This is Not ‘Rolling Stone’!

Tom Frank et al. wrote a book called “Popular culture: production and consumption” (2001). In this book, was a chapter called “Alternative to what?” (You can get it online at: http://library.newcastle.edu.au/record=b2086277 ). I probably should have referred to this article before, since it deals with a lot of issues I’ve been wrestling with in my posts, but I’m going to have a look at it now.

The article opens with the comment:

“There are few spectacles corporate America enjoys more than a good counterculture, complete with hairdos of defiance, dark complaints about the stifling “mainstream,” and expensive accessories of all kinds.” (2001: 94).

The most important thing to notice here is that Frank states that counterculture / alternative cultural phenomena are good for corporate America. This is in contrast to the usual idea that pop culture is created and maintained by corporations through advertising, and that alternative culture is more defined by people who oppose this mass-produced form of culture. This fits in with the recurrent theme of my posts that alternative culture is just as mass-produced (and hence phony) as pop culture, because what’s alternative today will be popular tomorrow.

I’m also interested in the way Frank highlights the commercial nature of alternative culture phenomena. One example I’ve come across was the band My Chemical Romance in the magazine Spin (February 2007, page 52-53). Before the article was a two page spread photo of the band dressed in hip black clothes, which were in some way fitting with ‘emo’ fashion. What bothered me was the blurb at the top right of the second page, which said what each band member was wearing and directed the reader to the part of the magazine called ‘Where to Buy’ for details.
This method of advertising was continued throughout the magazine with bands such as Bloc Party, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Kaiser Chiefs, but my attention was drawn to the My Chemical Romance photo because this was the band I knew most about. I’d heard interviews with the front man, Gerard Way, old interviews in which he commented on the difficulty of getting billed on shows due to his band’s sound being so different (i.e. alternative) from anything else at the time. Of course, to be in Spin, the band was doing very well. Arguably, the My Chemical Romance sound had become popular, and they were and are often seen as the epitome of the ‘emo’ genre both in terms of lyrical themes and fashion. The interesting point is that ‘emo’ fashion, like ‘punk’ fashion thirty years before, started as an alternative form of dress, closely associated with a particular genre of music, but both were commercialised into an elitist form of dress that could only be afforded by some. The link between fashion and music is a completely different topic, but here it is an example of the way alternative cultural phenomena become popular.
This seems to be exactly what Frank is talking about when he says:

“Forget the music; what we are seeing is just another overhaul of the rebel ideology that has fuelled business culture ever since the 1960s, a new entrant in the long, silly parade of “counter-cultural” entrepreneurship.” (2001: 96).

It is a separate issue again as to whether there’s another progression to ‘elitist’ which comes somewhere in this cycle. You would think that alternative would be more exclusive / elitist, based on the definition of popular as something widespread and accessible, however it is interesting to note that alternative culture often arises out of individuals who are fed up with the current popular culture and wish to create something more appropriate to them, something they can more easily identify with. This is exactly how punk developed (see my post ‘The good old days’ : http://millie3120.wordpress.com/2008/05/18/the-good-old-days/ ).
My theory is that this then becomes popular and perhaps then takes a further turn towards being elitist once again, but not in the same way it was to begin with. My theory places alternative culture as ‘below’ popular culture, destined to then move ‘through’ the phase of being popular and eventually into an ‘elitist’ phase, where it is celebrated and appreciated only by fringe groups and musical nostalgics, who may consider themselves to be ‘above’ popular culture. For such people, there is a definite element of pride in proclaiming: “I’m a real fan – I liked them before they were famous.” A fan may even stop advertising their appreciation for an artist or say that they only liked the artist’s earlier work, before they ‘sold out’.
On the other hand, for self-declared hater of labels, maybe I’m getting too hung up on words. Frank says:
“In such a climate, the old lowbrow / highbrow categorization becomes utterly irrelevant” (2001: 102).
One of the tell-tale signs that my theory is heavily under-developed is the fact that many forms of music go unnoticed by the culturally exploitative corporations Frank talks about, hence these forms of music never achieve mainstream popularity. This could be seen as a positive for the cultural elitists who can still always claim to be into ‘alternative’ culture (refer to the title of this post), but also a negative as the rest of the population never gets exposed to these musics. This is the primary moral reason cited by artists who are deemed to have ‘sold out’ by joining major record labels: “Our music can reach more people this way.”
The common argument opposing this is that the bureaucracy of major record labels can force artists to make their sound more ‘popular’, so it is easier to market. The irony is that the artist has been picked up for their original (‘alternative’) sound, yet the sound is often still a little too original to be easily marketed.

Frank says:

“Few among us are foolish enough to believe that “the music industry” is just a bigger version of the nextdoor indie label, just a collection of simple record companies gifted mysteriously with gargantuan budgets and strange powers to silence criticism.” (2001: 105).

There can be difficulty in evaluating the level of ‘authenticity’ of an artist who allows their fans the ‘alternative’ stamp of pride by labelling themselves thus:

“Almost without exception, the groups and music that are celebrated as “alternative” are watery, derivative, and strictly second-rate; so uniformly bad, in fact, that one begins to believe that stupid shallowness is a precondition of their marketability.” (Frank 2001: 96)

Frank supports this with the example of Pearl Jam:

“Time’s story on “alternative” rock never once mentions a band that is not a “co-optation,” that still produces records on an actual independent label. As per the usual dictates of American culture, only money counts, and indie labels don’t advertise in Time. So Pearl Jam, a major-label band that has made a career out of imitating the indie sounds of the late eighties, wins the magazine’s accolades as the “demigod” of the new “underground,” leading the struggle for “authenticity” and against “selling out.” (2001: 95).

Finally, Frank says:

“Under no condition is “popular culture” something that we make ourselves … It is, strictly and exclusively, the stuff produced for us in a thousand corporate board rooms and demographic studies.” (2001: 102).

Since I’ve just talked about the way alternative culture becomes popular culture, then the same could be said for alternative culture. This destroys the idealistic notion that a truly alternative culture is even possible, as Frank despairs:

“there is, quite simply, almost no dissent from the great cultural project of corporate America, no voice to challenge the television’s overpowering din. You may get a sifferent variety of shoes this year, but there is no “alternative,” ever.” (2001: 103).

Reference:
Frank, Tom. 2001. Chapter 8: “Alternative to what?” from “Popular culture: production and consumption”, Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishers, 2001, pp 94-105.

Heath Johnson