Taz (the complete text)
Andrea Chen
>
> (For Harry Smith)
>
> AT THE SURREALIST FILM show, someone asked Stan Brakhage
> about the media's use of surrealism (MTV, etc.); he answered
> that it was a "damn shame." Well, maybe it is & maybe it
> isn't (does popular kultur _ipso_facto_ lack all
> inspiration?)--but granting that on some level the media's
> appropriation of surrealism is a damn shame, are we to
> believe that there was nothing in surrealism that allowed
> this theft to occur?
Much of the article works on this theme and I shall snip most of it. I
shall make a few quick points on this general issue.
1) The borrowing of techniques isn't necessarily the borrowing of the
whole. I would claim that artists can reverse the process through
studying the techniques (often amazing) of the media and employing them
for other purposes. This of course brings up the issue of the medium is
the message.
2) Western capitalist society is very effective at incorporating forces
which challenge the status quo. The problems with this are frequently
discussed, but it's not a clearcut issue. There have been advances in
human rights including significant emancipation of women both legally
and in terms of identity. It may be that something crucial is lost when
such "evolutions" occur, but it results in an historically unique
system.
3) Like it or not, most modern "revolutionary" movements are products of
capitalism. The leaders are typically educated members of the middle
class, the supporters come from similar milieu. These politically
discontented or seekers of new artistic expression are the ones who have
most successfully redefined the world's cultural landscape. It would be
false to say that often idealized groups like the working class or the
peasants produce nothing orignal; but often this comes from modern
conditions which make them an alienated underclass from which rises
things like jazz, rhythm and blues and rap. Traditional (precapitalist)
people tend to be conservative (within the context of their culture.)
Revolutionarily we see events like Iraq or the north American militias.
One can hate capitalism, but one can't honestly separate the creation
of ones identity from it. This is sometimes hard to explain because
modern capitalist society provides many niches (the university etc.)
were people can pretend otherwise.
>The Surrealist liberation
> of desire, for all its aesthetic accomplishments, remains no
> more than a subset of production--hence the wholesaling of
> Surrealism to the Communist Party
I don't think Breton sold himself to the communists. The party has a
history of luring artsts and creating common fronts. Communism would
have seemed attractive. First of all they get things done, which is why
they have tended to dominate the left. In 1925 the NEP was just coming
to an end. There had been a (somewhat) fruitful period in Russia.
Given a humanly understandable desire to not look closely, to be moved
by such things as Engels theories on the end of the family and a whole
bunch of other stuff it's understandable that surrealism feel for it
(the Existentialists (or some of them) had less excuse.)
To Breton's credit he soon broke with the party or (I believe more
accurately) it broke with him finding him unsuitable for it's
discipline.
& its Work-ist ideology
> (not to mention attendant misogyny & homophobia). Modern
> leisure, in turn, is simply a subset of Work (hence its
> commodification)--so it is no accident that when Surrealism
> closed up shop, the only customers at the garage sale were
> ad execs.
>
This isn't true. At least as a symbol for something it remans a lure.
Logically ad execs don't show an interest in something unless it can
move and persuade or otherwise act on customers (the people). The fact
that they use sex doesn't mean sex is in and of itself corrupt, though
the resulting redefiniation may or may not be. Incidently the answer to
this isn't as simple as it may seem. Was the "sexual revolution" of the
sixties (strongly influenced by advertising's encouragement of hedonism
and which often treated women as commodities) more corrupt than the
rigid notions of family and purity that it challenged? In other words
is the shifts brought about by capitalist institutions necessarily bad
when compared to the previous situation rather than the ideal?
> Advertising, using Surrealism's colonization of the
> unconscious to _create_ desire, leads to the final implosion
> of Surrealism. It's not just a "damn shame & a disgrace,"
> not a simple appropriation. Surrealism was _made_ for
> advertising, for commodification. Surrealism is in fact a
> betrayal of desire.