CULTURE: THE JEALOUS GOD :: neon

Unlike the vitamin industry, culture does not develop along "good-for-you" lines.
It is volatile and unapologetic in bestowing success or defeat on aspiring artists and trends.
It is oblivious to political correctness and "good-for-the-world" ideologies.
It is a slave to buzz, and punishes infringement on its legacy keywords.
It favours escapism and shuns any vision of unprocessed suffering and strife.
It finds activists boring and extravagant bohemians intriguing.
It lends its history to rewriting only in the most convincing direction, i.e. away from reality.
It grants fame to reckless abandon and born-a-star charisma, and obstinately withholds it from the industrious strategist.
It never fails to deliver a coup de grace to those wounded by self-criticism even as it forgives talented egomaniacs.

Music that comes from the lands associated with the "wrong" imagery in the Western mind - war, starvation, political chaos - is hard to sell to the popular imagination, and therefore it's hard to sell, period. It needs a few decades to swallow its history and earn the carefree exotic appeal of reggae or Brazil. Unfair, but you can't override this algorithm.

With "Save the rainforests" products, sales volume is driven by the majority that buys into the escapist imagery of the exotic tropical paradise, not by the minority spurred to purchase via a "do-good" motivation. Colorful birds, frogs, and clays sell better than activism. Focusing on suffering damages the cause. Again, unfair, but must be taken into account.

"Bellydance," a bizzare legacy term, takes wing in the 21st century, while "Oriental Dance," "Raqs Sharki," "Middle Eastern Dance" and other "correct" English terms for the same or similar arts languish on the dark shelf of hard-to-sell niche goods, stuck-in-political-correctness artefacts, and unsexy historical preservationism.

"Gypsy" is another cultural precipice. "Romani" is PC, while the evocative historical "gypsy" (with all the sellable associations "carefree," "artistic," "passionate") is not, or at least there is a trend to read offensive views into this legacy term. However the damage from dropping it (if at all possible) and linking it to "suffering," "discrimination," "racism" for the sake of progress and historical truth, may be larger than the gain. "Romany dance": Historically-correct reference - yes. Sellable trend: no.

The flow of the cultural stream we inhabit is unstoppable and irreversible. When bound upstream, wisdom lies in using the flow to propel us. In terms of our individual careers and larger cultural causes, ignoring the flow results in splashing in one place - cute, but not helpful.

Comments

[Tempest]

yes.

[Alyra]

Great article, Neon! Interseting. Although I actually do think that culture is not oblivious to political correctness. PC has a very strong impact on what is popular and unpopular because it's based now upon Fear, rather than righteousness. Just my theory!

[Nedra]

wow! that was great Neon! I love your comparisons of what is widely accepted and what is hardly known in the world outside of our art...
I look forward to seeing you all on Sept 7th!
It will be a smashing success as always!
*muah*
(don't worry Tempest, I'll bring you a fuzzy bunny)