Subculture Versus Mass Culture in Nobrow and the Dialectic of Enlightenment

In his book Nobrow: The Culture of Marketing, The Marketing of Culture, John

Seabrook argues that the traditional “lowbrow” and “highbrow” distinctions of class and culture have been eradicated in modern society. Seabrook holds that old lowbrow culture (the world of

Vogue magazine, cheap, mass-produced furniture, and Budweiser beer) has coalesced with old

highbrow culture (the world of The New Yorker, fancy custom-tailored suits, and the opera) to

form “Nobrow,” a new culture devoid of class distinctions. One of the most important aspects of

this new culture, Seabrook argues, is the convergence of marketing and culture that has taken

place within it: in an era of widespread “product placement” in movies and television, constant

surveys of the demographic, and band names used as brand names to sell merchandise, culture

and marketing have become deeply intertwined. In the chapter The Culture Industry:

Enlightenment as Mass Deception in their Dialectic of Enlightenment, Theodor Adorno and Max

Horkheimer make a similar argument on this last point, although they are much more condemnatory than is Seabrook, who seems largely the impartial observer. Adorno and

Horkheimer observe a like convergence of culture and marketing, and they present a view of modern culture as a sort of widespread conspiracy run by what they call the “culture industry.”

The culture industry, they suggest, is a new cultural mechanism put in place to facilitate control of the masses, stability, and a robust economy.

I will argue that Seabrook and Adorno and Horkheimer make parallel and fundamental oversights in their cultural critiques, particularly in their lack of proper acknowledgement or discussion of subcultures—those pieces of culture that make up small niches, command relatively few adherents, and may be largely divorced from mainstream culture. Seabrook sees subculture as the “trend giver to the culture at large” (66), which while being to some extent correct ignores large areas of subculture, and Adorno and Horkheimer appear to neglect its

existence almost entirely. Both Nobrow and the Dialectic present an oversimplified view of culture which, I will argue, while having relevance to certain elements of mass culture (in particular, television and radio), does not explain other elements, particularly some subcultures.

To support my point, I will discuss subcultures in modern music, and specifically the modern heavy metal subculture (and its subcultures!) due to my familiarity with the subject. I will show that certain properties of metal, such as its lack of marketing (but nonetheless wide distribution),

its harsh, unpalatable sound, and its high/low-brow distinctions refute Seabrook and Adorno and

Horkheimer’s theses that culture and marketing have coalesced and that class distinctions have

disappeared.

As I have indicated, I do not claim that Seabrook and Adorno and Horkheimer’s

arguments have no validity; indeed, this is far from the case. In the world of television and radio

particularly, culture-class distinctions have largely disappeared, and culture has in many ways

merged with marketing. This phenomenon is due primarily to the format of these media: mass-

broadcasted audio and visuals whose distribution is government-regulated. Not anyone can run a

radio station (especially one with any sort of broadcast range), much less a television station; the

government controls the barriers of entry to both of these media, and, in general, money

determines who speaks to the masses and who is silent. It is exactly for this reason—money—

that culture and marketing have converged in the worlds of television and radio. It is in fact no

surprise that marketing, a means to money, predominates in a world where money is king. Since

television and radio are essentially both means of culture dissemination, an unprofitable venture

in itself since there is no direct sale of a product, they must rely on marketing to prosper and

even to keep themselves afloat. Thus, in these media, culture has been mixed with marketing, first with program sponsors, then with commercial breaks, then with related merchandise, and

finally with sometimes-subtle, and sometimes-very-unsubtle product placement within regular

programming. The mixture of culture and marketing in television and radio has been a gradual

process that started with the advent of these technologies and will most likely continue in the

future.

Because culture and marketing have become so deeply intertwined in television and radio, the cultural content of these media has become indirectly regulated by marketing necessities. On much of radio, for example, only songs specifically predicted (and even engineered) to be hits receive airtime. These hits attract listeners (consumers) with their generally predictable structure, hooks, instrumentation, and vocal delivery (which relate to the ideas Adorno and Horkheimer’s present of “ready-made clichés to be slotted in anywhere” (125) and “constant reproduction of the same thing” (134)). Thus, the culture distributed through radio becomes a means to more efficient marketing, and marketing is itself merged into the culture (in the airplay of TV show American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson’s song “A Moment Like This,” for example).

Finally, because of their reliance on the acceptance of the masses, culture-class

distinctions have largely disappeared from television and radio. It may be debated whether this

change indicates the rise of Seabrook’s Nobrow or whether it simply indicates the victory of

lowbrow over highbrow in television and radio. One way or the other, however, content on radio

and especially television today is rarely classified as belonging to a certain part of a larger

television and radio culture-class hierarchy; in other words, all content is seen as residing at the

same level. To see this, we need only compare, for example, the marketing techniques used by

different television channels. The relatively small variations in commercials played on different channels can most likely be accounted for solely by the age-range and racial makeup of the viewership of each channel—there is no need to make any reference to a culture-class hierarchy.

I have tried to show that Seabrook and Adorno and Horkheimer’s theses hold when scrutinizing the state of modern television and radio in order to demonstrate some of the qualities an element of culture must have in order to support these theses. I contend that specific subcultures of music, specifically heavy metal, do not possess these qualities and furthermore, have an extremely small likelihood of attaining them in the future as television and radio have done in their own lifetimes. Thus, I will attempt to show that Seabrook and Adorno and

Horkheimer’s theses do not hold for these cases. First, however, a clarifying digression: when I speak of heavy metal, I am referring to modern heavy metal, an international scene that has grown rapidly since the late 80s and early 90s. I am referring to musical movements that have taken place most predominantly in several Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Norway, and

Finland), the United States, and to a lesser extent England, which have produced many genres of metal including death, black, doom, Swedish melodic (i.e., the “Gothenburg sound”), progressive/technical, and various hard-to-describe combinations of influences that could generically be deemed “art-metal.” Bands that exemplify the music I am referring to are: Death,

Entombed, Immortal, Emperor, Katatonia, Paradise Lost, Dark Tranquillity, At The Gates,

Cynic, Arcturus, , and so on. To be clear, I am not referring to so-called “nu-metal,” a current American phenomenon consisting of rap- and hip-hop-influenced bands such as Korn,

Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, and so on.

The barriers to entry in recording and distributing a metal CD are much less than those required to run a television station, for example. In general, all that is required is some studio time and a deal with a reasonably sized record label (of which quite a few exist). And while it is the case that most metal-producing record labels don’t have distribution in huge retail chains such as Walmart, that is certainly not going to prevent bands from distributing their music to those who are interested. Because the music CD is a commodity bought and sold in its own right, marketing interferes much less in music than it does in television programs, which must have advertising to fund themselves; this fact in itself vastly differentiates music CDs from television and radio. Furthermore, while metal is marketed to a certain degree (in magazines and on the Internet, mainly), I would hold that this marketing plays much less of a role in influencing purchasing decisions than word of mouth, reviews, and past personal experience. Certainly, metal magazines are far less ubiquitous in society (even among metal fans) than television and radio are.

Metal is not intended for mass-consumption, nor is it massively consumed. Therefore, it

seems absurd to call it a “culture industry” or to suggest that it is used as a propoganda device as

Adorno and Horkheimer suggest (123). One could of course hold that the metal “industry” is simply a small part of a larger all-consuming industry, but I would argue that this is also not the case for several reasons. First, I see no ideological common thread between metal and mainstream culture. Horkheimer and Adorno suggest that small differences in very similar products are exaggerated to make it seem that the public is being given a choice when it is actually being offered many variations on the same thing (123), but the differences between metal and mainstream music seem large, not small. As an illustration, varying types of metal contain extensive use of atonal melodies; very harsh guitar and drum sounds; very un-catchy rhythms and guitar and vocal lines; noise, or chaotic instrumentation that can sound like noise to the unaccustomed ear; harsh production; technical sections containing odd time signatures and extremely fast instrumentation; a lack of choruses or any standard musical structure; dark themes and bizarre lyrics; and last but not least, very harsh, sometimes inhuman sounding vocals (for an example of all of these, I refer the reader to the Emperor album Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk).

Because of these differences, it seems quite a stretch to call metal just another part of one overarching monoculture.

Furthermore, I would go as far as to say that metal has an extremely low potential of

suddenly becoming mainstream. Seabrook speaks of this phenomenon at length in his discussion

of the Kurt-Cobain-like Ben Kweller and his band Radish, mentioning the interaction between

the “little-grid” world of supposedly authentic musical artistry and the “big-grid” world of the mass market (chapter 4). Adorno and Horkheimer also speak of the transition from small- to big-time, stating that for whom this transition occurs is determined by “blind chance” and akin to

“winning a prize” (146). The problem with this picture for metal, I would argue, is that the mass market does not demand the “raw authenticity” of underground metal (as Seabrook claims), but is instead confused, dismayed, and turned off by it—from my experience, the little mainstream press metal has gotten in the past decade has been ill-informed and resoundingly negative. Thus,

in this case, the “big-grid” and the “little-grid” are not commingling worlds, but instead distinct

entities. There is very little, if any, interaction between the two as might be the case in a more

palatable sub-genre of music such as, for example, “indie rock.”

Finally, to contest Seabrook’s point regarding the ubiquitous rise of Nobrow, there

definitely are culture-class distinctions present within the world of metal. Most predominantly,

underground metal such as that I have spoken of is generally seen as more artistic, intelligent,

and interesting, and in general “higher,” than the so-called “nu-metal” produced by

contemporary American bands previously mentioned. I am not going to discuss the validity of these claims (if doing so would even be possible), but it is clear that a class hierarchy exists: the genres of metal I have mentioned are seen as “highbrow,” and “nu-metal” is “lowbrow.” This point is actually very uncontroversial within the metal scene, and few will be found to contest it.

Thus, contrary to Seabrook’s claims, class distinctions are alive and well, even if they have transformed vastly from those that Seabrook’s father was familiar with (described in chapter 2 of

Nobrow).

I hope to have shown Seabrook and Adorno and Horkheimer did not consider subculture

to the extent that they should have in their critiques of modern mass culture and marketing.

While subculture surely did not exist to the extent it does today during Adorno and Horkheimer’s

time, Seabrook in particular has no excuse for this oversight. To be sure, marketing and culture

have converged in some areas such as television and radio, but this does not change the fact that

other areas, such as some subcultures of music, remain largely unaffected. Thus, the big-brother-

like marketing entity that Adorno and Horkheimer describe is (fortunately) not all-encompassing.

Additionally, as I have shown and contrary to Seabrook’s claims in Nobrow, class distinctions and elitism still exist, albeit in a different form from that which Seabrook discusses. The subculture of illustrates both of these points well, as, I am sure, do many other currently existing subcultures.