The experiences of the majority have been pushed incrementally to the margins of our culture thanks to a combination of entrenched elitism and increased risk-aversion following the financial crisis of 2008. In real terms, this has meant a collapsing of the gap between the powers governing our economy and politics, and one of the primary means for policing and keeping them in check. Where the media and our arts institutions might have once, and to varying extents, served as a counterpoint and agitator to the formal disciplines of power, in recent years they have become increasingly complicit in the neoliberal project, serving as the soft-power limb of an economic and political agenda that seeks to divorce objects, ideas and words from any greater meaning beyond their market value.
All of this matters not only because it debases our culture — an arguably sentimental consideration when compared with the practical matter of economics and survival — but because it also undermines the very basis of democracy, which relies on a free and independent media to empower the electorate in making sound political judgements. It’s a legitimate criticism often waged at the post-Soviet space that a state-controlled media constitutes a corruption of the democratic system. And yet, while it might sound extreme to say on account of our own false sense of immunity to these forces of corruption, our own media has succumbed to an unprecedented level of nepotism and elitism whose effects are arguably similar. The diminishing socio-economic experience that now informs the vast majority of our media, comprised of the same alumni networks as those in government, is a free media in name alone. And while it hardly requires me to make the case against Fox News and the Murdoch empire, whose corrupt workings are well exposed, the collusion between political power and even the ostensible liberal media through unchallenged and increasingly homogeneous rules of taste has also rendered meaningful debate impossible and prevented any new ideas from making headway into the mainstream.
While we analyse the causes of this phenomenon, its effects have already been felt in the daily lives of working-class people, whose culture has become increasingly mocked and derided. If pop culture had once been defined by the concessions it made to a loud, proud and outspoken working class, then over time it has shifted towards a more voyeuristic and condescending model. The criticism might well be indirect, but it is time to wake up to the impact of reality TV shows aimed at showcasing the working classes as a spectacle of moral rot, for example, which over time have understandably contributed to working-class resentment of the establishment, while the lifestyles of the more affluent are usually always presented in exclusively positive terms.
What’s more, at its core, neoliberalism rewards the strong, which by extension and in cultural terms translates to an endless perpetuation of the status quo. By reverse, any challenge to its authority can be dismissed offhand on the grounds of having no inherent value or worth. Therefore, if Hall’s “great moving right show” saw a concerted effort to usher in right-wing policies under the guise of a more egalitarian and inclusive agenda than the earlier Christian strains of political conservativism, then what has ensued since Blair has been an endless glitch or malfunction, as any attempt to accurately assess the situation faltered under accusations of extremity and madness. As a result, these criticisms had defaulted to a style of self-censorship and despair manifesting in so-called “irony poisoning”, which has been exacerbated by the fact that any form of rebellion, protest, adversity and challenge to the status quo has been commoditised by advertisers and marketing execs to achieve the ends of capitalism. This has the effect of instantly softening its effects and resulting in a cultural climate of immense insincerity that breeds bitterness, paranoia and mistrust. In creating a semantic vacuum capable of swallowing any predating value system or moral framework, neoliberalism has also been successful in positing class — and by extension, good taste — as the de facto metric of quality, transforming our conceptions of art and culture to the extent that the studied tropes of the establishment now constitute great art.
This might not seem like a particularly newsworthy or controversial point, until you consider the fact that art has always been broadly defined as antithetical to taste, characterised by its ability to challenge, subvert and ultimately transform our most deeply held beliefs and assumptions. In fact, it’s the normalisation of this phenomenon that is perhaps most telling of all about the success of late capitalism in conquering our critical faculties.
Diversity and inclusion quotas will never redress this problem for the fundamental fact that inclusion is itself the product of an empiricism whose origins lie in neoliberal and capitalist thinking, placing emphasis solely on the external signifiers of diversity which have historically been undervalued in the marketplace: skin colour being the most obvious example, but also dress code, accent, vocabulary, etc. In this dynamic, the altruistic father figure generously extends opportunity to the working classes without ever having to question his own authority, and is free to reward himself in the role of caregiver. But the clue’s in the name. This isn’t a chance to transform the status quo, as the father figure’s generosity necessarily dictates conformity to his rules. Instead, it’s an invitation to enter a system that has historically devalued the communities from which these “minority” candidates emerge, and to make only the most incremental of changes to it through whatever degree of change is permitted by it’s defensive rules of good taste, decency and moral acceptance.
Real change will therefore need to come from outside, and what few opportunities exist for transformation only become apparent to us when we start to trust the feeling of impostordom that we’ve been told to resist and overcome. This is the force that will allow us to mount an alternative to the neoliberal agenda and challenge the gatekeepers of culture whose authority is based on ever-shakier foundations. The liberal media is well aware that it has painted itself into a corner, and to secure its survival must placate the braying mob gathered outside its doors by a variety of different means. Cosplaying as the working class is one such method used by the middle-class ascendants to the highest ranks of the media, advertising and art institutions, disguising their own privilege by wearing tracksuits and talking in mockney accents. The second is to become increasingly benign and good-mannered. They have no choice, after all. The economic downturn, along with a radical transformation in the types of people obtaining further and higher education, has forced a degree of interrogration of the dubious methods by which the establishment accrued its wealth and status, thereby sparking a long overdue reflection on the crimes of colonialism, Reaganism and Thatcherism and their residual effects on the socio-economic tapestry of modern life. With the daily reminder of this fact provided by the internet, the media can no longer function with the arrogance that it once did with its imperialist assumptions intact.
While there’s the gnawing sense that the establishment is therefore running out of things to say, it is nevertheless saying them with a frenzied determination, churning out books and op-eds on an ever more obscure list of (non-) subjects ranging from How My Obsession With Le Creuset Revealed the Depths to Which My Marriage Had Been Plunged to The Mental Health Benefits of Cross-Stitch. These offerings are always justified with the sly insinuation that benign art and literature constitutes good taste, and any criticism countered with the fact that, for example, book sales are on the rise. But using market reasoning to justify the validity of art and culture seems paradoxical. Books per se are not valuable, so much as their function in the delivery of important and essential information; information capable of shaping political movements and uniting disparate people. If the notion of a canon existed for any reason, then it was to preserve this idea.
Besides Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, whose author Reni Eddo-Lodge deserves every accolade going for being able to successfully infiltrate the mainstream to the extent that she has, when did we last have a literary offering that caused as much controversy, or made as direct and pernicious an assault on the establishment, as the more experimental literature and fiction of the 1980s and 1990s? In fact, to protect the myth of its superior judgement, the media and publishing industries seem less inclined to issue work that makes any direct accusations, and resorts increasingly to a style of output that is ever more obscure, erudite and impenetrable to a mass audience. This is also borne of the fact that a growing number of artists and musicians receiving accolades over the past decade have hailed from aristocratic and upper-middle-class families with ties to the art world, academia and the intelligentsia.
We cannot rely on inclusion to overhaul a cultural climate whose elite power structures have been protected through a defence of rigid good taste principles. During the boom periods of the 1990s, when the illusion of endless growth allowed industries across the board to take greater and greater risks, these institutions were free to loosen their commissioning principles to allow for the telling of more working-class stories. But the period of stagnation since the financial crisis has exposed these industries for what they are — nepotistic, elitist and intimately tied to systems of financialised power. Any real challenge to the status quo and the hegemonic media will therefore be required to exert the dialogue, symbolism and vernacular of the working classes once again, but with a force that is currently not permitted by the establishment routes. This will only be achieved by stealing the same tools that have been used to ostracise the working class for decades.
First, it means dispensing with whatever sense of residual prestige we might have once attributed to the establishment organisations governing our culture. Second, it means taking this sense of irreverence and using it to coldly exploit the capitalist system to our advantage, treating employment in a way that is purely transactional and, where possible, charging as much as we can, while using that money to support and fund organisations dedicated to dismantling it. Thirdly, it means stealing the mechanisms of exclusion that have been used against the working class for decades, to undermine and humiliate the establishment, and in so doing, reinstating the audaciousness of the working-class voice, that was never so sharp and never so witty as when it was directed towards the capitalist class. And finally, and archaeologically, it means excavating the history of working-class and marginal communities and doggedly highlighting and problematizing the illegitimate aspects of Britain’s classist and colonial heritage.
All of this will only be achieved by rejecting any notion of impostor syndrome, and the countless other pathologies aimed at making us internalise the deliberate alienation of the working-class experience. Or perhaps, to be more accurate, by actively embracing our impostordom and wearing it as a badge of honour with which to scare the capitalist class into the swaddling bosom of its Kirsty Allsopp home furnishings. Only then can we begin to reject the morality of the modern workplace and exploit corporate power for our own gains without any sense of guilt or embarrassment. All the while remaining vigilant to the countless ways that neoliberalism is acting on us, and being wary of the people who subscribe, uncritically, to its logic.
All of this we must do on a diet of Pret sandwiches that we’ll forget to pay for, just like yesterday’s and the day before’s. Stretching out on the green spaces they commandeered and tried to sell back to us during the lunch breaks that we’ll enjoy far past their allotted hour. All the while watching carefully, taking notes, and hopefully creating the next phase of cultural output, defined by its commitment to tell things as they really were, and as we really felt them.