As you point out, there has been a vast regression in public consciousness – all the way back to a childish cartoonish quasi-supernatural outlook. My favourite – and I’m sure it will tickle John! – is the one about how Theodor Adorno wrote the lyrics to the Beatles!
This Teddy/Fab Four fixation fascinates me, partly for its charming quaintness, but also because it encapsulates this public regression perfectly. And this is because, to truly gain some insight into how such a bizarre concept came about, you have to try to think your way back to that conjunction of the 50s and 60s when the enviable American economic boom of the former – with Elvis Presley as the central image of America’s cultural ascent – gave way to that “British Invasion” of the latter in which, according to US ideology, these agents from the “dark commie East” were infecting the purity of this “Land of the Free”.
(One curiosity is that Elvis once apparently wrote a letter to Richard Nixon offering his services as a spy to report back on those commies – amongst whom I’m sure he numbered the Liverpool lads.)
But all of this should surely impress as an anachronistic irrelevance ... and yet I have encountered a resurgence of such fables.
What I love about this is that the narrator at least applies a minimal rationality to the remarkable aforementioned farrago – which would appear to have been put forward by one John Coleman: asking two questions – first, that if Adorno really wrote the Beatles’ lyrics, when did he find the time? Second, was The Beatles music really “atonal”?
That second one is the giveaway. Who with the most minimal feel and understanding for music could ever have thought that the Beatles were atonal? The narrator himself seems to be somewhat ignorant on the topic, unnecessarily delving into first and last chords. Anyone with any musical sense can instantly tell that ALL pop music is tonal.
What Coleman is giving us is that – as I’ve called it – “charming” naiveté of the grumpy old reactionary whose only point is that the world of today “sucks” but can give no genuinely perceptive observation as to what this disgruntlement signifies. The Beatles “made a racket” and it’s “just awful”! (Ironically, statements that Adorno would have agreed with only he could have given an actual analysis of the phenomenon at work.)
And it seems to me that it is this cartoonish naiveté that is behind these grand conspiracy narratives. There is an American outlook that sees America as this “Land of the Free” which managed to escape all feudalism which the rest of the world still struggles under. So naturally the rock ‘n roll of the 50s was an expression of this great freedom but that “British Invasion” of the 60s was an incursion from the dark outside etc.
All of which only scratches the surface of the idiocies around the Beatle-cropped Teddy saga. If you’re interested (and there’s no reason why you should be!) this video has a curious turnaround moment when Adorno goes from fretting about fascism to positively engineering it!
Adorno is like Marx in that he is mostly not read but read about. That's why you have these straw man representations e.g. that Marx wanted "total equality" and Adorno was some kind of shady CIA operative.
I feel like Adorno is particularly attacked these days as some sort of “grandfather of wokeness”. I’ve read Adorno before, and I must say that I enjoyed him and he wasn’t all woke. His analysis of fascism is especially prescient today. Also, at this time I think Marx is more important than ever. Both of them are attached so no one will read them and realise they were right…
Mention of “wokeness” shocks me into a sadly familiar feeling of misapplied neologisms used to revise the past. (Though perhaps ALL neologisms are used this way by definition?)
“Woke” seems to me to be a recent buzzword. Just as “political correctness” – though of older usage – was introduced as a smear which was then used retroactively.
I did have a look to see when such terminology first appeared but frankly I have a deep suspicion of Wikipedia which itself has a habit of retroactively applying neologisms cf. that bit about “transgender” people being victimised in The Holocaust.
In any case, the label “woke” has nothing to do with Adorno. Neither has “political correctness”. Both applications feed into the “Cultural Marxist” myth. Here is a very good article by Martin Jay on this myth:
Note the 11 point list that starts, “The creation of racism offences”. I have read this list repeated umpteen times in various blogs and in various books. It is clearly a copy/paste template for this smear campaign.
fascinating article. The attacks against adorno are incredible. Starting with gabe rockhill. Why ANYONE takes this guy seriously is beyond me. But all the sneering must mean something.
One of the most irritating things about those grand conspiratorial narratives is that some specific aim is always posited e.g. the destruction of Western civilization or the theft of our freedoms but no elucidation of these sweeping generalisations is ever offered, nor any reason as to why the overlords would want these outcomes. There is a very bourgeois mentality at work here I.e. this self obsessed notion that someone out there is coming to harm you for no reason other than sheer malevolence – since taking away “what’s yours” is seen as the ultimate offence.
This also indicates a blase assumption that “what you have” is something final and given – as if Western civilisation or our freedoms somehow came out of nowhere and were forever immutable.
Until I watched this podcast, I hadn’t realised how much so many recent TV programmes relied on surveillance equipment as a vital part of the plot – and this equipment always being presented as beneficial. The one I am currently watching – “Eric” (with Benedict Cumberbatch) – is set in the 80s i.e. before the surveillance technology had reached anything like its current advanced state. And yet there is still a policeman making extensive use of public video tapes which, according to this programme, seems to have been ubiquitous to a degree that is surely revisionist.
There was even “Invitation to a Murder” set in the 1930s in which there was a bank of screens with cameras set up to watch the residents in their rooms. With 30s technology?
Off topic, but Shaenah felt there was something fascistic about Taylor Swift. And The Guardian unwittingly confirms this through hysterical hyperbole:
“‘She dominates our age’: how Taylor Swift became the greatest show on Earth
The record-smashing singer-songwriter wields creative, commercial and celebrity power like no one before. As her billion-dollar Eras tour lands in the UK, we trace the making of the Swift universe”
Swift only “became” the greatest show on Earth through the media simply declaring her to be so. And if the media decide to “trace the making of the Swift universe”, they are only tracing their own process of hype. Indeed, this “tracing” is a mere subterfuge to further the hype.
On the topic of Solzhenitsyn, he always irritated the hell out of me. I admit to never having read him but I have a major aversion to these portentous “mystics” who so happily seize the opportunity whenever they see a convenient propagandist opening for them. Speaking of which, I am currently re-reading Trotsky’s “History of the Russian Revolution” where he talks of the Czarina’s gullible fixation on Rasputin which reminds me of that Marxist quote about history repeating first as tragedy, then as farce.
I’ve read him, it gets pretty dull after awhile. A few months ago I wrote something on my substack about him too called “There Were Once Two Russian Writers”. I certainly don’t think his literary ability actually matched what it was claimed to be in the western media.
As you point out, there has been a vast regression in public consciousness – all the way back to a childish cartoonish quasi-supernatural outlook. My favourite – and I’m sure it will tickle John! – is the one about how Theodor Adorno wrote the lyrics to the Beatles!
This Teddy/Fab Four fixation fascinates me, partly for its charming quaintness, but also because it encapsulates this public regression perfectly. And this is because, to truly gain some insight into how such a bizarre concept came about, you have to try to think your way back to that conjunction of the 50s and 60s when the enviable American economic boom of the former – with Elvis Presley as the central image of America’s cultural ascent – gave way to that “British Invasion” of the latter in which, according to US ideology, these agents from the “dark commie East” were infecting the purity of this “Land of the Free”.
(One curiosity is that Elvis once apparently wrote a letter to Richard Nixon offering his services as a spy to report back on those commies – amongst whom I’m sure he numbered the Liverpool lads.)
But all of this should surely impress as an anachronistic irrelevance ... and yet I have encountered a resurgence of such fables.
I’ve seen that one before, it cracks me up. If Adorno didn’t like jazz, how on Earth could he like the Beatles!!
A bit more on the Teddy/Fab Four farrago can be “enjoyed” here starting from the 1 hour 38 minute mark:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccEhmQ0M4FY
What I love about this is that the narrator at least applies a minimal rationality to the remarkable aforementioned farrago – which would appear to have been put forward by one John Coleman: asking two questions – first, that if Adorno really wrote the Beatles’ lyrics, when did he find the time? Second, was The Beatles music really “atonal”?
That second one is the giveaway. Who with the most minimal feel and understanding for music could ever have thought that the Beatles were atonal? The narrator himself seems to be somewhat ignorant on the topic, unnecessarily delving into first and last chords. Anyone with any musical sense can instantly tell that ALL pop music is tonal.
What Coleman is giving us is that – as I’ve called it – “charming” naiveté of the grumpy old reactionary whose only point is that the world of today “sucks” but can give no genuinely perceptive observation as to what this disgruntlement signifies. The Beatles “made a racket” and it’s “just awful”! (Ironically, statements that Adorno would have agreed with only he could have given an actual analysis of the phenomenon at work.)
And it seems to me that it is this cartoonish naiveté that is behind these grand conspiracy narratives. There is an American outlook that sees America as this “Land of the Free” which managed to escape all feudalism which the rest of the world still struggles under. So naturally the rock ‘n roll of the 50s was an expression of this great freedom but that “British Invasion” of the 60s was an incursion from the dark outside etc.
All of which only scratches the surface of the idiocies around the Beatle-cropped Teddy saga. If you’re interested (and there’s no reason why you should be!) this video has a curious turnaround moment when Adorno goes from fretting about fascism to positively engineering it!
Feel free to peruse .... or ignore completely!
Adorno is like Marx in that he is mostly not read but read about. That's why you have these straw man representations e.g. that Marx wanted "total equality" and Adorno was some kind of shady CIA operative.
I feel like Adorno is particularly attacked these days as some sort of “grandfather of wokeness”. I’ve read Adorno before, and I must say that I enjoyed him and he wasn’t all woke. His analysis of fascism is especially prescient today. Also, at this time I think Marx is more important than ever. Both of them are attached so no one will read them and realise they were right…
Mention of “wokeness” shocks me into a sadly familiar feeling of misapplied neologisms used to revise the past. (Though perhaps ALL neologisms are used this way by definition?)
“Woke” seems to me to be a recent buzzword. Just as “political correctness” – though of older usage – was introduced as a smear which was then used retroactively.
I did have a look to see when such terminology first appeared but frankly I have a deep suspicion of Wikipedia which itself has a habit of retroactively applying neologisms cf. that bit about “transgender” people being victimised in The Holocaust.
In any case, the label “woke” has nothing to do with Adorno. Neither has “political correctness”. Both applications feed into the “Cultural Marxist” myth. Here is a very good article by Martin Jay on this myth:
https://web.archive.org/web/20111124045123/http://cms.skidmore.edu/salmagundi/backissues/168-169/martin-jay-frankfurt-school-as-scapegoat.cfm
Note the 11 point list that starts, “The creation of racism offences”. I have read this list repeated umpteen times in various blogs and in various books. It is clearly a copy/paste template for this smear campaign.
fascinating article. The attacks against adorno are incredible. Starting with gabe rockhill. Why ANYONE takes this guy seriously is beyond me. But all the sneering must mean something.
One of the most irritating things about those grand conspiratorial narratives is that some specific aim is always posited e.g. the destruction of Western civilization or the theft of our freedoms but no elucidation of these sweeping generalisations is ever offered, nor any reason as to why the overlords would want these outcomes. There is a very bourgeois mentality at work here I.e. this self obsessed notion that someone out there is coming to harm you for no reason other than sheer malevolence – since taking away “what’s yours” is seen as the ultimate offence.
This also indicates a blase assumption that “what you have” is something final and given – as if Western civilisation or our freedoms somehow came out of nowhere and were forever immutable.
Thank you for the recommendation! I will give that a read
Until I watched this podcast, I hadn’t realised how much so many recent TV programmes relied on surveillance equipment as a vital part of the plot – and this equipment always being presented as beneficial. The one I am currently watching – “Eric” (with Benedict Cumberbatch) – is set in the 80s i.e. before the surveillance technology had reached anything like its current advanced state. And yet there is still a policeman making extensive use of public video tapes which, according to this programme, seems to have been ubiquitous to a degree that is surely revisionist.
There was even “Invitation to a Murder” set in the 1930s in which there was a bank of screens with cameras set up to watch the residents in their rooms. With 30s technology?
i discuss Eric, briefly, in the Theatre Lecture.
Off topic, but Shaenah felt there was something fascistic about Taylor Swift. And The Guardian unwittingly confirms this through hysterical hyperbole:
“‘She dominates our age’: how Taylor Swift became the greatest show on Earth
The record-smashing singer-songwriter wields creative, commercial and celebrity power like no one before. As her billion-dollar Eras tour lands in the UK, we trace the making of the Swift universe”
Swift only “became” the greatest show on Earth through the media simply declaring her to be so. And if the media decide to “trace the making of the Swift universe”, they are only tracing their own process of hype. Indeed, this “tracing” is a mere subterfuge to further the hype.
On the topic of Solzhenitsyn, he always irritated the hell out of me. I admit to never having read him but I have a major aversion to these portentous “mystics” who so happily seize the opportunity whenever they see a convenient propagandist opening for them. Speaking of which, I am currently re-reading Trotsky’s “History of the Russian Revolution” where he talks of the Czarina’s gullible fixation on Rasputin which reminds me of that Marxist quote about history repeating first as tragedy, then as farce.
I’ve read him, it gets pretty dull after awhile. A few months ago I wrote something on my substack about him too called “There Were Once Two Russian Writers”. I certainly don’t think his literary ability actually matched what it was claimed to be in the western media.