'Entertainment' Steers Clear of Progressive Action

By ROB PATTERSON

When I started writing this column some 15 years ago, my editor asked me to wrap up each year with an overview of the notable political and progressive music of the previous 12 months or so. At first it was there was always sufficient music with a political or progressive bent to fill a space twice the length of my usual column.a

Soon that began to decline precipitously. I shifted tack and began to cover more the music that might appeal to those with a leftist bent and include the few political treasures. In time there became even less of that. Last few years I’ve found myself not doing an overview and commenting on the paucity of music that expresses the feelings and concerns of liberals and left wing Americans.

What happened? Where did such music go? That’s what I hope to explore and maybe answer at least in part this year. And not just in music but entertainment overall.

Certainly there are some people making political music. But for the most part it’s in the margins, ergo not really significant. Nor is much if almost any of it music so strong that it can and will reach a wider audience. If it doesn’t, it’s just preaching to the choir.

A little context here: I was born in 1954, the same year that rock’n’roll started to go large in popular culture. Dwight D. Eisenhower, a sensible mainstream Republican, was president. McCarthyism was fading, Korean War had ended, and prosperity was blooming. Eisenhower ended his presidency quite presciently warning about the military-industrial complex.

I came of age in the 1960s. Folk music with a topical bent enjoyed its greatest cultural focus at the dawn of that decade, and then came The Beatles and the blossoming of rock’n’roll, soul, pop and more. John F. Kennedy inspired us to conquer new frontiers (and got assassinated). Martin Luther King Jr. inspired us to end segregation by non-violent means (and got assassinated). Robert F. Kennedy began to build on what both his brother and MLK began (and got assassinated).

Throughout that decade not just music but film, art and the full artistic and cultural spectrum not just reflected and expressed the times but also helped drive the movements forward. By the early ’70s an understandable fatigue with both activism and issues set in. But much had been accomplished: the war in Vietnam wound down and America’s part in it ended, civil rights had made great strides, feminism became a force to be reckoned with, to cite some major progress.

As I approached my 60th birthday, I quipped – but with seriousness – that I wanted my 60s to be like the ‘60s. Alas the joke’s on me.

Look across the political and cultural landscape and what one sees is that much the left achieved has been rolled back. Obama’s election brought out the latent racism still simmering in the electorate. Women’s right to choose and access to abortion and contraceptives is narrowing, and one need only look at the crisis of campus rape to see how feminism had been stalled. Xenophobia is all too prevalent.

Want to know why political and progressive music is so rare? Just listen to today’s Top 40 radio (if you can stand it). Women vie to be sexy and hot. In hip-hop they are largely referred to as “bitches” and “hoes.” It’s almost all glitzy escapism infused with less than progressive values. And that trickles down.

Many music fans don’t want politics with their entertainment. And given how the bottom line of making money at music is so much harder to achieve with the growth of the Internet and musical piracy as well as greater entertainment competition for the consumer dollar, artists are less inclined to take risks. Sure, you have your tasty roots purveyors in Americana, a few musically boundary-pushing alternative rockers, dedicated longtime populists like Bruce Springsteen, and the lonely political rocker Tom Morello (formerly of the band Rage Against the Machine, the last explicitly political major American musical act I know of; wish that his songs were better though love his intent and dedication). But the state of the nation and the world are rarely if ever addressed in popular music today even as an aside.

Same holds true in movies, if maybe to a slightly lesser degree (as borne out by a recent film like “Mandela,” for instance). The popular fare is mostly escapism, and there’s a rather troublingly large strain of violence as entertainment. Comedy is largely dumbed down. CGI (computer generated imagery) spectaculars are often money-makers. But rare indeed is the thoughtful if not provocative movie that explicitly deals in political themes, much less serves as a work of agitprop. Same goes for TV, though among some of quality cable series political matters are used as plot devices. “True Blood” deserves some kudos for addressing prejudice, right wing religionist wackiness and other pressing matters.

Go across the board through visual art, literature, drama, comedy... you name it. Political entertainment from a leftist or progressive or populist perspective is in very short supply to say the least. About the only area of today’s entertainment where politics is a part of the mix is on Facebook. And there it’s most all preaching to the choir, among my crowd posting the latest insane right wing statements and delusions, and the occasional scrap across the intractable left/right divide. (I must admit I find it entertaining that almost always the conservative crowd descends rather quickly to taunts and what they think are insults that are sadly at the elementary schoolyard level.)

The sad thing is that today’s political landscape is ripe for art and entertainment of all types. Imagine what a modern day Tom Lehrer could do with the mess in Washington, D.C., these days. Why isn’t there a wealth R&B, soul or even hip-hop supporting and defending brother Obama against the pernicious rise of racism since his election. How come rockers aren’t railing against the economic equities of our era?

I see a powerful visual storytelling arc in the journey of a young Latin American teen fleeing from wrenching poverty and violence to arrive after much struggle along the way, and dreaming as he travels of the promise in the American way, and finding nastily screaming right wing protesters. There is so much material for cutting satire in today’s fundamentalist megachurches and their perversion of Christianity, the rantings of right-wing radio talk hosts, commentators and bloviators, or the insanely delusional world of conservative politicians. Imagine a CGI spectacular that shows the dangers of climate change and mankind struggling against it.

I hate to have the dyspeptic view that we won’t be seeing or hearing such things. I’m growing ever closer to the conclusion that the activism and accompanying entertainment, artistic and cultural reverberations and reflections were an aberration, and the promise of the future those of us who came of age and enlightened and progressive consciousness shall never be realized.

The issue and activism fatigue that came about in the 1970s became entrenched. And then after the event that I believe sent this nation around the twist and headlong into the sad state of affairs we find ourselves in today, 9/11, a new avoidance of a world whose conflicts, troubles, inequities, violence, dangers, inhumanity and more has firmly set in.

There are days the state of the nation and the globe so pains me I feel like I need escape a world that can feel much too with us. But a part of me holds out hope that artistic creators and entertainers will find the vision and courage to be vanguards in a movement to lead us to a better place.

Rob Patterson is a music and entertainment writer in Austin, Texas. Email orca@prismnet.com.

From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2015

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