Hero Story, Variant 7.b
Jan. 15th, 2007 10:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koganbotHere'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.)
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.)
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no subject
Date: 2007-01-16 06:32 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-16 06:52 pm (UTC)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.