Jr. goes:
>Popular taste is not formed before industry dreck gets heard, >>it's
formed *in and by* industry dreck.
>>
And then Todd goes:
>When did T.W. Adorno sneak on to the list?
And so I goes:
Like, too long ago? Jr. is using a real overpure Frankfurt-school reading
of popular culture? And if not superceded totally the likes of Adorno need
to be modified (sez me) by more recent cultural thinking on response,
interpretation and appropriation? Adorno was an utter snob? He would think
every bit of the music we're talking about was dreck, including, say,
George Jones? (Tho that seems fitting to Jr.'s mood today considering his
later "romantic music isn't classical music" nitpickery? Like, take a chill
pill?)
Plus, y'know, I'd like to, kinda, stand up for myself as more pessimistic
than Junior? Because while thinking that people are to some degree, like,
sheep herded and counted in the pens of the purveyors of dreck, I also
think people can wallow dreck all on their own? Which is why the purveyors
got to be the big muscular purveyors in the first place? 'Cuz no one ever
went broke underestimating the taste of the [fill in nation-state here]
public? Along with the logic of late capitalism, I'll grant you?
But, well, shit, remember even among the dreck there are pearls? Pearls of
parody at least? Y'what I mean?
like, Carl W?
