Self-aware rebellion against spectacle is itself absorbed and commodified

Evidence

No-one embodied (and struggled with) this deadlock more than Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. In his dreadful lassitude and objectless rage, Cobain seemed to give wearied voice to the despondency of the generation that had come after history, whose every move was anticipated, tracked, bought and sold before it had even happened. Cobain knew that he was just another piece of spectacle, that nothing runs better on MTV than a protest against MTV; knew that his every move was a cliché scripted in advance, knew that even realizing it is a cliché. The impasse that paralyzed Cobain is precisely the one that Jameson described: like postmodern culture in general, Cobain found himself in ‘a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, [where] all that is left is to imitate dead styles, to speak through the masks and with the voices of the styles in the imaginary museum’. Here, even success meant failure, since to succeed would only mean that you were the new meat on which the system could feed. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 24

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the trap of meta-awareness the reader knows from ironic detachment in internet culture — where pointing out the cliché doesn’t escape it. — connects to: Attentional politics claims to prefigure the overthrow of spectacle society.; Collective refusal transforms individual self-discipline into public spectacle of noncompliance — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 282; Self-commodification in the attention economy creates an escalating spiral of exposure and attack — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror…, 207 (+3 more)
• CANDY: ‘Nothing runs better on MTV than a protest against MTV’ is a compact, quotable line for an elevator conversation.

Related

• Attentional politics claims to prefigure the overthrow of spectacle society. (similarity 0.87)
• Self-styled cultural rebels often become the establishment without realizing it (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Treating talk as self-display makes audiences dismiss activists as attention-seekers #exemplifies (0.92) — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics, 1034
• Collective refusal transforms individual self-discipline into public spectacle of noncompliance #exemplifies (0.88) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 282
• Embracing objectification can itself be a form of agency and power #exemplifies (0.85)
• Self-commodification in the attention economy creates an escalating spiral of exposure and attack #expands (0.78) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 207