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Macklemore x Ed Sheeran concert: politics cannot be ignored
Ed Sheeran (everyone's favorite dreamy male singer) is holding a big tour across North and South America. Macklemore (everyone's favorite white rapper) got kicked out after (in an earlier concert) saying "Free Palestine", playing a song with pro-Palestine lyrics, and this:
Ed Sheeran has defended himself, saying it was not his decision - indeed, one Robert Kraft graciously confirmed he coordinated venues to boycott Macklemore - though Sheeran also remarked he tries to avoid politics in general:
So far, four other performers have dropped in solidarity with Macklemore.
Interestingly, Gillette stadium which banned Macklemore is hosting Kanye West, yes, the guy who was praising Hitler a year ago (albeit later admitting mental illness).
What do you think?
First, let me address the elephant in the room: the music industry is a corrupt dumpsterfire, basically a cartel. This is what cartels do. Besides dropping his pro-Palestine friend, Sheeran must also accept Ticketmaster price-gouging attendees, limited tour dates (I overheard somewhere there used to be far more concerts), and other nonsense. He probably could just find more accomodating venues if every one wasn't owned by Live Nation.
Lots of people are discussing how politics can't be avoided, and they're right. This is an excellent case study of how the endgame of "politics" convolutes everything and makes everyone miserable. Everyone loses here: Macklemore for taking a mild pro-Palestine stance gets kicked out of venues and attacked by Palestine opposers, Sheeran for taking a pro-peace neutral stance gets his tour lineup wrecked and attacked by Palestine supporters. There is nothing these performers can do, even be completely silent, that won't get them attacked by some group.
But the other side of "every side gets you attacked" is that no side is truly best. With no obvious winning strategy, you can be truer to yourself. And as Macklemore says:
Less tyrannical cartels, more people able to say what they want and go home to their families (with careers, money, opportunity, safety, and audiences)...I can defend these by linking them to other axioms, but ultimately they just seem right to me. I think celebrities should express their politics (including neutrality), for authenticity, and moreso because they can: it widens the Overton Window as they avoid life-ruining consequences. Even Kanye and his edgy schizo-manifestations, which I (unsuprisingly) strongly disagree with, but don't hate and even sort of appreciate for some odd reason. Yes my thinking is flawed, but look, his "cancellation" gave him the Streisand effect and today he performs where even Macklemore cannot, so what is flawless?
(Also, holy shit, can news sites link to their actual sources instead of writing articles whose sole content is paraphrasing them? Credit to variety.com of all outlets, the one article I found that did, albeit in the middle.)
I’m personally opposed for several reasons.
First of all, once partisan politics invades a space, it becomes the primary point of that space. That’s what happened to Hollywood and music. You are almost required to have the “right” opinions on various topics to gain access to an audience. Not a liberal or even not outspoken enough about your liberalism — you are cut off from a lot of mainstream culture making. That means that you cannot be neutral or even ignore the topics. The same tends to happen even in amateur culture spaces. Once the topic of politics is discussed, the forum will become mostly political and will develop a strong political orthodoxy even if dissent is tolerated. Even here, the main topic of conversation is political discussion, and we have a pretty strong consensus of political conservatism. Not that other ideas are not discussed or there aren’t people who disagree on that consensus, but they’re generally heretics.
Second, it tends to destroy the art in question. It means that instead of creating an authentic, true to life story or song. It must serve the purpose of the person’s political ideology. An atheistic socialist writing a character who is not like them cannot help but make them in some way loathe some. Yesteryear was about a conservative Christian rancher who ends up completely off grid, but every conservative and every Christian in that story (except for a gay friendly pastor mentioned at the end) was a hypocritical, mean, loathe some character, they never really seemed to believe in God as areal living faith, and the same is true of “the manosphere “ and a conservative presidential campaign. The upshot is that the liberal and feminist author just couldn’t create believable Christian or conservative characters.
Third, it tends to turn those art forms and venues into partisan places. It’s no longer a place for everyone, instead the project tends to welcome orthodox people and shun heretics. If you’re a conservative Jew forced to listen to every musician scream about the Palestinian Genocide, you obviously are not feeling all that welcome. Nor are Christians or conservatives forced to listen as those same people scream about liberal causes like abortion. This leads to self-segregation where people tend to curate their music and other art to types of art that’s at least not hostile to them. This reduces places where all people can share a bit of culture. I can still attend most sporting events without feeling like the venue and the players are hostile to me as a fairly conservative Christian. I don’t see that as much in art and music.
Yeah.
There's a saying that "EVERYTHING is Political" and I vehemently disagree with it. There are many things one can do and enjoy without there being any political valence to it whatsoever.
But the problem is... You can add politics to anything. so "Anything CAN BE Political" is a statement I do agree with.
And so the asshole types who say "Everything is Political!" are using that, functionally, as an excuse to inject politics into everything, then using the existence of politics in the space to retroactively prove their original statement.
And my point is "no, you're not uncovering a feature of the scene that everyone was studiously ignoring, you are intentionally adding this feature that everyone was very happy was absent, then getting up in arms that people don't like you changing the ground rules without so much as a discussion." Gatekeeping such persons out is critical but also difficult because the motivation for them to smuggle in the politics is substantial and you only have to let one or two in for things to derail.
I think it’s a feature of our ideas about legitimacy. Since our idea of legitimate government is democracy and consent of the governed, the people who want to govern must “launder” their ideas into the culture, and thus it becomes imperative to capture any institution that imparts ideas to the public (which is, to be blunt, all of culture). Then you can firehose out your agenda in every way the cathedral can get a message out, and eventually, unless you are an extreme contrarian or opt out of most of mainstream society, you’re very likely to get caught up in the zeitgeist of the media culture you saturate in.
I consider it late-stage democracy. Democracy cannot function unless the public goes along with good ideas. Which means that you can’t just let the public form their own organic culture or community which is likely to have the wrong sorts of ideas. Instead the elites have to make the culture over to their tastes and if you can’t take over the institution, it must be discredited or destroyed.
That's pretty insightful, especially the need to launder politics through culture in order to manufacture consent. Hadn't thought of it in those terms.
Related to the "You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you" point.
Any culture that's not under control of the political edifice is, potentially, a method for alternative systems and resistance to organize and arise. The state would see this as an intolerable possible threat to sovereignty. On top of that any popular cultural edifice can be turned into a propaganda organ, can't expect them to ignore that.
I've arranged my immediate affairs so that I have as few as possible intersections with political authority. Quite literally, I chose the location of my house in large part because it has the fewest political bodies with jurisdiction over its physical location (i.e. it is outside of the nearest city's limits in unincorporated territory, has no HOA, and has extremely permissive zoning).
And yet, AND YET I know that I can't afford to ignore politics because the political-minded will constantly seek to bring me and my property under their ambit, and it is NOT enough to just retreat, run, and try to stay outside their grasp, it requires active, intelligent resistance and even then its not guaranteed b/c the state has infinite patience.
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