Ask Theodor Adorno's Legacy

Ask Theodor Adorno’s Legacy

An Advice Column

Dear Theodor Adorno’s Legacy:

I’m a senior in college, and I’ve been dating a wonderful man, a fellow student, for six months. He hasn’t met my parents yet, though they do know I’m seeing someone. I’m Jewish; he’s not. My parents, who are pretty religious, have expressed a desire to meet what they think is my Jewish boyfriend, and have suggested that he come to our house right after my finals, which would be right around Christmas, which he’s planning on spending with his family. Please, Theodor Adorno’s Legacy, how can I tell my parents that my beautiful shiksa won’t be able to come?

Flustered in Florida

Dear Flustered in Florida:

The democratization of the means of cultural production is at best a diversion but is even more frequently an out-and-out fiction, a myth propagated by the economic and social powers that control the true means of production. The consumption of culture remains a contextual act; our reactions to, and interpretations of, cultural artifacts are dominated by the context in which we understand them to have been created. It is the Modern Aura: rather than the layers of dust and mass re-productions of famous original works that created the Old Aura, the Modern Aura is that which arises from the dissemination of knowledge of the specific means of cultural production. Flustered in Florida, your relationship is a cultural artifact manufactured under modern means of production. If your parents continue to operate under the outmoded assumptions of the industrial means of production, I have no choice but to recommend disowning them. Of course, if you don’t have the stones to either do the deed or come clean, you could always just lie.

*****

Dear Theodor Adorno’s Legacy:

My father died recently (he and my mother divorced twenty years ago—neither remarried), and my siblings were going through his things when they found a collection of heavy metal records, a number of ticket stubs from metal concerts, and a good amount of other evidence that suggests that our father had a lengthy and secret obsession with bands such as Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, and Meshuggah. Should we tell our mother? It seems like such a disclosure could do little harm, but the lyrical and musical content involved is so completely incongruous with the rest of his personality that telling her seems almost spiteful.

Perplexed in Peoria

Dear Perplexed in Peoria:

The popularization and promulgation among the masses of some of the more superficial aspects of Critical Theory has led to an unprecedented level of irony among cultural producers and consumers. But irony is not Art; irony destroys Art. Thus, Meshuggah rocks.

*****

Dear Theodor Adorno’s Legacy:

Jazz sucks! WooooOooT!

A Big Fan

Dear A Big Fan:

Every now and then I receive e-mails that confirm my deep-seated pessimism, and while I’m never surprised, I’m always disappointed. Look, A Big Fan, one of the essential ideas of Critical Theory, not to mention sociology more broadly, is that there are no eternal truths. Times change, dominant paradigms shift, hermeneutical conventions evolve, and thus so must our interpretations of the world. Today’s jazz most definitively does not suck, and even though there are numerous socioeconomic problems with the facts of its evolution, from an artistic standpoint it does more than most subcultures to preclude subjugation by certain racial, economic, and social interests. Woot.

Celebrities, Athletes, Politicians Cooler Than You

Los Angeles, CA -- After years of ambiguity, the newly-formed Society of Celebrities, Athletes, and Politicians, or SCAP, issued a press release this morning which finally put to rest the decades-old question of whether or not CAPs, as they are known, are just like everyone else.  "We're not," the document, released through SCAP's spokesperson, Justin Timberlake, read.  "We're cooler, smarter, and better-looking than you.  Our lives are easier, happier, and more fulfilling than yours.  Our boyfriends and girlfriends are hotter, our bank accounts fatter, and our days and nights more exciting and glamorous than yours."  Authorities have long questioned the assumptions of the general public that CAPs deal with the same disappointment, the same heartbreak, the same hardship that average Americans deal with every day.

"This document finally answers our questions," totally uncool social scientist Ashok Mahat, of UCLA, says.  "CAPs are just way cooler than us in every single way."  The coolness of screenwriters and directors remains in question.

Column: Look North, Young Man

As a nationally syndicated columnist, I'm frequently called on to ask in what direction the country seems to be heading.  I don't relish the task, but I feel a certain responsibility to those right-headed men and women who ask me to give an answer.  And this is usually what I tell them:

As America slowly learns that it needs to ease its reliance on foreign supplies of energy, I believe that Alaska, with its vast, untapped reserves of oil and gas, represents our country's future.  In the 19th Century it was the Great Plain, that area between the Appalachians and the Rockies; in the 20th it was the West Coast and, later, air and space.  In this 21st Century, Alaska represents a new Final Frontier.  According to Wikipedia, Alaska is larger than all but 18 sovereign countries.  It also possesses more coastline than the rest of the U.S. combined.  It is a vast wasteland--but one could have said the same about the Wild West, or California, or the Moon, at various points in their histories.  And as Alaska inevitably becomes more important, more populated, and more powerful as the energy industry there continues to grow (the space for new energy companies and energy production in Alaska is almost inexhaustible), the influence of Alaska on the United States will become more and more profound.  In one area, however, we can already follow Alaska's example.

Alaskan politics should be studied in classrooms and seminars across the land, because the Alaskan government represents the pinnacle of political efficiency, ethics, and compassion.  In Alaska, the personal is political and the political is always personal.  Politicians understand how their actions affect real people, and real people have the ability to influence policies.  Leaders--mayors or governors--only appoint persons they know personally, which eliminates problems of strained relationships once appointees take office, as is wont to happen when leaders appoint strangers, and also means that appointers understand exactly who they are appointing.  They know their friends' weaknesses, and thus know that those weaknesses may not be problems for that position.

In Alaska, everyone belongs to the political class.  It is the ultimate democracy.  To engage in politics in Alaska one needs no real education or understanding of the issues (that's what your "smart friend" is for); the only requirement is the passion and temperament to engage in political battles--the ability, in short, to get your way.  For too long the "political class" in the Lower 48 has been a small, exclusive club, with appointment or election to political positions dependent on intelligence and educational achievement.  But the Alaskan Model is a truly democratic model, and I think with the national spotlight gradually moving toward Alaska, this updated idea of democracy might finally be imported down to the warmer states.

Some may say that Alaskan politicians are among the most corrupt in the nation.  With this exact point I will not quibble--it seems to be a fairly well-documented fact.  But the failings of some of the system's pioneers does not damn the system.  Alaska is the least populous state, and thus its pool of politicians is quite small.  There is no way to verify or police the actions of each politician.  But in the Lower 48, the larger populations and existing infrastructure for detecting corruption would erase this problem, and the politicians' proximity to their constituents would make them even less corrupt.

The next fifty years will see many historical events: a nuclear detonation on American soil, the electric car, the sinking of most of Australia, and quite possibly even the Apocalypse.  But if America survives, it will most assuredly begin to move down the road that Alaska paves.

--Gilbert D. Biletate

Study: Fake News Funnier Than Real News

Oxford, UK -- The postmodern ramblings of new alternative newsblog The Chive entered a netherworld of abstraction this afternoon, when researchers at Oxford University released a study of the relative funniness of fake news and real news.

"What we found," head researcher Todd Cox, professor of psychology at St. John's College, told The Chive, "was that there was a statistically significant correlation between subjects reading fake news and laughing, whereas when subjects read the real news, they tended towards dourness and pretentiousness.  Now, of course, this result does not by itself imply causation, as one of our research assistants has a harelip but was only seen by the first group of subjects.  This is off the record, right?"

The news was greeted with dismay by the mainstream media.  The Chive has no official comment at this time.

The Chive -- The Alternative To The Alternative

Charlton, NY -- The new alternative daily The Chive was launched today, finally verifying reports that a number of unemployed journalists had been hard at work on an undisclosed creation.  The blog, which has plans to launch a television network "within the next five years", proposes "to examine the unexamined life and question the unquestioned assumption".  According to a spokesperson, The Chive will also cover sports.