In the first of a series of discussions at Raw Story about counterculture and social change, Counterculture Through The Ages author Ken Goffman (AKA RU Sirius) chats with Tom Frank, author of What’s The Matter With Kansas? and The Conquest of Cool:
RU: In What’s the Matter with Kansas, you say that (I’m paraphrasing) because an artist sticks a crucifix in a jar of urine, industries will be deregulated and the working class will continue to get screwed (couldn’t find the exact quote, but it’s certainly resonant!). We get the political point, but what about the artist? Should he not stick a crucifix in a jar of urine if that’s the statement he chooses to make? Should gays forget about getting married so that workers in Kansas will vote in their own self-interest? Ralph Nader once said about gay rights, “I’m not going to get into gonadal politics.” Nobody has any intention of shutting up, so can these cultural conflicts truly be ignored or over-ruled by class interests?
TF: Artists can do whatever they want. Obviously my statement was descriptive, not an edict of some kind. I was describing the backlash dynamic that has operated in our culture, again, since the late 1960s. How artists want to react to this one-sentence critique, or to any of my much longer critiques written over the years, is up to them. My guess is that they will ignore my criticism; that they will continue to embrace the shallow imperative of square-shocking that has prevailed in the art world for the last century. And conservatives will continue to react in their highly successful culture-war manner. After all, why not? This sort of bullshit battle serves both sides: conservatives win elections, and artists get to imagine that they’re pissing off the man. It’s a win-win situation! Liberals, meanwhile, will have to find some way of dealing with the culture wars, and confronting the false populism of the backlash — it’s good humble you versus these goddamn highfalutin artists!— with real populism is just about the only workable strategy that’s out there.
Following Frank, RU will play brain tennis with Joseph Heath, author of Nation of Rebels, and BB pal Douglas Rushkoff. RU says, “I would love for this to turn into a discussion of the issues. They have a comments section.” Link