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Originally Posted by Glice
I've a feeling this is going to get a bit Routledge set*...
I think you're cock-on about the Dixie Chicks being part of the system they're critiquing, but that's an essential tenement of political progress, especially at that mass level - the hegemony of the system is perpetuated by its fluid, amorphous, nameless mass, not by it being the image of the demagogue puppeteering malificiently. The role the Dixie Chicks play is to represent the dissensus within this formless mass, the dissimulation and the re-orientation of the hegemony. It's not a question of political top trumps, but I'd argue that the Dixie Chicks tacitly and likely unconsciously represent a far more powerful movement in America in general than do, say, the DKs. This statement will necessarily be lost on most here, I'm afraid to say. A caveat - while PE galvanised and awakened political consciousness in a great many black and white men and women, their ultimate legacy is musical - anyone who was tipped into big-p Political actions by PE would've become a firebrand regardless, PE are the catalyst.
The Pistols speak of being a parody of their political selves (to my mind retroactively). 'Smash the system' is a trope, a narrative, and at this point in history, a staging, a theatrical gesture. The reason why people dislike 'corporate' punk is precisely because it reminds them of this theatrics, it reminds audiences of the suspension of disbelief that accompanies even the smallest scale of punk songs. No-one ever 'smashed the system', the system has no body to smash, it is not brittle and fragile, it doesn't adhere to any such metaphor. The system merely is, its being formed as an impossible network of organs and byways, intractable and in-negotiable.
*It's a real shame that it's only Herr Rail will get this gag, it's a good one...
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I really like your idea about the Dixie Chicks acting as a kind of 'dissensus'
within the mass, which, while ultimately limited in what it can achieve, is invariably more successful than the 'all or nothing' tactic employed by most 'revolutionaries'.
I have to disagree with your point that a 'system' (which I do agree is an annoyingly vague term, but anyway) cannot be 'smashed'. History provides numerous examples of this very thing taking place. One system may be replaced by another even more
corrupt one, but it does happen. A lot. Even today, in the war in Iraq, can we not say that Saddam Hussain's 'system' has been smashed? I'm not convinced that doing so has been for the greater good of Iraq, but certainly it's been smashed.