Is it wrong to look down on today's culture? I'm really troubled that so few people seem interested in classical music. I can't stand nearly all television and cinema. Mainstream literature is garbage. You have to dig deep to find anything valuable on YouTube. Contemporary art is a big circlejerk, and anything good in it is completely disconnected from the public.
Almost everything people enjoy, I hate. Sometimes I manage to enjoy it on an entirely ironic level, but this alienates me from people who genuinely enjoy it.
Calling out "elitism" to me just seems like a way to defend mindless consumption. There is such a thing as higher and lower taste. If you don't accept that you're putting up way too low of a standard for yourself.
Further, one of my main motivations for pursuing socialism is the belief that we can again find a higher culture, unlike the garbage we're in today.
Is this a problem? Am I just a pretentious twat? Should I be more accepting of the tastes of the average prole? And do I have an overly romanticized view of the culture of the past? Were things always as bad as today?
Adorno wasn't an elitist, tho. His whole point about 'high culture' was that it is inevitably tied to 'low culture'. The crisis of contemporary composed music is the same as rap's or pop's.
Luis Flores
Same boat. No, there's nothing wrong with this. Capitalism smashes true culture in favor of corporate brand culture and anything it doesn't destroy is turned into consumerist garbage. Look at christmas, it used to be wholesome and all about people being together with their family, now it is basically "go buy shit and give it to people otherwise you don't love them". Music is derivative as well, most rap is ghost-produced beats with consumerist lyrics thrown in (it wasn't always that way, it used to have revolutionary potential). Film is garbage because disney own literally everything now, and all of it is basically concentrated into hollywood. Basically, if we're ever going to return to true culture, we absolutely must have, at the very least, socialism.
Hudson Rogers
It's about time for this meme to be retired. Adorno was no cultural conservative.
No this isn't a problem, and it's definitely not something that has anything to do with socialist politics. Your opinions on music are completely immaterial to that, and it's about time people let go of the idea that in order to become a leftist you need to re-frame your entire behavior into something more populist and folksy, instead of just being an individual with their own opinions.
You sound like every middle-class guy in his late teens whose surroundings give him identity anxiety, like those 18 year old mexicans on RYM who have rated every Merzbow album. You couldn't be more banal.
Justin Morales
I don't think OP is claiming Adorno was a cultural conservative.
Parker Peterson
he's not, the memes are
Ethan Reed
literally why. "I'm refined so I listen to classical music" is a meme and you just come off as a euphoric 'le wrong generation' teen.
No. Yes. Hell yes. If anything things have never been better off when it comes to music. Free distribution in the form of internet piracy communizes the medium and because of the internet there is literally endless variety of genres and a lot smaller commercial barrier for anybody to become a known musician
Caleb Foster
I am a performing classical musician
I began playing classical music before I knew any of the history of it. I had just assumed it was the pop music of it's day, turned out that wasn't true.
I look down on modern culture because it is evil. The music is either bad, or evil, or both.
I like authentic music like bluegrass music or folk music in rural communities a lot though
Jack Allen
I didn't think Adorno was a cultural conservative, and am not sure if that's what the meme implies. Adorno liked Schoenberg a lot I believe, and Schoenberg is the opposite of conservative.
The stuff about the "end of art" does surprise me though. I'm not sure if that's meant to be taken at face value. Perhaps it's just a Hegelian reflection on art as an instance of Becoming. From that view, art constantly abolishes itself. It's part of the nature of art.
I don't imagine myself to be especially refined, though I do aspire to be, at least in my own way. Classical music is something more than just another music genre, just as world literature isn't just another book genre. It's a distinct cultural sphere.
And for some reason everyone chooses to be a DJ who produces mediocre house music supposedly intended for video games. I understand that there's probably more great stuff being produced right now than there ever was, but it doesn't take center-stage in our culture. That's what I'm sad about. We could be living in a world where we're all working on our own distinct voice, creating something new and incredible the world has never seen.
The present state of things, however, is that most people get sucked up in mediocre nonsense. Socialism could change that. Instead of pandering to people's emotions, as the profit motive inevitably does, it could lift them up, as people in reality want for themselves. Currently, people are bombarded with nonsense and end up with whatever sticks to the majority. If people were asked to take the proactive step in searching out culture, they would choose higher culture. That's how I imagine socialism would change the dynamic.
Kayden Kelly
I don't know the answer to your questions, but how can you determine "true culture"? It seems like a meme. How can you determine "true art"? I should read Adorno. I can't into culture at all. It all seems like bullshit. Why prefer classical to now? Because it's old? Paid for by rich aristocrats as opposed to SoundCloud subscriptions? No man, don't fetishize proles. They aren't inately good because of their class, and proles are only revolutionary as a class anyways. I don't get what separates good art from bad art.
Dylan Hill
Ideally I want to agree with you but if anything having more people creating art has just added more noise. With how much crap I have to sift through just to find a few artists I can enjoy I can't even imagine having to look through thousands of soundcloud artists to find the few actually talented/interesting artists. That shit would be a full time job in itself.
I agree about piracy though. Having 90% of all art ever made available to me is pretty amazing and refining that should be one of the first cultural projects of a modern socialist society.
That's a pretty cool thought tbh.
Henry Miller
Heck yeah my dude
Aaron Hall
I unironically listen to Lil Pump. How does that make you feel?
Justin Diaz
Image board's wouldn't exist without the hedonism that the very people here criticize. It's terminal lads, just admit this shit already
Kevin Hughes
Someone else has said everything I could say except this: Classical music is bourgeois as fuck. Hip hop/rap, despite it's fame, is proletarian. I dislike both for the most part. You don't get to tell people what is and isn't "high art".
Yes. Very
Matthew Fisher
Ironic re-appropriation is the only suitable use for that tripe.
Exactly this, there was no segmentation into the categories of elect art versus base art, but rather that art itself is a nebulous medium through which ideology expresses itself
Oliver Brown
I do share many of your feelings but IMO you are too hard on modern music. Is there no lesser-known or underground music whatsoever that you appreciate? The most mainstream commercial garbage isn't representative of the music industry as a whole. t. /mu/ fag
Classical "music" was made by the bourgeosie, for the bourgeosie. Do you think a peasant or worker has the time to sit at home and molest a piano for 12 hours a day? No, he is busy doing productive labor.
Go to Zig Forums and ask them what their preferred music genres are. Ignoring those who will obviously say WWII German military marches, classical music will be the most common.
It is reactionary and you should be be gifted with nine grams of lead for enjoying such drivel. Singing is the true proletarian art. Anyone can sing. You can sing while working in the field or factory. A piano? No.
Luke Morgan
t. philistine
Although Zig Forums is filled with them as well. Basically, classical for them is "Beethoven's Greatest Hits" at best or mere posturing at worst.
William Cooper
t. Bourgeois counter-revolutionary
Julian Edwards
Then so were Marx and Engels. Your point is so absurd that I'm convinced you're a wandering Zig Forumstard.
Noah Hall
You mean whistling. Lyrical songs can be too distracting from your work.
Dylan Scott
You are welcome to refute me using dialectical materialism to prove you aren't projecting, Zig Forumsak.
You can't. Classical music was made by the bourgeosie for the bourgeosie by exploiting the proletarians who do productive labor to feed and clothe these parasites who merely sit in their home with prole servants hitting those ivory (imported from Africa, thus imperialist) keys over and over.
Nathaniel Adams
I hardly have to when you're getting even basic things wrong.
Imperialism in the Marxist sense (from Lenin) didn't exist until very late in the Romantic period of classical music. Stop using terms you don't understand.
Thomas Morgan
Classical music was made by the bourgeosie for the bourgeosie. This cannot be refuted.
Noah Taylor
That isn't true either. Some of the earliest works were mainly for the church and feudal lords (or, in a few cases, by them); church works continued to be written and performed throughout every era of classical music and were increasingly written for common congregants rather than to be sung and heard entirely by the clergy. Occasionally the music in setting had in mind the burgeoning working class and petit bourgeoisie for consumption as sheet music, particularly in the 19th and 20th centuries.
As I said, you're an ignorant philistine and a trolling Zig Forumstard.
Xavier Long
...
William Cruz
It's fine to have your own tastes but if you expect everyone else to as well you're reactionary scum.
Hunter King
I share your sentiments but I find it really hard to justify them. Digesting "high art" requires a lot of effort, so just by this fact it can appear unappealing to the majority, regardless of politics.
Depending on why OP is fixated on classical, listening to underground stuff could be hit or miss. From a technical perspective, a lot of it will appear uninteresting. From a sonic perspective, it will be the opposite.
