Art and Commodity

[resist_anywhere]

Here's the thought I've been milling for awhile, which was brought to the front of my mind by a discussion in class tonight: is there an inherent, intrinsic distinction between "art" and "commodity"?  In class, we were discussing the supposed difference between corporate-created music like that of Britney Spears or those annoying Jonas brothers and

Comments

[incendiary_dan]

I think it's a matter of quality and homogenization, really. The corporate media, particularly in their selling of artistic expression, attempts to appeal to as many people as they can, and in doing so need to basically water everything down. In making all the music and other arts similar, making them marketable and not prone to rub against the grain of the audience, the quality is lowered. That, and it gets pretty boring having music all the same. Independently made art varies greatly in quality, and has the luxury of being able to deal with deeper, more important issues that how much of a slut the singer is. Of course, there's plenty of that, too.

I'm reminded of a chance occurrence I had one morning, when I happened to catch one of those shitty morning shows. The two guests were a pop/rap artist, and a country artist. A mishap occurred in the queuing of the music and sample videos, and the country guy's video ran to the sound of the rapper's music. Nobody noticed for ten seconds, however, because they matched up! These two mainstream artists, after years of working with corporate cronies, had ended up having very similar music in two genres that are rather dissimilar.

[incendiary_dan]

Oh yea, and a book suggestion:

Conserving Cultures by Harry Redner.

[resist_anywhere]

But the fact that we have an independent music scene shows that even under corporate capitalism, people still do want (to buy) other kinds of music. Just because something is a smaller market doesn't mean that it is not a market. Also, I know people who just genuinely like some pop music better than some independent stuff... are they automatically corporate shills for their preferences?