AudioShocker

After the last couple of weeks of attacking the notion of “audience” in critical writing, I’ve finally gotten around to reading those sample passages of the “Philosophy of…” books about X-Men and The Terminator that Nick linked to a couple of weeks ago, and I immediate find myself wondering who the audience of these texts are. Hypocritical? Maybe, but hopefully not. The tone of both the sample chapters are pretty similar, in line with the “…for Dummies” kind of books that have been popular since the ‘90s, so it’s not, as I had initially feared, in the mode of saying “here is what you aren’t noticing,” but rather, “here are some (supposedly) interesting things that we can talk about from these popular stories.” So that’s good, I suppose, but at the same time, given the massive amount of condescension involved in such an enterprise, I wonder who exactly would read this book and be both interested by the ideas and not offended by the oversimplification involved.

From my experience in "Academia" there's generally two or three attitudinal camps on what theory/philosophy's relationship with pop culture should be. There are elitists (like myself) who think that pop culture should be analyzed only insofar as it is popular; that is, I'm concerned, generally, with the mechanics of a given popular thing's popularity--questions like "what makes this cultural artifact so popular?" There is some spectrum, though, across various elitist viewpoints, as to whether any popular culture can ever transcend its capitalist origins (this problematizes, in the same breath, the notion of "high culture" as well, since "high" art is just seen as so much rationalization of leisure and complacency by the middle class--though, generally, at least in "popular" conception, the "split" between arts is either between the high/low or the popular/academic arts), or if its not transcendent, perhaps some popular art is good in spite of itself (that's generally my attitude). Another attitude, perhaps obviously, abhors the elitist stance, and wants to reach out to the popular audience, the bulk of any given culture. It doesn't mind the critical methodologies developed within various academic/intellectual communities; indeed, "philosophers" of this ilk embrace these interpretive practices but seek to apply them to anything that is interpretable, without concern to the modes of production of said cultural artifact. And another camp still despises both elitist culture and elitist criticism and seeks to generate new ways of interpreting popular art.

As might be expected, I have no problems with either the first or the last of the three approaches that I just described. And, as it turns out, based on their first chapters, these books of "pop philosophy" fall into the middle category. There's something, I have trouble putting my finger on it exactly, but there's something about this sort of "philosophy" that strikes me as strangely evangelical, as if, more than anything, these books are about luring people into their fields, more than anything in particular that might be said. Not surprisingly, then, both of the sample chapters involve Identity Politics. In the X-Men one, the writer inquires into what it means to belong, or to be different or special, and how one, who is "different" might or might not self-identify. For the Terminator, the discussion is of whether or not robots can ever "think" the way humans can, or whether or not robots could self-identify as being, essentially, human. The lure, then, for the imaginary reader of such an article, would be to get the reader to self-identify as a philosopher, and to begin to extend these kinds of "philosophical" investigations to other pieces of their cultural worlds.

Which would be all well and good; certainly, I couldn't claim to do anything but criticize, from whatever quasi-theoretical stance it is that I take here in Culturology, whatever artifacts I come across on a week-to-week basis. My ability to do so (whether or not its effective) certainly arises out of a certain amount of training in this field (whether that came in the classroom or from reading other books). But, with books like these pop philosophy things, the ideas are so watered down and glossed over, in order to attract readers at all, that they lack the kind of critical (and self-critical) efficacy that makes "philosophizing" about popular culture worthwhile in the first place (the basic question of such inquiry, which is a completely valid question, is: "I like this; why do I like this?" and notions of effectiveness come from how well that question is answered). The problem, then, is that, rather than inviting readers to learn more philosophy, I would charge that these books in fact invite readers just to do similar wishy-washy things to other bits of pop culture. (Granted, there are the obligatory nods to further reading, but the rhetorical stance of the chapters themselves seem to lack the kind of truth-seeking behavior that would effectively model the desire to read further.)

This all seems to be barreling towards the similar kind of "elitist" stance that seems to have become something of an idee fixe for me in the past month of posts here (similar to my (apparent) overuse of the word "atavist" in the month prior). Which is perhaps wrong; I try, usually, to ask more questions here than provide answers. But I can't get away from this notion of critic-as-specialist that is almost completely antithetical to the everyone-can-be-a-philosopher attitude that apparently exists as a demographic (since these books came to be published at all). The two aren't really mutually exclusive, though, huh? Maybe it's like punk rock, where the band on stage might be shouting about all the Noam Chomsky they've read, but the bulk of the kids in the crowd just want to be contrary and wear t-shirts with the word "fuck" on them. Is it better to be a punk at all then just a conformist? And for the few kids in the crowd that actually do go read Chomsky and actually do go learn some things, are they better punks than the conformist-punks? And should the bands themselves be doing more to recruit "actual" punks?

To my mind, this kind of discussion finds most of its answers in appeals to the pervasiveness of, if not capitalism, then of "the market," where everything, from artifacts to ideas, are readily turned into commodities and in competition with one another. Some number of philosophers or theorists hope that by being sufficiently aware of this process they might effect a reasonable critique of commodification despite the fact that their own ideas are subject to the market as well; some ideas are more easily marketable than others--hence, elitism, since elitists have found a way to reduce their market value by reducing any broad appeal of their ideas. Criticism, almost by definition, must be a niche market. The sort of foray into "popular" realms as exemplified by these books of "pop philosophy," though they might see themselves as doing something noble, inevitably reduce their importance as ideas in direct proportion to their importance as commodities. Whether or not that's a good thing, I'm not entirely certain.