"The Game": Thoughts On The Culture Of Cultural Criticism

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There tends to be a bit of discomfort surrounding works of art produced by people who we would consider to be privileged: look at the reaction to Girls in the television industry, for example, or the general reaction to Vampire Weekend. This article attempts to delve into the hypocrisy of cultural criticism that dismisses these works based on the background of their creators, summing it up as a game played to avoid talking about the issues they raise:

The Game is largely played by people who are white and/or middle-class, and much of it involves trying to outmaneuver one another about precisely that fact. At the heart of The Game is fear and loathing and boredom concerning the possibility of being bourgeois. Being bourgeois is The Game’s great sin, and it is often referred to using the code word “white."[/b] If you can’t avoid this sin by virtue of being working-class or Ghanaian or something, your best bet is to deftly corner the market on wary “whiteness"-based critiques of anything that smacks of being bourgeois. The critique will try to present itself as an incisive dismantling of class/race/privilege, but at its heart it will just be “oh noes bourgeois." The great paradox here, of course, is that The Game is itself an incredibly bourgeois pastime, but never mind that: just keep The Game in mind as we trace some of the history of Vampire Weekend.

I find the fluid definition of what constitutes a "white" person particularly interesting; here's how the author describes the reaction to the members of Vampire Weekend:

People would look at pictures of them, at lists of their names, and describe them as “four white guys," or even “four WASPs" — WASP, of course, being the doubly pointed variety of “white." And this was interesting, of course, because one of them is Persian, and he was standing right there. Right there! At the time, I would mention that fact — or wonder what it means to describe Jews as WASPs — and the response I tended to get was: yeah well sure but you know.

An unintended consequence of this view is that it indirectly condescends towards people who The Game determines "not-white": in order for "white" culture to be open to criticism, there has to be an ideal to compare it against, which the author describes as an illusory "realness."

Mostly The Game just uses non-white people as cudgels for Americans to outmaneuver one another on the subject of who’s too bourgeois. In order for The Game to criticize bourgeois “whiteness" as privileged, over-educated, too polite, and too clever, it needs various non-white people to go on representing some kind of “realness" — plus, accidentally, poverty, lack of education, and vulgarity.

She also goes on to accuse critics:

The critic, ever wary of a band like Vampire Weekend’s likely privilege, doesn’t look very far into what, if anything, they’re saying about class — so sure is she that her take on class issues will be more important and incisive.

The big question I think this article asks is this: does the value or truth a work of art holds depend on the position of its creator? Is The Wire inherently a more important work of art compared to, say, Girls, or is there a different standard we should evaluate both shows by? The author says no, but there's a bit of grey area.

This is why I think most of us could afford to stand down our participation in The Game. What it tends to draw out of us are critiques that sound fierce and penetrating but are mostly about arrogance and oneupsmanship and posturing. It’s tiresome.

Some other interesting questions to ask?

1. The author argues that in The Game, every single position of advantage is aggregated into one signifier: being white. Is this true, in your experience? Is there an inherently racial factor in every category of status, or are there exceptions?

2. Who holds more power - creators of art or critics of art? Who gets to define what a work of art really means?

3. Is criticism even important to understanding art? Literature has the Western canon; music and film have thousands of lists about all of the classic albums/films that every self-respecting person must listen to/see. Are we obligated to experience these works revered as classics, or is it more important to find what is important to us?