The Embarassment of Riches

For today's independent artists, integrity can be financially rewarding. Can punk rock and alternative comics make peace with entrepreneurial capitalism?

Brian Doherty from the August/September 1997 issue

(Page 4 of 4)

That punk rock attitude has spread throughout most underground youth culture arts; the audiences for underground music and comics largely overlap. As comic book artist Evan Dorkin once told The Comics Journal, "People who like stuff that's hard to find tend to like stuff that's hard to find in every medium. They just develop this attitude that, `I'm not going to find my stuff at Tower Records, at B. Dalton's bookstore.'"

Meanwhile, the community aspect of the independent arts adds a level of non-cash-oriented play to these small markets--an aspect that is often hidden in big corporate capitalism. The richer our world becomes through the workings of capitalism, the more considerations of play can work alongside the bloodless financial calculations that prompt cries of "sellout!" from indie purists.

After years of refining their tastes--and becoming jaded about the often crude pleasures of more mainstream rock and comics--certain cognoscenti are indeed going to find more pleasure in small-circulation products for aesthetic reasons that go beyond mere snobbery. But anti-mass-market snobbery is hard to get rid of. In Washington, D.C., various indie labels get together for an annual "Indie Rock Flea Market" in which bands play, food is served, and labels and bands set up tables and sell records. In 1994, the local "commercial alternative" station--anathema to the true-blue indie rock fan--set up a booth. Two indie fans were disgusted, The Washington Post reported: "The mass marketing of their beloved subculture has devalued its music."

Such snobbery ignores some of the real benefits of money for small pop cultures. Ian MacKaye's Fugazi money supports many other bands. The money made by one of the creators of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, of all mass-market excrescences (though it too began as a self-published parody of mutant comic books, not the kids' sensation it became), supports the Xeric Foundation, which gives grants to destitute young comic book artists to allow them to self-publish. The relationship between capitalism and lively underground culture can be complex.

The comments of one of the organizers of the Indie Rock Flea Market are revealing: "I just wanted to create a venue where the demographics were all the same, where everyone liked the same stuff."

"Everyone liking the same stuff" is the language of the fan seeking an isolated, small, simpatico community, one of the driving values behind small, alternative artistic subcultures. "Demographics" is the language of people trying to sell you something. They can mean the same thing. One does not rule out the other--and doesn't everyone, creator and audience, benefit from being able to buy the things we want?

As Gary Groth, owner of Bagge's publisher, Fantagraphics, and editor of The Comics Journal, puts it: "A lot of anti-corporate talk can basically be self-serving greed. It's just another new market: the anti-corporate market."