Philosophy with a hammer

The kaptain excellent on Nietzsche, mediocraty and Celebrity Big Brother. i have found myself a little unsettled of late whilst being immersed in TV and popular culture. I am yet to enter the world of digital tv so if I feel like flicking over the channels I tend to get stuck on programs that tell you how to eat, how to look, or how to live (usually one is told all of these things by a nauseatingly domineering woman, so the masochist ideal remains, if in a shiny, pre-packaged, capitalist form.) I saw an advert the other evening for Wednesday night TV which started with the words "You will obey!" Well... quite. Priest as marketing directors and producers, the masses being told what to be. One exchanges the transcendent ideal of God for the transcendent ideal of celebrity (but not interesting celebrity, rarely that. At least even God was interesting in pre-New Testament times).

I also had a glance through this article after being directed there by Mark. It seems to intimate that anyone under the age of 25 should be pleased with current trends in Indie music. Well, I'm under 25 and I'm not. In fact, the last album I got excited about was Kate Bush's Aerial and before that the music I get most excited about is in discovering an album that is generally a few years older than I am. Today's music is inherently banal, and parallels the mediocraty of TV and culture. I often find myself miserable when I think of the things that have happened but cannot happen now. There appears to have been a levelling out of everything (Mark is right when he laments the glorifying of BB's Chantelle. Pete Burns was the most interesting person in that house yet when he left he was set upon by a crowd that appeared to have been transported through time from a Medieval witch hunt. "Burn him!" they chanted, undoubtedly smug because they had come up with such a ingenious pun. Yes, the height of intelligence, really).

The conditions are really not here for "great cultural artifacts to emerge." If one showed any sign of it, it would instantly be beaten down by the blandality of the masses. Although, I don't agree with Mark's rejection of Nietzsche's perspectival approach. In order to achieve "noble thought" and to go beyond society's new truths (the truth that you can be what you want, provided that it remains in the cultural status quo; the truth of television; the truth of celebrity, etc etc) one must be able to maintain a perspectival approach to the world as it appears and is sold to us, otherwise one might find that what is affirmed is only a cliche and the truth that one has upheld has become useless. But then, perhaps Spinoza is more pertinent for cultural and political emancipation. What could be more radical today than being completely rationalist?


Appendum
I entirely agree with Mark when it comes to "niceness." I have been getting shit from people for not liking people "even thought they're really, really nice." Niceness appears to be the height of social aspiration for many people ("It's nice to be important, but more important to be nice" so the saying on bathroom walls goes. A throwback from the era of acid house and Es when everyone was nice because they were so high. A truth that was once useful for drug culture but that has now become far too incorporated.). Really? Is that all we can aspire to now? I'm really very sick of polite chat (perhaps Gerede; Heidegger quite right that we need to stop immersing ourselves in das man and idle chatter) and niceness.

|