18 Gen 2021 di NedCuttle21(Ulm) • 0 commenti
We’re Not Here to Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and the Real Culture War of 1980s America, l’ultimo lavoro dello storico statunitense Kevin Mattson.
In music, ubiquity breeds misunderstanding. The minute any genre breaks into the mainstream, its gestures and aesthetics become diluted, mass-marketed. The meaning that gave them urgency is boiled away. An insurgent scene, full of rebellion and creativity, is suddenly not so rebellious anymore, and far less creative.
This is what happens when art is commodified. Questions raised by this process are enough to stymie anyone preoccupied with the role of artistic expression. Does “turning rebellion into money,” as Joe Strummer once put it, necessarily neutralize authentic rebellion? Can a scene “go mainstream” without being sanitized transforming the mainstream rather than the other way around?