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[SalmonGod]

The question is: What do we do?  The law isn't going to provide any relief.  Those responsible can walk into court, fart their guilt in the judge's face, and walk away.  Even if convicted, nothing meaningful happens.  Popular pressure isn't going to change that.  It might work for getting lawmakers to protect people from prejudice, but that's nothing like asking them to give up power.  All that gets us is police militarization.

People are always trying to tell me that the system can be changed from within, but it's just impossible for me to see it anymore.  I think torches and pitchforks are all we have left.

[Scoops Novel]

I think it's worth coming back to popular pressure? Popular pressure? Where do you live? Rather a lot of people know little to nothing about this, and those that do seem to have little enough impassioned to do something about it. It's worth getting to the root of that before you refrain to badly coordinated and underwhelmingly manned pitchforks which is watched bemusedly by a unknowledgeable public. Rather like the referendum on AVP in the UK, actually.

[SalmonGod]

The next Occupy National Gathering is in Kalamazoo, MI / Aug 21-25.

[Scoops Novel]

What happened at the last one? How many people have been showing up, at that?

[Scoops Novel]

Salmongod, as you clearly use distinct boards from this, which one do you use for discussion of topics such as these?

[SalmonGod]

Salmongod, as you clearly use distinct boards from this, which one do you use for discussion of topics such as these?

I'm not a regular on any other forums.

I get my occupy-related news from groups and people I follow on Facebook and Google+, and when I catch wind of something interesting happening, I search through the news myself or go to twitter for real-time updates.  There's also an Occupy-specific social network and a couple other web infrastructures that I'm in on, but don't check very often.

[Scoops Novel]

Are there any you would suggest?

[DJ]

So I've recently seen a great music video that just smacks you over the head with current political issues, and it made me realize something about the Occupy movement. The problem is that there's just no sufficient activism in pop culture. Protests and similar methods of raising awareness can only go so far in shifting the popular attitude, to get it really snowballing into a cultural shift you need better delivery vehicles, like music and film. And no, not the artsy kinds, you really need something with mass appeal. A good example of how this works is how widespread anti-war attitudes in rock music ended USA's involvement in Vietnam.

Anyway, in case you're wondering what video I saw, here's the link, though I doubt you'll get any of it because it's not in English and you need to be a Bosnian to get even the visual references.

[SalmonGod]

I think this is a widely recognized problem among activists.  A LOT of activism-related art is generated all the time.

I don't know how it is other places, but the American public absolutely hates politics in its entertainment media.  People get seriously hostile over political music lyrics and such.  The only exception is when it's designed to be a non-intellectual backpatting show targeted only at people who already agree with the message.

It's something like this.

[Nadaka]

I dunno, back in the late 90's-early 00's Rage Against the Machine was pretty popular, and more or less every one of their songs had a political message, though I doubt that many people ever bothered to actually listen to the lyrics.

[DJ]

I think the problem is that the artists tend to be completely out of touch with aesthetics of the masses, and view art that has mass appeal as selling out, catering to the lowest common denominator, and generally not "real" art.

[SalmonGod]

I dunno, back in the late 90's-early 00's Rage Against the Machine was pretty popular, and more or less every one of their songs had a political message, though I doubt that many people ever bothered to actually listen to the lyrics.

RatM was and still is popular enough to be widely known and get radio play and stuff, but... it's kinda complicated.  It's more because of their attitude than their message.  They're the type of angry political stuff, along with System of a Down, that gives people an excuse to get all "Yeah!  Fight the power!  Fuck the system!" without really meaning it or understanding why they're saying it.  They'll listen to the lyrics enough to understand that it's rebellious, without understanding the real history that's often being referenced.  In RatM's case, there are real historical events called into the subject matter in every freaking song, but I doubt most of their listeners actually know anything about the majority of them.

And it is because of the aesthetic.  Because of that certain attitude that is easy for an audience to get superficially caught up in.  And those are rare breakout acts.

Other politically-charged artworks that don't appeal to an easily accessible aesthetic always get criticized as "preachy" in my experience, and end up only appealling to people who already agree with them.  I've even heard people call into local radio stations just to tell them not to play a song with a political message because 'musicians should just stfu and play music that's fun to listen to'.

But is the answer really to design your stuff for mass appeal?  What good does it do?  Does your message reach more people by being sincere or by giving people an excuse to be the audience Kurt Cobain described quite plainly back in 1992, who just enjoys getting riled up for its own sake and doesn't really care?

[Owlbread]

Some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses.

[Scoops Novel]

I think this is a widely recognized problem among activists.  A LOT of activism-related art is generated all the time.

I don't know how it is other places, but the American public absolutely hates politics in its entertainment media.  People get seriously hostile over political music lyrics and such.  The only exception is when it's designed to be a non-intellectual backpatting show targeted only at people who already agree with the message.

It's something like this.

It's not a stretch of the imagination to say that this is deliberately cultivated, but surprise, it appears to be getting boring. As yet, the mainstream stuff appears to be based around things that have recently lost much of their bite- I'd point to Macklemore as an example, having written songs on gay marriage and drug abuse that seem to be going down well with the youth. The flip side is the likely omnipresence of particular bands and songs found on the internet being a mainstay alongside the mainstream songs. I think the dividing line between that and hipsters is rejection of the mainstream. Strangely, the latter always seems to be depicted as white.

[SalmonGod]

The next time something like Occupy's encampment phase happens, we could see the military getting involved...