the fine print

When I think about the fine print—which is about all I ever do with it—I cannot help wondering if I really own my stuff. I wonder, for that matter, if I really am a tenant, if I really have a bank account, if I really am American, even if I really was born when and where the normal print says I was. This is because, from what fine print I’ve read, I get the distinct impression that things are not as they seem.

The fine print is a hidden track, a B-side extended cut with a million verses and the chorus “P.S. Not!” The fine print is everywhere, ever making the normal print out to be a liar and a fraud. It is a study in contradiction, an exercise in negation. For this reason, to a certain extent, you can tell what the fine print says just by reading the normal print. For instance:
Normal print: “Free.” Fine print: “bla bla bla bla S+H $1999 bla bla bla bla.”
Normal print: “Congratulations, you win!” Fine print: “bla bla bla bla no you lose bla bla bla bla ya big loser bla bla bla bla.”
Normal print: “No purchase necessary.” Fine print: “bla bla bla bla except round trip airfare to Dakar bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla.”
Normal print: “I love you.” Fine print: “bla bla bla bla it’s not you, it’s me bla bla bla bla.”

But I’m not here to talk about money or love. I want to consider the uncertain extent, the part you can’t predict just from the normal print. This is the freaky part. It comes down mainly to who owns what and who owes whom what. I’d wager my toaster oven and my entire luggage set (even if they're probably not mine to wager) that almost everything in the world that is owned by someone is actually owned by someone else.

There are really two worlds, then: the Normal Print World and the Fine Print World. The first, most of us are familiar with, but about the second there can only be speculation. Who are we? Whose stuff is our stuff? Whose is our stuff? Whither goest thou?

As many of you know, Below Dunster has committed itself to leading the charge when it comes to speculation, and Below Dunster vows to remain at the cutting edge of speculation for as long as it is Below Dunster. Below Dunster also strongly recommends that you speculate as to the nature of the Fine Print World; Below Dunster further strongly attempts to dissuade you from genuinely researching the matter, as this would be almost certain to engender either deep sleep or bitter warfare. Feel free to use the Comments section for your speculation, though you may or may not in fact be free to do so.



By reading the above, the reader (hereafter the reader) has acknowledged that in the introduction to Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, Pierre Bourdieu argues that “nothing is more distinguishing than the capacity to confer aesthetic status on objects that are banal or even ‘common’” (1813). The context for this claim is Bourdieu’s earlier point that the recognition of an aesthetic dimension is not exclusive to art, but that even objects or practices satisfying primary needs have become subjects of aesthetic inquiry. It is noteworthy that he doesn’t actually say that being able to think of something common as beautiful or not is distinguishing, but that the distinction comes from the ability to alter the status of an everyday occurrence from plain to aesthetically significant. By “status” he surely means an ascribed, non-essential label, and it is clear that in his Marxist perspective this is a capacity that only the ruling class enjoys.
.....The investment by the ruling class in common items does not come from a deep, genuine interest in them, but rather from the need to have everything be noble—thus, to eradicate that which is common. Seen this way, most of us would probably see elite taste as less distinguishing than disgusting. In any case, the attempted purification of the banal allows for an interesting, almost humorous perspective on elite taste and its effects. After all, the common is still only eradicated in the sense that fewer items are labeled as common. Clothes, food, and toilets still exist. Conferring aesthetic status on these things, in practice, simply allows other well-to-dos to display them in museums, to publish magazines about them, and to sell them at outrageous prices.
.....It is easy to see how the cycle created by the supposed refinement of everyday needs perpetuates class difference. Since practically everyone consumes food, wears clothes, and goes to the bathroom, every single person is almost constantly carrying around a marker of her or his class. This is a phenomenon that would not exist if art alone were the subject of aesthetic discussion. Hardly anyone carries paintings around in plain view, books stay in backpacks and on shelves, and music blares in the car or in headphones. Even given the marking of class by taste, it would not be as divisive if it concerned only art, because one could go through the entire day without revealing that class marker. As it is, we may literally wear our class on our sleeve—or sit on it while reading bathroom humor.
.....Curiously, Bourdieu says that popular taste works in a sort of reverse way. Not only does it value art, but it “performs a systematic reduction of the things of art to the things of life” (1813). This reduction brings about an expectation from art to represent “real, everyday life.” The result is a paradox: if art really should reflect everyday life, what could be more artistic than food and clothing? Yet bearers of popular taste hardly find these things aesthetically significant. It seems that the practice of aesthetics is basically a matter of appropriating what is not already associated with the self. Thus, for the ruling class, it is to appropriate the banal, and, for the general populace, to appropriate the artistic. The reader retains her/his right to speculate in the Comments section.
.....Bourdieu astutely characterizes these values as playing out along the lines of function and form. The basic difference between elite and popular taste, then, is that one seeks value in an item’s form, while the other seeks it in the item’s function. While the latter value seems more practical, of course, this distinction still perpetuates social difference. Furthermore, one might think that it is simply the case that whatever taste is held by the ruling class will be considered elite, and that the class distinction, with regard to aesthetics, comes from this alone. But it actually matters that the difference in values goes in the direction it does; i.e., that form goes with the elite and function goes with the popular. Everything that exists, certainly everything that exists physically, has a form of some sort, and this form is inherent and plain to see. Not everything has a function, and even fewer things have a plainly recognizable function. Thus, bearers of elite taste—the ruling class—do not merely appropriate a specific dimension of an item; they appropriate more items.
.....In the course of this discussion, we obviously do not mean that the ruling class appropriates all toilets, while the general populace appropriates paintings. Toilets, clothing, and food are not confiscated from proletariat homes, nor do the workers bring home murals from museums. But the ruling class gets to speak on all these matters, in a lofty, “noble” way, while the populace gets to speak on less, and to a “less important” audience. That is, it doesn’t get to speak on anything at all, in a way that has influence in society. On that note, even speaking, one of the most common practices there is, has been appropriated by the ruling class; one might argue, even, that this appropriation was fundamental to all others.
.....All this makes for a great Marxist view of aesthetics, and a great theory of yet another way in which the ruling class dominates the general population. It does sound like a good analysis of how things may have worked in pre-revolution France, or even in the United States in the early twentieth century. While it certainly is the case that specific groups have great, almost absolute influence over what is considered beautiful or valuable, this particular account seems outdated, or at least not quite appropriate in today’s American setting.
.....The ruling class’s drive today is not to have tastes that are above the rest of the population’s, but to influence the rest of the population to have the same tastes. Success and affluence come from having influenced the greatest number of people, of any kind, to agree on a certain item’s value. Form seems to be the defining aesthetic for both classes now (as if there were still exactly two), probably as the working class has recognized opportunities afforded by social rights movements to actually emulate the ruling class in some ways.
A huge factor in this development has been the pervasiveness of the mass media. Modern communication methods allow the tastes of a certain group to be broadcast to the vast majority of the population. A desire for affirmation causes everyone who can to assimilate to the ruling class as much as possible, for the sake of gaining respect, prestige, and influence of their own.
.....While this assimilation has been prevalent, there has also been a considerable amount of rebellion in the aesthetic realm. In many ways, it has become popular to like and affirm that which is not popular. Certain movements in music, most notably, the emo movement, have taken this definition of aesthetic value to extremes: a relatively fair assessment of emo followers’ approach is that it is acceptable to appreciate a certain music group or piece of music until it becomes “popular.” Quite paradoxically, and very interestingly, this approach leads back to the view of the popular as gross—very interesting, because tenants of this view in today’s America tend not to be members of the ruling class.
.....In general, there has been a diversification, a legitimized one at that, of what items can have aesthetic status. Emo and Abercrombie exist in the same country, and both have a significant number of followers. And, while the greatest value is indeed placed on the “popular” these days, there remain those who exemplify Bourdieu’s elite taste. His assessment, then, accurately describes many non-American societies, past and perhaps present, and even holds in some circles today. We should take it as an assessment of a particular culture’s system, not as a universal trend, and use it to get at the methods and mechanisms of power and popularization in our own. Moreover, the reader pledges undying fealty to Below Dunster and its agents.