It’s the End of the World as We Know It, and We Feel Fine: Part I

By Alif Omar Mahfix  •  25 Jan 2012 in Features

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Kulturpop never shies away from the big statements so while others are telling you 2012 is the end of dubstep, graffiti or bubble tea (we can only wish), we can confidently predict that 2012 will be the end of hope. The world economy has maxed its VISA limit, countries are paying bills with Amex cards and people are wondering where the next bowl or rice is coming from. While tweeting their credit-wrecked frustrations on state of the art smartphones, of course.

So where’s the fun in an age of poverty you’d tweet if you could afford to pay your phone bill any longer? Frankly, pop culture is, well…boring. A decade of untrammelled global success hasn’t been kind to it. Artists have prospered. Musicians have turned into mega-corporations with billion dollar turnovers. And technology has become the new rock and roll.

Look at our current crop of stars: Coldplay release Mylo Xyloto, a record with all the appeal of a Chartered Accounting annual dinner. One of the world’s biggest stars is Adele: an Amy Winehouse lite with all the fun and attitude sucked out. Maybe that’s why Amy gave up and left us for the great Vegas Casino in the sky.

Pop culture has gorged on a feast of borrowed cash and cocaine for far too long, and it’s become fat, greasy and grey in the process. Johnny Rotten once asked: “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” And it’s a question you ask yourself whenever you see the latest Damien Hirst bejewelled body part. When you’ve already reached the cultural nadir of the vajazzle, hope is already lost.

Thankfully, when things are hopeless they also get interesting again. When the global economy tanked in the 1930s we had the emergence of the riotous and scandalous cabaret scene in Berlin. Post-war America gave birth to outlaw motorcycle clubs like Hell’s Angels and later the Hippy counterculture.

The cultural stagnation of the 1970s gave us disco and punk – two movements that couldn’t be further apart musically but whose reverberations are still felt through hip hop, house music and rock and punk today. At the end of the 1980s it was acid house in Europe and grunge in the States. And since then, what have we had? Emo? Dubstep? Progressive House? Yawn.

A music correspondent recently tried to shock kulturpop’s ears with a mash up of metal and dubstep. Nice, we replied, but it sounds like a parent-approved take on ‘90s industrial bangers Godflesh. Which is why we’re voting to end all hope in 2012 and wait for the next cultural revolution to give violent and bloody birth to something new and impure.

Kulturpop is Matt Armitage, a pop culture documentist. In a pop culture world there’s only kulturpop.com.