Smart Consumption
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I found myself ending off this past summer vacation seeking out new niches in the music world. One genre that really caught my ear was something that is known as “industrial.”
Industrial music—if I had to try to define it—is an experimental genre that is a chaotic cluster of lo-fi, harsh noise. The key ingredient to the industrial sound is distortion—not only of instruments, but also of voices and voice clips. Most notably, Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, SPK, Genesis P-Orridge, and Boyd Rice are prominent contributors to the industrial music genre.
When looking for recommendations, I had a song called “Turn Me On Dead Man” suggested to me, which was performed by the latter-most on that list. After the first 30 seconds of that three-minute video, I excitedly began to look up other songs by this artist—also known as Non—because he had the exact vibe I was looking for. After a quick Google search, I was overwhelmed by the results that popped up about this artist. Rice is best known for being a racist, misanthropist, sexist, nihilist, and last—but not least—for playing a large role in Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan. I paused the song I had been listening to so that I could focus on reading an essay he had written, titled “Revolt Against Penis Envy.” By the end of it, I was hoping to find out that what I had read was a satirical piece, but I was wrong. The ideas about rape, maintaining superior status to women, and general ideas of oppressing less privileged groups were so outlandish that I could hardly believe that someone genuinely had these ideas and published them on public forums. Unfortunately, the aforementioned essay was written in earnest; every problematic statement featured in this piece really was a recurring ideal that appeared in Rice’s interviews. I was in a nervous sweat by the time I got to the end, which Rice punctuated with reiterations of his philosophies: “Long live oppression! Long live love! Long live rape!”
The unfortunate thing with this sort of situation is that it’s very common in all facets of media and art. Many, many artists are problematic. The spectrum of problems is wide and far; there are perpetuators of archaic ideas, and further enactors of despicable actions. Whether it’s Woody Allen with his adopted daughter, Sean Penn with Madonna, Chris Brown with Rihanna, or Lena Dunham with just about everything, us consumers are faced with making a moral decision: do we value the consumption of art more than we do our own moral standing?
Such a question is difficult to grapple with, since the idea of the artist is intrinsically linked to the piece of art itself, which we more often than not happen to take for granted. Really, this question is not one that is answered consciously, but through the act of being ignorant and passive about what is being consumed. It isn’t always necessarily the case where an individual is decisively consuming a problematic piece of media—often, when the problematic history of an artist is brought to the attention of this consumer, they become open to learning about who this artist is as a person and what that means for the art they produce.
The problems come in when an individual is educated about the producer of art, yet chooses to ignore the situation. There is a revisiting of this question posed earlier: is the consumption of art valued above an individual’s moral standing? And if so, why? The argument that art can be separated from the artist and subsequently appreciated by an audience relies heavily upon the idea that a work of art is not an extension of an artist. To assume that an artistic piece is not a reflection of the artist’s ideals and interpretations of his experiences is absolutely unreasonable. I argue, absolutely, that any piece of art is a direct reflection of the artist himself.
In conversations along these lines, I can’t help but bring Roland Barthes into the equation. His essay titled “The Death of the Author” touches on this very issue. Essentially, Barthes argues that the image we get of an author is through his writing. According to Barthes, an author—Barthes is referring to writing, specifically, in his piece, but it is easily applied to all media—is born through his writing: we cannot conceive of the writer without first reading his work. The writing only exists through the interpretation of the reader. In Barthes’ opinion, interpretations of the piece of art as a whole are the basis of our understanding of the author. The author’s role in producing a body of text is a misconception of productivity. The author does not produce the text – he is influenced by many factors.
Through a metaphor posed by Barthes, the author is traditionally thought to “nourish” his writing, much like a “father to his child.” However, Barthes argues that the author is born “simultaneously” with his work. The main idea I am pulling from Barthes’ essay is that the author is a product of his writing, which is then interpreted by the readers. The entire work hangs on being read, and this reading colours the reader’s perception of the artist who has produced the work.
Needless to say, in lieu of all of this, I had to drop Boyd Rice from my slow-growing collection of industrial artists. The good news, though, is that there are many other talented artists in the same vein for me to explore. And fortunately, that can also be said about every other art form.
Photo Credit: VICE Media
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