Probably because I’m reading the perspectives of ancient philosophers such as Plato who had very specific and clear views of human excellence, I’m struck now by the rise of brashly demotic artistic forms, and how they push their way into our public space. Consider the rise of country rap, which is one of the more bizarre cultural syntheses to arise out of the dialectic discourse which permeates American society. Country music has traditionally been dominated by rural white Americans, and reflects a conservative ethos which is notionally aligned with traditional values. Rap, in contrast, emerges out of a hip-hop urban milieu which is oppositional to broader American society, distrusting authority rather than celebrating it.
When the Moonshine Bandits “We’re all country” came on my Spotify I was curious about Sarah Ross rapping about how she’s from Jersey, but still country. And, there are explicit shout-outs to blue collar life. They seemed to be owning a denigrated lifestyle and class background. So I looked up the video. The aesthetic was shocking to me. To be entirely frank, it seems to celebrate a gritty slovenliness as the best of all things. Eternal Budweiser, mac & cheese, and poor muscle tone. Many hip-hop and bro country music videos are gauche in their crass superficiality, but at least ultimately there’s often a nod to an aspiration toward excellence, in wealth, in accruing attractive females, in being in shape. You don’t see any of this in the above video. It’s a valorization of the demotic, the pedestrian. Average looking people coalescing together to get inebriated. No symposium, that.
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