Horner's Corner

War On Pop 2.0

by on Dec.21, 2009, under media, music, politics



sonic-warfare-coverOn the face of it, the struggle over the Christmas number one this year sums up capitalist realism’s stranglehold over culture. From one perspective, what we have here is a simulation of disputation, one Sony BMG act versus another, where capital wins every way up – abetted by a grassroots Facebook campaign that has fed the marketing machine while ostensibly raging against it (retailers and Sony BMG must be delighted that members of the public have off their own back come up with a way of re marketing ye olde commodified rebel rock). Yet it’s worth also attending to the utopian dimension at work in both the campaign for the Rage Against The Machine to be number one and (submerged) in the X Factor phenomenon itself.

The problem is that no response to the X Factor phenonemon is adequate: whether it be the standard bourgeois “I don’t watch it, I don’t have a TV, although I occasionally watch serious documentaries on the IPlayer”, the PoMo “I watch it to exult in how awful it is”, or some version of apparently ingenuous engagement – any response seems useless. The X Factor has seemed as impregnable as capitalism. In one of the best pieces he has written for some time, Paul Morley captured very well the quandary that the X Factor presents. “What’s the point of watching the show,” Morley asked, “and feeling that I must be losing my mind, because I seem to be seeing and hearing bad, unsavoury, deeply uncomfortable things, while everyone else is enjoying a cheery, light-hearted party, fun for all the family, a Saturday night television show that is merely an ingeniously produced newfangled way of keeping alive certain old-fashioned light entertainment values?” Complaint seems both churlish and impotent; or else irrelevant – why be concerned about the X Factor at all? Aren’t there more important things than this high-gloss trivia?

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1 Comment for this entry

  • William Gaddis
    December 22nd, 2009 on 1:45 pm

    I don’t watch it; I don’t have a TV; although I occasionally watch serious documentaries on the IPlayer.

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