctrination (to sustain consumerist culture) of the masses, especially the expanding middle
class by powerful interests, is going on.
The middle class culture is frequently less affiliated to specific class,
regional, race, country or politics, and unofficially also remains indifferent
to ‘national’ questions, practising a sort of ‘transnational’ solidarity, as
far as consumerism is concerned. The
American popular culture has given rise, not so much to economic exploitation
as the capacity to be able to represent something, or someone, in a peculiar
way: as symbolic power and popular culture within the ambit of power. The media society-whatever its form, shape,
size, or colour –articulates this power, perhaps selectively, in a
contradictory fashion throwing open for others to decide with whom to associate
or empathise. It exposes the mechanism
of identity –creation, participates in identity politics, creates awareness of
exclusion or inclusion, and constructs counter-narratives with new critical
spaces and social practice. It acts as “central
political agent” of the powerful.
The politics
of popular culture reveals the conditions under which relationships of power
have been shaped in various parts of the world and apparently developed in an
emancipating way as everyday culture, or high culture, where new things are
emerging and creativity is thriving. In
music, for example, since the mid-1990s, musicians have been producing rhymes
that are faster, louder, funnier, and more lucrative. Choreographers have developed a new sense of body movement and
dance aesthesis. Computer evolution has
already led to a ‘net culture’ which links various art forms. Literature is already rooted in this world
today and trends in fashion industry are set by FTV models.
At times it
may appear difficult to reconcile the various impressions, including the desire
to break free of all constraints in art or destruction of its intrinsic
significance. The inherent
contradictions and heterogeneity of the ’melting pot’ that popular culture
seems to have turned into may not help us open the path to the human
consciousness or even initiate an intellectual debate. But whom to blame when “art blends so
seamlessly into the utilitarian”? To
quote Hanno Rauterberg, “Art, after all, is not dead, it is in a state of self-induced
paralysis.”
We are
marching into an indistinct future. We
experience the effects of globalization in such fields as communication, the
media, and the financial markets just as we are experiencing fragmentation of
politics vis-a-vis widespread religious casteist and ethnic conflict, secular
nationalism, and regional fundamentalism.
At the same time, we are witnessing impoverishment and economic
marginalization of a large part of the society. Almost all accepted norms and values are being called into
question, just as standardization and differentiation obtain at the same
time. However, the struggle continues
for coexistence of the glorious past and the naked modernization almost
everywhere.
What appears more appropriate is the need to appreciate the emergence of a greater degree of interculturalism. The ruling politicians should respect one’s right to be different and help create new cultural spaces for others to belong. They should help defuse, absorb and avoid those conflicts that result from the collision of world religions and cultures which are rigidly separated and social differences must be honoured and dogmatism must give way to dialogue. Our living together in a global civilization is not possible without some sort of global ethos on the part of our country’s politicians.