In class we discussed what Jes Grew is today and while it is rather hard to pin down the exact thing that it is, there is no doubt in my mind that it is going through a renaissance. To put a definition on it I would define Jes Grew as any form of culture the rebels against the standard. This modern resurgence of Jes Grew began in the 1970’s. In the last couple chapters Papa La Bas talks about his experiences sharing the stories of Jes Grew.
People in the 60s said they couldn’t follow him. (In Santa Cruz the students walked out.) What’s your point? they asked in Seattle whose central point, the Space Needle, is invisible from time to time. What are you driving at? they would say in Detroit in the 1950s. In the 40s he haunted the stacks of a ghost library. In the 30s he sought to recover his losses like everybody else. In the 20s they knew. And the 20s were back again.
Papa LaBas’ personal experiences fit the historical context. The 30’s were dominated by the depression and the 40’s World War II and the subsequent celebration, this prevented the spread of Jes Grew. The 50’s would then seem to set the stage for a Jes Grew revival, as people return both to happiness and physically return to the United States having picked up parts of the cultures from the countries that they fought in. However, this revival was stifled by the cold war. In particular, McCarthyism, which in my opinion is quintessential atonist suppression. Luckily, Jes Grew was able to survive this and finally re-emerge in the 70’s, within groups such as the hippies and the entire counterculture movement.
Today, Jes Grew is experiencing a renaissance. The most obvious part of this are things like modern hip-hop and rap. But there are more things that contribute to this. I would say that both the maker and hipster movements are Jes Grew. As both involve a significant move away from large corporations which are most likely the modern bastion of the atonists. All of these things are fueled by modern technology, primarily the internet. Intriguingly this means that those who attempt to control the internet are atonists, which leads to the fascinating question of whether or not the NSA or Verizon or the Republican Party are the modern atonists out to stop Jes Grew.
There is definitely a relation between the internet and those who try to control/monitor it that is similar to the relation between the proponents of Jes Grew and the Atonists in Mumbo Jumbo, although I'm not sure how I feel about describing entire government agencies, parties, and huge corporations as "out to stop Jes Grew."
ReplyDeleteThe Internet is certainly an important part of this contemporary dynamic, and we can see it in many different areas. To take just one of them: in _Mumbo Jumbo_, Reed depicts the Wallflower Order as exercising direct control over the media and its representation of news, which is "the first draft of history." And it's certainly possible to look at newspapers and televised news media as serving a role like this, framing stories to accord with an Atonist metanarrative, deciding which stories are important and which are marginalized, reinforcing cultural values and stereotypes, etc.
ReplyDeleteBut the Internet and social media have allowed for a kind of populist takeover of the means of media production, so we now see the old established media drawing on public-sourced, independent footage and reportage of news events as they happen. This was obviously a critical aspect of the Ferguson protests, which spawned the leaderless Black Lives Matter movement, almost entirely through twitter, facebook, etc. The distrust of official sources is often explicit in these posts ("See what the media isn't showing!"; "Video evidence contradicts statement by chief of police!" etc.). The first draft of history in the contemporary world has a more diverse set of authors than it has ever had before.