On
the Fetish Character of Music and the Regression of Listening
Optimism
Orwellian
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On
the Fetish Character of Music and the Regression of Listening
A classic 1938 essay
from the Frankfurt School by Theodor
Adorno which combined Marxist and Freudian ideas to discuss music
and indict contemporary bourgeois society in so doing.
A striking feature
of the essay is the way in which Adorno assembles many of the elements
that we now associate with postmodernism: in his diagnosis of contemporary
culture, Adorno singles out the use of "ambiguous and half accidental
allusions", "completely latent similarities and associations",
and of quotations which are both "authoritarian and a parody";
he contends that "regressive listening" might be easier to
defend if the "illusory elements" of the art "gave way
to the playful ones"; the discussion of the slogan "What We
Want is Watney's" highlights the compulsive nature of modern advertising,
with both the usurpation of the message by the medium and of the product
by the advertisement itself; and at several points he touches on the
now-extremely-familiar subject of self-referentiality. There is a kind
of postmodern irony, also, in a text which defends a certain kind of
music at least in part on the grounds that it is actually impossible
to derive pleasure from it. From Adorno's point of view, of course,
the rise of the postmodern represents a further and massive regression
both of listening, and of all modes of aesthetic appreciation.
His prescience,
however, has limits: Adorno describes a systemic tendency to shrink
the regular classical repertoire in somewhat arbitrary ways; yet classical
music is both more commodified and more diverse than it ever used to
be. His discussion of Mahler as a composer wholly antipathetic to bourgeois
taste, and therefore one whose works resist commodification, has fallen
victim to the cruel dialectic of history, and the best we can do here
might be to choose to see this as a vindication of the characteristic
Frankfurt School claim that commodification is a strong enough force
to appropriate even its strongest opponents, whether theoretical, material
or, in this case, musical.
The essay is most
notable as a showcase for Adorno's virtuosity in applying Marx's remarks
about the distortions of ideology to the musical and cultural spheres.
Marx's strong claim that ideological illusions promote the interests
of the ruling class has its echo in Adorno's equally strong claim that
"the illusion of a social preference for light music as against
serious is based on that passivity of the masses which makes the consumption
of light music contradict the objective interest of those who consume
it"! Ideology as a disjunction between essence and appearance features
throughout, most obviously in the concept of the "fetishization
of music", but also in numerous examples, such as the concertgoer
who worships the money he pays for his ticket; and the disjunction generates
its own illusion, for the "fetish character of music produc[es]
its own camouflage through the identification of the listener with the
fetish".
Yet for all of Adorno's
sensitivity to the dialectics of history, there also seems to be a far-too-crude
account of musical development over the last two hundred years. It is
plausible to claim that there was a perfect "fusion" of serious
and light music in The Magic Flute, but it is not clear what
it was impossible to achieve this synthesis after the death of Mozart.
In his discussions of the nineteenth century, he works with a narrow
conception of what is to count as "serious" music: he seems
interested in the big romantic symphonies and works by Beethoven, Wagner
or Mahler, and with the idea of the "totality", yet it is
not quite clear why this fairly uncommon kind of music should be treated
as the privileged bearer of the Zeitgeist, nor that the composers
themselves were nearly as concerned with "totality" as Adorno
himself is, nor that they never wrote music specifically intended for
the "deconcentrated listening" which he so despises. What
Adorno does is take up some salient features of the serialist modernists
-- their lack of a popular audience, sternly demanding music and uncompromising
aesthetics, -- treat these as the constituent elements that go to make
up the ideal-typical "serious" composer, and then back-project
these features onto the story of nineteenth century music in order to
create a coherent narrative. It is not obvious that this is a sensible
way to proceed.
For all its fine
moments, then, it is hard to affirm the central arguments of "The
Fetish Character of Music and the Regression of Listening", and
as with so much dialectical criticism, the ending is rather weak: it
is just not clear what "Even discipline can take over the expression
of free solidarity if freedom becomes its content" actually means.
But it remains an insightful, provocative and exhilarating essay, and
one well worth (re)reading sixty years after its first publication.
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Optimism
The Voice of
the Turtle has always been optimistic and enthusiastic, for it joyfully
proclaims the advent of a new social order. But optimism and enthusiasm
can swiftly become disabling fantasies, and we do well to guard against
the errors they can induce. Fortunately, to assist the Turtle with its
ongoing processes of self-criticism, we have the invaluable strictures
of Antonio Gramsci. He is, of course, famous for popularising the slogan
of Romain Rolland, "Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the
will", but he also had this to say, in his Ninth Prison
Notebook:
"Optimism
and pessimism. It should be noted that very often optimism is nothing
more than a defense of one's laziness, one's irresponsibility, the
will to do nothing. It is also a form of fatalism and mechanicism.
One relies on factors extraneous to one's will and activity, exalts
them, and appears to burn with sacred enthusiasm. And enthusiasm is
nothing more than the external adoration of fetishes. A reaction [is]
necessary which must have the intelligence for its point of depature.
The only justifiable enthusiasm is that which accompanies the intelligent
will, intelligent activity, the inventive richness of concrete intitiatives
which change existing reality."
[Source:
Remark 130 in Notebook #9, quoted in the Introduction to the first volume
of the Columbia critical edition of the Prison Notebooks, ed.,
Joseph A. Buttigieg and trans. Joseph A, Buttigieg and Antonio Callari,
New York, 1992, p.12.]
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Orwellian
It is an old joke,
but still a good one, to reflect that if George Orwell had continued
to use his real name then the adjective we would use to describe a nightmarish
future in which a government with total control over the nation's media
organs in a country where people felt increasingly impotent and isolated
in the face of overwhelming state power, et cetera, would be
"Blairite".
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