From The Art of Manliness blog comes Being Indie is a Bunch of Bunk. My thoughts exactly:
The indie identity is based on the idea of being independent from the mainstream. To this end, indie people buy clothes, CD’s, furniture, books, food, and concert and movie tickets that are not popular with the masses. Instead of going to Chili’s, they frequent their local Thai restaurant; instead of going to Wal-Mart, they go to Whole Foods; instead of picking up the new Coldplay CD, they buy an album from Blood Red Shoes; instead of shopping at the Gap, they buy from American Apparel; instead of buying a Dell they buy an Apple (sure they’re a big corporation, but they’re so cool). But what is the common denominator in all of those things? Spending money. Consumption. Indie people express their independence from the mainstream by doing the single most mainstream thing possible: basing their identity on what they consume. . . .
Free yourself from being defined by what you buy or do not buy. Define yourself by the things you cannot purchase: values, ethics, and what you actually do. Let your actions speak louder than your ironic message tee. Want to be truly independent from mainstream society?
-Use your free time to serve people, not numb you[r] mind with entertainment.
-Be courteous
-Stop “finding yourself” and embrace commitment and responsibility
-Don’t wear outdoorsy apparel, go camping
-Don’t spend big bucks to look like you shop at a thrift store, actually shop at one
-Don’t be ironic and sarcastic, be sincerely passionate
-Don’t just buy clothes and cell phones that support a charity, become charitable
-Don’t just buy a political bumper sticker, get involved in politics
-Stop being a boy and man up [emphases original]
Nice post. As somewhat of a cinephile, I tire of the constant implication that independant films are superior on all counts to big-budget, mass-produced studio pictures. The irony is that many of these independant films, while they may not rely on special effects or slick production, all resort to the same formulae or patterns in storytelling and structure. (Respected film scholars have noted this.) Which is not to say that mainstream = good and indie = bad, but the point is that “indie” whatever (be it film, music, or other), when conceived as some iconoclastic counter-cultural movement, really just ends by getting swallowed up in the culture it attempts to counter by focusing on accidentals and failing to see the big picture, that what defines someone is not their tastes, but their choices and ethics.
It’s all part of Horkheimer and Adorno’s ‘Culture Machine.’ Whatever is “fringe” will eventually be brought into the mainstream, because nothing can survive in the industrial capitalist world without becoming a consumable, commercial product.
The title of a recent album, “You’ll Rebel to Anything,” by a band who calls their style “post-industrial techno punk” says it all.