In the aftermath of
9/11/2001, commentators in every field of art and entertainment joined
the culture-wide consensus-chorus that "nothing will ever be the same
again". Many argued that a new spirit of civic commitment and
self-sacrifice would inevitably spill over to culture, with artists becoming
more engaged and tackling more profound themes, and the public craving deeper,
more demanding work. There were hasty announcements of "the end of irony", predictions that a new
seriousness would wipe away the vapid, trivial pop culture of the last decade
or so.
The precedent that everyone seems to be reaching back for is
WW2 and the reconstruction that followed: the moral (and morale) uplift created
by a stark Good Versus Evil struggle, and the sheer energy and can-do spirit
generated by the mobilisation of entire populations and economies, led to hopes
of rebuilding a better world. But the "WTC-as-Pearl-Harbor/Bush &
Blair as Roosevelt & Churchill" parallel doesn't really hold; at best, this is a choice between lesser evils. For most of
us non-combatants, the "war against terror" will be passive and
ultimately enervating, as we watch the professionals rain death (and food
parcels) down on remote populations, while the home front will entail the emergence
of an Israel-style security state, with constant and debilitating sense of
being both under siege and under surveillance.
It's hard to imagine either a massive project of social renewal like the
Welfare State, or a great era of artistic creativity, coming out of this.
It's not at all clear how the repercussions of 9/11/2001
will play out in pop culture, let alone its semi-popular and marginal adjuncts. With a few exceptions (hip hop, most
notably), music had seemed like it was ever more compartmentalized and
sealed-off from "the real world", developing according to its own
self-reflexive trajectory. But maybe
History will impact pop music and
recreate the conditions that prevailed in the postpunk era. When I was a youth, bands rarely mentioned music in interviews, political issues were so
much more urgent; it was a context in which a song like UB40's "The Earth
Dies Screaming" getting on Top of the Pops seemed like a crucial
intervention. The recent spate of rock bands like Radiohead and U2 speaking out
against globalisation, Third World debt, etc. already suggested a return to
activism, altruism, and earnestness. Actually, having chafed against the irony
culture for a long while, I already feel a slight pang for that cosy, harmless
decadence. Indeed, it seems likely that a certain sort of acerbic, bitter irony
is going to be an essential weapon in these days of bizarre reversals--like the
way Bush, the President dedicated to narrowing the gap between
church and state, has suddenly been recast as global defender of secular liberalism against theocratic
absolutism.
Where the WTC horror might
have at least a temporary dampening effect is on musics based on the aesthetics of devastation: extreme noise
terror, aural bombardments, apocalyptic soundscapes, traumaturgy, ambient fear.
From DJ Scud's "Total Destruction" and Techno Animal's Brotherhood of
the Bomb to the death metal covered by Terrorizer magazine, it all starts to
seem, if not questionable then at least.... superfluous, surpassed by reality.
Why was it supposed to be a good thing to do in the first place?
The alibi, I guess, is that it's not about vicarious delight
in wanton destruction (as with small boys who love blowing stuff up, Hollywood disaster movies), but about waking people from cultural slumber,
confronting them with the worst that can happen. In times of numbness, ersatz emergency gets
those atrophied adrenal glands pumping. But when everyday life is sufficiently
raw-nerved, thank you very much - who wants to experience simulated armageddon
as entertainment? Stuff that soothes, or
helps the tears flow, seems more suitable -- Harold Budd, Sandy Denny.
Of course, terrible things have been going on for, like,
ever -- massacres, massive bombings,
cumulative collateral death tolls that are way bigger. But
as they say, it makes a difference when it's close-to-home. That's literal in my case: I live about one
and a half miles from the site, and even now,
a month later, the air is sometimes fouled by the wind-born vapors from
what is essentially a gigantic slow-burning crematorium. 9/11 has fatally
interfered with my appetite for
"destruction" (meaning cultural/sonic images thereof). Even something like Tricky's
"Aftermath," one of my favorite pieces of music ever, might be a tough listen in the future,
the lines about going "looking for
people" having a new resonance - just as sharing my 2 year old's delight as he points at a glistening
airplane in the wonderfully blue skies over Manhattan will now always be
accompanied by a shudder.
Some of the more daring commentators have broached the whole
question of the carnographic sublime,
writing honestly about the appalling splendor of blazing fusilages piercing the sundazzled
glass, the sheer spectacle of the towers
crumbling. Even dotty old Stockhausen, who got in such trouble for his dumb
remark about the WTC attack as "the greatest work of art in history,"
was clumsily reaching towards something worth addressing: the extent to which
apocalypse, carnage and cataclysm are embedded in the "libidinal
economy" of the avant-garde. From Hendrix's aural pyromania to
Einsturzende Neubauten's end times scenarios, from underground hip hop producer
El-P titling his solo album Fantastic Damage to kid606 ally Electric Company using
a picture of a collapsing building on the front of his latest release for
Tigerbeat 6, imagery of waste and warfare seem to offer figures for absolute
desire, excess, too-muchness; it's the 20th Century sublime, man-made (where
the 18th Century's sublime was rampaging Nature) but inhumane and anti-humanist. Underground dance music of all kinds is full of this kind of
imagery, from drum'n'bass to gabber. For some years now dancehall reggae has been
dominated by fire imagery, whether it's gangsta gunfire or the Rasta vision of
Babylon being destroyed by the cleansing flames of Jah's righteous wrath (the fantasy is
essentially the smiting of infidels, something that appeals in postcolonial
vassal state Jamaica for precisely the same anti-globalisation, anti-Amerika reasons it does to Islamic jihadists).
The events of the last few weeks have made me question my
own pleasure in this kind of imagery. I've also had pause to consider the way a rhetoric of crusades and a messianic, rallying mode of
address has tripped off my critical tongue at various points over the years--
something that is paralleled by the way underground musics like
drum'n'bass envisions themselves in paramilitary terms, as guerrillas, renegades,
armies of underground resistance, even
terrorists. Then again, as silly as it seems when the real thing flares up all
around, maybe "culture" is the safest, most harmless place for this
kind of soldier talk. Music and the discourse around it can sublimate desires
for mission, insurgency, single-minded purpose, our will to believe and our
craving for the absolute.
No comments:
Post a Comment