Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Lawrence Welk: Herald of Postmodernity? Pt. 2

Well, this just about captures the entire post-war cultural dynamic. Is this the beginnings of the culture war, the absorption of Bohemia into the middle class, or just a terrible, terrible mistake?

2 comments:

K said...

I don't get it. what do you mean?

Wandering Americain said...

Well, in the sense that you have a song that was originally about drug use and personified a lot of what made the late 60s such a wierd period being remanufactured and passed off to the very people who would later make the politics of cultural resentment the centerpeice of our political world.

Also, if you look at a lot of the music aimed at the would-be Welk viewers since, it follows a somewhat similar pattern; take a style or its content, alter it so the originally disturbing content is hemmed in in some way (here by lots of makeup and a cut-out pastoral setting) and then sell it as viable. Muzak renditions of Led Zepplin would be one extreme example, but there are a lot of others. (Christian rock, another.)