Sunday, November 18, 2007

Down Or Up With Patriarchy?

A lot has changed since the Sixties. Back then it was bad to be considered, “the Man.” Now it’s something to strive for. “You The Man!” In the last fifteen years, being "the man" has somehow become a compliment.

It's really a brilliant sign of counter culture co-opting it's own language in a dysfunctional way. Pretty soon you're going to have young people saying things like, "Dude! That is so square!" I mean, you got to love how the anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist mantras of the "Fight the Man" era have been replaced with Fifty's "Get Rich or Die Trying."

I know this is a tired point that people have been talking about since the eighties. But come on already. Albums with the title "Get Rich or Die Trying" have people saying that Fifty is da Man and meaning that in a positive way. Meanwhile, his message, I think, is helping to add to a greedy culture that perpetuates inequities based on race and class. And so yes, Fifty is a hip version of the Man.

3 comments:

Jonathan Dworkin said...

Actually, in the 1950s a guy named Herbert Marcuse - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse - made a similar point about capitalism having the ability to "coopt" revolution.

I love your blog.

Jonathan Dworkin said...

Actually Herbert Marcuse made a similar point in the '50s - namely that capitalism would coopt revolutionary ideas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse

Love your blog, man.

Jonathan Dworkin said...

woops, clearly i don't understand the whole comment process. Here you go thinking you have three exciting and separate comments about your post, and in reality it's just three retarded similar comments by the same person.

You can pretend you're watching a televised debate.