Hero Story, Variant 7.b

[koganbot]

Here's a (slightly reworded) post of mine from an ongoing dialogue between me and Dave Moore over on Cure for Bedbugs. I was responding via Haloscan to his post of Jan. 9; he replied in his entry for Jan. 11. The discussion is about what basic bad arguments and bad assumptions those who sneer at Ashlee-Lindsay-Paris are making, but I'm also trying to probe into what interesting, deep, powerful, culture-wide, and maybe good Hero Stories the bad arguments and assumptions feed off of. So I'm continuing a conversation from chapters 1 and 7 of my book.

Bear in mind that variant 7.b of the basic Critic Hero Story is "Everyone's being snookered but me," and that this story can be applied to almost anything. Take, for example, my complaint in the first Why Music Sucks back in 1987 that the indie-alternative world lets the symbol stand in for the effect (e.g., symbolizing rebellion rather than actually creating a rebellion): Whether it was the performer, the audience, or some backstage financier who was calling the shots wasn't a big issue for me, since I was assuming that performer and audience were both happy to maintain and support each other in their delusion. But I was saying that Indieland was snookering itself and that I saw this and that most other indie people didn't. So, my point is that though the sneering at Ashlee and Lindsay and Paris is shallow and ugly and stupid and wrong, it still draws on some impulses within the culture that you and I and probably most other people we come across share. That is, Ashlee bashers think Ashlee (or Ashlee Plus Handlers) are selling her audience a bill of goods; but then you and I think that the Ashlee bashers are selling their readers a bill of goods. Of course we're right and the Ashlee bashers are wrong, which makes a difference; but nonetheless, both they and we ride an urge to tell the basic Hero Story. And so I want to partially reverse what counts as cause and effect here, to note that there's a self-feeding circle: What's going on isn't only that the haters make certain assumptions about Britney and Ashlee and the bizzers and the manipulators and the manipulated, and therefore tell this story of Ashlee and her audience being manipulated. Rather, the haters (also) make these assumptions so that they can tell the story. Now, I don't want to go all French here and overstate the case by saying that the story is paramount. (It's not as if everyone must tell the story, or that the story exists for no reason.) But rather I want to keep in mind that what we're calling "assumptions" are usually ad hoc. So when the Idolators sneer at Paris for lacking previous musical experience and at her audience for buying her CD despite her unacceptable résumé, this isn't because (1) they believe in a basic principle that all performers must have previous demonstrable musical experience to be valid or good, or (2) they believe that pop idols in general have little musical experience unless it's been demonstrated otherwise (interesting that they assume that Paris couldn't ever, say, have had piano lessons and couldn't have learned anything at dances and clubs etc.). Rather, they're just coming up with things that momentarily support their sneer and support their stance. (Or that's the way it seems to me, not having access to their minds or discussing with them what they think they're trying to do.)

Comments

[koganbot]

The thing about the Hero Story is that it's not necessarily a bad story, even Variant 7.b. "Everyone else is full of shit" is a common tone of Richard Meltzer and Manny Farber and Pauline Kael and Chuck Eddy, but those people all had novel ideas and knew how to reexamine their own opinions. But I'm thinking of continuing on with posts about the ubiquity of the Hero Story. I mean, our Hero Story is that we're the few, the brave, who give Paris a fair listen, right?

[koganbot]

Er, that was a response to a comment by Eppy, which he must have recalled in order to adjust the parts.

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

I meant to cut out the first paragraph and repost, but then I forgot to copy what I originally wrote. Oh well.

[koganbot]

Here are paragraphs 2 and 3 or what you wrote:

That said, I appreciate the points here. I was trying to write this whole thing about an "economy of shame," which is a critical community where you scored points by making people feel bad about their opinions, but since all you have to do to do that is say "what you think it's wrong," it can easily spiral out of control, and yeah, the internet does feel like that's happening sometimes. And I definitely felt like a part of that, arguing that you should be ashamed of your shaming, and that doesn't really make sense. I'm trying to step back from it a little, enforcing an ILM ban on myself that seems to be holding so far.

The second post on my new blog will be about Paris, and I think it steps out of the story, or at least tries to tell a different story. The first post is totally going to be Critic Hero Story shit though, hahaha. It's just so fun! "Everyone is wrong but me!"

[koganbot]

of what you wrote.

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

I've actually had a hard time reading Kael because of that. Maybe because her opinons have become so widely accepted (at least in the criticism I read) her stance strikes me as being dogmatic, even though she was being heroic at the time.

I'm probably thinking too much of myself and the times when the hero stance got into every damn thing I wrote, even when it had no place there, and it got boring. I wasn't really willing to do the grunt work of boosting specific things that advance the stance without explicitly stating it.

But isn't "I am seeing what no one else does" what almost any piece of criticism does? Why would you write something unless you thought it offered a fresh perspective? It definitely doesn't have to be a bad story, but I'm interested in how it can spiral out of control (see above) and what stops it from doing so. Is the stance being opposed a productive stance, too? And are things being lost in its ubiquity? Critics are really drawn to that rebel stance, like you say, but is that maybe skewing our perspective?

But yeah, I'm definitely guilty of it (still) and would love to hear more.

[koganbot]

But isn't "I am seeing what no one else does" what almost any piece of criticism does? Why would you write something unless you thought it offered a fresh perspective?

Exactly! I'd say that very few pieces of criticism actually see what no one else does, but it's certainly a laudable goal. This is why the Hero Story is a good Hero Story, and widespread. But there are a lot of journals and journalists who adopt a sneering, sarcastic, dismissive "We are not fooled" voice as their default tone while searching for easy targets and taking standard positions. And some that adopt the foul tone but nonetheless have something interesting to say.

[mcatzilut.livejournal.com]

We tell the same narratives over and over again because they are compelling narratives. So with this particular Hero Story (which is really an anti-Hero story, because instead of embarking on an epic, the Hero is criticizing the epic) exists only because it rings true for people. As long as music exists within the context of our lives, critiquing Paris for being fake, and manifactured, is a way at revenging oneself on all the fake and manifactured things in our life.

(One thing that this ignores is Paris's participation in this story - if you believe she has a say in her image, which is the flipside of a narrative which assumes she's being "handled." Which is to say; if you read Paris as being handled, then you've turned her into a twice-over victim. She's being victimized by her handlers who know more than her, and now she's being victimized by the storyteller, who picks on her instead of the real villians. On the other side, she's completely in control, which means it's a willful participation.)

Once the story stops being compelling (as it has for you, Frank, I assume. As it certainly has for me - my criticism of Paris tried to stay away from that narrative), a new story replaces it. Still, it seems to me that the new narrative has to be a reaction to the old narrative. Thus, the new story is always distinguished by how different it is to the old one. Where your narrative occurs - the hero is the person who realizes that Paris-bashers are ridiculous.

[mcatzilut.livejournal.com]

There's also the variation on the "Everyone is being snookered" Hero Story - which is the "I'm going to tell the truth, even if it kills me." Ideally in that story, the whistleblower is martyr'ed for the truth - which makes this variation odd - because the only person being martyr'ed is Paris, about whom the truth is being told. Think "An Enemy of the People" (Ibsen/Miller).

[koganbot]

Well, Variant 7.b seems to me to be a straightup Hero Story, not an anti-Hero Story, since it's the critic who's the Hero. Paris is just giving the critic the opportunity to be the Hero. Whether she's someone to denigrate or someone to champion or simply someone to evaluate seriously, you - as denigrator or champion or fair-minded critic - can be the Hero, if you want to play it that way, and people can see you as the Hero even if you yourself don't see you that way. Even if you try not to convey any attitude one way or another about whether you're defying some norm and whether everyone else is getting snookered, this doesn't mean people won't - correctly - see you as defying some norm. And perhaps I'll see you as the Hero who's not been snookered into participating in the Hero Story. (Sticky thing, that Hero Story.) Anyway, I don't see where I'm outside the Hero Story.

[mcatzilut.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying you're outside the Hero Story -- I'm saying you're outside that Hero Story. You're in a new one (like you pointed out above) where you're the Hero not being snookered in by the bill of goods the other critics are producing. Or actually, you're still apart of the original Hero Story, you're just taking over the role of Hero.

Anyway - My point about the anti-Hero is that I think we tend to identify Heroism with risk. And a critic who criticizes Paris is only taking a risk if everyone else loves her. But there's a suspension of disbelief if that's what the critic thinks. The person taking the risk is Paris, who is exposing herself to the critic.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think Paris has arguably taken the least risk...and I know it will sound hypocritical after a lot of what I've said about her, but in terms of Paris's actual career, she has so far declined (1) to make any attempt to tour or even really perform her songs, (2) to state that she has any interest in making another album or pursue a further music career, (3) expressed any real concern that this venture doesn't have very high returns.

Now this is largely speculative, and I'm undermined here somewhat by, for instance, what Scott Storch says about how Paris's album was handled, which is basically that the marketing was egregious and they destroyed any chance Paris had of really surprising people and making a crucial early step in her music career, which suggests a second and third step (though I think he's simply underestimating how vehemently a lot of her potential audience hates her). And obviously I can't tell you whether or not Paris's infamy and low sales figures keep her up nights. But I do think that in this story, Paris's general reception before and after the album are basically identical, and there's no "arc" like with, say, Ashlee Simpson, whose whole career is her music career (unless you count minor acting gigs). Now, I'm saying (as the 7.b critic?) that it's precisely because of "everyone else's" (to generalize, since one problem with 7.b is that "everyone" is never really everyone) existing problems with and assumptions about Paris, and their unwillingness to let the album challenge what they already believe about her, that she is now in this position. But there's been no Great Rise or (more appropriately) Great Fall, or even a perceived Great Rise/Fall, which makes Paris neither a martyr nor a hero/anti-hero. The story may not be Paris's as much as it is the story of her detractors versus her supporters; the process of understanding how "everyone" is using Paris to get at something else they're trying to express about themselves or how they see the world -- specifically, what's wrong with the world (and "everyone," and themselves).

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Although, also important to this discussion, a lot of times "everyone" is only suggested, and the 7.bs' targets are very specific. When I think of my favorite Pauline Kael pieces, I think of when she just ruthlessly cuts down some of her more prominent peers -- she wasn't just saying "everyone is beeing fooled but me," she was saying "BOSLEY CROWTHER at the NEW YORK TIMES is a fool, and he's trying to fool you, the reader, you who is also reading me. And here is how and why."

One thing I don't see a whole lot of in current music writing is this sort of exchange between critics. Idolator (for instance) frequently calls out Pitchfork-the-entity for being pretentious (or whatever) but they don't challenge the writers or, more importantly, what it is that the writers really write. They don't really name names (technically they publish the author's name, of course) and the writing is said to be "self-evidently" ridiculous (which it usually isn't...in fact, they've attacked lines that I really liked when I first read them in context).

And speaking of Crowther, Kael refers to the "reverse acumen that makes him invaluable," which I think could (sometimes) be applied to Stephen Thomas Erlewine, whose reviews I read all the time and whose opinions I respect, and with whom I disagree violently almost all of the time (even when our [original] star ratings are the same!).

[koganbot]

Wait, you and I and Eppy and Mordy and Chuck and Greg and Lex and Alex and a couple of Tims and Sterling and Moggy and (over on Rolling Country) Edd and Matt and Roy and Don are continually questioning and elaborating on each other's ideas. It's just that practically no one else is paying attention.

I don't think Kael and Sarris learned a damn thing from each other during their blasts at each other over the auteur theory.

[koganbot]

That said, I've been very frustrated over the last 20 years (in WMS and in ilX) at how few people are willing to sustain an intellectual conversation, or even know how to.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

"Exchange" maybe isn't the right word for what I'm describing in this case...more like SMACKDOWN. I mean words that can draw blood, words that make people really reconsider why it is they think what they think or write what they write (or "wrote what they wrote," to be more specific), even if they ultimately don't do anything about it.

As far as auteur theory is concerned, I'm generally against it. I think that puts me more in Kael's camp, though I haven't read much of Kael on it and haven't read any of Sarris on it. But I have been in film school with a bunch of "auteur" bozos, so maybe I'm prejudiced.

[koganbot]

Naw, you're not against the auteur theory, or you'd be smackin' me down, since I'm "auteurist" all the way. Odd thing - reason I put "auteurist" in quotation marks - is that I'm not particularly interested in the question "Who is the author of the song or film?" (except when I'm trying to figure out whether it's Kara or Ashlee I should fall in love with). I'm willing to credit corporations and zeitgeists, if I feel like it. But "mise en scène" - which basically means "musical or cinematic choices" - is the crucial concept, not "author." Reread chapter 17 and chapter 3 or my book, and realize that where a Cahiers guy like Rivette would have said "artist's vision," I'm talking about "social relations," but that it's still basically the same thing. And of course I like to bring audiences and critics into the game (their social relations/visions).

Trouble with smackdowns is that the smackers tend to go into litigation mode, which means that they look for weaknesses and vulnerabilities. True intellectuals go after an adversary's strength, because that's what interests them.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Well I guess if you can be an auteurist who doesn't (necessarily) give a crap about authorship, I can get behind that. You can also be a filmmaker who doesn't make films.

Actually I'm way more interested in the second point. I deleted a part of my last comment where I basically said that lots of writers, music and otherwise, are content to fiercely and uncompromisingly draw straw (which I followed with "har har"). Including me plenty of the time (sometimes you get red straw). But this might actually be a common flaw of the 7.b critic, who can substitute "everyone but me" for whatever or whoever it is he or she is really getting at.