Thanks to the powers of Hulu my desktop computer has witnessed the rebirth of My So Called Life. Although I was the right age in 1994, when the show ran on network TV, to have sworn by it as some kind of instruction manual for adolescence, I don't think I actually ever watched more than a random episode or two. I do remember, however, writing in to the network to protest the show's cancellation after only one season.
Why did I write in to the network when I wasn't even a regular viewer? Because Seventeen magazine told me to do so. Really. I'm not joking.
For just a moment I would like to put aside the likely interrelatedness of My So Called Life and Seventeen via shared parent companies past or present & look back on that little episode of dissent against power (in this case network omnipotence) to try to understand what compelled me to take action. I recall that writing the letter was a private act; no one knew I had done it. And while I remember the event carrying the significance of an identity proof, I was proving to myself, not to anyone else, that I could dissent.
Flash forward fifteen years: as a moment in time, that young act of dissent parallels my adult life in such striking alignment (I'm thinking of my graduate work in media studies, including my dissent around homogenized media ownership and content) that it makes me question the extent to which dissent can be quantified or even worse–commodified.
Today at the laundromat I was reading a discussion of the corporate marketing of nonconformity in The Aesthetics of Cultural Studies and it got me thinking about what I can do in my lifetime to counteract the commodification of dissent. I don't have a detailed plan yet, but I am working on it. My hunch, however, like the title of the book implies is that efforts to resist the commodification of dissent are not likely to succeed if we use information, raw data, or numbers-crunching as tools. I think the place to look for resistance inspiration is in the aesthetic appeal of dissent and in the ecstatic experience that it generates.
What do you think?
What a timely + thought-provoking post, K! Considering the recent news that the American Petroleum Institute is staging faux grassroots protests in opposition to the Climate Change bill, it's all the more critical to engage with this discourse today.
ReplyDeleteTerrifying! Thanks for the comment, Melinda. I hadn't heard about it. Here's a link if readers want info on the staged protests: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/08/sensitive_oil_industry_memo_lays_out_plan_for_astr.php
ReplyDeletewow, what the API is doing IS SCARY! what the? on a lighter note: commodifying dissent via condiments: http://industry.bnet.com/advertising/10003391/miracle-whips-we-will-not-tone-it-down-ads-trigger-scorn-from-viewers/
ReplyDeleteha ha ha. oh brother.
"I think the place to look for resistance inspiration is in the aesthetic appeal of dissent and in the ecstatic experience that it generates." what does this mean? because it conjurs up other ideas in my head that im pretty sure you were not intending.
Meenamade, Do you mean you are confused about how I meant "aesthetic" in this context? I meant it in two (seemingly contradictory) ways: one, to suggest a focus on the appearance of beauty; and two, to suggest the transcendent possibilities of something that is so beautiful it rocks your soul. Does that make sense? How's Bed Stuy, btw? Greenpoint's good. ha ha.
ReplyDelete