This post is about Vichy France. Carles asks a leading and pressing question: "Does n e 1 know why artists always have to ‘collaborate’?" The notion of collaboration here works synchronically to suggest both artists working with one another, and artists working in collusion with the interests of a repressive state apparatus. That pop stars produce propaganda is so obvious that it embarrasses this commentator somewhat to even have to mention it. But the problematic that emanates from that simple abstraction can become, as Carles intimates in this post, somewhat complex.
First, the fluidity of the propagandistic needs within a given sociocultural hegemony leads to unusual and unlikely collaborations, such as the ones documented in the photographs Carles has archived here. Typically these collaborative constellations are forced and then publicized to dissolve tightly-unified subcultural formations that could develop a revolutionary consciousness if left unchecked and allowed to formulate a specific ethic. The unlikelihood of these pseudo-collaborations in the name of the status quo threatens to reveal their propagandistic nature, hence the need to cast a cowl of "chillness" over the entire proceedings, a ruse Carles dares to openly mock. "WHICH BRO DO U WANT 2 CHILL WITH/BRING HOME 2 UR PARENTS AND TELL THEM IS UR BFF?" The idea of establishing personal relationships with celebrities is of course "chilling" to the potential for radical resistance and subversion. The personal is not in this case the political, quite the opposite. And the reference to the figure of authority at that personal, subpolitical level -- parents -- reinforces the way that these collaborations help keep subjects mired in their strictly parochial psychological trauma rather than sublimating it into political awareness. The proper course of action when confronted with these false constructs of collaboration is to engage in vigorous self-criticism, and question the ways in which we collaborate with power.
Second, the problem of collaboration as trans-signification, the forced migration of meanings. Carles: "Tired of these artists trying to piggyback off 1 another 2 ‘reach new audiences’/assuming that ‘authenticity’ or ‘pop appeal’ is a transferrable force." This transferability is precisely the vulnerability of resistance groups, which can dissolve as the stable ground of meaning slips from beneath their feet, thanks to these collaborative re-valuations. Authenticity, the glue that unifies subjects in resistance, becomes a movable feast. The incentive for revolution erodes as multiple-choice options for the focus of grievances come to light. As the core of authenticity is challenegd with alternatives, the nature of our intrinsic rights and how the state violates them becomes hopelessly muddled. Consequently the "pop appeal" of any resistance strategy is undermined -- its appeal is diluted among competing claims for justice, competing configurations (collaborations) of social movements. The inertia of multiculturalism.
With ironic hauteur, Carles writes, "Miss the days when collabs were ‘authentic’ and ‘exciting.’" Clearly he has in mind the quintessential instantiation of collaboration: when French intellectuals (as well as an international quilt of fellow travelers) worked with the Nazis. No commitment could have felt more authentic or exciting than to align with a baroquely aestethicized fascist movement intent on such merciless purification that no collaboration would ever again be possible, because no society would ever be less than homogeneous. When pop stars combine in unlikely configurations, we should not hesitate to scrutinize closely, looking for the jackboots.
Good work.
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