ALTHUSSER TALKS ABOUT PITCHFORK

Ever heard of Pitchfork? I assume a lot of you have. If not it's a notoriously snarky and elitist music review website. It's a tastemaker. An example of theme tearing apart music can be found

here.

At first glance I recognized Pitchfork according to Althusser as another form of the ISA. People are operating under the common idealogy: music can and should be reduced and quantified by its social and musical quality then compared to discern what is "best" and "worst." What is "new" and "derivative." These ideologies are increasingly complicated then by the subsidiary ideologies as to what constitutes these descriptors, what makes it good or bad.  In any case by sharing these Ideologies there is an apparatus by which people create a community which controls and manipulates its members. Saying what should and should not be done, exiling those who don't do it, and including and lauding those who do. Its a classic example of how any society of any level of freedom creates Ideologies that bring people together.

But there was a problem. I realized that although Althusser traditionally relegates the RSA to the national government, and its subjugation or repression through violence, within a subculture of the music world Pitchfork and taste-making websites like it are that government. They're reviews are often violent, willfully repressing that which people create or make in an attempt to create the best possible situation for themselves, that is, they're continued authority in the music world. The review then becomes the same as a chopping block or a guillotine where they have the final word and on which bands live and die. Let's be honest thought, Pitchfork doesn't quite have that power, people like Mumford and Sons will continue to be popular without Pitchfork. But when taken with other websites and promoters like this one, there is a serious repressive authority at work, wouldn't you say?