Look, are you trying to draw me into this conversation? I mean, I could be off colonizing Faye Wong speculating about the relationship between country music and the theme-song to a Japanese videogame that's sung in English by a Chinese woman who was born in Beijing but originally rose to fame singing in Cantonese rather than Mandarin.
I've heard maybe three songs by Vampire Weekend. I've read fewer pieces by Jessica Hopper than that, as far as I know, and haven't read the one you refer to. I've read only one of the posts by Abebe that address the issue, and I take it that he's made a whole bunch more. In that post he said that Hopper was playing a game of one-upmanship, but he didn't address why or how that particular game of one-upmanship came to be. Maybe he addressed the why and the how in some other post, but to leave it at "it's one-upmanship" and "it's posturing" and "people are suspicious of being bourgeois" doesn't get us very far. If he's correct, and what's going on is one-upmanship, this quotation would be useful:
Heroin is the most popular addictive drug used by Negroes because, it seems to me, the drug itself transforms the Negro's normal separation from the mainstream of society into an advantage (which, I have been saying, I think it is anyway). It is one-upmanship of the highest order... The terms of value change radically, and no one can tell the "nodding junkie" that employment or success are of any value at all. --LeRoi Jones, Blues People, 1963
And as Nitsuh points out, this sort of anti-success one-upmanship is part of middle-class culture too, and mainstream American culture, obv., or we wouldn't be engaging in it. So how did it get here? (Not to be self-involved and all, but this is the question that huge hunks of my book wrestle with, starting from the preface and the entire first section and going onward from there. But a particularly relevant after–Real Punks piece of mine on the subject (if it is the subject) is "The Rules Of The Game #14: The Death Of The Cool." (I assume the title of Nitsuh's post is coincidental; that he never knew of my column, but he, like me, does know the Jean Renoir film.))
You shouldn't come in deciding that the band is really about being bourgeois or whatever. You should come in and as the evidence moves you, maybe the kind of argument you're making changes too.
Well, who would argue with this? But this obvious procedure breaks down all over the place, in writing, thinking, reading, listening. And from what I can tell, lotsa readers, writers, and editors are fine with the breakdown.
no subject
colonizing Faye Wongspeculating about the relationship between country music and the theme-song to a Japanese videogame that's sung in English by a Chinese woman who was born in Beijing but originally rose to fame singing in Cantonese rather than Mandarin.I've heard maybe three songs by Vampire Weekend. I've read fewer pieces by Jessica Hopper than that, as far as I know, and haven't read the one you refer to. I've read only one of the posts by Abebe that address the issue, and I take it that he's made a whole bunch more. In that post he said that Hopper was playing a game of one-upmanship, but he didn't address why or how that particular game of one-upmanship came to be. Maybe he addressed the why and the how in some other post, but to leave it at "it's one-upmanship" and "it's posturing" and "people are suspicious of being bourgeois" doesn't get us very far. If he's correct, and what's going on is one-upmanship, this quotation would be useful:
Heroin is the most popular addictive drug used by Negroes because, it seems to me, the drug itself transforms the Negro's normal separation from the mainstream of society into an advantage (which, I have been saying, I think it is anyway). It is one-upmanship of the highest order... The terms of value change radically, and no one can tell the "nodding junkie" that employment or success are of any value at all.
--LeRoi Jones, Blues People, 1963
And as Nitsuh points out, this sort of anti-success one-upmanship is part of middle-class culture too, and mainstream American culture, obv., or we wouldn't be engaging in it. So how did it get here? (Not to be self-involved and all, but this is the question that huge hunks of my book wrestle with, starting from the preface and the entire first section and going onward from there. But a particularly relevant after–Real Punks piece of mine on the subject (if it is the subject) is "The Rules Of The Game #14: The Death Of The Cool." (I assume the title of Nitsuh's post is coincidental; that he never knew of my column, but he, like me, does know the Jean Renoir film.))
You shouldn't come in deciding that the band is really about being bourgeois or whatever. You should come in and as the evidence moves you, maybe the kind of argument you're making changes too.
Well, who would argue with this? But this obvious procedure breaks down all over the place, in writing, thinking, reading, listening. And from what I can tell, lotsa readers, writers, and editors are fine with the breakdown.