[Zzlist-deux] The Con Man and the Big Con

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A new posting -
The Con Man and the Big
Con<http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-con-man-and-big-con.html>
- from Zoltan Zigedy is available at:
http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/


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One can too easily blame capitalism for debasing the culture and
intellectual life of the US. The profit motive has surely placed commercial
success ahead of artistic merit. Independent purveyors of art and ideas
have been either co opted and absorbed by monopoly corporations or ground
to a pulp attempting to compete with corporate-sponsored rivals. Culture
has become corporate culture, despite the democratizing relief sometimes
offered by the Internet.

 From producer to consumer, arts and entertainment corporations are the
ever-present intermediaries for successful production and realization of
cultural commodities. Their goal is profit and not artistic merit.

 Similarly, the humanities have been marginalized through the marketization
of higher education. The ever present mantra of “running everything like a
business” has deeply infected the process of learning, thus sending
philosophy, political studies, literature, history and other humanities to
the dustbin. That which cannot pay its way deserves no place in the
university, say administrators wedded to best business practices.
Consequently, the appreciation for and vibrant generation of the humanities
is stunted by the dominance of the “practicality” of the sciences and
business. Higher learning becomes learning for a purpose, namely, getting
ahead.

 But the arts and independent thought are threatened by other factors as
well. While even those friendly to capitalism will give a reluctant
acknowledgment of the economic factors that diminish culture and humanistic
pursuits, few accept the significant role of politics in stunting culture
and learning. Of course many will readily agree that right wing zealots
chip away politically at the liberal values that are believed to be the
foundation for cultural and intellectual enrichment. They will eagerly
concede that pornography police and music censors retard the free flow of
ideas. But they, nonetheless, celebrate the US democratic spirit that
continues to nourish the spring of cultural production and intellectual
innovation.

Accordingly, they forget, or purposely overlook, the insidious role of Cold
War repression that befell intellectual and cultural life in the US from
the late 1940s through the early 1960s, with loud echoes today. For nearly
a decade and a half, intellectual conformity on class, race, and Communism
was rigorously enforced through punishment or fear, especially in the
sensitive areas of culture and ideas (the battle of ideas is not merely in
academia or among the men and women of letters but in the unions and mass
organizations, where a vibrant incubation of radical ideas was replaced
with a tepid, mediocre, and intolerant uniformity). Thousands of cultural
and intellectual workers lost their jobs, were shunned, or blacklisted.
Tens of thousands were frozen with fear and determined to assiduously avoid
anything controversial.

 Artists and intellectuals grew timid: ironically, some of the best popular
cinema of the otherwise mediocre era was offered by ex-Communists who had
made their *mea culpas *and thus earned the right to tackle edgy themes
(for example, *A Face in the Crowd* (Kazan), *Sweet Smell of* *Success*,
and *The Big Knife* (Odets). The best of television, a then-new medium
seemingly happy to wallow in mediocrity, came from deeply covert writers
who had been expelled from Hollywood. When vibrant African American music
in the form of a subversive Rhythm and Blues stood to crack the cultural
barriers, US entertainment corporations co-opted and whitened the music
while transforming it into mildly titillating Rock and Roll (RCA and Elvis
Presley), a safer alternative.

 The false radicalism of Abstract Expressionism was promoted by a deeply
conservative coterie of wealthy art impresarios intent upon overshadowing
any subversive messages borne by representational art (see *How New York
Stole the Idea of Modern Art*, Guilbaut). And mildly mocking satire of
upper-middle-class and suburban mores *a la* *New Yorker* magazine became
the gold standard of popular literature.

 Youth rebellion, thought to be a biological imperative, found expression
in the middle-class angst of the “beat” generation or through revisiting
frontier toughness through the cult of the motorcycle. “Alienation”
replaced “exploitation” as the theme of critiques of industrial society.....
*TO READ THE REMAINDER OF THE ARTICLE, PLEASE GO TO:*    *
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