[DEBATE] : A Slap in the Face of Public Taste

[Dominic Tweedie]

Hey, why don't we start a Pruitt-Igoe Movement for South Africa (PIMSA)?

I don't know about the counter-culture juddering to a halt in the
mid-C19, although that brings to mind Le Pere du Chesne.

Maybe you mean mid-C20, but what about Viz? Too much bad taste for
you? I know you are a bit fastidious.

I think the underground is always there, like a different, less
respectable kind of Old Mole. What keeps this particular mole
underground is inebriation as much as ostracism. Shame. He needs to be
dug out, dried out, cold-turkeyed and put back to work.

Forward with the work of drafting the PIMSA Manifesto, forward!

Domza, VC



2009/4/25  <grinker at mweb.co.za>:
> I really like the Pruitt-Igoe analogy. A lot more apartheid hangovers should have gone the same way as they were surely unreformable? We certainly could have started out with that giant and utterly dysfunctional architectural eyesore, Bhisho (yes I am being parochial)!
>
> In drawing up a list of 'cultural subversives' I think we clearly have a bit of a problem today in that we live in an era where intellectuals have effectively ceased to be 'left-wing' or radical for the first time since the mid 19th Century. That's why your list consists of mostly of people long past their sell-by date.
>
> CLR James?
>
> Victor Serge?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> From: dominic.tweedie at gmail.com
> Sent:2009-04-24 14:49:23
> To: debate at debate.kabissa.org
> Cc:
> Subject: [DEBATE] : A Slap in the Face of Public Taste Comrade Russell and Comrades,
>
> Won't you please assist me?
>
> See the message below, addressed to a comrade who may come to address
> our COSATU-Alliance Media Forum about the "Save Our SABC" Campaign.
>
> What I (only just) refrained from asking was: Why don't we just blow
> it up? (i.e. Auckland Park). Like Pruett-Igoe.
>
> I started to think of cultural subversives. Your post, Russell,
> referring to "A Slap in the Face of Public Taste" clearly indicates a
> place for Mayakovsky on any list of such monstrous heroes.
>
> My list is somewhat US-centric. Can anyone help me to make some
> additions to it?
>
> Leave out anyone you even suspect of having had any money when they
> died, such as John Lennon or Alan Ginsburg. No phoneys like Alice
> Cooper or Country Joe, please, or witless show-offs like that Cohen
> guy who used to crap on stage.. A few more scalding intellectuals, as
> opposed to performers, would be good.
>
> Come to think of it, is there anything worth calling culture that is
> not subversive?
>
> Here is my off-the-top-of-my-head list:
>
> The Fugs
> Lenny Bruce
> A magazine called "Fuck You"
> Abie Hoffman, "Steal This Book"
> Wilhelm Reich
> Film: Mysteries of the Organism
> Fela Kuti
> Brenda Fassie
> Frantz Fanon
> Sid Vicious
> Nina Simone
> Mayakovsky
> Edgar Broughton
> David Peel and the Lower East Side
> Christopher Caudwell
> Jonathan Swift
> Eduardo Galeano (thanks, Riaz)
>
> Here is the letter I referred to above:
>
> Please allow me to put a question in advance. Others can also do so on
> this forum.
>
> My question is: In supplying content for the broadcaster, what
> critical theory do we use? Is there any critical consensus, other than
> the received liberal default condition as exemplified by the Guy
> Bergers and the Anton Harbers?
>
> Is there any critical leadership? Can you name, say, ten personalities
> in South Africa who have any sort of concrete root-and-branch
> revolutionary critique and forward perspective on content whether
> artistic, educational, or political? Rehad Desai? Jihan el-Tahri? John
> Matshikiza is gone.
>
> Who are the hard men, and women, who can clean out this colossal,
> reeking stable?
>
> Or, in other words, bearing in mind that the number of channels will
> increase and create a content vacuum, how do we prevent this vacuum
> being filled with junk from overseas, that invariably carries a
> repugnant ideological bias?
>
> Who, in the world as whole, has developed a media critique for today,
> corresponding in scope to the Marshall McLuhans and Ngugi wa Thiongos
> of yesteryear?
>
> What would Frantz Fanon recommend if he was still around?
>
> How do we avoid empiricism, post-modernism, and eclecticism, whether
> dressed up as “diversity”, or not?
>
> How do we cultivate a vanguard of sufficient weight to counter the
> feather-brained media mob, the “celebrities”, the Model-Cs, the “Top
> Billings”, the “analysts” and the “anchors”?
>
> How do we as a labour movement move forward along our entire front
> line so as to hegemonise this ideological incubus called broadcasting?
>
> How can it serve us, when it was designed to oppress us?
>
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>
>



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