Material Existence & The Spectacle of Creative Capitalism
The Irish culture industry is in a golden age, with actors, musicians, and artists proudly selling the identity across the globe. But, when everyday culture is taken out of the quiet rhythms of life and distilled in performances by the creative class, how are muintir na hÉireann effected by this self-awareness?
Creative Capitalism – Pedagogy of Class Values
The Irish culture’s reduction by creative capitalism has created a paradigmatic vision of identity, where the inspired artists have developed a hierarchy in Irish representation. When artists are creating deliberate exhibitions of culture, acting as anthropologists who glean the everyday for marketable emblems of identity, what effect does this have on those whose lives are turned into a palimpsest, obscured by simulacrums of their reality?
Fontaines D.C.’s Grian Chatten summarised his affectation of the Dublin accent as an “example of coming over to a different culture and telling that culture something about themselves”. This pedagogical approach to the culture industry is underpinned by the belief, not only in telling working-class Dubliners who artists believe they are, but also in telling them who the upper classes would like them to be. Embodied by the noble savage trope, this fantasy of Irishness can replace the undesirable truths of social degradation with a character that is both palatable to the middle-class and marketable across the globe.
Culture as democracy; holistic and equitable.
Culture, mediated by creativity gurus and curated by marketing firms, is defanged and rendered impotent. As stated by Meditation for The Anxious Mind in the above video, culture exists nebulously in society without self-awareness or market affectations. In order to reconcile Irish consciousness with the identities and issues of the country, defamiliarisation with the media’s identities is necessary. This is done by rejoining society, where walking through urban areas is a radical exercise. Exploring working-class areas with curiosity rather than fear.
Moore Street and The Liberties are not zones for inspiring artistic representations, but places to live in and to take for granted as a citizen. Creative capitalism acts as the marketplace for gentrification and commodification, advertising areas for developers and pricing the locals out of their homes under the guise of the culture industry. For a social future in the arts, the creatives should act as antagonists of capitalism rather than its greatest allies.
