Fightin’ Words
BY Pike Wright
Illustration by Evan Munday
In this corner, meet Hal Niedzviecki, author of Hello, I’m Special: How Individuality Became the New Conformity, weighing in at 254 pages. And over here, we have the tag team of Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, authors of The Rebel Sell: Why the Culture Can’t be Jammed, at a hefty 348 pages.
The players have fought in this ring before: Niedzviecki as This Magazine’s culture columnist from January 1998 until September 2003, Potter as editor of This & That from September 2000 until September 2001 and current member of the editorial board, and Heath as a guest columnist.
The two books discuss the same films, current events and pop theorists. But who will sell more books to the same audience? Despite the similarity of their themes, lurking here are two radically different premises for the failure of counterculture. And the authors know it. As they toss out vitriolic criticism of each other’s work in major Canadian dailies, This Magazine squares off the contenders. Let’s get ready to rumble.
The player Hello, I’m Special: How Individuality Became the New Conformity (Penguin Canada) by Hal Niedzviecki
On the failure of counterculture “The system continues to hold its own, killing anything that threatens the pop-culture monopoly, drawing us into ever-more-irresistible spectacles, transferring all dissent into an endless array of options that cleverly create a patina of democratic input.”
Targets of his critique
Canadian Idol: “I find thousands of bright, funny, interesting, horribly deluded people…. They all share the same dream and pursue it in exactly the same way.”
Amusement parks: “How many places can we go that are authentic, unsullied, free of Coca-Cola and Mickey Mouse? The majority of people, anyway, are losing interest in authenticity. They want more of the fake.”
What he says about the other guys “Full-time academics and part-time writers,” Niedzviecki wrote in The Globe and Mail. “Heath and Potter discuss the characters in The Matrix, American Beauty and Fight Club, but no actual people. Because the authors do no first-hand research, and rely solely on secondary sources to make their arguments, they erroneously merge cultural shifts as disparate as New Age spiritual tourism and the anti-globalization movement into a single, undifferentiated, present-day counterculture.”
Offered remedy for feelings of mass political and cultural disenfranchisement Keep doing what you’re doing (backyard wrestling, blogging, breaking world records). Something might eventually happen to dislodge the corporate retelling of your truths. Then again, it might not.
The player
The Rebel Sell: Why the Culture Can’t be Jammed (HarperCollins Canada) by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter
On the failure of counterculture “Countercultural rebellion is pseudo-rebellion: a set of dramatic gestures that are devoid of any progressive political or economic consequences and that detract from the urgent task of building a more just society. In other words, it is rebellion that provides entertainment for the rebels, and nothing much else.”
Targets of their critique
Naomi Klein: “Her complaints about commercialization [of her neighborhood] are nothing but an expression of [her] loss of distinction … it is fear of losing her social status.”
Michael Moore: “In the end, Moore winds up taking a position against gun control. Gun control is too superficial. He passes up a perfectly workable solution … on the grounds that it is not radical or “deep” enough … he rejects anything less.”
What they say about the other guy “Guru” of Toronto’s indie culture zine scene, Potter wrote in the National Post. “Somehow, Niedzviecki has got himself locked into a totalizing theory that sees the world of pop culture as the cause of, and potential solution to, all of our problems. He appears to believe that the struggle to participate in the production of mass media is a matter of profound political importance.”
Offered remedy for feelings of mass political and cultural disenfranchisement The revolution will not be fun or fast. Get thee to the not-so-glamorous work of cranking out petitions and influencing slow-moving legislative change. Get used to some rules, rebels—we need them.
