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Tamsin bloody Omond

LLETSA said:
I'm going offline for a while now, but I'll just add that it seems incredible that politicised people don't seem able to any longer grasp the effect of having the cultural values of the system their purport to oppose beamed directly into people's living rooms day and night.
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You don't have to go off in a huff, I was just asking you to explain the rather major claims you were making for the 'power' of the media. It's a shame that despite trotting out this line about the power of TV you don't seem to actualyl have any real thought-out critique of how it works, just that it's bad. Because it's bad, and capitalist, and bad.
 
Does anyone really buy into this antediluvian model of culture any more. Ideas being zapped straight into peoples heads. 'Ideas' not being transformed in the process of reception based on personal or collective experience? It's all very 1950s.
 
i hate this idea that anyone who watches TV or engages with mainstream culture or whatever somehow by default is lacking the critical faculties to also see where things are wrong in society, culture or even the TV show we are watching.
 
weltweit said:
Personally I am a bit surprised by the class hatred which seems a major part of the "why I don't like Tamsin!"

Though I admit her writings seem a bit contradictory.

We can't chose the class of our birth.

What we do in our lives is more important than how we were born.
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As Random has said, it's not that she's posh, it's the way she's cloaking her careerism in the flag of progressive/whatever politics. She's using her inbuilt privilege to hitch a lift on someone else's political wagon for her own ends. At least a posh kid who goes into the City or law using their background (to an extent) is only manipulating their own class position within their class.
 
butchersapron said:
Does anyone really buy into this antediluvian model of culture any more. Ideas being zapped straight into peoples heads. 'Ideas' not being transformed in the process of reception based on personal or collective experience? It's all very 1950s.
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'The hypodermic syringe model' it's called in sociology iirc.
 
Dan U said:
i hate this idea that anyone who watches TV or engages with mainstream culture or whatever somehow by default is lacking the critical faculties to also see where things are wrong in society, culture or even the TV show we are watching.
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stopstart.jpg
 
kyser_soze said:
As Random has said, it's not that she's posh, it's the way she's cloaking her careerism in the flag of progressive/whatever politics. She's using her inbuilt privilege to hitch a lift on someone else's political wagon for her own ends. At least a posh kid who goes into the City or law using their background (to an extent) is only manipulating their own class position within their class.
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hmm.. It seems you are suggesting people of a class should only mix or work within their born class.

I can't think of much that would be more likely to continue and strengthen the class system.
 
NB I am, of course heavily critical of the media, and of the companies that control it, and am fully aware of the way they try to set the terms of the debate, and control what our culture is. But culture is also created at the everyday level, plus popular culture is often part of opposition.
 
The meedja is an all powerful tool of social control. Especially when people criticise it, further proving just how brainwashed by it they really are.
 
To my mind kyser suggested that middle class people using their connections to get ahead is alright if they do it in the law or the city, amongst their own class, but if they tried to do it in a more left wing working class mileau then it was bad form of some kind.

That seems to me to be a recipie for the continuation of privilidge and the class system.
 
weltweit said:
hmm.. It seems you are suggesting people of a class should only mix or work within their born class.

I can't think of much that would be more likely to continue and strengthen the class system.
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No, I'm saying that she, in particluar, as an individual, is using her pre-existing class status to enhance her own, personal life and career, by hitching herself onto a social group that she doesn't share class interests with.

My second point was saying that, is that her behaviour is worse than someone who only uses their class privilege within their own class, and that this is why she attracts such opprobrium from many here.
 
weltweit said:
To my mind kyser suggested that middle class people using their connections to get ahead is alright if they do it in the law or the city, amongst their own class, but if they tried to do it in a more left wing working class mileau then it was bad form of some kind.

That seems to me to be a recipie for the continuation of privilidge and the class system.
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Do you really think the class system can be overcome by class-mixing rather than removing its material basis?
 
using their connections to get ahead is alright if they do it in the law or the city, amongst their own class, but if they tried to do it in a more left wing working class mileau then it was bad form of some kind
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I'm not saying 'it's alright' to either example, altho I think her behaviour shows a level of knowing cynicism that isn't present in the other example.
 
kyser_soze said:
No, I'm saying that she, in particluar, as an individual, is using her pre-existing class status to enhance her own, personal life and career, by hitching herself onto a social group that she doesn't share class interests with.
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So because she does not share class interests she should not hitch herself to that group?

kyser_soze said:
My second point was saying that, is that her behaviour is worse than someone who only uses their class privilege within their own class, and that this is why she attracts such opprobrium from many here.
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Yes, it is clear to me what you are saying. I just don't agree with it :)
 
kyser_soze said:
No, I'm saying that she, in particluar, as an individual, is using her pre-existing class status to enhance her own, personal life and career, by hitching herself onto a social group that she doesn't share class interests with.

My second point was saying that, is that her behaviour is worse than someone who only uses their class privilege within their own class, and that this is why she attracts such opprobrium from many here.
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I think it's a bit of a far stretch to claim that the green movement is a working class social movement. Middle and upper class greenism has existed as long as the modern movement has.
 
butchersapron said:
Do you really think the class system can be overcome by class-mixing rather than removing its material basis?
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Not only by that no, but it would be a step in the right direction.

And I don't mean just middle class people mixing with working class people, but also working class people mixing with middle class people .. iyswim
 
kyser_soze said:
Not if she's using it as a vehicle for her career, no.
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So do you think it equally wrong that an Essex lad might enter the city of London and prosper in the financial markets which had been traditionally a middle class occupation?

I think social mobility is a positive thing, in all directions. (well pehaps not all :)
 
weltweit said:
So do you think it equally wrong that an Essex lad might enter the city of London and prosper in the financial markets which had been traditionally a middle class occupation?

I think social mobility is a positive thing, in all directions. (well pehaps not all :)
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Not even remotely the same thing. This isn't about social mobility.
 
weltweit said:
Not only by that no, but it would be a step in the right direction.

And I don't mean just middle class people mixing with working class people, but also working class people mixing with middle class people .. iyswim
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'Background' and class aren't just about being born somewhere or in a particular group, they're about the structures of power that control who has access to wealth.
 
Random said:
You don't have to go off in a huff, I was just asking you to explain the rather major claims you were making for the 'power' of the media. It's a shame that despite trotting out this line about the power of TV you don't seem to actualyl have any real thought-out critique of how it works, just that it's bad. Because it's bad, and capitalist, and bad.
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I didn't go off in a huff-I'm working.

It's obvious how it works, isn't it? As already hinted at, if the values of the capitalist system are beamed into everybody's home nearly all the time, it's inconceivable that they won't dominate most people's way of looking at the world.
 
kyser_soze said:
It hasn't 'become' infested, it's inherent that some elements of the controlling ideology will also inhabit it's opposition. Down this road lies idealised ideological purity.
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I'm not calling for ideological purity. I'm just pointing out that we've never before had a situation in which so many people are addressed so directly by the cultural values of capitalism.
 
butchersapron said:
Does anyone really buy into this antediluvian model of culture any more. Ideas being zapped straight into peoples heads. 'Ideas' not being transformed in the process of reception based on personal or collective experience? It's all very 1950s.
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I'm not saying that people don't process the ideas and try to work out their own viewpoint, just that they inevitably have a major effect. Hence the failure of opposition to capitalism to offer convincing alternatives-why sacrifice your current situation only to achieve something that sounds pretty much like what went before?
 
LLETSA said:
I didn't go off in a huff-I'm working.

It's obvious how it works, isn't it? As already hinted at, if the values of the capitalist system are beamed into everybody's home nearly all the time, it's inconceivable that they won't dominate most people's way of looking at the world.
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But what if people are too busy working in capitalist jobs and buying capitalist products and services to pay attention to the box and the rags. Presumably they are the most free of capitalist values...
 
Dan U said:
i hate this idea that anyone who watches TV or engages with mainstream culture or whatever somehow by default is lacking the critical faculties to also see where things are wrong in society, culture or even the TV show we are watching.
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Everybody sees what's wrong, but the diversity and, often, plain daftness of much of what's offered as an alternative only proves my point.

Keep 'em confused. Make 'em laugh, make 'em cry.
 
Random said:
NB I am, of course heavily critical of the media, and of the companies that control it, and am fully aware of the way they try to set the terms of the debate, and control what our culture is. But culture is also created at the everyday level, plus popular culture is often part of opposition.
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Never before have we had so much in the way of TV, literature, drama and film that criticises the way the world is, often pointing the finger in the direction it needs to be pointed. And never before has opposition to capitalism been so weak and a workable alternative more remote.

Capitalism can afford any number of talented celebrity critics.
 
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