rage: Fans Speak!

Rage Against the Machine

Fans Speak!

Paddy Walsh: Dissertation
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Chapter 2;

"Networks at work, keepin' people calm"; The sanitisation of counter-hegemonic dissent within popular culture.

In Chapter 1 I established the hegemonic potential of mass culture and popular culture, which gave the producers of popular culture a significant amount of control over what we, the audience, ideologically consume. Everything we consume from mass culture is filtered through the ideological perspectives of its producers, be it morally, socially or politically. The producers of these ideologies are also able to use these manufactured perspectives to sanitise dissent, subversion or opinions that run contrary to its own ideology, marginalising other cultural forms meanwhile establishing their own practices as "the norm". As Street comments, 'Popular culture can function as an instrument of political change, not merely reflecting reform but actually prompting it.' In this second chapter I intend to explore these theories focusing specifically on how a popular, left-wing quasi-Marxist rock group, Rage Against The Machine, are theoretically located in the arena of popular culture.

First I am going to examine the medium of music, how it is produced, communicated and consumed and for what reasons. Ideologies of consumption come from both the state's organisation of social mores and the values of those in control of cultural production and other hegemonic institutions. As Street argues, 'The state creates the conditions under which popular culture is produced and distributed. The State's role in broadcasting, education and industrial policy, among other areas, establishes the conditions, regulations and opportunities that help define what kind of popular culture is available in any region or country. In other words, to understand popular culture is to understand the conditions of its production.'

Cultural producers reinforce their value systems hegemonically within this medium; a good example of this would be MTV, who, categorised by their "One Planet, One Music" slogan, seek to homogenise culture around their own ideological and economic needs, which, typically, is reliant on an apolitical stance and a focus on image rather than content. Naomi Klein comments on MTV's homogenising aesthetic in her text, No Logo, 'From the beginning, MTV has not been just a marketing machine for the products it advertises around the clock (whether those products are skin cleansers or the albums it moves with its music videos); it has also been a twenty-four hour advertisement for MTV itself: the first truly branded network. Though there have been dozens of imitators since, the original genius of MTV, as every marketer will tell you, is that viewers didn't watch individual shows, they simply watched MTV.' This remark in part emphasises the power of influence culture now holds, because when Robert Bocock analysed those institutions that underpinned collective hegemonic ideals, a mere 14 years earlier, he would never have envisioned the power a station like MTV could hold, 'It is widespread philosophical and moral ideas which influence people's perceptions. These underlying ideas and values come from religious groups, from the law, from educational institutions, from political movements and parties, more than they do from newspapers, radio or television news broadcasts. The latter deal with day-to-day events rather than with the formation of underlying philosophy and moral values.' As I have proven, this is no longer the case, as all forms of popular culture are potential sites for struggle.

The self-serving ideological constructs of MTV are evident; it becomes an advertisement for itself. It is also a leading producer of the culture industry, is extremely popular, and hence has significant hegemonic control over how music is consumed, what forms of music are consumed (and inherently what ideologies these emit), and how we, the viewer, should receive this music. MTV brackets music into genres, as a simple way of ideologically constructing the music into easily understandable forms (despite how ideologically complex the music may be). A corollary of the "One Planet, One Music" tenet is the complete loss of personal or regional tastes. Moreover, as most artists (musicians or video directors or filmmakers) would like their work to reach the largest possible audience, this means tailoring what you produce to the dominant consumer force, American capitalism.

Many critics also see its symbiosis with postmodernism as symbolic of its ahistorical, apolitical, asocial, amoral aesthetic; 'MTV denies the existence of all but the moment, and that moment exists only on the screen. There aren't any problems on MTV.'... 'The flashing crashing image-sounds are energy, speed, illusion, the hyperreal themselves: they simulate nothing, neither the reality nor the social machine.'... 'MTV is part of a contemporary discourse that has written out history as a possible discourse.' I would support this assertion, and argue that MTV is the epitome of depoliticising popular culture; we are thus presented with an interesting juxtaposition when we consider how such a form presents overt political content, in the case of Rage Against The Machine.

Rage Against The Machine are a Los Angeles-based rap-rock political group, whose multi-racial line-up reflects their broad political support. Among the groups political concerns are The Zapatista movement in Mexico and the repression of indigenous Mexican peasant population by the US-backed PRI dictatorship, the oppression of the American Indian Movement by the US government (both historically and presently), the rights of imprisoned political dissidents Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier (who the band, along with many others, believe falsely convicted), corporate crime, censorship, and the oppression of any dispossessed community. Rage Against The Machine manifest support for political causes they champion through the medium of popular culture, through lyrics, videos, interviews and concerts, and with band merchandise. Their message is encapsulated by vocalist Zack de la Rocha, who says, "One of the things I wanted to ensure was the band's integrity. That we were walking what we were talking, as opposed to just talking. We're dealing with a monstrous pop culture that has a tendency to commodify and pacify everything � it's happened to so many bands in the past. Its important that artists in my position set an example and there's a fine line between the promotion of a product and the promotion of an idea."�"The rock band Rage Against The Machine has become an alternative medium of communication for young people. We have created a great level of co-operation between groups and people to spread the ideas of the Zapatista movement in its relationship to the poor, the young, the excluded and the dispossessed in the United States. Through concerts, videos, interviews, broadcasting of information at concerts and our song's lyrics, we have placed the experience of the Zapatistas within the reach of young people, our audience. We act as facilitators so they can participate and we put them in contact with the organisations and Zapatista support communities in The United States."

The music videos of Rage Against The Machine are a primary way they use images and slogans to raise awareness of certain issues. Yet they are forced to use the rules of the music video; quick one-second flash cuts and nebulous diatribes. They cannot engage in detailed political argument. As a result, they rely on imagery; "Bulls on Parade" features slogans as indiscriminate as "Free speech is like money. Some people just have more of it than others"; "Guerrilla Radio" is a parody of the Gap advertisements, making a connection between the Gap clothing company and human rights abuses in the third world; "Sleep Now In The Fire" criticises capitalism, with a parody of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, juxtaposed against facts and soundbites of American economic and social inequality, manifested in the game questions.

Rage Against The Machine use lyrics to subvert a process they are forced to be part of, that of American capitalism. Although they are signed to Epic Records, a subdivision of The Sony Corporation, one of the most powerful multinational media corporations, they explain this stand by saying that it gives them the optimum opportunity to criticise the value systems of corporations such as Sony, as shown in the lyrics to "Wind Below";


	"G.E. is gonna flex and try to annex the truth,
	NBC is gonna flex and cast their image in you,
	Disney bought the fantasies and piles of eyes,
	And ABC's new thrill rides of trials and lies,
	And while the gut eaters strain to pull the mud from their mouths,
	They force our ears to go deaf to the screams in the South."

De la Rocha justifies being signed to a multinational corporation by saying, "I was curious as to the massive communicative network a corporation like Sony could provide. Ultimately, although a lot of people have criticised us for being in bed with our enemies, I disagree. I think that it is a mutually exploitative situation. The kind of information that people can get as a result of us using Sony is much more important than what some people would consider an endorsement." The tactic of using the "system" as a platform for criticism was one predicted by Antonio Gramsci, who believed that (in the words of Bocock), 'the struggle for hegemony will take the form initially of moral and philosophical argument in the media and in education, not primarily in the form of direct action or in actions of a narrow-corporate kind.' As an example of this, Rage Against The Machine publicised the Zapatista movement through the video, artwork and lyrics;


	"When the fifth sun sets, step back, reclaim,
	The Spirit of Cuahtemoc, alive and untamed�
	�Tha vulture came ta try and steal ya name but now you found a gun,
	You're History, this is for tha people of tha sun."

Lyrical support for this movement manifests itself in many other songs, such as "Zapata's Blood" or "War Within a Breath".

However, as I intend to show, such subversive activities are co-opted until they are institutionalised, 'being defined by the leading groups as the activities of deviant minorities, whose rights to protest peacefully must be protected in Western democracies. Such institutionalised activities have little chance of achieving changes of the system.' This does not necessarily mean they are completely bereft of any impact, though, as when politics acts within popular culture, it is able to put pressure on the institutions it criticises and excite popular feelings of compassion or support.

Merely because the music of Rage Against The Machine articulates world-views that contrast with the ideologies of the cultural producers that publish it, does not necessarily mean that an oppositional musical discourse exists. When political subversive music is institutionalised, it also adopts new qualities. How much autonomy can the band really have if they do not control the culture they are filtered through, and more importantly, why would Sony publish and publicise an act who constantly criticise their economic and ideological motives? Apart from basic economic factors (Rage Against The Machine have sold millions of albums), themes of revolution are seen as "cool" and "alternative", and add fashion credence to those associated with them. So just as politicians associate themselves with popular forms to gain a vicarious popularity, cultural producers also embrace radicalism to co-opt "cool" revolutionary imagery and slogans while ignoring the political diatribes and ideologies that brought the culture together originally. In short, they mould radicalism around their own belief systems, a fact noticed by E. Anne Kaplan, (although in reference to television) 'Television seems able to integrate and use any kind of potentially subversive counter-culture before it even has time to identify itself as such.' Of course, for "television" we can read "popular culture". Although we must not assume oppositional discourses are always at work, subversive music, I believe, does have a positive impact on political education.

Rage Against The Machine have used the platform Sony have given them to publicise many political movements, such as the oppression of the American Indian Movement, the case of political dissident Mumia Abu-Jamal, the anti-nazi league, multinational corporations use of sweatshop labour and the PRI dictatorship cruelty to the indigenous people of Mexico. The band's music does not guarantee political activist consequences, as many people may listen to merely the music, attaching their own apolitical images and discourses to the music, yet I would agree with Ray Pratt when he says that although oppositional consciousness does not imply transformative movements embodying affirmative change, 'these forms at least establish the groundwork that makes such movements possible. Lacking structured links to pre-existing communications networks of organised movements, no unified fusing of oppositional tendencies occurs, though it may be prefigured in cultural linkages through new forms of community established by mass communication.' Such challenges to the structure of social power take place at a social level, so although overt politics may not necessarily guarantee political organisation of those who consume these ideologies, it can orchestrate a shift in public consciousness. The music of Rage Against The Machine has significant political potential, but what people will make of this potential is another factor.

It is also important to note how Rage Against The Machine promote political education and not self-image. They do not have any recognisable ideology beyond the overt political criticism they espouse, and solely express political ideals and values within the realm of popular culture. They can be bracketed in the same group as artists who use popular culture as a forum for propaganda. 'From the political songs of John Lennon and Bob Dylan to the movies of Oliver Stone and John Sayles, popular culture has used its various media to make political statements...While the form and character of popular culture does not always allow for detailed or lengthy expositions and while its profundity depends more on rhetoric than on argument, it can still constitute a political forum.' Although this statement reveals how the political ideologies of Rage Against The Machine are transmitted, it also emphasises the limitations of how developed their political critique can be.

Referring back to the way in which the producers of popular culture create identities, as discussed in Chapter 1, the identity of Rage Against The Machine, and how it is compromised and filtered, emphasises how hegemony is used to reinforce prevailing dominant ideology. Although they may promote detailed political ideologies, they also symbolically represent ideas of subversion and rebellion, which are highly representative of youth culture; therefore, these images of rebellion are co-opted and represented in a more nebulous way. While removing the detailed political discourses, the images are made less issue-specific and can therefore apply to a greater number of people to transmit their own images onto it. After all, 'popular music is one of a variety of cultural commodities (serving as a commodity in both the sense of "value" Marx distinguished in Capital as "use" and "exchange values"). People use their cultural commodities to define their identities and define, as well, a particular subculture or personal style.' Therefore, by co-opting the image of Rage Against The Machine, making the issues less specific, cultural producers who sanitise their political ideologies are concurrently hoping to appeal to more people and thus serve their own ends economically.

If the counterculture is seen as "cool", it therefore becomes an economically fruitful possibility, exemplified by an incident of marginalising dissent related by Naomi Klein, 'Mark Hosler of Negativeland [an independent, anti-corporate protest band] received a call from the ultra hip ad agency Wieden & Kennedy asking if the band that coined the term "culture jamming" would do the soundtrack for a new Miller Genuine Draft commercial.'

It is important to consider how definitions of the American way and anti-American attitudes manifest themselves in responses to Rage Against The Machine. They are consistently referred to as anti-American by governmental/right-wing voices, an example being the ironic use of the Chief of New York City's police department's claim that "This band, The Machine Rages On, or Rage Against The Machine or something, are anti-family and pro-terrorist" � at the end of the music video for the single "Sleep Now In The Fire". They are also synonymous, during live performances, with draping their amplifiers with an inverted American flag (although this is not an original direct political statement, but rather an appropriation of the symbol of the American Indian Movement). A disgust for genocidal American imperialism manifests itself in their lyrics too;


	"So called facts are fraud,
	They want us to allege and pledge 
	And bow down to their God,
	Lost the culture, the culture lost,
	Spun our minds through time,
	Ignorance has taken over"

In the words of Robert Bocock, 'it has become plausible to think that no longer do the words "socialism", never mind "communism", suggest something worth striving for to many young people in the Western World, but rather something which is not much fun and is to be avoided. It is sometimes claimed by right-wing politicians that it is the Western, and more specifically the American way of life which many people, especially young people in Western and Eastern Europe�wish to emulate. The American way of life appears to offer the promise of more excitement together with possibilities for personal and social change and development.' This would suggest that the Western way of life has already achieved hegemony through active consent, despite the fact that Bocock adopts, wrongly in my opinion, Gramsci's assertion regarding America; 'The United States has not produced a world-view, a philosophy, which has moved beyond positivism and empiricism. Even American pragmatism, which Gramsci admired, had failed to break through the anti-intellectual, positivistic, and, at the same time, a more popular level, a naively religious, culture of the United States.' By labelling Rage Against The Machine anti-American, a positional discourse is established whereby the band and its ideologies are instantly dismissed without analysis or discussion.

Obviously, Rage Against The Machine are frequently subject to censorship, but we can understand a lot about the ideology that underpins this censorship in the way that they are censored. The State's organisation of social mores together with the ideologies of the cultural producers establish an agenda for what is to be censored, which echoes Street's assumption that '...to understand popular culture is to understand the conditions of its production.'

MTV's process of censorship has affected two Rage Against The Machine videos, for both "Freedom" and "People of The Sun". However, the reasons for censorship by MTV are usually moral (a typical example, cited by Goodwin, is the video for NWA's "Straight Outta Compton"(1989) which was banned on the grounds that it might seem to glorify crime associated with gang membership). However, the reasons for the censorship of the aforementioned Rage Against The Machine videos were on political grounds. The video for "Freedom" blends live performance footage of the band with images of Oglala Indians and a series of written messages calling for political dissident, and jailed member of the American Indian Movement, Leonard Peltier, to be granted executive clemency. The video also uses footage from the Robert Redford film Incident at Oglala and quotes from the Peter Matthiesson book In The Spirit of Crazy Horse, both texts which examine the Pine Ridge rebellion at the heart of Peltier's case. Although the video is not banned in full, MTV has refused to show the final image from the video, which shows Leonard Peltier and then superimposes the address of the Leonard Peltier Defence Committee address on top. MTV have justified this act of censorship by saying, "We want to make sure we differentiate videos from public-service announcements." Yet, as I have already commented, by not condemning certain acts it is possible to be seen to condone them. MTV present their own ideologies 24 hours a day, but they wilfully suppress the ideologies of others. The "People of the Sun" video was censored for depicting a dying Mexican woman with blood trickling down her wrist, onto which were superimposed the words "Trickle Down", relating to the American government's political policy of the same name.

When considering the problematics of dissent within popular culture, we must consider the questions, "Is hegemony maintained when confronted with political dissent", and "Can political activism harness any degree of autonomy in cultural production?" In response to the first question I would say that hegemonic rule is, for the most part, observed. Through campaigns of censorship and propaganda, those whose dissenting voices are suppressed have no recourse. As we have seen empirically, to take one example, Rage Against The Machine were able to release a video for "Freedom" but were not allowed to present it in the way they wished. However, the dissenting voices, although they are invariably co-opted by the cultural producers, they still have a profound impact. Rage Against The Machine, through lyrics, videos, artwork and interviews have been able to highlight the plight of many oppressed groups, and although they are restricted from offering detailed political analysis of these issues, the fact that they can present such issues is a significant counter-hegemonic step.

Chapter 3...

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