culture
Weirdo Subcultures Are No Longer Producing Great Art
Bismarck Analysis
Philosophy, Notre Dame
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Genesis
Response
Penultimate
Finale
March 29th, 2021
In the past couple of decades, weirdo subcultures have produced surprisingly little great art, in every medium. The new aesthetics tend to be shallow and transitory, and in my lifetime there have been hardly any cultural figures with the creativity and staying power of, say, John Lennon or Robert Heinlein. While art and aesthetics cannot be quantified and pinned down for a perfect comparison, it seems fair to say that the new artistic movements since around 1990 or 2000 have not measured up to midcentury creations like rock and roll or punk.
Why is this? We have no lack of weirdo subcultures. Going by raw numbers, there are probably more outsider artists than ever. Many people once thought that the internet, and the easy distribution that came with it, would make today’s outsider artists even more influential than those from the 20th century. Despite this, new cultural products now have a harder time crossing the blood-brain barrier into mainstream society. The fertile scenes from my youth, like the webcomics and Flash cartoons of the late 90s and early 2000s, have had essentially no impact on the wider culture. Online fanfiction communities achieved slightly more, by serving as a launching pad for a handful of writers who achieved mainstream success in other media. The only medium from this period which achieved wider popularity is the image macro, which does not lend itself to influence or depth. Today’s youth are in a similar situation—fertile scenes in new internet media, but with little impact on the wider culture.
Today we often take for granted that great and influential art is supposed to come from outsiders and countercultural weirdos. For most of the 20th century, this was often true. A cultural pipeline would take challenging outsider art, partially sanitize it, and incorporate it into the mainstream. However, this pipeline doesn’t seem to be working today. Artistic scenes that were fringe and disreputable in 2000 have not graduated to respectability, with the arguable exceptions of video games and rap music.
Can we get groundbreaking art without getting it from the weirdo outsiders? It’s possible. Before the rise of middle-class consumers, developments in art were driven by patronage from elite insiders. At its best this led to celebrated periods like the Renaissance painters and the Classical composers. The growing prominence of corporate-driven storytelling, like Netflix shows or the much-discussed franchise media, is a small step towards a similar centralization of art and culture. Today’s institutions of mainstream culture don’t seem likely to produce similar great works in the short term, but this could change. Should we rely on them? I don’t think so. I find that I still have more faith in the weirdos and outsiders.
This leaves the big question: Why aren't the weirdo subcultures getting traction in the mainstream anymore? Is it because of changes at media organizations? Is it somehow because of the internet? Are the weirdos just making worse art, unworthy of wider adoption? I wish I knew.
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