Frank Kogan

that is to say, I think, that in terms of "class" we have no power, or none individually, but only collectively. But I don't like the way that sounds.

Maybe my hang-ups above were related to this uneasy feeling as well -- actually, this gets at what was going on in "Pretty Girls": we have a vague feeling something must be wrong, but often the crisis has more to do with how we've framed the situation (socially or through the language we use) than the situation itself (perhaps the situation isn't a "situation" as in problem-that-requires-solving, but is merely a situation-that-is). One benefit of using high school tags is that we get rid of (some of) the notions that class disparities must be changed or righted. More often (in the HS examples), they simply change as they change (depending on chance, stimuli from pop culture, opinion leaders, etc.) and there isn't some clear "line of action" to take to "fix" the situation. I.e., even if people tend to cluster around skater or prep or jock etc., there's no law saying that [econ bracket] must be [social role], etc. (The Marxist proletarian/bourgeois class split might be helpful in framing a discussion of institutional inequality, but I do wonder -- kind of in response to what Mark is saying above -- whether or not we need such an absolute framework to notice these problems, as if without simplification into clear-cut categories we won't notice that economic/gender/etc. disparities exist. Not rhetorical, either, I really do wonder this and I have about zero grasp of actual Marxist theory via academia 'cept in Hollywood film production.)

Might just be rephrasing some of the above points here. Where this gets a little complicated, I guess, is that there is a "law" of sorts that says "individual people group into classes of people," or more simply, "people group." (Whether or not they want to do it or have control in it is to some extent a side issue; I can wring my hands all I want about where I get grouped, but also can't deny that I'm getting group there, and also can't deny that I don't always mind being grouped, indeed often enjoy being grouped.)

No, I'm still wringing my hands. I just have this feeling that there's some kind of disconnect between the social implications of listening to the music we do as members of a "cluster" and those visceral responses that lead us to like or dislike what we do. Maybe one area that would be useful in "bridging" the insights on social class and visceral response (Metal Clusters versus Boney Joan?) is this idea of "learned taste," the process through which we teach/tell/rationalize to ourselves how to like something, and the processes through which other people facilitate this? Learning to dance, learning to ask the right questions, learning to pay attention or stop paying so much goddam attention -- in fact, I had the lattermost experience watching The Family Stone; about halfway thru the movie I realized I was literally causing myself undue agitation because I was leaning forward, analyzing constantly, "dissecting" it as if it was a Hollis Frampton film. This was totally inappropriate, and even though I still didn't really like the movie, I liked it more than I would have if I'd kept at the rigorous viewing. This varies more for me in music -- I find that I can pay lots of or little attention to Paris without it making much of a difference, but can't listen to most low-key techno outside of headphones; always end up paying a lot of attention to Ashlee when I listen to her, which can be unreasonably taxing depending on the song -- if I listen to "Pieces of Me" the way I listen to "Better Off," I drive myself nuts, in fact often end up skipping track 2 because I'm too invested in it and feel weirdly disappointed. Same experience with Aly and AJ's new alb, which I just bought and sounds GREAT in the background.