Anti-Modernism

DHinMI said that an aspect of Fascism was Anti-Modernism. He also said that Bush hasn't openly embraced anti-modernism. On the 2nd point I disagree.

Bush has heavily co-opted 2 things fundamentalist church and country music.

Fundamentalist church is almost by definition anti-modern. They are all about denying the changes that have taken place in religion over time and going back to the fundamentals of their religious texts.

I'm sure we are all aware how much Bush has used country music as theme music for his campaign. What you might not be aware of is the current #4 and #2 songs in country music. As rated by Billboard.

#4 Tim McGraw - Back When

Tim McGraw is a huge star in country music. Back When is a rabidly anti-modernism song. It has only been on the charts for 14 weeks as is already song #4 and still moving up. To summarize it w/ one short clip...

We got too complicated
It's all way over-rated
I like the old and out-dated
Way of life

#2 Kenny Chesney - The Woman With You

Kenny Chesney is another big star. This song isn't rabid like Back When but it sort of jumps out at you when you look at the charts. This one is #2 its also been on the charts for only 14 weeks. A bit of a low number it shares with Back When. It comes across a little different but when you inspect it its also something of a back looking man dominated woman view. This is about a woman who had big plans and found herself happy just being married to X man. To grab a few clips for highlight.

She said the girl I was with the business degree probally wouldn't recognize me.
I was going around the bank.
I was going to run them out.
Now all I want to run is a bubble bath.
Back then you know I had this plan.
Before all of this reality set in.
...
Just when it feels like I can't make it through.
She said it sure is nice to just be the woman with you.

Has Bush come out and said Anti-Modern blah blah blah? No But to do so would not be Bush's way. However we can see Bush running with/on the Anti-Modern setiments of others. If you want to say Anti-Modernism is an element of Facism I will argue we have it.

•  14 weeks is a pretty good run

  on any chart. Songs tend to sink after they've been on the chart for a few weeks, especially these days. So for what it's worth, what you're talking about here is extremely popular songs.

  by Dog of the South on Sun Nov 28, 2004 at 05:59:06 AM PDT

  •  You might actually take a look...

    at the country chart. #1 just peaked has been on the chart for 24 wks. #7 up from #8 last week has been on the chart for 30 wks. #10 a falling former #1 has been on the chart for 32 wks. Its not at all unheard of for a country song to remain #1 for a few wks or more. They aren't exactly screaming to the top but they are moving plenty fast. Esp in a chart that has seen a number of long running #1's in recent months.

    by Ranger CN on Sun Nov 28, 2004 at 06:08:26 AM PDT

•  Wonderful insight

  I think your idea to talk about the media surrounding the movement is quite on track.  I think your disection and analysis of the songs shows them for what they are, a longing for the so-called simpler life, or , as you put it, signs of anit-modernism.

  I think there is a kind of trend in the US, a kind of medieval fetish, and I'm not talking about people who play role playing games or go to renaissance festivals.  I'm refering more to the vast throngs of middle and working class people who like movies that glorify royalty.  Anything like 'The Princess Diaries' or most Disney animated films.  These films demonstrate the kind of 'king and country' fetish and the lust for a return to aristocracy.  

  This tendency is shown in mainstream films such as 'Maid in Manhattan' and 'Two Weeks Notice'.  These films look up to and fetishize aristocratic privelige.  The working class latino can finally make somthing of her life by finally cozying up to the rich and charming Republican senator.  The liberal lawyer can finally clean up her act when she stops all that do-gooding for those hopless causes and gets a respectible corporate job and of course sleeps with the aristocratic owner of the company...  who, by the way has a giant "W" sitting outside of his company headquarters just to remind people that these films are planted firmly in the Bush-era.  

  These characters can do well when the lofty aristocrats on high dole out their blessings (especially after a good bonking), but don't ever ask to be put in charge yourself.  A movie like 'Bruce Almighty' shows just how screwed up things can get when a regualar guy gets the reins of power in his hands.  He starts to reorder the world according to his tasted and needs.  Better to leave the power to those who were born to it.  They know how to run things.

  On the opposite end of the medieval fetish is the longing for the (long past) pastorial life.  The same sentiment you find in the songs you posted.  'Sweet Home Alabama' is a perfect example of this.  It is totally a Bush-era movie.  This movie asks us to accept the absurdity that this highly accomplished woman would give up her New York fashion design career and her John Kennedy type fiance to live back in her old hometown and marry her old, ne'er-do-well, glass-blowing boyfriend who seems to be some kind of cinematic stand-in for the young and irresponsible larval phase of our current president.  This film is like the opposite of 'The Secret of My Success' which is the like the ultimate Reagan-era, uppwardly mobile everyman fantasy.  

  I think these and many more example of media plays into and reveals the secret aristocratic longings of Americans.  No, it's not that so many Americans long to be aristocrats, but it's that they long for a return to that stratified society in which the lords and ladies occupied the regal palaces that are their birthright and the peasants have their pastorial bliss of hearth and home.  They live a life of less, knowing that the lords will protect them and the church will guide them to a better life in the world beyond.  Everything is as it should be.  No one need strive, no one need feel that they've missed out. Everyone has their place, their lot. Too bad this idylic world only exists in romantic Arthurian fantasies and Disney movies.  But isn't this longing for the idyllic and idealized past the essence of fascism?

  Why on earth would a people who fought for their freedom from such a society want to go back to such a society?  Free people do it all the time...

  Check out Eric Fromm's Escape From Freedom

  by sonofapes on Sun Nov 28, 2004 at 06:43:34 AM PDT

•  Fascism wasn't anti-modernism

  Nazism was anti-Jewish, and became anti-modern as a code word for "Jewish".

  by Stirling Newberry on Sun Nov 28, 2004 at 09:27:52 AM PDT

•  Modernity & Modernism

       There may be some verbal confusion here.
  "Modernity" is usually defined(by people who write a lot about these matters)as democracy, capitalism, and secularism.  The Enlightenment agenda, if you will.
       "Modernism" is primarily a cultural and technological phenomenon that emerges roughly in the last quarter of the 19th century.  More difficult to characterize than modernity, modernism has been described by Malcolm Bradbury as "a sense of modern culture as a field of anxious stylistic formation".  It's a compound of the telephone, motion picture, automobile, radio, airplane, Freud, Einstein, Planck, Stravinsky, Picasso, Frank Lloyd Wright, Joyce, and Robert Musil.  Think also of Georges Sorel, Vilfredo Pareto, H.G. Wells, and Ezra Pound.
       As a number of cultural historians have pointed out Fascist movements have always appropriated elements of modernism.  You could almost define Fascism as one path of "anxious stylistic formation" applied not to culture but to politics. Part of Fascism's appeal is the notion of changing all the rules to suit one's own political fantasies--Nicholas Mosley thinks this was an important element in his father Oswald Mosley's evolution towards Fascism.  It's not unlike the the idea expressed in the Bush White House that an empire creates its own realities.
       As for modernity, it's safe to say that fascism's basic premise is rejection of the entire package.  It is, as Ernst Nolte argued in his Three Faces of Fascism, fundamentally opposed to the Enlightenment agenda.
       Isn't funny how after the massive going-over it got from the Postmodernists, the Enlightenment is suddenly looking pretty good?  

  by angry blue planet on Sun Nov 28, 2004 at 12:09:12 PM PDT

•  Sometimes I think that

  Country Music is the White People's Pascification Program for this country...but some country music is very good...more of the populist movement sort of stuff..

  by boycottgop on Sun Nov 28, 2004 at 01:38:51 PM PDT

•  Fundamentalism

  Digby has a great post on the qualities of Fundamentalism. Your diary was a fresh take on things - dKos is a place where I'd guess 80% of the people think nuance is a good thing so it's great to have someone point out popular references to have a different point of view.

  by joejoejoe on Wed Dec 08, 2004 at 09:50:59 PM PDT