padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
so this very clearly isn't topical or anything (despite the ongoing intermittent output of academic papers + discussion surrounding black metal) but lately I have for whatever reason been listening to much gangster rap from its halycon days, i.e. the first half of the 90s, and I was thinking about this the other day.
here's a paper from 1999 that is essentially a semantic overview of rap up to that point, with a specific focus on gangster rap. many of the insights + critiques rather predictable, as is the ultimate conclusion (favoring consciousness, specifically of the street variety, over gangster ignorance) tho perhaps not as much as they were 12 years ago. and tbf it's much more nuanced + considered than your average mass media hysteria, or true school denunciation (i.e. Okayplayer or whatever) for that matter. here's a more recent paper on Peste Noire, who are kind of a crit theorist's wet dream as far as extreme political + aesthetic stances, depth of thought, internal contradictions + so on (Sale Famine kind of comes across like Euronymous, albeit much smarter + more mature yet still with that same propensity for wild, extreme statements). the latter is considerably drier + more academic in tone but both papers not only mention but are actually focused around the organic intellectualism of their subjects.
I'm not so interested in the actual academic output on these musics which is, I mean...whatever it usually is when critical theory is seriously applied to a pop culture topic, i.e. a few genuine, unexpected insights mixed in with a -lot- of highly verbose silliness, many reference to Frankfurt School/French post-structuralists/etc and so on. I'm more curious about what draws these academic bros to this stuff...something about a perfect blending point of transgression + extremism, pop culture, cultural + subcultural coding that is highly difficult for outsiders (such as academics) to decipher + thus intriguing, violence (especially in the art imitating life imitating art loop that screams out for pomo conjecturing), and a bunch of other things I'm sure. certainly there's a highly weird element of fetishism that's more akin to certain kinds of journalism. specifically I'm thinking of sportswriters in the way that they often mythologize - sometimes in very creepy ways - the athletes they write about*. in this case academics fetishizing the outlaw element + violence + extreme positions (or inn rap's case hypermasculinity/misogyny) that they are simultaneously denouncing or at the very least ambivalent about. the whole element of the educated professional valuing something for its very ignorance, a point one could also make about a great deal of more academic nuum journalism, the notion that something loses value by being/becoming self-aware. where this celebration of "organic intellectualism" comes in, a term that to me implies the academy trained intellectual professional simultaneously celebrating/condescending with the label (s)he has him/herself applied . I'm kind of just rambling at this point so I'll stop maybe other people will be able to say interesting things more concisely. maybe it can be boiled down to yet another iteration of middle-class guilt I dunno...
this would almost certainly would have made more sense as a blog post but I'm too busy/lazy to maintain a blog + I reckon message boards offer a considerably better chance of actual discussion. maybe no one will write anything back + it will be one of those lonely thread starters that just withers on the internet vine which would be ok but I reckon there are enough actual intellectuals around here who are also into black metal and/or rap to say some interesting things...
*didn't Baudrillard write that one thing about sports + watching sports + media coverage of sports and all the different layers of simulation + removal therein? not that I've actually read it but maybe someone else has.
here's a paper from 1999 that is essentially a semantic overview of rap up to that point, with a specific focus on gangster rap. many of the insights + critiques rather predictable, as is the ultimate conclusion (favoring consciousness, specifically of the street variety, over gangster ignorance) tho perhaps not as much as they were 12 years ago. and tbf it's much more nuanced + considered than your average mass media hysteria, or true school denunciation (i.e. Okayplayer or whatever) for that matter. here's a more recent paper on Peste Noire, who are kind of a crit theorist's wet dream as far as extreme political + aesthetic stances, depth of thought, internal contradictions + so on (Sale Famine kind of comes across like Euronymous, albeit much smarter + more mature yet still with that same propensity for wild, extreme statements). the latter is considerably drier + more academic in tone but both papers not only mention but are actually focused around the organic intellectualism of their subjects.
I'm not so interested in the actual academic output on these musics which is, I mean...whatever it usually is when critical theory is seriously applied to a pop culture topic, i.e. a few genuine, unexpected insights mixed in with a -lot- of highly verbose silliness, many reference to Frankfurt School/French post-structuralists/etc and so on. I'm more curious about what draws these academic bros to this stuff...something about a perfect blending point of transgression + extremism, pop culture, cultural + subcultural coding that is highly difficult for outsiders (such as academics) to decipher + thus intriguing, violence (especially in the art imitating life imitating art loop that screams out for pomo conjecturing), and a bunch of other things I'm sure. certainly there's a highly weird element of fetishism that's more akin to certain kinds of journalism. specifically I'm thinking of sportswriters in the way that they often mythologize - sometimes in very creepy ways - the athletes they write about*. in this case academics fetishizing the outlaw element + violence + extreme positions (or inn rap's case hypermasculinity/misogyny) that they are simultaneously denouncing or at the very least ambivalent about. the whole element of the educated professional valuing something for its very ignorance, a point one could also make about a great deal of more academic nuum journalism, the notion that something loses value by being/becoming self-aware. where this celebration of "organic intellectualism" comes in, a term that to me implies the academy trained intellectual professional simultaneously celebrating/condescending with the label (s)he has him/herself applied . I'm kind of just rambling at this point so I'll stop maybe other people will be able to say interesting things more concisely. maybe it can be boiled down to yet another iteration of middle-class guilt I dunno...
this would almost certainly would have made more sense as a blog post but I'm too busy/lazy to maintain a blog + I reckon message boards offer a considerably better chance of actual discussion. maybe no one will write anything back + it will be one of those lonely thread starters that just withers on the internet vine which would be ok but I reckon there are enough actual intellectuals around here who are also into black metal and/or rap to say some interesting things...
*didn't Baudrillard write that one thing about sports + watching sports + media coverage of sports and all the different layers of simulation + removal therein? not that I've actually read it but maybe someone else has.