Popular modernism was eclipsed by heritage kitsch and US corporate culture
Evidence
‘Radio On,’ Petit said in a recent interview, ‘ended with a car ‘stalled on the edge of the future’, which we didn’t know then would be Thatcherism.’ Ahead lay a bizarre yet banal mix of the unprecedented and the archaic. Instead of accelerating down Kraftwerk’s autobahn, we found ourselves, as Petit puts it in Content, ‘reversing into a tomorrow based on a non-existent past’, as the popular modernism Radio On was part of found itself eclipsed by a toxic-addictive confection of consumer-driven populism, heritage kitsch, xenophobia and US corporate culture. — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 502
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: British cinema overlooks ready-made post-Fordist landscapes it could still use — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 503; A British-European film rapprochement was once imaginable but never arrived — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 501; Capital reabsorbed modernism’s cult of the new as commodity novelty — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 62 (+5 more)
Broader Connections
- Capital reabsorbed modernism’s cult of the new as commodity novelty
#corroborates(0.85) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 62 - With the collapse of high-modernist style, culture producers turned to imitating dead styles
#corroborates(0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 78 - Postmodernism represents the plebeianization of modernist culture
#corroborates(0.80) — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 271 - Postmodernists borrow modernism’s features to claim a false novelty
#corroborates(0.78) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 128 - American postmodernism assumes inevitable unopposable cultural trends we must accept
#qualifies(0.75)