CO-OP Platform Text 3: Occufest [A Media Proposition]

By Chris Moylan

Occupy Wall Street has been relentless in demonstrating the structural, legal and financial dimensions of a systematic and well-financed process to corrupt Congress, paralyze the executive branch, manipulate the courts, and weaken financial regulations to allow speculative banking and investment practices ruinous to millions and exorbitantly profitable to the few. This calling to account extends to environmental practices, war policy, food production and marketing; the list goes on.

It stands to reason that harm to art and culture has paralleled harm done to economic and political life. On a practical level, when millions lose their homes and their jobs the arts suffer in varying degrees along with other elements of a society. However, detecting changes in discourse, as opposed to changes in attendance or viewership or the like, is difficult and to a large extent requires the wisdom of hindsight. We can track accurately how many people are attending what kinds of movies, but it can take some time to determine what a given cluster of comedies or action movies says about the zeitgeist at given time.  It can take time for the effects of social trauma to manifest themselves in fiction, movies, tv shows, not to mention more ambitious or serious undertakings in music, visual arts, poetry, and dance…

We can, however, identify some of the egregious forms of damage being inflicted on the public psyche right now, leaving the more subtle analysis of cultural artifacts to another time and context. In particular, the working poor and lower middle class people are subject to insult in the guise of entertainment and degradation in the guise of advertising. The Occupy Wall Street ambition to build a better world might include the task of defending and supporting the dignity of those who would inhabit. In particular this is something that artists and writers associated with OWS can do.

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