Culture in our view of post-Marxism and internet influence.

              In my first post, a brief discussion of the nature of culture seems appropriate. The very word has various depth of meaning; from it being the direct result of  animal civilization, to its framing and manipulation by various industries. At its very core it usually requires a level of communication that is re-enforced over time. A saying or symbol can take on and evolve with its use over time. Patterns of meaning are reproduced with action. There is assuredly a vast amount of writings on the implications of culture, but here I would like to give an example of it, in the example of the  a very random evolution of a subculture saying “In Soviet Russia….and a phrase in antimetabole form”, resulting in wordplay.

 From a brief history from the almighty Wikipedia, “Yakov Smirnoff, is a Ukrainian-born American comedian, painter and Psychology professor. He was popular in the 1980s for comedy performances in which he used irony and word play to contrast life under the Communist regime in his native Soviet Union with life in the United States, delivered in heavily accented English. A phrase such as “In America, you can always find a party.” would be said as ”In Russia, The Party can always find you!” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakov_Smirnoff)

                  The evolution of this phrase sums up not only having a comedic view of a particular culture, in the case of Smirnoff’s view of America as a immigrant of a different culture, but also the re-use of this phrase in the “Russian Reversal” joke, thus now being a entirely new cult in-joke.

An additional reason for this example was because in response to Dr. Strangelove’s lecture discussion on Marxism, I was immediately reminded of this example. The image of the T-shirt with the antimetabole saying referring to a blog sums up the combination of the commodification of culture, the phrase displayed with classical Russian lettering and red and gold colors that has become synonymous with Classical Marxism. 

In a reiteration of what was discussed by Dr. Strangelove during a lecture, Classic Marxist determinism states that culture is determined by the base which it’s established on. However, I would argue that this seems to be a closed system view since often meaning is determined by a commercial system, in both being made in a commercial system, for a commercial system. A criticism that has been formed of Classic Marxist thought is that it overdetermines the condition of manufacturing, that is, it presumes a malleable audience.

Going back to the example of the phrase “In Soviet Russia…”, this neo-marxist theory which dictated the culture of the Soviet Union for over 50 years, is in many ways contrasting with the commercialization on the sub-cult culture of the internet shown with this shirt. With the popularization of certain phrases over internet forums with posting on public anonymous boards such as 4-chan and the World of Warcraft role-player game.

With the theory of Economic Determinism there appears to be an assumed autonomy in the model of Culture and Superstructure being the result of the Base and Economic situation. This would be summed up as the type of culture we have is determined by the  type of economy. In fact, one would argue that it is a vice versa relationship that is highly interwoven. Media is quite often massively powerful in producing culture, but it is also not a sovereign all powerful dictator as portrayed by mass society theorists, but it does greatly affect our actions. The addition of the Internet in the Economic Determinism model as given rise to a variety of debate over the flow of control in culture and economy. We, as a society now are witnessing for the first time in history, a medium that is not been controlled by some economic organization. In every year that has gone by, we have seen freedom in communication increasing. Whether this trend will last is uncertain, but our progression as a society to become less and less segmented, as in the case of entertainment being just for children, or just for adults, is indeed encouraging.

The power of commercialism, using the cult saying that has been popularized by internet use, a play on the Antimetabole comedic style of Yakov Smirnoff as described in the post, here on the shirt is shown the quote: "In Soviet Russia Blog hacks you!"

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