For all the shit that we can talk about Occupy (and there is plenty of shit to be talked), I think we can all agree that, at the very least, it’s one of the rare social movements that actual deserves an extended conversation. Inequity! Bailouts! Economic existentialism! These are the days of our lives, and a big, vague spout of low-barrier cultural activism is just the thing to rev up the masses. It’s certainly not something to be marginalized, even if it needs to get off of several thousand high-horses. It doesn’t matter if you’re a believer or a skeptic, you should be happy it exists, because any reassurance that the human race cares about something is worthy of our gratitude.
Unfortunately, something like Occupy leads to a lot of people in the press passing off totally irrelevant, baseless observations as feature-length thinkpieces. Seriously, when something like Occupy goes down, every freelancer in the known universe smells blood in the water. Chief among these silly, under-thought notions is the idea that Occupy Wall Street is missing protest music. You know, the iconic pop that’s mostly used to make it abundantly clear that you’re watching a movie about the Vietnam War. Everyone from Under the Radar to The New York Times has pondered why the Occupy Anthem is nonexistent. Suffice to say, this is a pretty dumb thing to write about. Here’s why, in four parts.
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IMPLYING THAT ALL SOCIAL MOVEMENTS NEED TO FIT THE MOLD OF THE ‘60S MEANS YOU’RE NOT THINKING ABOUT THIS HARD ENOUGH.
I was not even close to being alive during the ‘60s, but neither were you, so hear me out. Whenever anyone talks about the Occupy Movement missing music, they’re almost exclusively citing the protest songs of classic-rock-radio lifers like CCR, Bob Dylan, and The Byrds. However, people fail to mention that the musical climate of the mid-‘60s has gone unparalleled for, well, the succeeding four decades of pop music. The proliferation, widespread acceptance, and popularity of protest music has literally never been the same. You certainly don’t remember the great universal outcries against Nixon or Reaganomics (unless you’re Fugazi, more on that later). That Occupy doesn’t have a song isn’t emblematic of shortcoming—in fact, it puts it right in line of every movement before and after “The Times They Are a-Changin’.” The ‘60s were an anomaly; they’ve not been replicated in 52 years, so how the hell are they a template? It was such a perfect concoction of trends, crisis, business and personality, it will probably never happen again. Holding something like Occupy to that standard is impossibly naïve.
YOU’RE IGNORING THAT PLENTY OF PEOPLE HAVE BEEN WRITING SONGS FOR OCCUPY FOR, LIKE, AN ENTIRE CAREER.
A couple months back, I was interviewing Ted Leo for the Austin Chronicle, and at one point during our conversation, we started talking about Occupy. Leo is a politically-conscious guy and the movement plays right into his worldview; economic inequity has been a consistent topic in his music. However, that didn’t stop people from constantly badgering him to write a song for all the Occupy kids, despite the fact that, as he puts it, “I’ve been doing that. I’ve been writing Occupy songs for ten years.” When people start complaining that Occupy doesn’t have an identifiable jam, they’re totally forgetting that people like Fugazi, tUnE-yArDs, and yeah, Ted Leo, have been holding up all those pretty little ideals for a long, long time. Sure, nothing’s blown up like, “Fortunate Son,” but pretending like they don’t exist is something children would do. Why not recognize the protest music we do have instead of lamenting the “lack” of an “anthem?”
EXPECTING SONGWRITERS TO CREATE ART THAT TOTALLY MATCHES UP WITH YOUR IDEALS IS A REALLY ARROGANT THING TO DEMAND.
Occupy Wall Street is a large, vague, decentralized movement with a fluid list of demands. And frankly, when you realize that making $30,000 a year still puts you in the top 1 percent of the world, it makes you consider focusing energies elsewhere. When people complain about the lack of protest music at Occupy, they generally conclude with the sentiment of a lost tradition. This is a curious sentiment, one that takes a lot of unchecked audacity. Occupy is not something that everyone is going to agree with. It’s not Nelson Mandela, it’s not “We Are The World,” it’s a questioning of an entire economic system, and most cognizant people should have a wide range of opinions about that. Scolding our artists for not feeling the vibes is unimaginably guileless. Artists are not left-wing progressive machines, they’re real human beings with real, thought-out perspectives on current events. If they’re not feeling inspired by Occupy, it’s not a fault against them, or you. It’s just how they feel. Despite the way everyone has talked about it, the matrix of Occupy is far too complicated to boil down into absolutes.
THERE’S NO FUCKING DRAFT.
Holy shit! You want to encourage a whole ton of protest music? Start sending young men involuntarily overseas to fight wars they don’t believe in! I’m not a scientist, but I bet that will generate some high-impact anti-government art! Seriously, every protest song from the ‘60s is about peace, but what made their peace special compared to all the other wars waged by the U.S.? Obviously, the draft. It’s not something you can recreate for any old crisis. Now, if Occupy was raging against the actual killing of young people, you might have yourselves a revolution. But as it stands it lacks a certain gravitas that makes everyone come out from the woodwork. And please, don’t pretend that the economic injustices at the heart of Occupy measures up to a draft, because we both know that’s not true.
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