Editor's Note: This seven part series explores the "veneer" of each channel of culture. It is inspired by the latest Q book by Jason Locy and TIm Willard: Veneer: Living Deeply in a Surface Society . If these ideas resonate with you, consider picking up a copy and diving deeper into this conversation.

There’s a reason why, in the worlds of movies and music, “indie” is the new mainstream.  There‘s a reason why many of the major film studios now have “arthouse” subdivisions (e.g. Focus Features for Universal, Fox Searchlight for Fox, Sony Pictures Classics for Sony), just as most major record companies own or distribute distinctly “indie” imprints under their corporate umbrellas.

It’s because “indie” sells. Or, rather, it’s because the marketing of something as indie tends to work. There’s a market hunger for products that are viewed as slightly off-kilter, non-mainstream, more authentic and/or more culturally conscientious. It’s why alt-grocers Whole Foods and Trader Joe's are doing booming business; it’s why hipster/bohemian clothing chains like Anthropologie or Urban Outfitters are as prevalent in Boise now as they are in Boston.

All of this is well and good, and—don’t get me wrong— many of these “mainstream indie” brands are legitimately good. The ironic fact that indie/artsy/subversive has become big corporate business is not in itself a bad thing.  Plenty of things that are marketed as indie or artsy are actually deserving of those descriptors. But plenty of it is not. And this is where our flimsy, fickle, “what can a product do for my image?” consumer sensibilities are often easily duped.

We live in a culture that has placed high value on the ability to demonstrate against-the-grain, unique consumptive habits. As “cool” has fueled capitalism for the better part of five decades, we’ve gradually been conditioned to believe that 1) Our identities reside in the brands/products we consume, and 2) We should be totally unique individuals (i.e. totally unique consumers). This is why our identities on Facebook, for example, are expressed in terms of the bands/movies/books we “like.” It’s why we are constantly looking for that individual personal aesthetic, unexpected taste in cinema or esoteric knowledge of Norwegian bands no one has ever heard of.  We must be original in what we consume, and we must publicly share it with others (via tweets, status updates, or casual “did you read…?” name dropping) as an exercise in identity validation.

The problem with this is that it doesn’t really lend itself to thoughtful, nuanced appreciation for the merits of a given piece of art or entertainment.  It defines quality as: quirky, edgy, different, rebellious, snarky, experimental, foreign. But when this is how we understand quality (as simply the opposite of what we’re used to, or something out-of-the-box), we begin to lose our ability to truly discern value and achievement in culture. The marketing machines behind “indie” seize upon the formulas of our superficial assessments of cool, and churn out products that have that artsy/hipster look: Movies starring Michael Cera or featuring a Wes Anderson aesthetic, bands who’ve perfected that neo-shoegaze/glo-fi sound, TV shows with single-camera sheen and Arrested Development wittiness, one-word restaurants specializing in “fusion” food, and so on.

But unique does not always mean good. Experimental does not always mean successful. And likewise, traditional/conventional/mass-appeal does not always mean bad. Though a blockbuster Steven Spielberg film would never be marketed as “arthouse,” many of his films wind up being more artistically significant than your average foreign-language costume drama billed as something akin to a fine art museum piece.

Fox Searchlight’s indie awards-darling last year, Black Swan, for example, was marketed as the hip indie epic of the year. It had all the indie goods: A slightly twisted marquee director (Darren Aronofsky), an ingénue-in-a-dark-role (Natalie Portman), feverish lesbian dream sequences and David Lynch-esque surrealist psychedelia. It was released in a staggered, “select cities only” rollout, which lends itself to the “have you seen?” name-dropping word of mouth effect. And certainly Black Swan was unique, artful, even beautiful in parts. But was it really the piece of “important” art it was sold to us as? How many of us spent any significant time wrestling with the themes of that film after the credits rolled? In reality, Black Swan is arguably just an example of B-movie horror kitsch.

So it goes with the veneering of “artful” cinema, as with indie music and “prestige” TV and other forms of arts and entertainment. It’s easy to become convinced of the artfulness of something when every aspect of the way it is marketed to us screams “Unique! Cutting-edge! Valuable!”

But so often, the truly valuable, truly subversive, truly revolutionary bits of culture are not heralded as such.

Be wary of too much “indie” hype. Learn to look deeper and evaluate a thing’s merit apart from how hip its posters look or how quirky its wannabe-Amelie style is. Resist the temptation to curate cultural goods based on how rare or unique they appear to be, or how strategically they will compliment the genre diversity in your iTunes library.

Like something because it moves you, it resonates with you, it tells you the truth. Like something because it’s good; because you can articulate why it’s good apart from the fact that it’s different.

Learn to think about “indie” with a truly independent mind, freed from its own naïve susceptibility to superficial status-seeking and the deceptions of marketing and gimmicky style.

-----
Do you find a propensity toward the "quirky, edgy, different, rebellious, snarky, experimental, foreign?" Do you agree/disagree with McCracken's assertion that this is something we should be wary of?

Comments

Comments are now closed