GeekinthePink

The rise of aesthetic populism. More postmodernism rhetoric. Capitalism is getting such a beatdown from these theorists. Marx wanted to get rid of it all together, Benjamin frowned on capitalism's ability to mass produce, and now Jameson says that the rise of aesthetic populism and its degraded "landscape of schlock and kitsch" is the consequence of a post-capitalist society.

According to Jameson, we are either in the third or fourth machine age. "Is is at this point that we must reintroduce the problem of aesthetic representation already explicity developed in Kant's earlier analysis of the sublime--since it would seem only logical that the relationship to, and representation of, the machine could be expected to shift dialectically with each of these qualitatively different stages of technological development." To this idea, Jameson says the technology we possess can no longer have the same representation--we have computers and televisions that show us new technology with a "flattened image surface within itself." Subsequently, these machines are machines of reproduction.

I stand with what I said about Marx and Benjamin. While I see their viewpoints on capitalism ensuring mass reproduction and the destruction of art through that route, I also see capitalism as an enabler. It is a double-edged sword that must be used for good and bad. It is human nature to use it for both; the fact that people exploit it will always happen. But you have to ask yourself a question: If you make a horrible rendition of "Romeo and Juliet" and make it sell to millions of people, dumbing it down for average audiences and for the maximum dollar value, yet someone sees it, becomes interested in the original story and pursues it for themselves, isn't this spreading true culture? So, out of the depths of some evil capitalist plot there lies benefit for those willing to seek it. And in the end, are not the only ones willing to seek original, cognitive thinking for themselves and appreciate it the only ones that are going to in the first place? Thus, the only fault in capitalism is in people--and you will have that factor in any political system you conjure up.