In Praise of Vulgarity

This is far and away one of the most interesting things I have read on the web in a long time. “In Praise of Vulgarity” is a defense of popular consumerist culture and art.

The essential argument is that participating in culture is a form of self-experimentation and self-fashioning that is inherently anti-authoritarian and essentially human. The degrees to which people will go to seek out these modes of expression even in brutal, repressive political circumstances are truly amazing.

It’s over 9000 words long, so there is no way to effectively summarize it. But, I promise if you read it, you won’t be disappointed:

Capitalism's critics in the West blame what they call "the culture industry," which makes itself rich by aggressively manipulating consumerist idiots. The latter part with their money because they have been persuaded that some truly useless but expensive object will make them hip, youthful, or desirable, or raise their status. This manipulative scheme is now a global enterprise, filling the world with what Benjamin Barber and his ilk castigate as "junk." Worse, say the Daniel Bells and Hillary Clintons, it's a threat to Western prosperity, because it instills self-absorption at the expense of the work ethic.

This critique completely misses the point of cultural commerce. The citizens of the post-subsistence world have a historically remarkable luxury: They can experiment with who they are. They can fashion and refashion their identities, and through much of their lives that is just what they do. They can go about this in a lot of ways, but one of the most important methods is what is known and reviled as "consumerism." They experiment with different modes of self-presentation, assert or mask aspects of their individuality, join or leave a series of subcultures, or oppose and adhere to centers of power. It is from this complex mix that the things of the material world become the furnishings of both a social and a personal identity. That's what meaning is.

There are plenty of cultural products that I denigrate. But even when I am on my high horse, my ire is mostly aimed at the artists, not the consumers. There are many artists who simply go through the motions mimicking well-established literary or musical forms, but adding nothing of incremental value to the cultural stew.

In a sense, it is like selling bubble-gum flavored popcorn to the public and calling it a full meal. It is a facsimile of food the same way that Britney Spears is a facsimile of music. But, without Britney Spears, there is no Mick Jagger. And, it is from the low barriers to entry of pop culture participation combined with its experimental and free-flowing feedback loop between artists and consumers that true genius is revealed and that cultural change is fostered.