Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 10:05:35 -0700 (PDT)
From: Matthew Levy <mlevy-AT-orion.oac.uci.edu>
Subject: Re: Adorno on TV


On Mon, 7 Jun 1999, S Mure wrote:

> In article <Pine.SUN.3.96.990606201016.24956A-100000-AT-orion.oac.uci.edu>,
> Matthew Levy <mlevy-AT-orion.oac.uci.edu> writes
> >> 
> >> A nod and a wink, life goes on...
> >> -- 
> >> Simon Smith
> >> 
> >
> >I disagree with this explanation ... yes irony is a way that we adjust
> >ourselves to capitalism, which can impede moral engagement ... but that
> >does not equate to being able to dismiss rock music as "manipulative" or
> >to say that people are "addicted" to soap operas ... that reading just
> >reifies and mystifies the psychological and aesthetic phenomena that the
> >Frankfurt school were getting at, and further plays into the fascism of
> >our time (which is full of "experts" telling us we are "manipulated" or
> >"addicted").
> 
> Of course nobody needs these 'experts' to tell them they are being
> manipulated or that they are addicted. Like I said -
> 
> "People I know who are addicted to soap operas are really quite
> conscious of the way they are being manipulated, but nonetheless go on
> consuming."
> 
> Nobody needs experts like Neil Postman to tell them that - they'll tell
> me themselves with that wry grin 'I'm afraid I'm a bit of a soap opera
> addict myself'. It's a matter of what Jay Bernstein calls 'seeing
> through and obeying', which is at the core of cultural consumption
> today. 

you completely missed the point of what I was trying to say.  This
discourse ... the discourse of addiction to consumption ... is a prevalent
one in our society, which everybody is immersed in, and which various
experts constantly reproduce ... from the self-help gurus that Ralph
claims are our organic intellectuals, to Postman, to Jerry Mander's
idiotic "four arguments for the elimination of television", to the
constant sly ironic commentary on television shows themselves about how
television rots your brain, to the misogynistic reactionary bullshit of
the film "Network" ... nobody needs an expert to tell them this, of course
... because we are already all so surrounded by this myth that we assume
it as common sense.  But it is a bullshit myth which, as I said, explains
nothing.  An aesthetic and political-psychological critique of what it is
that "happens to me" when i watch television has to go beyond these
simpleminded skinnerian ideas of passive conditioning to offer any insight
whatsoever ... what the discourse of addiction does is just replicate a
longer tradition of protestant guilt, not give me any critical ammunition
to understand my situation.  

 I really don't
believe addiction is too strong a word for
the > need one may have for that kick or thrill to punctuate their working
> week. 
> 
> When someone regularly watches MTV and tells everyone what crap it is, I
> cannot believe that what must be the most violently authoritarian pop
> cultural form yet created is not damaging their ability to think in more
> than spasmodic jerks. 
> 

Now I am irritated and am going to borrow one from Ralph's book ...please
demonstrate to me what sort of thinking you are capable of and if
sufficiently impressed I will consider switching to your favorite cultural
forms.  Or are you implicating yourself in this?  Why is it that you see
audience participation in popular commodity culture as a greater danger to
enlightened democratic thinking than your self-righteous alienation?  And
what do you know about the way the human mind works that I don't, that you
can actually describe anyone's thinking as "spasmodic jerks" and mean
something by it other than a pointless insult?

 > > Everytime someone tells me they don't watch TV or listen to
> >rap music or whatever as if they expect me to praise them for this, I see
> >another form of fascism masquerading as enlightenment - another opposition
> >between "freedom" and "slavery" that makes "slave"=everybody else (people
> >who watch too much TV, like repetitive music etc.) and makes "free"=me
> >(the one who can discipline himself to transcend these things)
> 
> Indeed, (though I think you overuse the word fascism somewhat), there
> are no islands. I'm a vegetarian, but I don't turn it into a speciality
> makes me free. Like I say, I do the ironic consumption thing myself.
> Anyone brought up in this society has commodity exchange in their
> bloodstream. Adorno went to films (though maybe not exactly for
> pleasure!) and felt that he came out 'stupider than before'. I wonder
> how good a protection this irony really is...
> 

There is a paradox in Adorno's attitude and in yours.  And you know what,
I'm a vegetarian too ... because I realized that my quasi-protestant need
to discipline my desires and create myself as one who has mastery of my
own consumption was basically inescapable, and it occurred to me that I
might as well do something that actually mattered in some tangible way,
instead of worrying about the quality of the TV I watch or the music I
listen to ... I stopped eating meat so that I could reduce my impact on
animals, but I'm also aware that this is part of my (basically fascist)
desire to make myself something other than just another body ... as for
getting stupider at the movies, I essentially don't believe that the word
"stupid" has any useful meaning.  I usually use it only in anger or in
jest, because I realize that in any particular situation where I might
want to use it seriously and carefully ... i.e. a situation in which I
thought there was something about someone's thinking which needed to be
changed ... the term could do nothing but mystify the actual situation and
make impossible the real intellectual work which needed to be done,
replacing it with a pseudo-theoretical reification of a basic
contradiction of our culture.
 
> One major function of music, for example with university students, is to
> allow people to do two things at the same time - e.g. they will listen
> to music and read their course work - which ensures that they manage to
> avoid paying full attention to either. This seems to be an important
> function of music nowadays.
> -- 
> Simon Smith
> 
i listen to music with my full attention fairly often.   sometimes i make
music of my own.  other times i listen to it in the background when
writing.  i kind of wish i had some music right now to mellow me out since
i'm finding your attitude quite frustrating.

peace,
matt