If a Bohemian Falls in the Forest ...
Judith ShulevitzPosted Sunday, Jan. 9, 2000, at 10:31 AM ETIs there currently an American bohemia? Last week the official organ of American cultural bohemianism, the Village Voice, was sold to speculators without a complaint from its once fiercely anti-capitalist readers and staff. Also last week, the Chronicle of Higher Education proclaimed the death of American intellectual bohemianism: A junior professor of English at Princeton bemoaned the fact that his most brilliant students are being lured into high-paid consulting jobs (higher-paid than his!), rather than pursuing the life of genteel poverty demanded by academic or artistic careers. Oh sure, he says, he knows the occasional Ivy Leaguer who works nine-to-five so that she can rush off at night to read Gilles Deleuze or play rock 'n' roll. But she's an anachronism. New York, at least, is "postbohemian."
Now, people have been proclaiming the death of bohemia ever since a 19th-century Parisian, Henri Murger, wrote a book that would become an opera that would become synonymous with the artistic life right up to the moment when the whole concoction was boiled down to corn syrup in the Broadway musical Rent. Jerrold Seigel, the author of an excellent history of bohemianism, Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life 1830-1930 (1986), says that when people go around saying bohemia is dead, what they usually mean is that they can't see how to wiggle free of commercialism and convention: "People experience bohemia as a form of authentic existence." Bohemia is a state of mind, says Seigel. It's not just the collective experience of radicals and artistes in the cafes of Paris or the lofts of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Bohemianism is a life self-consciously positioned on the margins in order to express ambivalence about the mainstream.
But does the aggregate of people who happen to be living the bohemian lifestyle right now add up to an actual bohemia? That's a tougher question. Seigel also says that bohemians have a role to play in society: Theirs is to act out the bourgeoisie's quashed longings and confusions. Bohemians should be mirrors in which we see what we might have been, had we dared.
So who's doing that today? Obviously, we can rule out the hipsters paying exorbitant sums to inhabit gentrified downtowns and sport the latest iteration of poverty chic. But there are people all over America living lives quietly on the fringe. We get a glimpse of them in a forthcoming book by New York Times rock critic Ann Powers. Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America (Simon & Schuster, $23) is a charming, rambling account of her coming of age as a music-store clerk/riot-grrrl punkster/aspiring writer in Seattle and San Francisco, interspersed with interviews of her old friends. Bohemia, Powers admits, is geographically dispersed. It looks moribund. But, she says, it thrives sight unseen. It is "everywhere somebody opens a used-record shop, a laundromat-café, and a punk rock bar." It's a "floating underground, which is really more a life path than a place. ... It is a challenge undertaken in privacy ... to confront and reinvigorate the premises of society, the definitions of kinship, labor, love, leisure, consumerism, and identity itself."
Here's the problem with this definition: Can bohemia exist "in privacy"? What if society isn't aware that its premises are being reinvigorated, its contradictions being dramatized? What if the bourgeoisie, whom the bohemians are supposed to épater, seems un-épater-able? What if it just doesn't give a damn? If there is a bohemia today, it seems to be neither hated nor celebrated. This strikes Culturebox as a mortal condition. The great bohemias of history--Murger's and Charles Baudelaire's 19th-century Paris, Bloomsbury, the French and German Dadaists, the Surrealists, the Beats, the indie rock scene--were flamboyant and self-enthralled. They hogged the limelight. They made themselves seem the center of the artistic universe. In so doing, they really did change the world.
There was a moment about a decade ago when the group-house dwellers and music-store clerks whose lives Powers details so minutely rose to the level of a bohemia. The streets of Seattle opened up and gave us Kurt Cobain; New York's Strand bookstore yielded Mary Gaitskill; video-store culture belched forth Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith. Now, however, when Powers returns to her old music store, she is bewildered by how little she finds. "I could see no sign of the Planet attitude, no surly looks in the eyes of the kids behind the cash register," she writes. Then she thinks she understands: "I realized that I was on the other side of it now. To the sly members of the cultured proletariat I looked like an average customer, not a fellow traveler who knew and approved of their tricks."
Perhaps. What Powers describes sounds frankly too subterranean to amount to a bohemia anymore. At best, the stone-faced attitudes of retail-outlet clerks have become the manifestation of a subculture that is soon to disappear, like all the other subcultures that have faded into history. One of the most remarkable facts about this turn of the century, so far, is that if you want to be on the cutting edge, you have to leave the margins for the center. That, the domain of American industry and entrepreneurship, is where the interesting ideas--the innovation, the subversion, the re-imagining of the boundaries of society--are coming from. That's the bohemia of the moment. Great American bohemias have bubbled up from the depths in the past, and more surely will in the future. But there's nothing going on down there right now.
Highlights from the Fray:
Judith Shulevitz assumes that bohemia is A) entirely artistic in nature and B) is majoritarian white. As far as I can see, a lively bohemia without geographical boundaries brought us the so-called Battle in Seattle. And what can you call hip-hop culture, which thrives, both under- and aboveground, but a bohemia? The assumption that "the domain of American industry and entrepreneurship, is where the interesting ideas--the innovation, the subversion, the reimagining of the boundaries of society--are coming from," is one that only someone trapped desperately in that center can hold. Just because interesting, creative people no longer live in the East Village (and even that's arguable), doesn't mean they're not out there, doing important, organized work.
The surface stance of American cultural radicalism has been heavily co-opted by corporate culture, which leaves the "bohemians" without an aesthetic pose. So politics must fill the gap--union organizing, campaigns for prison and police reform, and other campaigns. They're not as glamorous as a gig at CBGB or a reading at City Lights, but they're just as important.
--Neal Pollack
(To reply, click here.)
Mr. Pollack makes some good points, all of which I wish I could have addressed in my Culturebox. To take them one at a time:
1. I do assume that bohemianism is cultural (I wouldn't go so far as to say artistic), rather than political, largely because that has historically been true. Organized political activism may occur on the margins (though it's also a prominent feature of the mainstream) but it is not synonymous with bohemianism. In fact, activists are often suspicious of bohemians, who don't have a great track record of getting things done. Marxists, for instance--particularly the Marxist cultural critics known as the Frankfurt School--wrote bohemianism off as "avant-gardism." Their beef, according to Seigel, was that "the failure to carry the critical project through to the end appears as an abandonment of the revolutionary possibilities inherent in it, or a sign that the identification with them was never wholehearted or complete." In other words, to serious activists, bohemians are a bunch of amateurs.
2. I don't say anything about race, but by leaving hip-hop out of the discussion, I do leave myself open to the charge of white bias. There were two reasons I did that:
a. Powers barely mentions hip-hop--it's not her world--and this was partly a review of her book.
b. Hip-hop is barely bohemian, in that it (to my knowledge) rarely espouses a critique of commercialism, except, perhaps, the kind of barely discernable ironic critique which consists of criticizing by being the thing you're against.
3. You think the Battle for Seattle was some kind of spontaneous coming together of a bunch of bohemians acting out their dislike of corporate culture? You should read Ryan Lizza's remarkable story in the New Republic, in which he uncovers some of the organizing that went into the anti-free-trade movement, including funding of extreme left-wing groups by extreme right-winger Roger Milliken, the South Carolina textiles giant.
--Judith Shulevitz
(To reply, click here.)
Judith Shulevitz raises some interesting points in this article. One point she didn't discuss at much length, or perhaps dismissed with her comment about "the hipsters paying exorbitant sums to inhabit gentrified downtowns and sport the latest iteration of poverty chic," is the extent to which bohemianism, however defined, is undermined as an alternative lifestyle when much of the middle and upper-middle class supports the bohemians.
Example: many alternative arts groups are set up as non-profits, which often have lawyers, businesspeople, and other non-artists as their members and supporters. Before dismissing such individuals as shallow "hipsters," as Judith Shulevitz seems to, perhaps one should consider the possibility that the overlap between the bourgeoisie and the bohemians (God, I hate both words) is rather large, and has increased in recent years. After all, many of the young professionals one sees riding around town in SUVs cut their cultural teeth on Kurt Cobain, Kevin Smith, and the other early 90s alt-heroes that Judith Shulevitz cites as key individuals, and have remained influenced by such individuals and the cultural movements they were a part of. They just got older, and started going to art galleries and performance art shows instead of punk clubs.
--Mark
(To reply, click here.)
There's always a temptation to complicate the simple. Why fewer Bohemians today? It's the economy, Stupid! In my hometown of Houston, Texas, for instance, if you have any sort of education whatsoever---a $25,000+ annual salary is readily available. Only a few years ago, I recall a young fellow who had recently graduated from Rice University with an English degree. This young man was frantically sending out his resume seeking appropriate employment. In the mean time, he earned a $6 per hour income advising store customers which classical music CDs they should purchase. He had been doing this well over a year after his graduation. Today, employers are begging for good people. A current Rice University graduate easily has a wide-open choice of many positions outside of academe.
It's hard to be a Bohemian when you are living a solidly middle class lifestyle. Was Francis Fukuyama on target when predicting the "The End of History?" Have we all become the despised bourgeoisie?
--David Thomson
(To reply, click here.)
A quiet and uneventful life might be for the best. I recall the Chinese curse: "May you live in exciting times!" The Germans at the turn of the century made much of the so-called cultural creativity resulting from war and bloodshed. It is indeed my adamant opinion that severe hardships and tragedy produces great art. But do we really wish to pay this price tag? The society responsible for producing an Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is not worthy of emulation.
--David Thomson
(To reply, click here.)
Anyone who believes Bohemia is dead obviously has never experienced Eugene, Oregon. Ferrets on ropes outnumber dogs on leashes. That thumping in the back of your head is actually your neighbor down the street, hanging out on his front porch bidding farewell to the sun with his bongo drums. In some neighborhoods vinegar outsells shampoo by wide margins (that's what you use to wash dreadlocks), and people wave at each other in their wildly colorful VW buses with bumper stickers that say, "Old hippies never die, they just move to Eugene." There is a symphony, a ballet, a lively theater scene, a weekly arts and crafts fair, and numerous independent bookstores, all supported by a population of roughly 100,000. And where else can you go to enjoy good old-fashioned wholesome street rallies to express public outrage or support for causes ranging from old-growth logging to allowing women to sunbathe topless in the downtown pedestrian mall without fear of misdemeanor charges for indecent exposure.
Bohemia dead? Sure, in New York City. But everywhere? You're just not looking hard enough.
--Amy Clemons
(To reply, click here.)
(1/11)
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Highlights from the Fray:
Judith Shulevitz assumes that bohemia is A) entirely artistic in nature and B) is majoritarian white. As far as I can see, a lively bohemia without geographical boundaries brought us the so-called Battle in Seattle. And what can you call hip-hop culture, which thrives, both under- and aboveground, but a bohemia? The assumption that "the domain of American industry and entrepreneurship, is where the interesting ideas--the innovation, the subversion, the reimagining of the boundaries of society--are coming from," is one that only someone trapped desperately in that center can hold. Just because interesting, creative people no longer live in the East Village (and even that's arguable), doesn't mean they're not out there, doing important, organized work.
The surface stance of American cultural radicalism has been heavily co-opted by corporate culture, which leaves the "bohemians" without an aesthetic pose. So politics must fill the gap--union organizing, campaigns for prison and police reform, and other campaigns. They're not as glamorous as a gig at CBGB or a reading at City Lights, but they're just as important.
--Neal Pollack
(To reply, click here.)
Mr. Pollack makes some good points, all of which I wish I could have addressed in my Culturebox. To take them one at a time:
1. I do assume that bohemianism is cultural (I wouldn't go so far as to say artistic), rather than political, largely because that has historically been true. Organized political activism may occur on the margins (though it's also a prominent feature of the mainstream) but it is not synonymous with bohemianism. In fact, activists are often suspicious of bohemians, who don't have a great track record of getting things done. Marxists, for instance--particularly the Marxist cultural critics known as the Frankfurt School--wrote bohemianism off as "avant-gardism." Their beef, according to Seigel, was that "the failure to carry the critical project through to the end appears as an abandonment of the revolutionary possibilities inherent in it, or a sign that the identification with them was never wholehearted or complete." In other words, to serious activists, bohemians are a bunch of amateurs.
2. I don't say anything about race, but by leaving hip-hop out of the discussion, I do leave myself open to the charge of white bias. There were two reasons I did that:
a. Powers barely mentions hip-hop--it's not her world--and this was partly a review of her book.
b. Hip-hop is barely bohemian, in that it (to my knowledge) rarely espouses a critique of commercialism, except, perhaps, the kind of barely discernable ironic critique which consists of criticizing by being the thing you're against.
3. You think the Battle for Seattle was some kind of spontaneous coming together of a bunch of bohemians acting out their dislike of corporate culture? You should read Ryan Lizza's remarkable story in the New Republic, in which he uncovers some of the organizing that went into the anti-free-trade movement, including funding of extreme left-wing groups by extreme right-winger Roger Milliken, the South Carolina textiles giant.
--Judith Shulevitz
(To reply, click here.)
Judith Shulevitz raises some interesting points in this article. One point she didn't discuss at much length, or perhaps dismissed with her comment about "the hipsters paying exorbitant sums to inhabit gentrified downtowns and sport the latest iteration of poverty chic," is the extent to which bohemianism, however defined, is undermined as an alternative lifestyle when much of the middle and upper-middle class supports the bohemians.
Example: many alternative arts groups are set up as non-profits, which often have lawyers, businesspeople, and other non-artists as their members and supporters. Before dismissing such individuals as shallow "hipsters," as Judith Shulevitz seems to, perhaps one should consider the possibility that the overlap between the bourgeoisie and the bohemians (God, I hate both words) is rather large, and has increased in recent years. After all, many of the young professionals one sees riding around town in SUVs cut their cultural teeth on Kurt Cobain, Kevin Smith, and the other early 90s alt-heroes that Judith Shulevitz cites as key individuals, and have remained influenced by such individuals and the cultural movements they were a part of. They just got older, and started going to art galleries and performance art shows instead of punk clubs.
--Mark
(To reply, click here.)
There's always a temptation to complicate the simple. Why fewer Bohemians today? It's the economy, Stupid! In my hometown of Houston, Texas, for instance, if you have any sort of education whatsoever---a $25,000+ annual salary is readily available. Only a few years ago, I recall a young fellow who had recently graduated from Rice University with an English degree. This young man was frantically sending out his resume seeking appropriate employment. In the mean time, he earned a $6 per hour income advising store customers which classical music CDs they should purchase. He had been doing this well over a year after his graduation. Today, employers are begging for good people. A current Rice University graduate easily has a wide-open choice of many positions outside of academe.
It's hard to be a Bohemian when you are living a solidly middle class lifestyle. Was Francis Fukuyama on target when predicting the "The End of History?" Have we all become the despised bourgeoisie?
--David Thomson
(To reply, click here.)
A quiet and uneventful life might be for the best. I recall the Chinese curse: "May you live in exciting times!" The Germans at the turn of the century made much of the so-called cultural creativity resulting from war and bloodshed. It is indeed my adamant opinion that severe hardships and tragedy produces great art. But do we really wish to pay this price tag? The society responsible for producing an Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is not worthy of emulation.
--David Thomson
(To reply, click here.)
Anyone who believes Bohemia is dead obviously has never experienced Eugene, Oregon. Ferrets on ropes outnumber dogs on leashes. That thumping in the back of your head is actually your neighbor down the street, hanging out on his front porch bidding farewell to the sun with his bongo drums. In some neighborhoods vinegar outsells shampoo by wide margins (that's what you use to wash dreadlocks), and people wave at each other in their wildly colorful VW buses with bumper stickers that say, "Old hippies never die, they just move to Eugene." There is a symphony, a ballet, a lively theater scene, a weekly arts and crafts fair, and numerous independent bookstores, all supported by a population of roughly 100,000. And where else can you go to enjoy good old-fashioned wholesome street rallies to express public outrage or support for causes ranging from old-growth logging to allowing women to sunbathe topless in the downtown pedestrian mall without fear of misdemeanor charges for indecent exposure.
Bohemia dead? Sure, in New York City. But everywhere? You're just not looking hard enough.
--Amy Clemons
(To reply, click here.)
(1/11)