Noah Baby Food
Well-known member
Christ. Can I have some "grime spam", please?
those hairshirt -wearin' Dissensians
- Thread starter blissblogger
- Start date
blissblogger
Well-known member
Shaun MGS said:
and that grime spam dude!!!!
perhaps we should have a forum called Music and Thought so that people can avoid these kind of threads if that's their inclination?
Or a warning sign icon at the top of any specific thread of an overheated brain fizzing dangerously?
Until then, you could always simply refrain from clicking on any thread started by me, kpunk, finney, dom, and doubtless a few others i'm forgetting
i started writing some further thoughts and it's kind of escalated into something so large it's probably bad form to deposit it here. but what the fuck eh
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blissblogger
Well-known member
Excuse me, a whole bunch of disordered thoughts here, and then I will return to pick up Tim’s points,
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Proposition: any argument in favour of any kind of music that attributes to it “edge” or “worth” = rockist (regardless of whether the music in question is made with electric guitars).
The reductio ad absurdum of rockism is the artist or genre that is all edge and no entertainment (power electronics--sorry Infinite!), or all worth and no entertainment (an early Eighties Jackson Browne 'socially conscious' album maybe)
Personally, something that is devoid of entertainment has no appeal to me. My choices are all in the grey fuzzy area where entertainment and Something Xtra are mixed up. There might be a record, for instance, that is entertaining but not so exceptionally entertaining that I’d want to overlook or put up with other aspects that I find distasteful or irritating. Especially given there’s an unlimited number of fish in the pleasure sea.
(In addition to, and closely related to, the Aesthetic Morality of Finitude is the Aesthetic Morality of Over-Abundance. So many pleasures, which to pick? And what justifies the decision to reject something?)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The X(-tra) factors that refer to something beyond pleasure generally come either from the discourse of Art or the discourse of Folk. Rockism’s arguments are mostly all Art-derived (innovation, avant-garde type talk of shock and formal advance; Lit-crit type lyric-based stuff about imagination-activating, soul-enlargening, making us more sensitive, imparting life-wisdom) or they’re Folk-Based (the social/political, solidarity, resistance, community, voice of the people/the streets, social realism, etc). Rockism tends to oscillate back and forth between these sets of arguments (Dylan in that sense is foundational, shifting from community-based protest to individual artistic expression); you can see them going on in the punk and postpunk era (TRB and Sham versus the more existensialist side of postpunk-as-artrock-reborn).
These are both discourses of truth. The X(-tra) factor therefore is always a species of truth. As in, unfortunately, the Manic Street Preachers, “this is my truth tell me yours”.
(The exception to this is formal innovation, which isn't "truth" in that simple sense of the word, although didn't someone once say that form is sedimented content).
The greatest, most provocative, artists are perhaps those who operate in some undecidable zone between the political and the personal. “Dissident” might be the best word that captures the mixture of political, cultural, existential/shamanic/outside-of-everything. I’ll concede Dylan although I don’t feel it owing to some quirk of my growing up; Lennon, Lydon, Morrissey, Mark E. Smith, and so on, loads more examples. Where “protest against society” meets and becomes indistinguishable from “protest against life”.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Q: Isn’t pleasure emancipatory in itself?
A: Maybe once, long ago, claiming the right to pleasure was emancipatory, a movement across a limit. The 1950s, for sure, and the 1960s, for certain kinds of pleasure, certain kinds of fun. But the victory of pop, its success, means that fun is lfar ess proscribed today than it is prescribed. That victory was more or less established by the early Seventies, when rock became, give or take some residual art-talk, “just entertainment, mere showbiz”. Punk was the restoration of the idea that there was more to music than just entertainment. So when the Sex Pistols sang their version of “No Fun” it wasn’t just a complaint; it was interdiction, threat, promise.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
An account of a piece of music purely and entirely in terms of the pleasure it gives the listener would have not much interest for me. At bottom I couldn’t really understand what would motivate someone to pick up pen or keyboard and issue such a piece of writing. Why not “enjoy in silence”?
Such a piece of writing would be as useful to me as a munch by munch account of a meal. (I love food but I rarely read restaurant criticism. I did once cut out and keep a piece on steak houses in New York by a famous food critic whose name i forget, because it’s voluptuous, slightly fey imagery reminded me of Chris Roberts).
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
A lot of talk on the blogs, forums, etc, involves trading information, pointing out pleasures, the mutual burble of delight. It’s in the spirit of Everett True’s remark “I don’t need to know why something is good, I just need to be told what is good and where it is ” (I quote from faded memory). And that is totally fine, a useful activity for fans who share tastes and assumptions; I engage in it myself. I would call it sub-critical, not as a diss but as an accurate description. But the stuff that really excites me
is the stuff that questions the terms, enlarges the frame of reference, sets a little fire in your brain. There’s a symmetry there, in so far as I’m looking for similar things from the music: pleasure, yes, but also that it spur me to new thoughts. This year my interest in grime has started to wane a bit because it feels like it isn’t moving fast enough and therefore is failing to generate new thoughts in me. I might be mistaken there, it could be a failing of my own rather than the genre; but I doubt it. (By contrast, I lost interest in drum’n’bass when its entertainment quotient started to go into steep decline; for all I know it might have generated a steady stream of new thoughts--in fact it did, in the sense of repeatedly coming back to the subject of “why did D&B turn crap?”--but the hedonic factor had dropped away completely).
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
“But… but… but… Simon… I’m sure you’ve written many pieces that are just purely about the pleasure and surface delight of a record”
Well, you might be right. I’d be surprised if there were many that were devoid of any reference to the X-factor. But I daresay when writing a column of jungle 12 inch reviews or 2step or whatever, they might be almost entirely about the sensation-al and formal delights of the music. But then it would be taken for granted that the X-factor aspects had already been established; that understood-and-more-or-less-agreed set of values and claims would be the context for this second-tier form of consumer-guidance writing. Also it would probably have a tone of urgency about it that would in spirit echo the larger project.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Proposition: any argument in favour of any kind of music that attributes to it “edge” or “worth” = rockist (regardless of whether the music in question is made with electric guitars).
The reductio ad absurdum of rockism is the artist or genre that is all edge and no entertainment (power electronics--sorry Infinite!), or all worth and no entertainment (an early Eighties Jackson Browne 'socially conscious' album maybe)
Personally, something that is devoid of entertainment has no appeal to me. My choices are all in the grey fuzzy area where entertainment and Something Xtra are mixed up. There might be a record, for instance, that is entertaining but not so exceptionally entertaining that I’d want to overlook or put up with other aspects that I find distasteful or irritating. Especially given there’s an unlimited number of fish in the pleasure sea.
(In addition to, and closely related to, the Aesthetic Morality of Finitude is the Aesthetic Morality of Over-Abundance. So many pleasures, which to pick? And what justifies the decision to reject something?)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The X(-tra) factors that refer to something beyond pleasure generally come either from the discourse of Art or the discourse of Folk. Rockism’s arguments are mostly all Art-derived (innovation, avant-garde type talk of shock and formal advance; Lit-crit type lyric-based stuff about imagination-activating, soul-enlargening, making us more sensitive, imparting life-wisdom) or they’re Folk-Based (the social/political, solidarity, resistance, community, voice of the people/the streets, social realism, etc). Rockism tends to oscillate back and forth between these sets of arguments (Dylan in that sense is foundational, shifting from community-based protest to individual artistic expression); you can see them going on in the punk and postpunk era (TRB and Sham versus the more existensialist side of postpunk-as-artrock-reborn).
These are both discourses of truth. The X(-tra) factor therefore is always a species of truth. As in, unfortunately, the Manic Street Preachers, “this is my truth tell me yours”.
(The exception to this is formal innovation, which isn't "truth" in that simple sense of the word, although didn't someone once say that form is sedimented content).
The greatest, most provocative, artists are perhaps those who operate in some undecidable zone between the political and the personal. “Dissident” might be the best word that captures the mixture of political, cultural, existential/shamanic/outside-of-everything. I’ll concede Dylan although I don’t feel it owing to some quirk of my growing up; Lennon, Lydon, Morrissey, Mark E. Smith, and so on, loads more examples. Where “protest against society” meets and becomes indistinguishable from “protest against life”.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Q: Isn’t pleasure emancipatory in itself?
A: Maybe once, long ago, claiming the right to pleasure was emancipatory, a movement across a limit. The 1950s, for sure, and the 1960s, for certain kinds of pleasure, certain kinds of fun. But the victory of pop, its success, means that fun is lfar ess proscribed today than it is prescribed. That victory was more or less established by the early Seventies, when rock became, give or take some residual art-talk, “just entertainment, mere showbiz”. Punk was the restoration of the idea that there was more to music than just entertainment. So when the Sex Pistols sang their version of “No Fun” it wasn’t just a complaint; it was interdiction, threat, promise.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
An account of a piece of music purely and entirely in terms of the pleasure it gives the listener would have not much interest for me. At bottom I couldn’t really understand what would motivate someone to pick up pen or keyboard and issue such a piece of writing. Why not “enjoy in silence”?
Such a piece of writing would be as useful to me as a munch by munch account of a meal. (I love food but I rarely read restaurant criticism. I did once cut out and keep a piece on steak houses in New York by a famous food critic whose name i forget, because it’s voluptuous, slightly fey imagery reminded me of Chris Roberts).
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
A lot of talk on the blogs, forums, etc, involves trading information, pointing out pleasures, the mutual burble of delight. It’s in the spirit of Everett True’s remark “I don’t need to know why something is good, I just need to be told what is good and where it is ” (I quote from faded memory). And that is totally fine, a useful activity for fans who share tastes and assumptions; I engage in it myself. I would call it sub-critical, not as a diss but as an accurate description. But the stuff that really excites me
is the stuff that questions the terms, enlarges the frame of reference, sets a little fire in your brain. There’s a symmetry there, in so far as I’m looking for similar things from the music: pleasure, yes, but also that it spur me to new thoughts. This year my interest in grime has started to wane a bit because it feels like it isn’t moving fast enough and therefore is failing to generate new thoughts in me. I might be mistaken there, it could be a failing of my own rather than the genre; but I doubt it. (By contrast, I lost interest in drum’n’bass when its entertainment quotient started to go into steep decline; for all I know it might have generated a steady stream of new thoughts--in fact it did, in the sense of repeatedly coming back to the subject of “why did D&B turn crap?”--but the hedonic factor had dropped away completely).
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
“But… but… but… Simon… I’m sure you’ve written many pieces that are just purely about the pleasure and surface delight of a record”
Well, you might be right. I’d be surprised if there were many that were devoid of any reference to the X-factor. But I daresay when writing a column of jungle 12 inch reviews or 2step or whatever, they might be almost entirely about the sensation-al and formal delights of the music. But then it would be taken for granted that the X-factor aspects had already been established; that understood-and-more-or-less-agreed set of values and claims would be the context for this second-tier form of consumer-guidance writing. Also it would probably have a tone of urgency about it that would in spirit echo the larger project.
Tim Finney said:
Returning to this phrase, really more i read it more i didn't get it.
If i love some piece of crap, and i love a lot of crap that is esthetically, politically or simply musically offensive, i don't hear any "objectively speaking" god who say that i should not.
Then my pleasure principle is gone AWOL since i'm more a entomologist and a dissector of every music subculture i get to hear.
The pleasure of autopsy the pleasures of sounds.
Interesting thread, more when I'll have more time to write.
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<i>...fidelity to the 'music alone', surely the very cornerstone of rockism?</i>
at this point i've read countless thousands of words on this popism/rockism thing, and I don't know how anyone could possibly consider fidelity to the music alone the very cornerstone of rockism. to my mind, that would be the essence of popism!
after all this time, if there isn't even agreement on what the basic opposition underlying the debate is, that could mean a couple of things
a) I'm stupid.
b) you're all talking past each other at an incomprehensible level of abstraction.
i'm going with b). these threads always remind me of that irvine welsh short story, "the two philosophers."
at this point i've read countless thousands of words on this popism/rockism thing, and I don't know how anyone could possibly consider fidelity to the music alone the very cornerstone of rockism. to my mind, that would be the essence of popism!
after all this time, if there isn't even agreement on what the basic opposition underlying the debate is, that could mean a couple of things
a) I'm stupid.
b) you're all talking past each other at an incomprehensible level of abstraction.
i'm going with b). these threads always remind me of that irvine welsh short story, "the two philosophers."
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I think this is a really key point. Essentially, what's the difference between a convincing argument that changes someones perception of a piece of music, and one that does not? I would say that in the latter case, it hasn't actually been argued successfully, if you are still able to enjoy the piece of music.Tim F said:
I believe that's the nu-rockist (or whatever) idea, that you can't disconnect your perception of music from your conceptions of music. In other words, the situation described in Tim's quote that started this whole thread is not actually possible.
k-punk
Spectres of Mark
joeschmo said:
So on this account, popists would reject any discussion of image, fashion, record covers etc?
Incomprehensible to whom?
There is a third option, which I would say is the most likely: that these terms are contested.
Dunno the story... can you explain? No doubt some anti-intellectual sentiment...
Yeah, I had thought about that, but I think the problem is that we're viewing enjoyment as some sort of all-or-nothing kind of proposition. Surely, once you've realized the politics of some song are objectionable, your enjoyment of it will decrease somewhat? Knowing you shouldn't enjoy it obviously decreases your enjoyment of it to some degree.k-punk said:
But why do you continue to enjoy the song at all? Well because the argument against the politics of the lyrics doesn't really effect the quality of the beats or the vocal delivery. So what, you like some aspects of the song, and you don't like some other aspects, and the aspects that you don't like are the bits that were successfully argued against, while the aspects that you do still like are the bits that were not successfully argued against (and in fact, weren't part of the argument at all). I think this seems reasonable.
Yes bipedaldave that is the point I've been trying to make (evidently not very successfully! I'm not sure I have much luck articulating my position, although I intuitively sense it is worth articulating...). My beef isn't really with Dissensians taking seriously things like politics, artist intentions etc. I do this too, though it is inevitable that my conclusions will not always be the same any more than mark and simon's are always the same.
My beef is with the idea that our experience of music is cordoned off from our objective understandings of music, and the latter overrules the former but doesn't really interact with it at all. The M.I.A. example is still the pre-eminent one: what the M.I.A. hataz wanted was for M.I.A. fans to reject their enjoyment on the basis of stuff they didn't necessarily <i>hear</i> in the music (or even the combination of the music, the interviews, the press photos etc.) - to simply take it on faith that liking her was a <i>bad idea</i>. At least, this is the inevitable conclusion I come to from the otherwise not-very-logical linking of M.I.A. love with popism - a regretful "ah, this is what happens when we no longer have <i>objective standards</i> to refer to!" It's not the anti-M.I.A. argument that I have a problem with; it's an idea that the world of music criticism would be better if people simply stopped trusting their reactions to music over and above some rule laid down by music critics (and it would have to be a rule laid down by music critics: the problems which the M.I.A. hataz have with her do not announce themselves to the world in the same unambigious way that homophobic or fascist lyrics do).
Mark actually seemed to support this kind of world when he talked about Pascal (via Zizek) approvingly in the Pop thread: the idea being that we should ignore our own reactions and persevere with some idea of music (partly through listening to certain types of music) elucidated by an enlightened third party, on the basis of a leap of faith that we will become better people as a result. Of course Pascal (via Zizek) sort of works in my favour too: as Zizek notes there needs to be some underlying <i>fantasy</i> that this leap will give the subject a sense of imaginary fullness - i.e. what appears to be a supression of enjoyment is ultimately done in the service of enjoyment.
I agree with most of what Simon wrote in his last post, although I feel like he hasn't engaged with my point that all his "something [x]tras" are things that he only arrives at through his enjoyment. I fail to see the obvious logical break between enjoyment and all these legitimating addendums - it seems to presume that enjoyment is some easily identifiable, historically static substance, whereas I would consider it to be more of a structural response to a number of different factors (not just the music itself, but all the surrounding factors - social or historical context, past history etc. etc.) which may or may not include these designated [x] factors. As a corollary to this, there seems to be an implied belief that popism is about "simple pleasures"; I've always considered popism to be about the fact that no pleasure is ever "simple" in this way.
I know that Marx disagrees with me on this point - both in the sense that he thinks this is not what popism about and in the sense that he thinks pleasure can indeed be simple and, quite boring. But this in itself entails an ability to separate out between simple, boring pleasure, and the more interesting sorts of engagement we might have with music. As far as I'm concerned the only way this could be made out is if we were to hit upon a formula that separated the emancipatory from the non-emancipatory in popular music ("popular" in the broadest sense i.e. grime, folk etc.). All other political engagements with music surely just amount to playing around with identity politics in Zion - which doesn't mean that they are worthless, but does mean that we cannot assign some <i>a priori</i> ontological superiority to them - the case for them has to be made <i>without<</i> reference to an objective guarantee.
I simply don't think this can be done, and I think attempts to do it lead to awful music criticism like Ben Watson 's article I mentioned earlier (I should note that I don't think this is what Mark K-Punk's music criticism does, although he might think it <i>is</i> what he is doing). I have yet to find a satisfying example of a truly emancipatory musical experience wherin the music wasn't ultimately incidental (to the point of irrelevancy) to a more general political process (i.e. the hardcore playing at the Seattle WTO protest - there's no real reason why that specific music had to fulfil that function). Of course if you want to spend yr time talking about music as incidental to politics go ahead, but it seems that nu-rockism doesn't actually want to do this, but merely preserve it as an ideal while it continues to talk about music <i>qua</i> music.
"One of the problems with empiricism is that it doesn't account for where reactions come from in the first place... are we really to conceive of people as blank slates that are simply 'filled in' by experience?"
I wouldn't say that convictions are sedimented responses and <i>nothing else</i>. I guess you could say that the <i>sedimenting force</i> is the application of rationality to experience - there is a dialectical process at work between the raw content of our experience and the process of making sense of it. My point though is that you cant' separate these out except in the abstract: because rationality does not occur in a vacuum (esp. in relation to something like music criticism) but only expresses itself <i>through</i> its application to experience, all our "rational" convictions are tainted by these experiences. Preconditions "precede and structure" our experience but they are not static: like a blade chopping wood they are also changed by each application.
"Your jungle example in a way makes this point. Experiencing a track as a jungle track can never be a simple matter of reacting to music. It involves grouping a series of reactions together under an abstract category that is not itself given in experience."
But, equally, this abstract category cannot exist independent of experience.
My beef is with the idea that our experience of music is cordoned off from our objective understandings of music, and the latter overrules the former but doesn't really interact with it at all. The M.I.A. example is still the pre-eminent one: what the M.I.A. hataz wanted was for M.I.A. fans to reject their enjoyment on the basis of stuff they didn't necessarily <i>hear</i> in the music (or even the combination of the music, the interviews, the press photos etc.) - to simply take it on faith that liking her was a <i>bad idea</i>. At least, this is the inevitable conclusion I come to from the otherwise not-very-logical linking of M.I.A. love with popism - a regretful "ah, this is what happens when we no longer have <i>objective standards</i> to refer to!" It's not the anti-M.I.A. argument that I have a problem with; it's an idea that the world of music criticism would be better if people simply stopped trusting their reactions to music over and above some rule laid down by music critics (and it would have to be a rule laid down by music critics: the problems which the M.I.A. hataz have with her do not announce themselves to the world in the same unambigious way that homophobic or fascist lyrics do).
Mark actually seemed to support this kind of world when he talked about Pascal (via Zizek) approvingly in the Pop thread: the idea being that we should ignore our own reactions and persevere with some idea of music (partly through listening to certain types of music) elucidated by an enlightened third party, on the basis of a leap of faith that we will become better people as a result. Of course Pascal (via Zizek) sort of works in my favour too: as Zizek notes there needs to be some underlying <i>fantasy</i> that this leap will give the subject a sense of imaginary fullness - i.e. what appears to be a supression of enjoyment is ultimately done in the service of enjoyment.
I agree with most of what Simon wrote in his last post, although I feel like he hasn't engaged with my point that all his "something [x]tras" are things that he only arrives at through his enjoyment. I fail to see the obvious logical break between enjoyment and all these legitimating addendums - it seems to presume that enjoyment is some easily identifiable, historically static substance, whereas I would consider it to be more of a structural response to a number of different factors (not just the music itself, but all the surrounding factors - social or historical context, past history etc. etc.) which may or may not include these designated [x] factors. As a corollary to this, there seems to be an implied belief that popism is about "simple pleasures"; I've always considered popism to be about the fact that no pleasure is ever "simple" in this way.
I know that Marx disagrees with me on this point - both in the sense that he thinks this is not what popism about and in the sense that he thinks pleasure can indeed be simple and, quite boring. But this in itself entails an ability to separate out between simple, boring pleasure, and the more interesting sorts of engagement we might have with music. As far as I'm concerned the only way this could be made out is if we were to hit upon a formula that separated the emancipatory from the non-emancipatory in popular music ("popular" in the broadest sense i.e. grime, folk etc.). All other political engagements with music surely just amount to playing around with identity politics in Zion - which doesn't mean that they are worthless, but does mean that we cannot assign some <i>a priori</i> ontological superiority to them - the case for them has to be made <i>without<</i> reference to an objective guarantee.
I simply don't think this can be done, and I think attempts to do it lead to awful music criticism like Ben Watson 's article I mentioned earlier (I should note that I don't think this is what Mark K-Punk's music criticism does, although he might think it <i>is</i> what he is doing). I have yet to find a satisfying example of a truly emancipatory musical experience wherin the music wasn't ultimately incidental (to the point of irrelevancy) to a more general political process (i.e. the hardcore playing at the Seattle WTO protest - there's no real reason why that specific music had to fulfil that function). Of course if you want to spend yr time talking about music as incidental to politics go ahead, but it seems that nu-rockism doesn't actually want to do this, but merely preserve it as an ideal while it continues to talk about music <i>qua</i> music.
"One of the problems with empiricism is that it doesn't account for where reactions come from in the first place... are we really to conceive of people as blank slates that are simply 'filled in' by experience?"
I wouldn't say that convictions are sedimented responses and <i>nothing else</i>. I guess you could say that the <i>sedimenting force</i> is the application of rationality to experience - there is a dialectical process at work between the raw content of our experience and the process of making sense of it. My point though is that you cant' separate these out except in the abstract: because rationality does not occur in a vacuum (esp. in relation to something like music criticism) but only expresses itself <i>through</i> its application to experience, all our "rational" convictions are tainted by these experiences. Preconditions "precede and structure" our experience but they are not static: like a blade chopping wood they are also changed by each application.
"Your jungle example in a way makes this point. Experiencing a track as a jungle track can never be a simple matter of reacting to music. It involves grouping a series of reactions together under an abstract category that is not itself given in experience."
But, equally, this abstract category cannot exist independent of experience.
blissblogger
Well-known member
Tim F said:
i thought that was glorious -- a Marxian slip! Definitely a big compliment
back atcha later with some proper responses
Grievous Angel
Beast of Burden
What surprises me is the Dissensus-envy of ILM.
Simon, of course you should reject dancehall with homophobic lyrics -- principally because there's so damn much great dancehall out there it is impossible to miss out much by avoiding the homophobic stuff.
Simon, of course you should reject dancehall with homophobic lyrics -- principally because there's so damn much great dancehall out there it is impossible to miss out much by avoiding the homophobic stuff.
infinite thought
pigferatu
Sorry to go back to a now old point on this thread - had I had time yesterday I would have gotten in there before...am obv in no real position to comment on music in the same way as k-punk, blissblogger, er, probably anyone else on this board, but I'm just not getting these pleasure/enjoyment arguments. Saying that noise/power electronics etc. doesn't appeal because it's not 'enjoyable' just misses the point - most things in the world are not enjoyable - if music consciously/unconsciously reflects that, well, I find that interesting. I'm not saying it's a more profound/useful approach than imagining that music/dance is all about the pleasures of the self, or whatever, not at all - but stopping yourself from listening to stuff because it doesn't conform to your rosy idea of the world just seems bizarrely individualistic and isolationist.
But I'm not saying people should watch it for 'pleasure', obv, and certainly not implying this separation is desirable - I think it's actually impossible - but not watching it at all because 'life's too short' is the wrong way of looking at it I think. All I'm saying is that an understanding of the way in which the fascist aesthetic actually functions is probably a good idea (as is working out the way racist ideology/misogyny/homophobia etc. work) - otherwise how are you going to know who your enemy is, and how best to defeat them?
k-punk said:
But I'm not saying people should watch it for 'pleasure', obv, and certainly not implying this separation is desirable - I think it's actually impossible - but not watching it at all because 'life's too short' is the wrong way of looking at it I think. All I'm saying is that an understanding of the way in which the fascist aesthetic actually functions is probably a good idea (as is working out the way racist ideology/misogyny/homophobia etc. work) - otherwise how are you going to know who your enemy is, and how best to defeat them?
infinite thought said:
riefenstahl is an extreme example, but i do think there's something worth investigating in this tangent; in pleasures that are totally ideologically vile, and where that ideological vileness is part of the enjoyment itself. this reminds me funnily enough of the stuff on Front 242, Metallica or early Def Jam in Blissed Out, where the fascistic elements in the music itself- LL's boot stamping on a human face forever, the constriction and militarism of EBM etc are what make the music exciting- pleasurable, if you like (also the comparison of the S1Ws in Public Enemy to the Freikorps, finding fascism in the ostensibly 'progressive')
this argument i think extends to grime and hip hop. i remember a great carmody piece a while ago on crunk as 'fascist-hop', principally dipset's 'santana's town' (those strings at the start are terrifyingly wagnerian); the funklessness and militarism of lil jon productions being an unconscious reflection of actual militarism. where i live kids do carry guns, and yet i love hearing 'aargh! lethal b's got a gun!' on that highly inflammable record (heh sure i remember tim f mentioning this also)
there's always a connection between the cartoonish musical version and the 'reality' and the alternative obviously isn't to pretend it doesn't exist, or to listen to black eyed peas or summat- but while denying enjoyment is silly, there's no reason it shouldn't be problematised.
A few probs I have with Blissblogger's argument
1) What about when this goes the other way? When someone applies this approach in inverse, ie, flogs their REM albums down the MVE in disgust because, love them as he may, he's just discovered Michael Stipe might be a poof?
2) A distinction must clearly be made between applying this guilt trip to a) the artist b) the actual tune. It's OK then to listen Buju's "Champion" because he doesn't talk about offing queers in that particular song. By extension then is it OK to champion Skrewdriver if I make a CD-R of the group's songs about vikings and drinking mead by the sea, while leaving off the directly racist stuff? Is it better that Elvis Costello never called Ray Charles a blind nigger on record?
3) I don't see it as being linked purely to pleasure. Despite hating the BNP, I didn't track down Skrewdriver records when I was 15 just because I was lured by the potential of hearing hi-energy punkabilly that would piss off left wing teachers (though that played a part in it). I genuinely wanted to know what nazis listened to. The ANL (Mk 2, ha ha ) said these albums were terrible and sick, but didn't have a clue what was on them, which to me is a ludicrous position to take. I could start a wind-up by adding Ian Stuart to your list of 'outsiders'...but I won't...
1) What about when this goes the other way? When someone applies this approach in inverse, ie, flogs their REM albums down the MVE in disgust because, love them as he may, he's just discovered Michael Stipe might be a poof?
2) A distinction must clearly be made between applying this guilt trip to a) the artist b) the actual tune. It's OK then to listen Buju's "Champion" because he doesn't talk about offing queers in that particular song. By extension then is it OK to champion Skrewdriver if I make a CD-R of the group's songs about vikings and drinking mead by the sea, while leaving off the directly racist stuff? Is it better that Elvis Costello never called Ray Charles a blind nigger on record?
3) I don't see it as being linked purely to pleasure. Despite hating the BNP, I didn't track down Skrewdriver records when I was 15 just because I was lured by the potential of hearing hi-energy punkabilly that would piss off left wing teachers (though that played a part in it). I genuinely wanted to know what nazis listened to. The ANL (Mk 2, ha ha ) said these albums were terrible and sick, but didn't have a clue what was on them, which to me is a ludicrous position to take. I could start a wind-up by adding Ian Stuart to your list of 'outsiders'...but I won't...
Yeah that's "Charge (Remix)" isn't it? Love that track! Having said that I actually prefer Mighty Mo's defence of old fashioned seduction ("before a galla get sexual it's essential that we get sensual!") to Lethal's paranoid hysterics.
I sort of feel like issues of violence, homophobia, fascism etc. in music are a separate (although in some ways more interesting) discussion, because there the enjoyment of the music is inevitably intersecting with the listener's relationship to standards of social behaviour. e.g. once you become aware that dancehall lyrics are homophobic you can't simply go on as if you weren't aware, and any response you have to the music is now impliedly a response to the music's homophobic message. Your musical enjoyment automatically becomes at least partly a social policy position because, at the very least, you're making an implied statement as to whether homophobia should be allowed in art/popular entertainment, and whether its presence is something you can endorse (let's assume for the sake of the argument that the homophobic content is fairly clearly made out, so there's no issue as to whether this music is homophobic or not).
With someone like M.I.A. (or, to take another dissensian nu-rockist example of bad music we should reject out of hand, Kylie) things aren't so clear-cut. I haven't seen anyone claiming that Kylie or M.I.A. are objectionable from a <i>social policy</i> perspective; the argument is simply that they make (or <i>make for</i>) bad music. Of course these arguments draw on social issues - e.g. for Mark, Kylie is the standard bearer of the strange psychic union of straight managers in pubs with teh gays in clubs in the shared pursuit of mindless consumption - but the criticism loses its specificity and force if there's not something about the music itself which allows for this social ill. But of course not everyone agrees with these assessments, so there is room for dispute as to whether this capacity for causing social ills is indeed present within the music itself.
The idea that T.O.K.'s "Chi Chi Man" is about homophobia is difficult to refute - one need simply refer to the lyric sheet. But the idea that M.I.A.'s music is definitely about a project of post-colonising class tourism, or Kylie's music is definitely about mindless consumption, are much more tenuous (if not, for that, automatically untrue) - both seek to seize control of meaning within a field of interpretation that is contested. I'd be interested in seeing an example such as this where a nu-rockist opted not to trust their own reactions, e.g. despite the fact that they enjoyed Kylie in a way they felt had nothing to do with mindless consumption, they recognised that, "objectively speaking" (i.e. because someone clever had said so), the only way one could enjoy Kylie was through mindless consumption, and therefore they decided to reject their enjoyment.
It's always struck me that, quite to the contrary, the rockist (of the old or new varieties) always appears to find his or her reactions and his or her explanations of objective quality in music to be perfectly complementary: the objective explanation merely elucidates and contextualises what had already been intuitively sensed. It is only other people, the people who have allegedly got it all wrong, who ever find their reactions out of step with historical necessity.
Mark made the point that if conviction precedes and structures responses then there is no reason for this to ever happen: whatever theoretical postion we take will determine our reaction to the music. I don't really agree with this, but it's interesting because it would appear to invalidate our reactions entirely: what we would be left with is a war of theoretical positions which could not seek to justify themselves by reference to the music itself but, rather, strictly by reference to external social factors. It robs particular pieces of music of any purpose: all they will do is reflect back to us the co-ordinates of our own convictions. Which leaves me wondering: why talk about music at all?
(nb. I'm not saying that music criticism should restrict itself to discussing the music itself; but, by the some token, music criticism which can't talk sensibly about the music would presumably be gripped by an identity crisis of sorts)
I sort of feel like issues of violence, homophobia, fascism etc. in music are a separate (although in some ways more interesting) discussion, because there the enjoyment of the music is inevitably intersecting with the listener's relationship to standards of social behaviour. e.g. once you become aware that dancehall lyrics are homophobic you can't simply go on as if you weren't aware, and any response you have to the music is now impliedly a response to the music's homophobic message. Your musical enjoyment automatically becomes at least partly a social policy position because, at the very least, you're making an implied statement as to whether homophobia should be allowed in art/popular entertainment, and whether its presence is something you can endorse (let's assume for the sake of the argument that the homophobic content is fairly clearly made out, so there's no issue as to whether this music is homophobic or not).
With someone like M.I.A. (or, to take another dissensian nu-rockist example of bad music we should reject out of hand, Kylie) things aren't so clear-cut. I haven't seen anyone claiming that Kylie or M.I.A. are objectionable from a <i>social policy</i> perspective; the argument is simply that they make (or <i>make for</i>) bad music. Of course these arguments draw on social issues - e.g. for Mark, Kylie is the standard bearer of the strange psychic union of straight managers in pubs with teh gays in clubs in the shared pursuit of mindless consumption - but the criticism loses its specificity and force if there's not something about the music itself which allows for this social ill. But of course not everyone agrees with these assessments, so there is room for dispute as to whether this capacity for causing social ills is indeed present within the music itself.
The idea that T.O.K.'s "Chi Chi Man" is about homophobia is difficult to refute - one need simply refer to the lyric sheet. But the idea that M.I.A.'s music is definitely about a project of post-colonising class tourism, or Kylie's music is definitely about mindless consumption, are much more tenuous (if not, for that, automatically untrue) - both seek to seize control of meaning within a field of interpretation that is contested. I'd be interested in seeing an example such as this where a nu-rockist opted not to trust their own reactions, e.g. despite the fact that they enjoyed Kylie in a way they felt had nothing to do with mindless consumption, they recognised that, "objectively speaking" (i.e. because someone clever had said so), the only way one could enjoy Kylie was through mindless consumption, and therefore they decided to reject their enjoyment.
It's always struck me that, quite to the contrary, the rockist (of the old or new varieties) always appears to find his or her reactions and his or her explanations of objective quality in music to be perfectly complementary: the objective explanation merely elucidates and contextualises what had already been intuitively sensed. It is only other people, the people who have allegedly got it all wrong, who ever find their reactions out of step with historical necessity.
Mark made the point that if conviction precedes and structures responses then there is no reason for this to ever happen: whatever theoretical postion we take will determine our reaction to the music. I don't really agree with this, but it's interesting because it would appear to invalidate our reactions entirely: what we would be left with is a war of theoretical positions which could not seek to justify themselves by reference to the music itself but, rather, strictly by reference to external social factors. It robs particular pieces of music of any purpose: all they will do is reflect back to us the co-ordinates of our own convictions. Which leaves me wondering: why talk about music at all?
(nb. I'm not saying that music criticism should restrict itself to discussing the music itself; but, by the some token, music criticism which can't talk sensibly about the music would presumably be gripped by an identity crisis of sorts)
k-punk sez...
<i>So on this account, popists would reject any discussion of image, fashion, record covers etc?</i>
Not really what I meant. I've always thought of popism, in one sense at least, as being about liking Kylie, or MIA, or Buju Banton, regardless of whether you feel strictly in alignment with whatever political/social message you feel is most reasonably derived from the music. Seems like that is what is being argued against by the anti-popists here, anyway. So that's an argument strictly about the music; I don't care if it's ideologically dodgy, it's got a good beat, and I can dance to it, and I feel comfortable bracketing off whatever I might not personally disagree with because the rest of it is powerful enough to make that worthwhile.
Whereas one aspect of rockism, I've always understood, is considering only music that resonates in some larger ideological sense that you feel comfortable with to be worthwhile. In other words, privileging the extra-musical factors. Vive la revolution, and all that.
<i>Incomprehensible to whom?</i>
Incomphrensible to each other, if you don't even understand each other's basic positions! Which it doesn't seem you really do, at least some of the time.
<i>There is a third option, which I would say is the most likely: that these terms are contested.</i>
True.
<i>Dunno the story... can you explain? No doubt some anti-intellectual sentiment...</i>
Yes, I've found that this is the default reaction when intellectuals are questioned about the value of their discourse--oh, you must be an <i>anti-intellectual</i>. Suffice to say I've got lots of big fancy books on my shelves, most of which I've read all the way through
It's a long time since I read that Irvine Welsh story, but I recall it as being about a couple of high-minded philosopher old friends who take their argument down the pub one day and wind up fighting in the street about it. ie, all the words are a cloak for more basic territorial battles. That's a little unfair to characterize this endless popist/rockist debate that way, but still...
<i>So on this account, popists would reject any discussion of image, fashion, record covers etc?</i>
Not really what I meant. I've always thought of popism, in one sense at least, as being about liking Kylie, or MIA, or Buju Banton, regardless of whether you feel strictly in alignment with whatever political/social message you feel is most reasonably derived from the music. Seems like that is what is being argued against by the anti-popists here, anyway. So that's an argument strictly about the music; I don't care if it's ideologically dodgy, it's got a good beat, and I can dance to it, and I feel comfortable bracketing off whatever I might not personally disagree with because the rest of it is powerful enough to make that worthwhile.
Whereas one aspect of rockism, I've always understood, is considering only music that resonates in some larger ideological sense that you feel comfortable with to be worthwhile. In other words, privileging the extra-musical factors. Vive la revolution, and all that.
<i>Incomprehensible to whom?</i>
Incomphrensible to each other, if you don't even understand each other's basic positions! Which it doesn't seem you really do, at least some of the time.
<i>There is a third option, which I would say is the most likely: that these terms are contested.</i>
True.
<i>Dunno the story... can you explain? No doubt some anti-intellectual sentiment...</i>
Yes, I've found that this is the default reaction when intellectuals are questioned about the value of their discourse--oh, you must be an <i>anti-intellectual</i>. Suffice to say I've got lots of big fancy books on my shelves, most of which I've read all the way through
It's a long time since I read that Irvine Welsh story, but I recall it as being about a couple of high-minded philosopher old friends who take their argument down the pub one day and wind up fighting in the street about it. ie, all the words are a cloak for more basic territorial battles. That's a little unfair to characterize this endless popist/rockist debate that way, but still...
blissblogger
Well-known member
tim's points, as many as i can remember anyway
-- arguing people out of their enjoyment
well i don't think that was , or ever is, my goal, partly because it's impossible (people are very attached to their own enjoyment, it's a visceral thing) and partly because it would be bad manners. but certainly i was arguing against the significance wrapped around that particular object of enjoyment, saying that as a package it didn't really add up. there might well be a significance to the enjoyment in itself but i've not seen anyone elucidate that successfully.
-- could someone present an argument so powerful that it dissuaded me out of my own enjoyment of a record, the example given being 'renegade snares'
it's theoretically possible -- not that the enjoyment would disappear, obviously, but that you could be convinced it was unworthy or trivial. i can't think of any examples where that's happened to me. the closest in recent memory would be ian penman's review of Radiohead in the Wire where he momentarily convinced me that the record had no claims to radicalism (in ways similar to mud hut lady argument actually, that all the good things about Kid A/Amnesiac could be found elsewhere, in their purer, more original source). It didn't cause me to relinquish my pleasure in the record -- which is involuntary after all -- but did momentarily make think, ah well maybe it's not as significant as i thought. another example from a few months ago: i recently read and highly enjoyed Jonathan Coe's The Rotter's Club. While trawling the web to find out more about the author, I stumbled on a negative review of Rotter's, and while I disagreed with his overall verdict, it took me a while to shake off this "other view" of a novel that had affected me quite a bit. The book seemed slighter for a while. in particular, the critic effectively exposed one of the book's most comic scenes as essentially implausible, with the stinging comment "could be from a Tom Sharpe novel".
one of the functions of critics isn't just to praise things, introduce you to new pleasures or enrich your enjoyment of things you already like; it's to say when things are over-rated, to say "you can do better than this", "this isn't worthy of your passion". Again, life is short; there's too many fish in the sea, etc.
it's far more common for me, though, given that i'm quite firm of opinion, to have the other function of the critic affect me: be convinced that something i'd written off or not enjoyed actually does have something going for it, and learn to like it. pleasures can be acquired
non-enjoyment can be quite recalcitrant too, though--there's something about my original unseduced response to dylan that makes me still hold back despite all the very great arguments made in his favour, this despite my buying into almost everything else in the rock canon.
---- objectivity versus subjectivity
obviously criticism isn't a science. on the other hand objectivity might be a useful myth, a noble aspiration, tending to promote rigour and scrupulousness. furthermore it's hard for me to imagine someone embarking on a piece of writing AT ALL if they didn't think their words had some purchase on a truth that extends beyond their own reactions, sensorium, brain. i suppose the most productive approach, for me anyway, would be to embark in a kind of objective spirit, while remaining aware of the perspectivalism of everything and every so often situating yourself. and in fact if you look at the original review that caused so much offense, the word "I" appears at regular intervals; the filter of rockism is specifically presented as an option, if you look through these filters (content, intent, context, etc), you'll probably reach these conclusions. I explicitly say: But if you choose not to apply these filters, then fair enough, dance dance dance.
(I must add that everything i've learned since about mud hut lady has confirmed me in my opinions and shall we say expanded and enriched my lack of interest)
------ what comes first, enjoyment or the X-tra-Factors
i've never consciously observed myself experiencing a piece of music or art, i daresay it happens in any number of ways -- the initital response might be all pleasure and then the X-factors kick in during the process of living with the record or thinking about it with a view to writing about it -- or might be simultaneous, a jumbled up set of reactions -- in a certain sense i'm (professionally, as someone who earns their living doing this, but also vocationally, as someone who lives to do this) always looking for the X-factor in everything. but (anticipating your response tim) yes that too is a pleasure. the two are indivisible. the erotics of hermeneutics or something.
-- simple pleasures versus complex pleasures
yes i'll give you that, pleasure can be complex. however, poppism (this creed which appears to have no actual adherents apparently!) does tend to celebrate the instant thrill, catchiness, brevity, shiny-shiny euphoria.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
more than enough for now, but i will add
-- as well as Folk and Art, there's a whole other category of X-Factors that relate to Spirituality, Mysticism, Ritual etc and that account for everything from psychedelia to kosmische rock to the hippie side of rave
to free folk. perhaps the Sacred is where folk and art meet? at any rate all that belongs to Rockism too.
--- going to whitehouse shows for Edification really is too hairshirt for me
--- someone chucking out their REM or Elton John albums on discovering the ungodliness and perversion of their creators is entirely consistent with my point. It's of course a value scheme i utterly reject but it shows how someone could over-ride their enjoyment for the sake of a principle, a value scheme. C.f. people burning their beatles albums after 'we're bigger than jesus christ'.
-- arguing people out of their enjoyment
well i don't think that was , or ever is, my goal, partly because it's impossible (people are very attached to their own enjoyment, it's a visceral thing) and partly because it would be bad manners. but certainly i was arguing against the significance wrapped around that particular object of enjoyment, saying that as a package it didn't really add up. there might well be a significance to the enjoyment in itself but i've not seen anyone elucidate that successfully.
-- could someone present an argument so powerful that it dissuaded me out of my own enjoyment of a record, the example given being 'renegade snares'
it's theoretically possible -- not that the enjoyment would disappear, obviously, but that you could be convinced it was unworthy or trivial. i can't think of any examples where that's happened to me. the closest in recent memory would be ian penman's review of Radiohead in the Wire where he momentarily convinced me that the record had no claims to radicalism (in ways similar to mud hut lady argument actually, that all the good things about Kid A/Amnesiac could be found elsewhere, in their purer, more original source). It didn't cause me to relinquish my pleasure in the record -- which is involuntary after all -- but did momentarily make think, ah well maybe it's not as significant as i thought. another example from a few months ago: i recently read and highly enjoyed Jonathan Coe's The Rotter's Club. While trawling the web to find out more about the author, I stumbled on a negative review of Rotter's, and while I disagreed with his overall verdict, it took me a while to shake off this "other view" of a novel that had affected me quite a bit. The book seemed slighter for a while. in particular, the critic effectively exposed one of the book's most comic scenes as essentially implausible, with the stinging comment "could be from a Tom Sharpe novel".
one of the functions of critics isn't just to praise things, introduce you to new pleasures or enrich your enjoyment of things you already like; it's to say when things are over-rated, to say "you can do better than this", "this isn't worthy of your passion". Again, life is short; there's too many fish in the sea, etc.
it's far more common for me, though, given that i'm quite firm of opinion, to have the other function of the critic affect me: be convinced that something i'd written off or not enjoyed actually does have something going for it, and learn to like it. pleasures can be acquired
non-enjoyment can be quite recalcitrant too, though--there's something about my original unseduced response to dylan that makes me still hold back despite all the very great arguments made in his favour, this despite my buying into almost everything else in the rock canon.
---- objectivity versus subjectivity
obviously criticism isn't a science. on the other hand objectivity might be a useful myth, a noble aspiration, tending to promote rigour and scrupulousness. furthermore it's hard for me to imagine someone embarking on a piece of writing AT ALL if they didn't think their words had some purchase on a truth that extends beyond their own reactions, sensorium, brain. i suppose the most productive approach, for me anyway, would be to embark in a kind of objective spirit, while remaining aware of the perspectivalism of everything and every so often situating yourself. and in fact if you look at the original review that caused so much offense, the word "I" appears at regular intervals; the filter of rockism is specifically presented as an option, if you look through these filters (content, intent, context, etc), you'll probably reach these conclusions. I explicitly say: But if you choose not to apply these filters, then fair enough, dance dance dance.
(I must add that everything i've learned since about mud hut lady has confirmed me in my opinions and shall we say expanded and enriched my lack of interest)
------ what comes first, enjoyment or the X-tra-Factors
i've never consciously observed myself experiencing a piece of music or art, i daresay it happens in any number of ways -- the initital response might be all pleasure and then the X-factors kick in during the process of living with the record or thinking about it with a view to writing about it -- or might be simultaneous, a jumbled up set of reactions -- in a certain sense i'm (professionally, as someone who earns their living doing this, but also vocationally, as someone who lives to do this) always looking for the X-factor in everything. but (anticipating your response tim) yes that too is a pleasure. the two are indivisible. the erotics of hermeneutics or something.
-- simple pleasures versus complex pleasures
yes i'll give you that, pleasure can be complex. however, poppism (this creed which appears to have no actual adherents apparently!) does tend to celebrate the instant thrill, catchiness, brevity, shiny-shiny euphoria.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
more than enough for now, but i will add
-- as well as Folk and Art, there's a whole other category of X-Factors that relate to Spirituality, Mysticism, Ritual etc and that account for everything from psychedelia to kosmische rock to the hippie side of rave
to free folk. perhaps the Sacred is where folk and art meet? at any rate all that belongs to Rockism too.
--- going to whitehouse shows for Edification really is too hairshirt for me
--- someone chucking out their REM or Elton John albums on discovering the ungodliness and perversion of their creators is entirely consistent with my point. It's of course a value scheme i utterly reject but it shows how someone could over-ride their enjoyment for the sake of a principle, a value scheme. C.f. people burning their beatles albums after 'we're bigger than jesus christ'.