{"id":274,"date":"2014-03-01T00:09:21","date_gmt":"2014-03-01T00:09:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.dminlgp.com\/?p=274"},"modified":"2014-08-12T17:41:56","modified_gmt":"2014-08-12T17:41:56","slug":"counter-productive-counter-cultural","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/counter-productive-counter-cultural\/","title":{"rendered":"Counter Productive Counter-Cultural"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently Leonardo DiCaprio did the interview circuit for his new movie \u201cThe Wolf of Wall Street,\u201d a movie that depicted a wealthy trader on Wall Street who had a \u201clust for wealth and the lust for consuming everything around him.\u201d This drove him to extremes of debauchery that make up much of the movie. It is an \u201chonest\u201d (a word DiCaprio used several times) portrayal of the contemporary \u201clust for greed,\u201d a world of \u201cwild and rampant\u201d consumption, lacking rules and regulation, totally \u201cdesensitized to the debauchery\u201d in all its forms.[i]<\/a><\/p>\n

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One can applaud DiCaprio for his brave stand against the evils and abuses of Wall Street wealth and his critic of greedy life-styles and conspicuous consumption.\u00a0 Yet, during these many interviews, no one seemed to see irony of this actor\u2014whose net worth is over two million dollars, living a life of extravagant wealth\u2014making a stand against the evils of wealthy and greed. \u00a0Here was a man whose Malibu home has seven bedroom, six-and-a-half bathroom and runs for a mere $23,000,000\u2026oh, and it is just one of three houses he owns, not to mention his island off of Belize.[ii]<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Further, no one questioned the fact that the profits from this \u201csocially conscience\u201d movie would add to an industry known for its \u201cunregulated\u201d practices and its \u201cdesensitized debauchery\u201d (just watch any Hollywood awards show).\u00a0 Didn\u2019t it strike anyone that DiCaprio\u2019s distaste for conspicuous consumption might be in fact seem a little strange?\u00a0 Wouldn\u2019t this be just like Miley Cyrus coming out as a campaign spokesperson for modesty?<\/p>\n

It is this kind of crazy, mixed-up Alice-in-Wonderland world that is so well illustrated in The Rebel Sell <\/em>by Joseph Heather and Andrew Potter. \u00a0The authors suggest that there has been a long series of cultural critics who viewed society as completely permeated by capitalism and consumerism, advertising and big business, which have taken control of all aspects life. Their task was to \u201cwake people up, unplug them, free them from the grip of the spectacle\u2026.through symbolic acts of resistance to suggest that something was not right in the world.\u201d[iii]<\/a>\u00a0 For forty years, various attempts to fight the system and be counter-cultural have been both misguided and counter-productive.<\/p>\n

The entire counter-cultural movement was based on false theory of society as an impersonal and all persuasive machine that dictates all of life.\u00a0 This led to idea that the system must be either jammed or avoided completely, which meant living a life counter to its ideals and practices.\u00a0 This rebellion often took the form of \u201cpolymorphous perversity, or performance art, or modern primitivism, or mind-expanding drugs, or whatever else turns your crank.\u201d[iv]<\/a>\u00a0 In short, hedonism was the doctrine of the revolution.\u00a0 The authors point out that what these counter-culturalists were battling was in fact non-existent. There was no dictatorial machine running all of life that one simply needed to jam or escape.\u00a0 Society was in fact a mosaic of \u201cbillions of human beings pursuing some more or less plausible conception of the good, trying to cooperate with one another, and doing so with varying degrees of success. There is no single, overarching system that integrates it all.\u201d[v]<\/a> \u00a0Because they chose battle with a \u201csystem,\u201d their effort was \u201cnot just unhelpful, it was positively counter-productive.\u201d[vi]<\/a> \u00a0The wonderful irony is that the system these revolutionaries saw as needing to be over-turned, in fact co-opted the very symbols of the rebel cultural and made them mainstream because the consumer system was based on providing ever new products and ideas for the customer to keep the system going.\u00a0 Counter-culturalists were in fact the new entrepreneurs, creating new styles of clothing, new products for sale, and new music for distribution.\u00a0 Being themselves embedded in the system, they seemed unaware that their rebellion and radical life-styles were only feeding the very machine that they were attempted to dismantle.\u00a0 Like DiCaprio, the very focus of their protest was being furthered through the methods and symbols of protest.<\/p>\n

The sad reality is that the turn to hedonism as a way of social protest did little to persuade people to make \u201cany sacrifices in the name of social change.\u201d [vii]<\/a>\u00a0 Dropping out of the system did nothing to bring important social change, while positive changes in racial equality, women\u2019s and gay rights, and security for the poor have all been won within the system and through slow progress.\u00a0 The conclusion then is that the radical counter-culturalist that practiced hedonistic, unplugged, self-absorbed rebellion did little to bring substantial social change.<\/p>\n

Two questions come to mind from this study.\u00a0 First, is the Church immune to this tendency of counter-culture stands becoming merchandise and mainstream?\u00a0 Showing my age, I remember the beginnings of \u00a0the whole Jesus movement with its radical shift in music and clothing and worship, which now has amazingly become the norms in most churches.\u00a0 Even attempts at teaching people to be Radical <\/em>today comes in nicely packaged DVD sets with leaders guide and has swept the churches to popular acclaim (again, the dripping irony of \u00a0EVERYONE now being Radical).\u00a0 <\/em>And when non-Christian youth are found wearing WWJD bracelets, we understand that even our attempts to live counter-culturally can be easily co-opted by the capitalist, consumer system where merchandising Jesus and marketing Christianity brings in a lot of money.<\/p>\n

Second, how can the Church bring about real social change?\u00a0 If we take the lessons of The Rebel Sell<\/em> seriously, it isn\u2019t by unplugging, escaping, or even turning inward. \u00a0It is remembering that we are dealing with real people who make up that colorful mosaic of society\u2026and not a system. It is about living the kingdom faithfully among these people, which means: caring for people that are collateral damage from the system; making the hard personal sacrifices for others; it means practicing the work of the Good Samaritan, or the sheep in Jesus\u2019 parable of the Sheep and Goat<\/em>, or living out the Beatitudes.\u00a0 All are examples of radical, self-empting, Christ-like love.\u00a0 Real social change, Jesus way, will come from small Eucharistic communities whose simple lives of love and care in radical identification with the oppressed will bring change as yeast to bread. In our hedonistic, greedy and debauched society, this might in fact be a radically counter-cultural approach that would actually touch lives rather than sell products.<\/p>\n

John F. Woodward<\/p>\n

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<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [i]\u00a0 Leonardo DiCaprio Interview: The Wolf of Wall Street, Part 1 & 2, <\/em>accessed February 26, 2014, http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=d8tQyUrqs04.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [ii] \u201cLeonardo DiCaprio House: Breakin\u2019 Up is Hard to do,\u201d \u00a0Celebrity Net Worth<\/em>, accessed February 26, 2014, http:\/\/www.celebritynetworth.com\/articles\/celebrity-homes\/leonardo-dicaprios-house-breakin-hard\/.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [iii] Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, The Rebel Sell <\/em>(Chichester, West Sussex: Capstone Publishing Limited, 2006), 9.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [iv] Ibid., 11.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [v] Ibid., 10.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [vi] Ibid.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [vii] Ibid., 11.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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