Twees're Good (except they're not)

[baboon2004]

Yea, this is precisely what ie John Lewis do. They sell you the whole lot, the same way urban outfitters do. But it's true that whatever culture/subculture you are part of this will happen. like if you 'bought in' to jungle music you'd be buying into a whole lot else, for example certain types of clothes (spliffy jeans? lol i dunno). basically as a consumer you wouldn't be defined by individual choices, you'd be buying the whole lot.

this might be where authenticity comes back into it. there's a certain lack of autonomy in buying in a culture wholesale whether is jungle or bourgeois john lewis liberalism. this basically this leaves us with a clear distinction between authentic and inauthentic consumerism.

i never thought you had to do that, which s'pose is why I had a memorable moment requesting some 'more funky house' once after a DJ had put Kyla/Crazy Cousinz on, where the DJ was like 'you don't look like the kind of person who'd be into funky mate'. I thought his surpirse was quite cool but at the same time quite sad in terms of how restrictive culture/signifiers can become. People move in packs!

 

[mistersloane]

Nice rant but it's all rather myopic. Like there aren't white middle class people, born and bread in the city, who just eat this shit up. Or people of all classes, from anywhere in the country, who'll hate twee for the exact same reasons. Or middle class white boys who get overly angry about such things in an attempt to rebel.

yeah I know, I was drunk and I wanted to make people laugh. And I hate the country. And people who live it in.

 

[computer_rock]

i never thought you had to do that, which s'pose is why I had a memorable moment requesting some 'more funky house' once after a DJ had put Kyla/Crazy Cousinz on, where the DJ was like 'you don't look like the kind of person who'd be into funky mate'. I thought his surpirse was quite cool but at the same time quite sad in terms of how restrictive culture/signifiers can become. People move in packs!

yeah! and not to cast any aspersions on you, but it just occurred to me that this is probably where the 'legitimacy' of 'hipster' eclecticism lies.

 

[mistersloane]

Also has anyone complaining in this thread about middle class consumerism looked in the middle class consumerism sorry I mean 'miscellaneous' subforum of dissensus recently?

Although obviously our interest in obscure American designers and random foodie stuff is genuine and authentic whereas via our hipster-ESP we can tell that the people we look down on only like vintage stuff "because it's cool".

Oh yeah I know, but my sort of consumerism is better. At least I know I'm a cunt, I'm not fooling anyone. We demand conscious consumerism for cunts! at all times! Not delusion.

There's also Emma Goldman :

"I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things. Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal." (Living My life, p. 56)

And baboon's right about Charlie Brooker, we haven't forgotten that one Charlie, and we will never forget.

 

[mistersloane]

so how did universal middle class 'cool' become dominated by twee?

Yeah it's this really. Good question, and it's probably just Smiths fans growing up and starting to run things. I love the Smiths, but I fear this is true.

 

[Slothrop]

Yea, this is precisely what ie John Lewis do. They sell you the whole lot, the same way urban outfitters do. But it's true that whatever culture/subculture you are part of this will happen. like if you 'bought in' to jungle music you'd be buying into a whole lot else, for example certain types of clothes (spliffy jeans? lol i dunno). basically as a consumer you wouldn't be defined by individual choices, you'd be buying the whole lot.

this might be where authenticity comes back into it. there's a certain lack of autonomy in buying in a culture wholesale whether is jungle or bourgeois john lewis liberalism. this basically this leaves us with a clear distinction between authentic and inauthentic consumerism.

It doesn't have to be sold wholesale by the same place though - I mean, part of what we're railing at is the idea that going to a range of peer-group-approved small outlets (farmers markets, local delis, smaller high street fashion places, alternative craft fairs, artisanal mayonnaise shops etc) makes you a better person than someone who just goes to Morrisons and Next or whatever.

I suppose the Dissensus argument would be that although we do the same thing with turkish grocers, record shops, carefully approved big high street fashion chains, independent book shops, the chilli stall on borough market, sichuan restaurants in obscure corners of London etc, we don't think it makes us better people. But I think we're on rather thin ice there...

Going back to the adverts, I think what's so irritating about them is that they're both cloyingly sentimental, faux-naif, cutesy rubbish and cynically manipulative marketing. Edit: erk, I'm running into an authenticity argument myself now...

 

[baboon2004]

but for starters i think that's a valid difference, not looking down on people, and trying to put what you do do in context/being reflective about it, and feeling free enough to actively like what you genuinely love (which will mean a huge, unfettered range of things that won't be rducible to any one 'lifestyle', but also will not include psy-trance).

being reflective is a very important difference indeed.

@Sloane, most Smiths fans still think Morrissey is 'ok'/better as a person though. I put on 'This Night has Opened My Eyes' and can't square the beautiful lyrics with Morrissey's stunted, hollow mind, until I remember most of them were written by Shelagh Delaney. The man got away with more uninterrogted lyrical theft than anyone else I can think of....

 

[SecondLine]

...we do the same thing with turkish grocers, record shops, carefully approved big high street fashion chains, independent book shops, the chilli stall on borough market, sichuan restaurants in obscure corners of London etc...

Look fwd to publication of Slothrop's 'LDN! A Handbook For The Discerning Dissensian'

 

[Slothrop]

Look fwd to publication of Slothrop's 'LDN! A Handbook For The Discerning Dissensian'

Printed on recycled takeaway menus by unemployed record shop staff, and available from a West Indian grocery near you - soon!

 

[baboon2004]

gazooks, has this whole thread been one long publishing ruse in disguise? ever get the feeling you've been cheated...

 

[Slothrop]

gazooks, has this whole thread been one long publishing ruse in disguise? ever get the feeling you've been cheated...

Argumentative is the new Twee...

 

[PadaEtc]

Sometimes when I buy records I realise a couple weeks after the records come and I haven't listened to it much that I don't actually like it. It's usually a record that fits in to a certain aesthetic I like, but the actual record doesn't do anything for me. I always say "I won't do that again!" but a couple months later I realise I've done it again.

Does anyone else do this or is it just me?

My Mrs likes Mumford and Sons actually. I don't think it is really a lifestyle or anything they are selling, its just inoffensive background music.

 

[mistersloane]

it's just people buying high street stuff that looks like somebody died in it in the 80s.

That really made me laugh, it's a great line. Moment of death couture.

 

[matt b]

No you're not, there's plenty of people who don't like darkness or modern urban music and who like knitting and stupid craft markets for people to make shit that no-one wants but they buy it. And they should go and live in the country. They like it there. They like it there with their parents. They like children and houses and dogs and breeding. They should fuck off out of cities...

These people can't sustain their lifestyles in the country. No one is going to buy a jumper with the asking price of £x, when you can get it for 1/4 of the price in the charity shops that now make up most rural town's high streets, or in the craft fairs that stink of piss in the town hall.

You in the cities created them, you keep them.

this might be where authenticity comes back into it. there's a certain lack of autonomy in buying in a culture wholesale whether is jungle or bourgeois john lewis liberalism. this basically this leaves us with a clear distinction between authentic and inauthentic consumerism.

Isn't it more about modern and post-modern consumerism? 'Authenticity' is too, erm, gaseous to grab hold of, but certainly in order to be a Junglist in 1994, you'd need to know something about the music and culture. Now it appears I can just buy a tweed 3 piece and an acoustic guitar. Or whatever. Just consume.

 

[slowtrain]

Sometimes when I buy records I realise a couple weeks after the records come and I haven't listened to it much that I don't actually like it. It's usually a record that fits in to a certain aesthetic I like, but the actual record doesn't do anything for me. I always say "I won't do that again!" but a couple months later I realise I've done it again.

Does anyone else do this or is it just me?

My Mrs likes Mumford and Sons actually. I don't think it is really a lifestyle or anything they are selling, its just inoffensive background music.

Yes I have done this a couple of times.

My way around it has been to cultivate a personal mystique that allows me to do whatever the fuck I want and stop cultivating any personal mystiques.

 

[computer_rock]

These people can't sustain their lifestyles in the country. No one is going to buy a jumper with the asking price of £x, when you can get it for 1/4 of the price in the charity shops that now make up most rural town's high streets, or in the craft fairs that stink of piss in the town hall.

You in the cities created them, you keep them.



Isn't it more about modern and post-modern consumerism? 'Authenticity' is too, erm, gaseous to grab hold of, but certainly in order to be a Junglist in 1994, you'd need to know something about the music and culture. Now it appears I can just buy a tweed 3 piece and an acoustic guitar. Or whatever. Just consume.

postmodernism is fucking gay mate

 

[SecondLine]

Isn't it more about modern and post-modern consumerism? 'Authenticity' is too, erm, gaseous to grab hold of, but certainly in order to be a Junglist in 1994, you'd need to know something about the music and culture. Now it appears I can just buy a tweed 3 piece and an acoustic guitar. Or whatever. Just consume.

Don't see how 'post-modern' is any less gaseous than 'authenticity' as a defining term for consumerism, maybe I just haven't read enough books. But ultimately what you're saying, that 'you'd need to know *something* about the music and culture', is prescribing what that 'something' is and in that way sketching out the perimeter within which engagement with the culture is 'authentic'.

There's an argument that dance music is one of the few 'modernist' cultures left in the West - hence we still wrangle over things like authenticity, innovation, boundary-breaking, experimentalism on here, long after most people have got bored and moved on. I don't know, it's a knotty issue, I'm tired.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I like to make a distinction between things I see as 'honestly cynical' (good) and 'cynically honest' (bad).

E.g. Lou Reed, Throbbing Gristle, Pet Shop Boys, nihilistic hip-hop, Paul Verhoeven, William Burroughs and Brett Easton Ellis are all (I would say) honestly cynical. Whereas Wes Craven (edit: haha, or Wes Anderson, even), Amelie, Kate Nash, Innocent smoothies and any indie music involving lots of hand-clapping, breathy, affectedly artless "oh my gosh!" vocals and a video with a faux-retro filter on the camera are all cynically honest.

So few people are cynical for the right reasons these days, it breaks my heart.

 

[Slothrop]

Isn't it more about modern and post-modern consumerism? 'Authenticity' is too, erm, gaseous to grab hold of, but certainly in order to be a Junglist in 1994, you'd need to know something about the music and culture. Now it appears I can just buy a tweed 3 piece and an acoustic guitar. Or whatever. Just consume.

It's an interesting point, but I'm not sure. There seem to be two very different demographics and styles of twee that we're talking about here - the subset of hipsterism that wears tweed suits and totes acoustic guitars, and erm, a couple of mobile phone adverts plus Cath Kidston from which we've somehow extrapolated the behaviour of the entire English middle class.

From the hipster side, I'd guess that it's not what you do it's the way that you do it, as ever, and I think you'd probably need to be just as tuned in to actually look and sound and act like a twee hipster. Because if it was that easy to do, there'd be no subcultural capital to be had, so the the hipsters would move on elsewhere.

 

[computer_rock]

postmodernism is fucking gay mate

ahem. i should have said i think post modernism is the most elusive of concepts, but i do think you have a point in that, especially nowadays (postmodernism, hyperconsumerism or whatever), it's possible to pick select a culture off the shelf and 'just consume'. how that relates to authenticity is quite interesting. it definitely completely undermines 'modern' concepts of authenticity - the essentialist (?) idea that you're supposed to be SOMETHING and the choices you make are authentic in relation to that.

this is a really good rsa animate of the topic of choice by renata salecl (used to be married to zizek lol)