Dichotomies are like Jell-o--there's always room for more.
Nowhere is this trend toward oversimplification more apparent than in current debate surrounding Bob Dole's attacks on the entertainment industry. In a May 31 speech at a fund-raising event in Los Angeles, Dole excoriated entertainment moguls like Time Warner for supporting the degradation of American society through their financial support of music, such as "gangsta rap" and death metal, and blasted Hollywood for continuing to release "nightmares of depravity" like "Natural Born Killers" and "True Romance."
Many think Dole is being both disingenuous and hypocritical. When he made his comments, he had neither listened to the music nor watched the movies of which he spoke. And some of the movies he called "friendly to families" or excused from criticism, such as "True Lies" and "Die Hard," are hardly the stuff of which nonviolent dreams are made--but their stars, staunch Republicans Arnold and Bruce, are the stuff of which hefty campaign contributions are made.
Yes, Dole probably is being dishonest and hypocritical (read: politically savvy) when he makes such convenient exceptions to his analyses and attacks. But that doesn't mean that his point is invalid--not that you'd tell that from the way the debate has been portrayed in the media. The award for "Best Forced Dichotomy from a News Publication" has got to go to Time Magazine, which announced on its cover a forum about "Free speech vs. family values"--a binary about as complex as "Multiculturalism vs. white supremacy."
The cover, however, wasn't the worst part. Although one might think it difficult to get more simplistic than contrasting the First Amendment with a belief in American values, one of the participants in Time's forum proved that such a feat of intellectual vacuity was not impossible.
Katha Pollitt, described as a "poet, writer and social critic" (read: English major who still lives with Mom and Dad), said, "Ultimately, culture reflects society--for a violent nation, violent amusements." Apparently, Pollitt was trying to say something like "art reflects life" (also a fairly simplistic notion), but in her effort to sound more like a real "social critic," she substituted "culture" for "art" and "society" for "life." In the process, however, she put her poetic foot in her critical mouth.
When did culture and society become two different things? After taking two classes in literary theory and reading everything from Nietzsche to Nehemas, I have yet to understand how one might distinguish between the two terms--or even what they mean. In and of themselves, "culture" and "society" mean nothing. Lines drawn between the two are purely arbitrary, and usually serve only to oversimplify and blur the issues at hand. For the sake of argument, however, let's take a look at how she does use the terms and what linguistic legerdemain she employs to justify them.
Pollitt seems to argue that culture consists of things like movies and music--things that are produced for the rest of society. She fails to explain, however, where culture ends and society begins. Is Snoop Doggy Dogg, for example, a member of society or a cultural product? In Pollitt's eyes, he would have to be the latter: His music reflects a violent and disenfranchised society, therefore it is a cultural product.
But what made Snoop what he is? What made him angry, made him think it is OK to refer to women as "bitches" and "ho's"? The answer to this question is more complicated than "His society made him do it."
What about the other rappers, such as Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, who came before him and taught him what it takes to be a successful rapper? According to Pollitt, their commercial success (and the fact that they are producing music) would make them cultural products. If, however, culture reflects society, Dr. Dre and Ice Cube could not have influenced Snoop Doggy Dogg, since before his success Snoop existed in the realm of society, not culture, and therefore would have been excluded from the one-way culture-society relationship. Snoop-the-member-of-society became Snoop-the-Zeitgeist, but Pollitt would have you believe that the transformation occurred irrespective of "culture."
There is no difference between the two terms, no matter how much one would like to pretend otherwise. When people like Pollitt propound their naive distinctions between that which is produced ("culture") and those who produce ("society"), the result is that the producers stop feeling responsible for their products--which gives them even more leeway to do whatever the hell they want to do, because hey, as long as nobody gets hurt, it's OK, right? Wrong. It's not OK, and no amount of wishing or linguistic butt-covering will make it that way. Responsibility is tough, and it's about time that Time Warner and the rest of the entertainment industry started taking some. It's like Jell-o--there's enough for everybody.
Justin Dillon is a Trinity senior and editor of The Chronicle.
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