Thinking about Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" triggered a memory about an article by Tom Frank (now better known as Thomas Frank) in The Nation because of its interesting title: "Hip is Dead: The Howl of Unreflective Consumerism." I couldn't at first remember the exact year this first appeared (1996), but I sure remembered the title and, more generally, the content. Two things still stick, having filed a copy somewhere but not read it in a while: first, hipster types have risen to the top of many corporations (in technology and mass cultural production, for example) and second, there is a great need for more muckraking investigative work. In the article, Frank would have people exercise more reflection before consuming "shit we don't need with money we don't have" (to quote George Carlin rather than Frank, but the gist is the same). Beware of hipster flimflam and marketing: corporate gurus may know the code and pulse of Beat Generation poets and writers and rock/hip hop music coolness, but they are at core out to make a quarterly profit just like any other conglomeration. Ultimately, big scale capitalism is at odds with the original intent. Big scale capitalism subsumes ideas and trends like Ginsberg's Moloch devours souls. Luckily, since 1996 there has been a revival in muckraking and such developments as WikiLeaks.
Today's Rune: Defense.
2 comments:
Big scale capitalism chews up every movement that had worth and converts it to money making schemes.
Exactly why I have such an attitude against them of the boomer generation nation. The current CEO of Goldman Sachs, the one who helped ruin the economy with CDO's and made up markets is 3 months younger than me. All of them who moved manufacturing jobs offshore are the same age as my older siblings.
Yep Boomers are in the main like locusts. Eat and eat and eat and eat...
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