he says "pop had a new purpose: to make out of pleasure a politics of optimism, to turn passive consumption into an active culture" (60).
Would a song a today be able to accomplish this, and sell? Would people today be willing to purchase a politically charged song, a song that would be able to create an active culture?
But were songs from the 60's so different from the songs being produced today? Today's songs are over flowing with drug, violence, abuse, and sexual references. A lot of the songs from the sixties were composed while the writer was under the influence of some hallucinogenic drug, and probably had some sexual references, with war references which corresponds to today's violence references.
Didn't Professor Fink make some point about psychedelic music being written and performed as a way to depict the effects of whatever psychotropic substances, rather than as a direct creative product of those experiences, as functionality on the order of writing songs or playing music might just be somewhat impeded by being that stoned?
ReplyDeleteBut regardless, today's music could be considered more blatantly commercial, capitalizing on tropes established during that era.
There's not really a way to look at today's culture as we can the 1960's. We're living it. Future generations will really be the ones to decide how this generation is remembered based on their social values. I do agree that today's music is more commercial, but that is the culture of today's society. Either our society will become more commercialized, and we will be remembered as a transitional generation, or there will be a backlash against commercialism and our generation will be viewed as unique. There's no way to tell, and that's for future generations to decide.
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