One of those ideas that keeps coming back to me is a question that has been on my mind for at least ten years. Whether it is music, writing, or art in general: Where is the disruption and subversion?
This isn’t intended to be a Luddite-inspired rant against technology… Other people are better at it than I. And I quite like some elements of technology that we didn’t have when I was a kid.
However, I do have to make the observation that since the digital age settled in, the arts seem to be suffering from a lack of will when it comes to being disruptive and subversive. And when I use those two words, I mean them in the same way that early rock music disrupted popular music. Or when punk rock subverted rock. Or the dadaists and surrealists when it comes to art. Or Heinlein’s approach towards speculative fiction, Poe daring to write macabre in a time that people found it subversive and, perhaps, morally reprehensible.
After the rise of social media it seems many of the arts are stuck in the 90s—00s. Very little feels like it challenges the status quo in a way that provides a pivot to something new.
Maybe we still need some distance to have hindsight. To me, though, I wonder why I cannot think of any arts-related elements that ushered in a a paradigm shift in the public consciousness in the past twenty years. It seems like we are really overdue, but that the current technological state has held true artistic progress in limbo while itself advances. Iteration, emulation, and homogenization seems to be the standard practice these days. Where is the subversive?
Do you have counter-examples? Am I overplaying my hand at suggesting that the arts have largely succumbed to stagnation and enshittification?
Leave a comment. Markdown use is permitted.