It’s not about objectification: PETA and competitive activism

[I'm linking to PETA's images rather than embedding them here because I don't want them on my blog. They are all potentially triggering, so click with care.]

PETA's latest PR stunt doesn’t have many fans. The Metro and even the Mail have run critical pieces on the video, which features a woman walking around in a neck brace after rough sex with her newly vegan boyfriend. No, it doesn’t make any more sense written down. I’m not going to retread ground already covered by the impressive array of PETA takedowns to be found online. The Opinioness of the World has already made the most important point: ‘Domestic violence is not a joke. It shouldn’t be trivialized and used as a goddamn marketing gimmick.’  In a sense, PETA’s crime in this case is so clearly outrageous that it’s not immediately obvious why we need a conversation about the problem with PETA. As Arwa Mahdawi points out: ‘It makes no difference whether you're promoting chocolate or charity: normalising violence can never be justified.’ But even if we can all agree that there is something seriously wrong with PETA’s assumption that violence = desirability, the challenge of developing a broad critique of the larger problem with the charity shouldn’t be underestimated.

I’ve been a vegetarian for 17 years and PETA could teach classes in how to piss me off. Their past campaigns have involved likening fur to drag,  fat oppression,  getting pregnant women to pose as pigs in cages, and comparing race hate and dog breeding by dressing up as the Ku Klux Klan. What's the best way to draw these actions together and conceptualise PETA’s strategy? Critics on the left tend to use terms like ‘sexualisation’ and ‘objectification’ to describe the charity's penchant for sexual references and near-naked female models. I’m not convinced that this vocabulary is adequate to its target. PETA is doing something more complex - not to mention more sinister - than appropriating images of the female body. 'Objectification' is a difficult term to apply to PETA. It's true that their pictures of naked women trade on the message that veganism is sexy. But although PETA’s image of sexy is female, skinny, white and subservient, there’s just enough irony at work for all this to just about pass as pop culture pastiche. This is not a get-out clause, because PETA's approach to irony reveals much about their cold ideology. 

PETA operates according to a skewed vision of détournement in which the 'powers' being subverted are anti-racist, feminist and queer liberation movements. PETA anticipates and manipulates the language and iconography of these movements, deflating their ability to resist while stealing their oppositional strategies. For instance, it doesn't make a lot of sense to criticise PETA for making women look like pieces of meat when the entire purpose of this image is first to provoke our outrage at the objectification of women, then to persuade us to direct this outrage at the meat industry. The photograph engenders a confused response involving intermingling feelings of titillation and protest, misogyny and shock. This confusion makes it easier for PETA to belittle the cause of women's rights even as it leeches currency from mainstream recognition of feminist tropes. PETA’s real crime is not that it uses sexualised images of women, but that it acknowledges violence against women for the sole purpose of rendering feminism subservient to animal rights.

I used to think PETA subscribed to a fantasy of a post-sexist and post-racist society in which the energy of activist movements was wasted unless directed towards the vegan cause. I imagined a PETA PR brief might read: guys, the racism problem has been pretty much solved now, so it’s time to translate that success into a coup for dogs. It was difficult for me to accept that PETA could completely dissociate the spectacle of a naked woman on all fours in a cage from the real violence suffered by women. I could only presume that PETA was under the misguided impression that racist and sexist violence didn't happen anymore.

I’ve reassessed my position on PETA’s motivation. Parodying a domestic violence awareness campaign to promote veganism is nothing short of chilling. Commentators have interpreted the new video as an insensitive controversy-courting exercise, but this perspective overlooks its coherence as part of the charity's overall strategy. The video goes further than trivialising domestic violence in a bid for attention: it is an attempt to erase the issue of domestic violence altogether. This approach depends on a model of competitive activism that pits interconnected social movements against each other. The problem with PETA is not about controversy and it’s not about sex. It’s about hostility and hatred, and we need to develop a critical vocabulary equal to the challenge. 'Objectification' doesn't cut it.

Castrating Review of Alexander Payne’s The Descendants

It is difficult to make a good film about a straight white man’s mid-life crisis. When it works, the director responsible usually gets a big slap on the back: gushing reviews, a few packs of cigars, maybe some awards, a hazy but persistent connection to the phrase ‘cult following’. Alexander Payne has directed several critically acclaimed films about white male mid-life crises and most of them are master-classes in how to approach the subject without coming across like an irrelevant dick. Having watched and enjoyed Payne’s Election and Sideways before seeing The Descendants, I had loosely defined their general lesson - let’s call it the Payne Doctrine - as follows: empathise sincerely with your embattled male subject but make it clear that his situation is ridiculous.

The Payne Doctrine makes it possible for viewers of Election to root for Matthew Broderick’s sad high-school teacher Jim against Reese Witherspoon’s go-getting cheerleader Tracy, but to simultaneously keep their distance from the film’s undercurrent of misogyny. The viewer splits into two: one side shares in Jim’s misogynist zeal and hates Tracy with lusty venom, the other side responds to the film on a whole other level as political satire. Election thrives on cultural disgust at ambitious, sexually active women, but it’s also a film about this disgust.

Sideways works in a similar way, but here the split viewer is mirrored by a split protagonist: Paul Giamatti plays neurotic Miles opposite Thomas Haden Church as philandering Jack. It’s hard not to empathise with Giamatti’s hangdog chops as he forlornly steals cash from his mother’s wallet and furiously pines after his ex-wife. The audience presumes Miles’s ex wife is a totally heartless bitch, but it turns out the marriage broke up because Miles had an affair. This twist illuminates the way gendered tropes condition our response to Hollywood films. You, viewer, judged the woman too soon. But then there’s Jack, whose compulsive cheating makes him something akin to Miles’s id. For all its alluring ambiguities, Sideways is committed to the ideal of masculinity as something primal, biological, pitifully lost in the wild seas of post-feminist America.

The Payne Doctrine is intriguing because it gives its viewers so much flexibility. If you’re the kind of person who just loves having your insecurity about postmodern gender roles alleviated by on-screen stereotypes (maybe you’re a fan of New Girl), kick back in front of Sideways and howl, “Yes! This is exactly what men ARE like! Phew!” If you’re a gender studies geek, settle down with Election and some popcorn and take notes on Payne’s exploration of masculine insecurity and institutional sexism. My appreciation of Payne’s pre-Descendants work has largely been an exercise in giving him the benefit of the doubt - it’s interesting, and it niggles.

All this is a long-winded way of stating that if The Descendants is indeed one of the most embarrassingly conservative films I’ve ever seen, it’s not because it takes affluent, middle-aged masculinity as its subject but because it invests this subject with a bizarre gravitas. The Descendants introduces George Clooney’s character, Matt, as the classic Bad Modern Man who spends too much time at the office and barely sees his family. The film then spends an excruciating 115 minutes painstakingly proving that Matt is actually, really, truly a great guy. The process begins with Matt’s grating voiceover: his wife is in a coma and it’s a wake-up call: he wants to be a better person. Then the cinematic pep talk kicks in. It turns out Matt’s wife was cheating on him all along! And there he was, feeling guilty for trying to make a living so they could all be comfortable! The wife’s coma, it emerges, is terminal. But maybe that’s not such a bad thing - Matt’s two troubled daughters thrive with their single father now their pleasure-chasing mother is off the scene. Under the stewardship of her dad, the wayward teenager blossoms into a mature young woman and the weird ten-year-old is much calmer with a strong male figure in her life. Matt’s wife dies, they scatter the ashes in the Pacific and settle down with bowls of ice-cream to watch March of the Penguins. Roll credits. Who needed the coma chick anyway?

None of this is exactly new (cf. Mrs. Doubtfire, Three Men and a Baby). The reactionary audacity of The Descendants derives mainly from its decision to weave this tired narrative into a sub-plot about Matt’s status as a descendant of Hawaiian royalty and the executive trustee of a beautiful patch of ancestral land. At the beginning of the film Matt has all but signed a deal to sell the land off to a development company, but in one of the final scenes he announces his decision to abandon the sale. This is an ambiguous move, coming straight after Matt’s discovery that his wife’s lover stands to gain financially from the deal. In one of Payne’s earlier films, the question mark over Matt’s motivation might have been explored, at least lingered over. Instead the camera ogles the lush green land as Clooney’s relentless voiceover offers platitudes about ancestral connection and heritage.

But let’s take a step back here: Payne is asking us to admire a rich man for choosing to keep his land. The revenge motive isn’t explored because it doesn’t undercut Matt’s decision in the slightest - rather, it emphasises his restored masculinity. The land is a symbol of Matt’s refusal to succumb to cuckoldry: he might have lost his wife, but he’s not letting go of Mother Nature. Ultimately, Matt’s emotional journey takes him from a position of utilitarian corporate anonymity to the recognition of his duties as imperial-patriarchal custodian of family and land. It’s a heartwarming tale.

It sounds like a parody, and perhaps it once was. The Descendants is adapted from a book by Kaui Hart Hemmings. It was Hemmings’ decision to name the protagonist Matt King. I haven’t read the novel, but there must be some satire buried somewhere. If so, the film retains none of it. The male leads in Payne’s other films are fumbling and pitiful. Matthew Broderick hasn’t been cool since Ferris Bueller and Giamatti always plays losers. George Clooney is, well, George Clooney. If Clooney makes a fool of himself, the mishap is inevitably transmogrified into an example of the dashing actor’s triumph over vanity. Good on him, he’s willing to do a silly run despite being incredibly attractive! One result of the Clooney effect is that the film’s contempt for women is not cushioned by the slightest hint of irony or even self-awareness. When his wife’s best friend tries to excuse her adultery, Matt shouts, “It’s never a woman’s fault!” The viewers are on Matt’s side as he takes down the matriarchy then goes off for a silly run. We’re supposed to be glad he gets the chance to snarl and shout at his comatose wife - it’s the kind of behaviour society won’t usually sanction, because “it’s never a woman’s fault.” Somebody in the row behind us at the cinema whispered excitedly during one of the hospital verbal abuse scenes, “He’s going to call her a bitch!” The Independent gave The Descendants good review, describing it as ‘intelligent, and humane, and pretty likeable’. Even according to the Guardian’s fairly negative assessment the film is ‘soft-centred, lenient and sentimental’. I miss Manny Farber. Is it too 1970s to criticise a film for being absurdly right wing? The emotional payoff of The Descendants is Clooney’s rediscovery of his masculine authority and reassertion of his property rights. Are we weeping? Are we laughing? I was on the verge of walking out. 

Racism, Sexism and Lonely Planet India

Pick up any travel guide about any destination and you'll almost certainly find a reference to 'the juxtaposition of old and new'. These references usually mean there are some old buildings but there is also a McDonald's, or people are religious but there is also a McDonald's, or there are lots of beggars, but there are also lots of branches of McDonald's. As cliches go, it's not necessarily more offensive than most workaday journalistic banalities. But when applied to India – and it is, all the time – the tradition/modernity patter works in a very specific way. I use Lonely Planet India as my example because it was the guide that at least 90% of tourists had when I was there, but the Rough Guide (and probably others) are just as guilty. My particular experience of using the Lonely Planet was first one of general irritation, but after a while I traced my irritation back to this seemingly innocuous cliché about the clash of the new and the old, development and sustainability, progress and tradition.

Why is sustainability 'traditional'? I began to wonder about these odd synonymic chains. For 'new' read 'Western', 'secular', 'big corporations', 'the rich'. For 'old' read 'Eastern', 'Hindu', 'sustainable local economies', 'the poor'. Now, there is really no necessary alignment between Hinduism and localism, or between secularism and capital. Nevertheless, in order for India to make sense within travel guide logic, the East must necessarily stand for one thing, the West another. In this narrative, the forces of tradition can mean anything from sustainable agriculture to high infant mortality, while the forces of development can mean anything from improved medical care to corporate land-grabs. The result is a world-view in which India's poverty is a casualty of its difficult path to modernization, and all the shiny wealthy stuff is a glistening image of the future (which is coming soon for everyone, of course). Lonely Planet jokes that the 'dhoti-clad man you pass in the bazaar may be delivering instructions to his mergers and acquisitions office in London'. The relentless emphasis on such apparent incongruities belies the fact that they aren't incongruities at all. Religion and capitalism exist, together, now. Recognizing this is the first step to recognizing that there is a future in which the mergers and acquisitions office doesn't figure. That perhaps the shiny wealthy stuff isn't a beacon leading India out of poverty, or even a neutral emblem of the inexorable march of time, but a sign of what has gone wrong.

The progress-tradition smokescreen allows Lonely Planet to get away with a lot, including stark misogyny. Its advice for women travellers includes the following helpful gem:

“Broadly speaking, India is a conservative society, and the skimpy clothing and culturally inappropriate behaviour of a minority of foreign women appears to have had somewhat of a ripple effect on the perception of foreign women in general … Baggy clothing that masks the contours of your body is the way to go.” (1171-1172)

We can only guess at the terrible acts committed by this evil minority of foreign women and their Western bodily contours. The Rough Guide to India is, thankfully, more specific about what constitutes 'culturally inappropriate behaviour':

“It's always best to dress modestly – a salwar kameez is perfect, as is any baggy clothing – and refrain from smoking and drinking in public, which only reinforces prejudices that Western women are “loose” and “easy”. (78)

So culturally inappropriate behaviour is not murder or rape, but smoking and drinking in public. Don't do that, girls. Not sure if men are allowed to smoke and drink. It doesn't say. They are allowed to rape, I think.

Guys get some advice from the Rough Guide too:

“Men should always wear a shirt in public, and avoid shorts (a sign of low caste) away from beach areas.” (75)

Just, wow.

I am sure Lonely Planet and Rough Guide would point out that this advice is written from a pragmatic rather than a principled point of view, designed to make life easier for the traveller. Both guides devote space elsewhere to explaining the complex and continuing history of gender and caste based oppression in India. But the traveller is mainly looking to have an easy time, right?

Well, it is not that simple. It's likely that a (loose Western) women travelling in India during the hot season might wonder why she's still sweating beneath that (culturally authentic) shawl when she has plenty of (slutty, skimpy) vests in her backpack. It's possible she might get angry at the fact cross-cultural patriarchy has made her so uncomfortable. It's possible she might connect this discomfort with the fact there are more stray dogs out on the street than women, despite her travel guide's seeming inability to make this link. She might even notice that, no matter what she wears, men still stare at her, yell at her, grope her, take photos of her without asking, ignore her and give her boyfriend the bill. She might even feel a sense of solidarity with the Indian women who have to put up with this shit and much, much worse all the time. She might look around her and notice that all the backpacker dudes aren't all that much better, and are often a lot worse, especially the total stranger who shouted that she should use her boobs to help him hitchhike. She might think fuck this, I'm putting on my fucking vest and it's not to help you fucking hitckhike. And the guy? Maybe he likes his shorts, or maybe he doesn't feel comfortable making wardrobe decisions on the basis of caste prejudice, which a few pages ago was being discussed as a terrible but thankfully fading custom.

There is an ever-so-subtle difference between promoting cultural sensitivity and chauvinism. It's not so hard to spot the distinction, if you try. Cultural sensitivity might mean both sexes covering heads and removing shoes when entering a mosque. It might mean not wearing a bikini to dinner. It might mean refraining from passionately kissing someone in public. Generally, cultural sensitivity just means approaching each unique social situation with intelligence, kindness and respect. People from other countries aren't actually aliens.

This doesn't mean women should feel bad about adapting their clothing or behaviour if doing so makes life easier while in India. If you feel OK about covering up, and if it genuinely stops all the unwanted attention, do it. But the Lonely Planet should stop perpetuating stereotypes about 'loose Western women' founded on the erroneous belief these stereotypes are rooted in 'Indian culture'. At best, this is ignorance; at worst, it's both racist and sexist, advancing a colonialist myth about inherently lustful Indian men that (a) fails to acknowledge the complexity and cultural specificity of the situation and (b) completely ignores all the Indian men who are perfectly respectful of women.

Hard and fast rules telling female tourists to disguise the contours of their bodies and behave meekly and obediently are nothing but an attempt to rebrand patriarchy as an ancient tradition that outsiders must respect. At the root of all this 'practical advice' is the same idea that India is engaged in a struggle between the old and the new, and that the traveller is there to witness this struggle and to grab some wisdom from 'the old' before it disappears altogether. But the oppression of women and the poor is not a precious part of India's cultural heritage, nor is it something India will grow out of as it travels slowly but surely along the path to enlightenment.

I'm not sure what I expected of my travel guide. The Lonely Planet has an absurd monopoly in Asia. Practically every tourist you see in India is clutching a copy. I'm not cynical about tourism. I think travel guides can and should do better.

The film Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh (adapted from Helena Norberg-Hodge's book) demonstrates that this problem isn't limited to travel guides. Norberg-Hodge's premise is that the rapid scale of development in Ladakh allows us to vividly discern the problems caused by capitalism. It's a fascinating idea, marred by the fact that the film never mentions globalization or capitalism. The problem in Ladakh are framed as the invasion of the Eastern past by the Western future and as a result, some of the film's most forceful arguments are swallowed by the redundant truism that “we can't go back”. If you care about social justice, you apparently have three pieces of advice: yearn for a time machine, wear a fucking shawl and if that doesn't work, shake your fists at the stars.

Arundhati Roy Vs. Lonely Planet India

On the 2002 Gujarat massacre

Lonely Planet says:

“Congress was mainly in control of Gujarat after Independence, till 1991 when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power. In 2002, communal violence erupted after a Muslim mob was blamed for an arson attack on a train at Godhra that killed 59 Hindu activists. Hindu gangs then set upon Muslims in revenge. This violence coincided with the beginning of the election campaign, and BJP Chief Minister Narendra Modi followed a policy of fiercely Hindu rhetoric, which may have encouraged division in the state, but brought him a landslide victory. Since the 2002 riots, however, the state has been peaceful, and continues to enjoy its reputation as one of India's most prosperous states. In late 2008 this progressive state secured the large and lucrative Tata Motors' Nano car project.” (p. 727)

Arundhati Roy says:

“That the BJP has struck roots in states like Karnataka and Gujarat, both frontrunners in the globalization project, once again illustrates the organic relationship between ‘Union’ and ‘Progress’. Or, if you like, between Fascism and the Free Market.

In January 2009 that relationship was sealed with a kiss at a public function. The CEOs of two of India’s biggest corporations, Ratan Tata (of the Tata Group) and Mukesh Ambani (of Reliance Industries), while accepting the Gujarat Garima—Pride of Gujarat—award, celebrated the development policies of Narendra Modi, architect of the Gujarat genocide, and warmly endorsed him as a future candidate for prime minister.” (p. xxii)

On the IT industry and 'success'

Lonely Planet says:

“Despite the collective pros and cons, there is no doubt that IT will go down in history as one of India's great success stories.” (p.67)

Arundhati Roy says (in the voice of George Bush):

“In return for Bill Gates' millions the Innian government buys hundreds of millions of dollars worth of computer technology from him. He's so rich I'm afraid he might burst. I always wear an apron when I'm around him.” (p.112)

On agriculture and 'basic Malthusian truths'

Lonely Planet says:

“Between 11% and 27% of India's agricultural output is lost due to soil degradation from over-farming, rising soil-salinity, loss of tree cover and poor irrigation. The human cost is heart-rending, and lurking behind all these problems is a basic Malthusian truth: there are too many people for India to support at its current level of development.” (p.102)

Arundhati Roy says:

“The regime of Free Market economic policies, administered by people who are blissfully ignorant of the fate of civilizations that grew too dependent on artificial irrigation, has led to a worrying shift in cropping patterns. Sustainable food crops, suitable to local soil conditions and micro-climates, have been replaced by water-guzzling, hybrid and genetically modified 'cash' crops which, apart from being wholly dependent on the market, are also heavily dependent on chemical fertilizers, pesticides, canal irrigation and the indiscriminate mining of ground water. As abused farmland, saturated with chemicals, gradually becomes exhausted and infertile, agricultural input costs rise, ensnaring small farmers in a debt trap. Over the last few years, more than 180,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide. While state granaries are bursting with food, that eventually rots, starvation and malnutrition approaching the same levels as in sub-Saharan Africa stalk the land." (xvi)

All Arundhati Roy quotations are from the essay collection Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy (Penguin, 2009). All Lonely Planet quotations are from the 13th edition of the India guide (2009). I just spent five weeks in northern India with both books.

poem about people who follow Charlie Sheen on Twitter

Clutching yr smartphone to your

beleaguered crotch:

"Winning", you gurgle.

You gaze up at the closed door of the sky

and scratch in vain

at what life once promised

Imaginary constituencies, invisible power

The constituency formed by students is always in flux, but we persist in discussing 'the students' as if they are a static mass. When I finished my BA in 2006, my classmates and I were quick to throw off the 'student' label - it always carried a stigma in Manchester, where the physical frontier between town and gown has always been blurred. Now people who already have degrees take a quasi-ironic pleasure in slagging off the bloody students - a bit like when the Year 8s at comp take the piss out of the Year 7s, or when teenagers act more adult around younger children. It's a way of asserting your separation from the crowd, your malleable identity, your resistance to collective labels, your self-interest. At yesterday's demo against education cuts, workers and pensioners and sixth-formers and unemployed graduates and part-time students marched against the withdrawal of state support for education. It's ludicrous to claim this is an expression of self-interest, as Polly Toynbee did a few days before the protest, her position now backed by the unceasing, tedious groan of online commentary. If you are a student now, chances are you won't be directly affected by the policy changes. My PhD funding for the next three years is guaranteed (I hope). Self-interest would be to sit back and wait for graduation day. Sartre, in his Critique of Dialectical Reason (crude analysis of complex text i haven't read in full alert), distinguishes between serial collectivity, in which people are passively unified by social structures, and the group-in-fusion, in which people actively unite towards a mutually acknowledged purpose. If the students are a series, can a group campaigning for their rights break up that identity? I think so.

Why criticize students for being posh and middle-class? The social homogeneity of higher education is only going to get worse under the new proposals. I've heard people express support for higher fees on the grounds of their own disillusionment with university - huge class sizes, apathetic teaching, no contact time. These problems exist, but they were created by what Nina Power calls the  'the increasingly utilitarian approach to human life that sees degrees as nothing but "investments" by individuals'. It's perverse that an intensification of this approach is now being hailed as a solution to the problems it caused. I've heard people call for non-violent protest. First: smashing up a building is a lesser form of violence than self-starvation. Second: it's vital to see the Millbank occupation as an important part of something much bigger. Some bloggers are discussing the occupation as the only worthwhile part of the demo: it's a shame to discount the peaceful protests of 50,000 people, just as it's a shame to "condemn" (such sanctimonious language) the less peaceful protests of a sizeable minority as "petty vandalism" (I should stop reading Facebook comments). 

Political demonstrations are a form of performance, which isn't to say they are falsified or trivial, but that they are a way of staging problems that are not easily articulated. Demonstrations turn private misery - no jobs, benefit cuts, young people who can't afford to learn to think critically - into the sorts of images and noises that can be transmitted and shared. They turn the violence of law, which is shadowy and invisible and easy to hide, into the kind of violence that can be communicated. They force the police, some of them nice enough people, into the role of The State, making them perform government violence instead of working to naturalize it, keep it invisible. This might not seem fair. But remember who's directing this performance. Protestors don't set the stage. They just storm it.

These machines kill fascists

White boys with guitars: take stock. In fact, everybody take stock for a moment because John Harris is not happy. Upset with the government and yearning for some righteous protest tunes, Harris recently dug out his Jam records and had a darn good time thinking about what Paul Weller might do to the coalition government and their flabby, smirking, DICKHEAD faces given half the chance. Harris had a sandwich, and then he had a think. “The Jam are really old!” he suddenly realised. He rifled frantically through his record collection, but could only find a record by Mumford and Sons. “I have terrible taste in music!” shouted Harris. “Therefore I must write an article about how contemporary pop music is failing to respond to the political crises of our time!”

According to John Harris, the last pop band to articulate a sense of impassioned anger about social inequality was the Arctic Monkeys. It’s difficult to argue with him there. I certainly plan to chant “I BET YOU LOOK GOOD ON THE DANCEFLOOR, CLEGG!” at the NUS protest on Wednesday and I sure don’t expect to be alone. Since that apex of searing, politicised rock, there have only been a few right-on blips in a sea of apathetic sludge, claims Harris. He concedes that John Legend and the Roots attempted something like a sonic sit-in with ‘Wake Up’, but complains the album is an “exercise in sepia-tinted radical chic”. Nostalgia is an odd charge from a man who wonders aloud whether “when the Berlin wall fell and the gospel of no alternative took hold … the culture was inevitably changed for keeps”. 

Harris is stuck between a rock and a hard place: he quite rightly doesn’t want 21st century popstars to ape Woody Guthrie or Pete Seeger, but neither can he understand that you don’t need to “pick up a guitar and howl” to make music expressing opposition to a right-wing political culture based on the greed of elites. Plenty of people are still making seditious music with guitars, but there are other ways to express dissent sonically.

I can't claim to hold the key to a music library that reflects the specific crisis we're facing in the UK right now, but surely even in this Cyber Age Beyond Time we can't expect a rousing anti-Osborne album on the day of the comprehensive spending review. Still, there’s enough evidence that the musicians of postmodernity are doing a lot more than lying around worrying about their ability to critique the system from within (as if it was ever possible to stand outside capitalism, even in the 1970s).

I saw Joanna Newsom perform ‘What We Have Known’ at Matt and Phred’s in Manchester in 2004, just as Bush was clambering his way to a second term in the US. She told the audience it was a political song, and her chilling words about the amnesia of war – “and all the baby boys we’ve borne/with eyes averted from the storm/sent off to die in perfect form/we know not now what we have known” – remain the best response to claims that Newsom’s lyrics are whimsical nonsense. Even more recently there's El-P snarling "Me fighting in your war is still, by a large margin, the least likely thing that will ever fucking happen. Ever." in the explosive ‘Dear Sirs’. They aren't all Americans: there's The Bug, Robert Wyatt’s Comicopera, M.I.A (whether or not you're sold on ‘Born Free’). Berlin-based electronic musician Barbara Morgenstern’s track, ‘Driving My Car’, exploits pop’s poetic licence to express several things at once. Its haunting lyrics are a meditation on climate change, or a determination to continue singing about driving with carefree abandon, or both. Harris probably hasn’t listened to Erykah’s Badu New Amerykah Part One: 4^th World War. Badu’s lyrics on ‘Soldier’ – “to my folks on the picket line/don’t stop till you change their mind” – form part of a devastating portrait of black American life during the Bush era, not that I would ever use that phrase to recommend the album because, obviously, it exceeds that sort of dry assessment.

Sleater-Kinney were the best at a lot of things, and their ‘Combat Rock’ is one of my favourite protest songs with guitars. It appears on their astonishing post 9/11 album One Beat. The title track of that album crystallizes what Harris doesn't get: that music can be political even when it isn't. Corin Tucker hollers: "I'm a bullet in a sound wave/A sonic push for energy/Exploding like the sun/A flash of clean light hope ... If I'm to run the future/You've got to let the old world go/Could you invent a world for me/I need to hear a symphony..." Then there's Janelle Monae, angry but still excited, and not at all pining for the past.

M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.