I was thinking about cultural value this morning, as I have all week (all month, really…actually, for the past year, I guess). I’m interested in the overlap between the hard economic value of cultural products (and their producers) and the softer, ideological realms of products’ cultural or symbolic capital—how do these twin evaluations relate directly to one another? How do they diverge, and how do we understand the two kinds of values to be both connected and distinct from one another? My research explores the “ragtime era,” the period from the Supreme Court’s concretization of Jim Crow in 1896 to the end of World War I. While most refer to this as the “Progressive Era,” I prefer ragtime. It’s no coincidence, I submit (though I will not bore you with a long defense), that the first piece of sheet music published in America with the word “ragtime” on it came off the presses in 1896, the year “separate but equal” became the law of the land. (Besides being a “ragtime” song, it was also a “coon song”—and also the first of its type—entitled “All Coons Look Alike to Me.” Its author was an African American: Ernest “The Unbleached American” Hogan.)
From the moment Hogan’s tune became a national hit, African American musicians’ fiscal and cultural capital have most often been united. Due to the prevalence of blackface minstrelsy, black musicians’ cultural capital could hardly have begun at a lower point; due to white supremacist systems of labor and commerce, nor could blacks’ economic value. Yet, through black artists’ non-linear rise to national prominence through ragtime, jazz, blues, gospel, R&B, rock’n’roll, funk, disco, and hip-hop, their symbolic capital and fiscal worth have often remained tied. And I wonder if that is still true, not only of African American musicians, but American pop performers more broadly.
Pop stars these days—the big ones—make a lot of money, more perhaps than at any other time. But where’s their cultural capital? How do we even evaluate it? Does anybody care anymore if Madonna champions her latest cause? (Perhaps I’m showing my age and my head in the historical sand.) Does anybody care what Justin Bieber thinks is important, does his opinion carry any social currency? Do the fields of popular music, movies, or culture receive a kind of respect or authority? Or is it all just noise and glitter? I’m not sure I can tell, nor am I sure if the idea of “cultural capital” (itself, a historically-constituted theoretical paradigm from the 1970s) really holds any water in the age of reality t.v. As far as I can tell, we seem to like to pay people enough money (fiscal capital) to grant them “star” status (cultural capital) almost wholly so that we can watch their status shrink and disappear into Dancing with the Stars—ironically, one of the real-world indications that someone is no longer the star they used to be.
Jay-Z and Beyoncé seem to wield considerable cultural capital alongside their mega-fortunes. But for as many people who admire and respect the power couple, they have become straw figures, as ripe for criticism and ridicule as anyone—frequently moreso. Hip-hop, obviously, provokes wildly disparate social responses, but that’s been true of all types of culture products since ragtime (ragtime syncopations scared the shit out of many, many people). Film, I assume, still holds a status over t.v., but this is probably on the wane too since so many movies suck, and t.v. (I hear) keeps getting better.
And then there’s the internet, the ultimate democratizer. Maybe it’s the information age that has upended these categories of analysis. It has certainly played surprising roles in the creation of some folks’ fiscal wealth (again, Bieber). Perhaps the internet’s onus on a level playing field has un-tethered monetary capital from its social component? But facebook has status; or it did compared to myspace. Did its status rise and fall with its public shares? Again, how do we evaluate it? Fuck, too many questions. I’m gonna think about this and return to it. Anybody wanna jump in? It’s the internet….
