ARTS & CULTURE

WHY CAN’T PEOPLE JUST ACCEPT THAT THEY ENJOY MAINSTREAM ART? POSITIVITY CULTURE IS A PSYOP

MORGAN TROPER

When The Ramones released their first trio of highly influential records in the late ‘70s—their self-titled debut in 1976 and Leave Home and Rocket to Russia in 1977—the consensus was that it was sort of dumb music, and that dumb was good. “Stoopidity [sic], both celebrated and satirized,” wrote The Village Voice’s Robert Christgau—a.k.a. the “dean of American rock critics.” In a retrospective conducted by The Guardian in 2016, Richard Manitoba from The Dictators referred to them as “the smartest dumb band you ever heard.” Rolling Stone put it even more pithily back in 1979: “The Ramones are dumb.”

This is not the way gleefully-lowbrow art is received by critics today. Massive media corporations have thoroughly co-opted the language of social justice; they would like you to believe that all media has a political and social conscience now, whether or not it was conceived in a boardroom and produced on an assembly line. This phenomenon has given us cringe-inducing headlines like “Captain Marvel smashes the box office and the patriarchy,” or articles in exalted publications such as Vanity Fair with straight-faced titles such as “Star Wars: The Last Jedi Offers the Harsh Condemnation of Mansplaining We Need in 2017.” This is not to say blockbusters can’t telegraph progressive principles—but the idea that a Star Wars film is a trojan horse for the revolution is a fantasy.

This has had some terrible consequences for culture writing at large. Things have cooled down a little bit within the last few years, but when the narrative surrounding a piece of commercial media is that it is “world-changing” or espouses some miscellaneous radical idea—even when it is fundamentally dumb or geared toward children—it becomes incredibly hard to criticize in liberal spheres. A good example of this was Pitchfork’s controversial review of Lizzo’s Cuz I Love You from 2019—a publication that continues to more or less play by its own rules— in which author Rawiya Kameir referred to the music as “empowerment-core.” Kameir’s review was misconstrued by some as an attack on Lizzo’s politics, but the point was actually just that the music was a little corny.

The positivity culture that is so pervasive in arts criticism has a few notable points of origin. The first is poptimism, the attitude that pop or “commercial” music deserves the same level of critical recognition as other, more “important” forms of music such as jazz, blues or rock—and it’s easy to see this same philosophy applied to other mediums such as film or television. The second is what Tom Scocca refers to as “smarm” in his groundbreaking Gawker essay from 2013, “On Smarm”—an unctuous, “no losers” philosophy that views itself as a response to years of snark and gatekeeping in arts criticism. And lastly, we have essayists such as Chuck Klosterman, who pioneered the art of the “it’s important, actually” lowbrow retrospective. Say what you will about Klosterman—his influence remains palpable in the world of arts journalism.

The problem with this positivity culture is that it has resulted in a grand flattening of artistic standards. In other words, if all art is important now, then none is. The latest case study is Olivia Rodrigo, a prefab Disney star-turned-teen sensation who has been slapped with the burdensome “voice of her generation” tag by critics who are probably a little too old to be making that call. Don’t get me wrong: Rodrigo’s debut album Sour is good—great, even—but, with the hyperbole surrounding her album rollout, the accolades are enough to make you wish you were illiterate. “[A] stunning portrait of adolescence,” wrote British newspaper i; “multidimensional,” said the NME.

Poptimism is a valuable philosophy—it resulted in the mass reevaluation of tabloid pop and musical forms such as disco, which had been unfairly maligned in elitist, rock-oriented critical circles for at least a generation. It has also helped expose the racist, classist and sexist prejudices that often help fuel anti-pop sentiment.

But, as the response to Olivia Rodrigo’s album makes clear, the pendulum has possibly swung too far in the opposite direction, where critics who know better now trip over themselves in an attempt to legitimize and intellectualize corny mainstream tastes. You can like pop music and Marvel movies and Star Wars without needing to convince yourself and everyone around you that these things are “smart”—sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a pop record geared toward children is just a pop record geared toward children.

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THIS WEEK around the WORLD

May 24–29

May 24 NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA

Tasmanian devils were born on the Australian mainland for the first time in 3,000 years, according to the NGO Aussie Ark on Instagram. Born at the 988-acre Barrington Wildlife Sanctuary in New South Wales, the seven joeys were identified in their mothers’ pouches, being the size of “shelled peanuts.” “We’ve been able to historically, albeit in its infancy, return the devil to [the] mainland,” said Aussie Ark president Tim Faulkner. Tasmanian devils died out in Australia 3,000 years ago, but the predatory marsupial continued to exist on the island of Tasmania. Their population plummeted when a contagious form of cancer called Devil Facial Tumor Disease killed 90% of them. In September 2020, Aussie Ark introduced 26 Tasmanian devils back into the Australian wild, and the marsupials have successfully reproduced. The reintroduction of this native apex predator will help control the populations of feral cats and foxes that hunt endangered species, according to CNN.

May 26 THAILAND

Princess Chulabhorn, the sister of Thailand’s king, bypassed government laws on Tuesday and approved a decision to import COVID-19 vaccines from China, according to Reuters. Developed by the company Sinopharm, the vaccines will be imported by the Chulabhorn Royal Academy, an institution the princess chairs. These doses will serve as “alternative vaccines,” until Thailand can produce their own “to a capacity that can sufficiently protect against outbreaks,” according to the academy’s secretary general, Nithi Mahanonda on Facebook. Only approximately 3.3% of Thailand’s population has received at least one vaccine dose in a country of 66 million people. Its government has avoided importing doses from other countries, instead opting to manufacture the vaccines domestically through a company that the king owns. Princess Chulabhorn’s decision has caught much of the government by surprise: but reception seems positive so far. “I just saw the announcement last night,” Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said on a local television interview. “But if it is a benefit to the country, we are ready.”

3 May 26 MALI

Malian President Bah N’Daw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane resigned from office two days after being arrested by the military, according to Reuters. Their detention was orchestrated by their colleague, Vice President Colonel Assimi Goita, a military officer who has since assumed power over Mali. The three men were part of a transitional government which was formed after a coup in August 2020, led by Goita. The interim government’s goal was to restore Mali’s democratic government and hold fair, legislative and presidential elections in 2022. According to a statement read by Goita’s advisor Baba Cissé, Goita had the men removed from office because they had not consulted him on a government reshuffle, which was a violation of the cabinet’s charter. As of Tuesday, Goita’s actions have been met with international condemnation. “After the resignation of the transitional president and his prime minister, the detainees will recover their freedoms. This will be done gradually [for] obvious security reasons,” Cissé said. The Economic Community of West African States described the high-profile arrests as “an attempted power grab,” while French President Emmanuel Macron has promised to take “targeted sanctions against the people involved” if the situation remains unresolved.

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May 27 MOSCOW, RUSSIA

Two European planes headed to Moscow were blocked by the Russian government because they planned to avoid Belarusian airspace. The planes had been following the guidance of the European Union, which had just advised European airlines not to fly over Belarus. Belarus faced backlash this week when its authorities diverted a Lithuania-bound airplane to its capital, Minsk, claiming they had received a bomb threat. “I had to protect people, I was thinking about the country’s security,” Lukashenko said in a statement on Wednesday. Dmitry Peskov, the spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin, supported Lukashenko’s decision shortly after. Upon arrival, passenger Roman Protasevich and his partner Sofia Sapega were arrested and the bomb threat was deemed implausible, according to BBC. Protasevich is a Belarusian journalist and the former Editor in Chief of Nexta, an opposition media outlet that has extensively covered the ongoing Belarusian protests against the current government.

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May 29 GOMA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

Seismologists recorded 61 earthquakes within a 24-hour period following the eruption of Mount Nyiragongo in eastern Congo on May 22. The eruption spewed torrents of lava from a fissure in its side and killed at least 31 people and destroyed more than 900 homes and five schools in the city of Goma and its adjacent villages, officials said on Monday. DRC government spokesperson Patrick Muyaya told CNN reporters that these earthquakes are unusual and the country has “never seen this before.” The natural disaster has damaged Goma’s infrastructure, and power was only partially restored on Wednesday. “It is not known exactly how many have now left the city, but approximately 400,000 people are potentially affected by the evacuation order,” said Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Many families have been separated in the displacement, and over 100 children have been reported missing, according to UNICEF. Due to recent data on the volcano’s seismic activity, DRC authorities believe that Mount Nyiragongo could erupt again.

THE MURDER OF GEORGE FLOYD

CONNOR CARROLL

In Portland, protests have diminished and police reform has stalled, leaving advocates for change in political limbo.

May 25 marked the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder, after a Minneapolis police officer killed him during an arrest. On that anniversary, a crowd of an estimated 200 protesters in Portland gathered at the Multnomah County Justice Center and later Portland City Hall, where some in the crowd set fires and police declared a riot.

According to the Portland Police Bureau’s (PPB) Media Relations department, “Based on the criminal activity of people in the crowd, officers gave public address announcements that the assembly was unlawful. People threw frozen water bottles, glass bottles, eggs and metal spikes at officers and fired mortar-style fireworks at officers.”

Around midnight, after five targeted arrests, the crowd size decreased to an estimated couple dozen protesters still present in the downtown area, and no further relevant criminal activity was reported.

The size of protests currently is far smaller than those that took place in early June of 2020, when a crowd of thousands walked across

the Burnside Bridge and took to downtown Portland, demanding justice and reform.

Mayor Ted Wheeler gave a press conference the morning of June 2, 2020 and said that he and other political and society leaders must act in order to address the systemic racism at the heart of these types of injustices.

“Until we get to the ‘OK, we’ve now heard it, we’ve acknowledged it’, so what concrete actions are we taking next?” Wheeler said during the press conference. “I want to hear more from the community about what they think we should do.”

Over the past year, protesters have made it clear the reforms they want from Wheeler and the Portland City Council: less police violence against people of color, re-allocation of resources toward community-focused programs, and more accountability for officers’ actions.

At the state level, there has been reform, with a flurry of bills in late June 2020, on the heels of Floyd’s death, coming out of the Oregon State legislature.

H.B. 4203 bans the use of chokeholds except when using deadly force is “warranted,” H.B. 4205 mandates officers take action to “prevent or report a fellow officer engaged in misconduct” and S.B.1604 makes it more difficult for arbitrators to “overturn police disciplinary findings.”

H.B. 2002, a yet-to-pass sweeping legislative proposal, would scale back the criminal justice system’s authorities and reach, with reforms in minimum mandatory sentencing and what sends a person to jail or simply cites them, among many other alterations to a person’s interaction with the legal and penal system.

Advocates for police reform in Portland argue now that promises for change have not been kept by the mayor or Portland City Council, and independent journalists on the ground at protests throughout Oregon have seen the same behavior from police as last year, and even infiltration and disruption of Black Lives Matter protests by far-right activists.

“Unfortunately, I don’t even know if we are pointed in the right direction,” said Shannon Wright in an interview with OPB. Wright is the deputy director for the Partnership for Safety and Justice, which fights for criminal and police reform in Portland and Oregon as a whole.

As for the protests specifically, from Eugene and Springfield to the streets of Portland, the Black Lives Matter protests and anti-ICE pro-

tests are steady, but lack the size and influence they once did, according to James Croxton, the managing editor for Double Sided Media and contributing reporter for The Village Portland.

“A lot of these protests have fizzled out into nothingness,” Croxton said. “Most of my time I spend in Portland is now at these ICE protests, which don’t seem to be going anywhere. But even that is often just a couple dozen of protesters, sometimes maybe 100, and even then, it is only the really dedicated ones.”

The United States Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility and detention center in Southwest Portland has been a consistent site for protests over the last year.

For Croxton, another concern is the ICE facility’s close proximity to the Cottonwood School of Civics and Science, a public charter school, which has been exposed to many evenings of tear gas and other chemical munitions since when the protests began last May.

“Another major thing from the ICE protests is that people actually know what the place is now,” Croxton said. “I mean, it’s right next to a K-8 [charter] school. With schools opening back up, and kids going back to school, the playground has essentially been condemned from chemical saturation.”

Tear gas is prohibited under the 1925 Geneva Protocol, and its use in both warfare and domestically as a riot control agent is often considered a human rights violation by international organizations like Amnesty International and civil rights groups like the ACLU.

According to Sven Eric Jordt, associate professor of anesthesiology at Duke University, in a 2018 interview with CNN, tear gas is particularly unhealthy for the underdeveloped nature of a child’s immune system, lungs and other bodily functions and long term side-effects can follow.

“Children are especially at risk because tear gas is heavier than air. It is present in higher concentrations closer to the ground, and children, being shorter, are exposed to higher concentrations,” stated Jordt.

Cory Elia, managing editor of the Village Portland and podcaster for KBOO, has noted there are further consequences from the protests over the past year, in regard to the tactics utilized by the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) and other law enforcement agencies across the state.

“There are a massive amount of people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from all the violence that went on between police, or federal agents, last summer,” Elia said. “But I do foresee that there will be protests this upcoming summer, for sure. They are just going to be severely diminished.”

“[It seems like] they are using new tactics... where the police mainly remain standoffish, and utilize targeted and specific arrests to try and quell the protests’ energy and momentum, simply allowing the protests to dissolve internally.”

“I’m optimistic that people will show up in numbers [this summer], however, there is a lot of concern within the protest community about the informants being found in individual protests and cited in news reports,” Croxton said.

“The truth of the matter is, there are informants, and they are either police, federal agents, or far-right provocateurs, sometimes all three,” Croxton said. “You see this in Eugene, in Springfield, and definitely in Portland.”

Croxton was referencing a specific alleged incident in the neighborhood of Thurston, in eastern Springfield, where the Black Unity Organization and Civil Liberties Defense Center have sued the Springfield Police Department for colluding with and assisting farright wing militia.

“The complaint stems from the events at the now-infamous Black Unity-led protest in Thurston last July, which saw SPD use excessive force on peaceful protesters, while ignoring the violence and threats coming from far-right counter protesters,” Croxton stated in a Double Sided Media article.

Croxton was on the ground during these protests in July 2020, and reported on the events extensively. Croxton said he faced counter-protest intimidation and police violence first hand, or watched it happen to others.

“July 29 was the most violent day in Springfield in 2020,” Croxton said. “Springfield P.S. essentially caused a riot, they tased people, one of the leaders had a knee on their neck; bones were broken. Then as we were leaving, the fascists showed up and were caught on live stream coordinating with the SPD. There is currently a lawsuit pending, so we’ll see.”

This is not uncommon for law enforcement to be affiliated with, or even occupied by far-right groups like the Proud Boys, Three Percenters and Boogaloo Boys. The FBI’s Counterterrorism

Division stated white supremacy groups and far-right militia groups have infiltrated on a large scale many law enforcement agencies across the U.S.

According to a report from the Brennan Center for Justice, white supremacists have “produced more fatalities than any other category of domestic terrorists since 2000.” The FBI issued a report in 2017 titled “White Supremacist Extremism Poses Persistent Threat of Lethal Violence” detailing incidents of white supremacist violence between 2000 and 2016, arguing such violence would likely continue in the future.

“Regarding the future, I have no idea what will happen,” Croxton said. “All I know is that people in our communities are angry and some are willing to act. It has been over 365 days since George Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin and, yet, over 1000 people have been killed at the hands of law enforcement—mostly including our BIPOC community.”

“If people want to make a change, they need to educate themselves, and they need to get out and fucking protest, let people know how they feel,” Elia said.