Yesterday, our friend Warren Ellis posed an interesting question: “why doesn’t alt culture exist?” In his weekly column, The Sunday Hangover, Warren points the finger in the same direction as our mission statement, blaming the rapacious mainstream. However, Warren goes a step further, fingering another culprit:
We’re in Reynolds’ “anachronesis” — living in a time of constant, delusional recursion, in a limbo of a dozen different pasts. Re-enactment, like living as a medieval soldier for a never-ending Renaissance Faire. Being Lenny Kravitz. Being the White Stripes. Record collection bands. People who like Amy Winehouse. Reynolds again: “Things under the sway of anachronesis are just nothing. You might as well be dead.”
Here’s another theory: perhaps anachronesis is not the retardant of a burgeoning alt culture, but its catalyst. After all, every subculture has always been a mediated response to the mainstream: punk culture’s rebellion grew out of a disillusionment with the rewards promised by white-collar mobility; Rastafarianism was a subversion of the white man’s religion; both the riot grrls of the 90s and the flappers of the 20s adopted certain styles to reject - or reclaim – certain conventions of womanhood. What, then, is the mainstream culture that today’s alt puts under the microscope?
It could be the Information Age. We live an era that promises us a free flow of information, an era that, if you look just a little deeper, constantly exposes the ways in which facts can be covered up, in which history can be digitally remastered as simply as throwing up a website or mixing up a few adverbs on Fox News. If the aim of every subculture is to interrogate the problems of the mainstream, then today’s emerging alt culture – call it mash-up culture, retro-futurism, whatever – does precisely that, questioning notions such as definitive information in today’s ephemeral age by performing a “rewriting of history” through fashion, art and music.
For alt culture, reenactment is reinterpretation. As Zoe and I were discussing today, the accelerated timelines fostered by the Internet’s accessibility to the past invite revivals at ever-shortening intervals; the 60s, the 80s, and now even 90s grunge is making a comeback. “We won’t be surprised if retro-2001 comes into style by the year 2009,” Zoe jokes as I write. Bands like The Killers make that all sound boring, but that’s just the mainstream hooking onto something more interesting happening underneath the surface.
Alt culture today does face one major obstacle: the rate at which pioneers of certain new sub-genres flee the coop. In our age of accelerated timelines and high transparency, trendsetters see “users” adopting their creations faster than ever before. Sadly, this often leads to a desire for disassociation. The Internet makes it so easy to have those kinds of feelings; who wants to have anything to do with goth after seeing this Tyra Banks clip?
Artists of the past were lucky to have their isolation, because it enabled them to develop comfort zones around their body of work. Such comfort zones are now paper-thin for both original creators and the next generation of adopters. People look around and think, “should I even bother?” We think you should. If it’s still a concept you love, don’t let others take it away from you. Own it. Take it one step further. Above all, be creative. “Start making things. Tilt into the future.” Or get the eternal mediocrity you deserve.
October 22nd, 2007 at 3:08 pm
..it just leave me with the question…if alt. culture doesn’t excist anymore, whose alt. culture was it in the first place?
October 22nd, 2007 at 3:24 pm
I definitely agree with this whole article. You should bother. You’re right that if the concept is something you love then take ownership. You have to turn it into something ten times better than what other people are doing with it.
October 22nd, 2007 at 5:49 pm
Agreed with the above, but a question for your joke: If the speed of recursion matches itself and ultimately surpasses itself, what do we have, then? CAN retro simply become the modernity mainstream, Mimicking itself, everything past, and creating the present, without thought to “retro/modern/futurist” tendencies? Can it just create?
October 22nd, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Hey Damien, I wasn’t joking! This serious business!
October 22nd, 2007 at 7:48 pm
We think you should. If it’s still a concept you love, don’t let others take it away from you. Own it. Take it one step further. Above all, be creative.
Yes, exactly. This is what I try to get across to people all the time. Thank you for stating it so succinctly.
October 22nd, 2007 at 8:21 pm
There’s a letter from Martha Graham to Agnes DeMille that I think has some bearing on this:
“There is vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it.
It is not your business to determine how good it is; nor how valuable it is; nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.
No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatsoever at any time. There is only a queer, divine, dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”
October 22nd, 2007 at 8:31 pm
Jhayne - a great punctuation to the article!
October 22nd, 2007 at 8:54 pm
@ Jhayne: thank you for those inspiring words! I think Graham totally hits the nail on the head, conveying the same message that we want to get out with this site.
October 22nd, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Jhayne, indeed! We’ll have no apathy! No, namby pamby second thoughts. We’re in ze business of living.
October 23rd, 2007 at 4:17 am
“…and now even 90s grunge is making a comeback…”
This cannot be allowed to happen…at all. It was fun the first time but come on…flannel again? Really? Bands who sound like bands from the 60’s and 70’s only with less polish? WE ALREADY HAD THAT TWICE NOW!…
With people being found guilty of mass distraction toward anything or substance and importance it seems as though everyone is just stuck in “Angry Rant Mode” as opposed to heading out and doing something, anything, everything…hell it’s gotten so that it’s hard to take a sub culture seriously when you have them as “Theme Nights” for assorted clubs and venues…so that eternal Ren. Faire comment above is dead accurate.
Many just seem bored or so worried about everything from terrorists to their local barista they can’t get around to doing anything for the sake of losing everything. Plus one has to admit we tend to expect far too much from those proven to give very little of what we actually need…creativity is alive and well…it’s just being torn in two directions. One side wants it secretive and pure others want it commercial and whored into oblivion.
People are slowly waking up though…and boy are they gonna be cranky.
October 23rd, 2007 at 4:26 am
A most excellent re-assessment, Nadya.
As we were discussing, everything seems to be caught up in this relatively sudden transition from one modality to the next. I agree that it may be this loosely defined resultant hybrid culture that catalyzes mutation like living expressions of Burrough’s literary montage techniques.
“Cut into the present and the future leaks out.”
Once more, I salute Jhayne’s contribution.
Graham is articulating the point in a way that directly speaks to me at every moment of doubt I’d ever experienced within the contentious love-hate relationship I’ve had with my own work.
Whenever I meet individuals who tell me that something I’ve done affected them positively in some way, I think back to the bludgeoning degrees of anger and despair that I, all too often, put myself through, and can only guess at the nullity which would have opened up to engulf me, had I given in to it.
To know that you’ve made a difference on some level can be profoundly validating. Conversely, I have met those who openly despised my work. Should I accede to them the voice of reason? Fuck, no!
Whether what I do becomes a focal point in the move towards futurity or is merely re-appropriated as a quaint cultural artifact remains to be seen, but I’m having too much fun to even comtemplate capitulation.
October 23rd, 2007 at 6:46 am
[...] Coilhouse responds to Herr Ellis’s comments on the death of Alt Culture: Why Doesn’t Alt Culture Exist? [...]
October 24th, 2007 at 3:47 am
It’s interesting, but I usually read about this idea on pop-culture sites feeling frustrated that the “mainstream” doesn’t exist any more.
Back in the late 90’s I remember reading a newspaper article about the death of independent FM alternative radio in Minneapolis where the DJs bemoaned the difficulty of courting a music culture that championed music that wasn’t getting played on the radio.
At VloggerCon 2006 in San Francisco I got in a conversation about the idea of “privacy parties” where attendees would abstain from recording anything or writing about it later so that the revelers could have a shared private experience.
There’s also the whole “long tail” thing, where the connectivity of the internet renders anything put on it unobscure, and allows micro-niches to suddenly support entire subcultures.
And this all goes against the idea of “Jante Law,” a Norwegian concept summarized as “Don’t think you’re anything special, or that you’re better than us.”
I’m sorry, this is awfully disjointed, but I’m still collecting thoughts and free associating. I guess rather than fret over whether alt culture exists in a super-connected world, I wonder what that would mean. The world is faster, and new novelties are almost unending, but they’re also less exclusive than before. To be honest, worrying about other people reappropriating anything I create seems silly. I’m glad what I’m making is worth stealing. If they’re doing it worse than me, then I’ll start seeing more interest in my work due to my level of skill. If they’re doing it better, then I can learn from them and make a response of my own. Hell, when I got into steampunk, it barely even had a name, and it was so boring compared to what’s going on now with all the interest on the web.
Who are these trendsetters who up and flee a scene entirely when others start biting their style? What’s their real motivation?
October 24th, 2007 at 9:42 am
Ben, M1K3¥, and others on this thread: thank you for all of your thoughtful feedback! I want to follow up on some of your points in greater detail, but right now I only have brain energy enough for one nugget so here it is:
“Who are these trendsetters who up and flee a scene entirely when others start biting their style? What’s their real motivation?”
I have two very good friends who I could cite as examples. Both are talented, creative, driven people who developed certain fashion trends long before I saw them skyrocket through the net’s alt “visual culture.” Sometimes, when you see people get inspired by your aesthetic, it’s wonderful and rewarding… but when you see everyone doing it, it’s probable that some will do it badly. It can be very personal, and when someone feels like their entire aesthetic has been ripped off AND corrupted on top of it, stripped of meaning, that can really ignite an impulse to just run the other direction. Some people (like you and me, I think) can take it, some can’t.
Also! I know I said I’d respond to only one point BUT…
To be honest, worrying about other people reappropriating anything I create seems silly. I’m glad what I’m making is worth stealing. If they’re doing it worse than me, then I’ll start seeing more interest in my work due to my level of skill. If they’re doing it better, then I can learn from them and make a response of my own.”
It’s a matter of “who cries the loudest.” I’ve noticed that a lot of people who blatantly, rapaciously, shamelessly appropriate something original that another person has done, they are the ones who self-advertise the loudest. Think of any contest on the web where people vote - who wins? The person who blogged about it the most and sent out the most mass emails and MySpace bulletins telling everyone to vote for them. The real winners don’t have the time or stomach to do that lame shit. This phenomenon causes the truly passionate and talented people to run away. They don’t want to be associated with the bullshit artists. Like I said… some can handle it, some can’t. But it is a drain on creativity in this scene.
October 24th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
“The real winners don’t have the time or stomach to do that lame shit. This phenomenon causes the truly passionate and talented people to run away.”
Obviously what is needed is a new breed of super creative barbarian warrior nomads.
It seems to me that resentment is only likely to occur if the person is hoping to get something: money, fame, respect, acclaim, etc. Especially money. I’m lucky enough to make my living being creative, and I can recognize the difference between how I feel about the creativity I do for money, and the creativity I do on the side. Sometimes alt culture production is a means to an end, and other times it’s and end in itself. Rarely are these lines cleanly drawn, however, and I think that may be where a lot of the confusion comes from.
My gut, and a significant portion of hip-hop music, still tells me that in the long run a creative person who stands by their work and strives for quality and personal expression will win out over the noisy crowd of non-contributing copycats. That’s why I’m curious about the motivation of the other ones. What is it that they’re really trying to accomplish?
October 24th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
”That’s why I’m curious about the motivation of the other ones. What is it that they’re really trying to accomplish?”
I’ve always sensed that there are those who have inborn insecurities which motivate them towards some form of actualization, who spend their lives looking for something, ANYTHING to justify this impulse, even if it means completely assimulating the life’s work of another.
On a side note, I’ve always found it hysterical that, by their nature, ego-driven self-promoters absolutely HATE and vilify others cut from the same cloth. i.e. “Look! Just look at this FUCKER… polluting the world with his impotent, excremental, apologetic excuses for art! He’s never had an original idea in his entire sad life! Oh he’s a real rockstar now, isn’t he. I tell you, that piece-o-shit’s head won’t fit through a DOOR!” etc.
Ah, the “Mirror That Flatters Not”. It’s all so amusingly venomous.