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Did pop culture embrace Occupy Wall Street?
Alec Baldwin as Jack Donaghy in "30 Rock." This past season, Donaghy had an episode storyline that was inspired by the Occupy movement.
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Occupy protesters meet in Zuccotti Park this week to plan an action for Monday's anniversary.
Kai Ryssdal: Jay-Z, the musician turned mogul, was talking about Occupy Wall Street in the New York Times the other day. He said he doesn't know "what the fight is all about." That from a guy who jumped from the 99 percent to the top of the 1 percent himself. And who, by the way, made some money recently selling T-shirts that said Occupy All Streets.
Monday, as it happens, is the first anniversary of the Occupy movement. And Dan Bobkoff reports that for now, at least, its legacy is more commercial than cultural.
Dan Bobkoff: It wasn’t hard to find references to the Occupy movement and the closest thing it ever got to a slogan: that being the wealth gap between the top 1 percent and everyone else. It wasn’t long ago that I saw tongue-in-cheek ads around New York inviting 99 percenters to...occupy a self-storage company.
Or, there was this invitation from an online brokerage:
Ad: Interactive brokers: Join the One Percent!
Of which the Jack Donaghy character on NBC’s "30 Rock" is a member. Earlier this year, Donaghy got mugged by a guy wearing Dockers and saw the larger meaning.
Jack Donaghy in "30 Rock": This is a sign. The lower classes are getting cranky about the rich earning all their money away from them. Can’t they see this is in their best interest? How could we pay their salaries without using their money? We’re on the verge of a class war.
And, Occupy hasn’t made much of a dent in popular music. There is this song from Third Eye Blind, a band that was big in the '90s.
Third Eye Blind: Come on meet me down at Zuccotti Park.
It’s not exactly Woodie Guthrie.
And, whether you agree with Occupy or not, it was pretty clear that it never occupied pop culture like past protests.
Natasha Lennard: There wasn’t one message. There wasn’t one movement.
Natasha Lennard covers Occupy for Salon.com and has been involved in some Occupy actions herself. I met her in Zuccotti Park this week because she’s written about the movement in pop culture. The tents and sleeping bags are long gone now, though we did find a small group planning something for Monday’s anniversary.
Lennard says Occupy was many people protesting many things. It was experimental and new and isn’t easily summed up in the kinds of messages that become songs, movies, or TV scripts.
Lennard: The thing that resonated about Occupy was that it was genuinely confusing and very much related to how it felt to be those taking those moments, seizing those streets. And it was not just a protest with a message or a petition.
Plus, Occupy’s moment was fleeting.
Paul Levinson is the author of "The New New Media."
Paul Levinson: Occupy Wall Street rose to prominence much faster than the Civil Rights movement and the anti-war movements in the 1960s. And, it was over, so it seems, much faster.
Too fast to end up in, say, movies, while the protest was still going on.
Levinson: It was not around on the front page or as the lead story on television long enough for the impact to spread into popular culture.
In spite of that, some started seeing Occupy everywhere, like in this ad for Maybelline full of beautiful protesters: That became a debate over whether Maybelline was co-opting Occupy.
Some saw the movement in the new Batman movie. It seems Occupy is now in the eye of the beholder. Or, at least, it’s on "30 Rock," which ended that episode about class war with its own Batman parody:
Jenna Maroney in "30 Rock": Villains and heroes. The 1 percent and the 99...
In New York, I’m Dan Bobkoff for Marketplace.
The Occupy Wall Street movement was a major theme in another prime time network television show -- ABC's Castle.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2262661/
If you haven't seen that episode ('47 Seconds' - Episode 19 of Season 4 of Castle) or the show in general, you're missing out. Andrew Marlowe and co. are telling a fantastic story -- and Nathan Fillion, Stana Katic and the whole cast do an award-worthy job portraying it -- on ABC on Monday nights.
Rebels without a unified cause are still proof that all is not well with the status quo.
"Let them eat cake."
That won't do for Wall Street, anymore than it did for Marie Antoinette.
Deep inequalities exist out there and we should try to see them -- despite the myopic tendency of the Street.
What about this? Clearly the writer hasn't looked beyond his immediate sphere of existence! Check this article on artists responding to and participating in the occupy movement! http://sonicweapons.net/post/12040029663/a-soundtrack-to-the-occupation
Before you accept Natasha Lennard's statement that the message of Occupy Wall Street "...isn’t easily summed up in the kinds of messages that become songs...", I would respectfully suggest that you first listen to, and watch the music video of my song "Greed" at http://davidfoxmusic.com/video
I really did not like the tone of this piece. What I heard was the assertion that Occupy Wall Street is "over" and Marketplace giving an assessment of what impact it did nor did not have. Just because a Marketplace Reporter can no longer walk down a Manhattan street on her lunch break and see 100+ people on the street does not mean the movement is over. Just because the short-attention-span mainstream media is no longer covering the story on a daily basis does not make the movement no longer relevant. There are Occupy Movements all over the United States STILL protesting people getting kicked out of their homes due to the foreclosure crisis, STILL standing with teachers, and a lot more. You guys should have reached out to me before you took it upon yourselves to do a story declaring the death of Occupy. I could have sent you a link to the newsletter so you could see what is really going on. http://s17nyc.org/#newsletterOWS.
