Hope and despair in the midst of The Fear.
I’ve been reading Habermas this week, a German historian and political theorist who originated the elaborated concept of the “public sphere.” The public sphere has origins in the seventeenth century and really took off in the eighteenth. Fundamentally bourgeois, the public sphere was a space (figuratively speaking) of rational debate where the private citizens of a state met to publicly debate relevant issues and, hopefully, subject existing authority to the dictates of reason.
Sounds nice, yes? Sounds wonderful to me. And for a little while, it seemed, the reality came pretty close to the ideal. But all of this fell apart pretty quickly; the public sphere soon became as much an instrument of control as emancipation, especially through the use of culture to advertise rather than criticize existing (especially class) structures; consequently you end up with a mass public culture, constantly shifting and technically open to anyone, but merely geared towards supporting a consumerist society which has nearly lost the ability to think really critically about received wisdom and structures.
Thinking about all this brings me back into the twenty-first century. How everytime I turn on the TV, I get crap. About how standing in line for groceries, I read crap across every magazine cover I see. About how even I, notoriously confident among women, look at myself in dressing room mirrors and feel fat. And when I think about all of this at once, I feel almost despairing. The state of our society has gotten so truly sick, so far removed from that which is truly nourishing and joyful, that I wonder if I am in the end days of reason and happiness. It frightens me, and makes me feel ever so alienated by this place, this space that I must move within.
However today I came across two things which gave me some cause for hope. The first is a song by Lily Allen which I first heard in Moscow on TV, liked it right away, and heard again last night in the pet store, reminding me to download it today. I think the lyrics will speak for themselves bellow:
I don’t care about clever, I don’t care about funny
I want loads of clothes and fuck loads of diamonds
I heard people die while they are trying to find them.
And I’ll take my clothes off and it will be shameless
Cause everyone knows that’s how you get famous.
I’ll look at The Sun and I’ll look in The Mirror
I’m on the right track yeah I’m onto a winner.
Chorus
I don’t know what’s right and what’s real anymore
And I don’t know how I’m meant to feel anymore.
When do you think it will all become clear
Cause I’m being taken over by the fear.
Life’s about film stars and less about mothers
It’s all about fast cars and cussing each other
But it doesn’t matter cause I’m packing plastic
And that’s what makes my life so fucking fantastic.
And I am a weapon of massive consumption
And it’s not my fault it’s how I’m programmed to function
I’ll look at The Sun and I’ll look in The Mirror
I’m on the right track yeah we’re onto a winner.
Forget about guns and forget ammunition
Cause I’m killing them all on my own little mission
Now I’m not a saint but I’m not a sinner
Now everything’s cool as long as I’m getting thinner.
Chorus
I don’t know what’s right and what’s real anymore
And I don’t know how I’m meant to feel anymore
When do you think it will all become clear
Cause I’m being taken over by the fear.
This assures me that, at the least, we have not reached the point where critical voices are absent and it is not clear to a lot of people that there is a very serious problem here. Of course, recognizing the problem is different from acting to fix it, and recognizing that it is much, much more pervasive than we realize, and is in fact working its evil magic in places we deem to be free from excessive consumerism, shallowness, or oppression. But we’ll save that discussion of our society’s split personality for the post I’ve been planning forever on Oprah. The point here is that it could be worse. We could be in a situation where a song like this might not hit a chord; however, I’m pretty sure that a lot of people appreciate the blunt social criticism going on here.
The second thing that I came by was the much talked about performance of Susan Boyle on Britain’s Got Talent. This is one of those times where it would be shallow of me to even attempt to avoid being cliche — this video moved me, more than I can say. I recognized my own young, childhood dreaming in this entire moment, but I saw it through a woman who, unlike me, has probably felt knocked down several times for having the dreams she does and appreciating the woman she is. And while you see the sickness, and indeed The Fear in the initial reactions of the audience, again at least, at least we can still recognize beauty when it strikes us starkly, sharply, and with complete assurance in its being.
