Rules Of The Game #21: When The Wrong Song Loves You Right

[koganbot]

I talk about Celine and the White Stripes. I quote Nia (and once again rely on her brain).

The Rules Of The Game #21: When The Wrong Song Loves You Right

This time I'm doing something of a free association, stitched together at the last minute - I'd envisioned writing a different piece and then abandoned that other piece and did this - and the seams show a bit, but the following question might help you guys pull it together, and needs to be something we explore further:

What are we - "we" meaning specifically (but not limited to) my livejournal buddies and related gangs - trying to get out from under? This is a question I've been asking publically for 21 years or so (and asking it of myself since about 1970), but the question's never taken hold in the culture, and it needs to.

My hatred for antirockism - and for people's use of the word "rockism" at all, the whole discussion of "rockism" pro and con - is that the discussion sidestepped the question "What are we trying to get out from under?" and replaced it with "What are they doing wrong?" And since antirockism was about defeating an enemy rather than trying to understand ourselves, really what happened was that the antirockist was projecting a reductively stupid form of his own ideas onto the supposed rockist and then knocking down the ideas he'd projected, so achieving an easy victory over a nonexistent foe.* And this is true even when the antirockist was thinking of his former self - or even his own "rockist" tendencies - when he said "rockism."

(*Notice that antipoptimism follows the exact same pattern.)

A (too?) easy way of pulling the piece together would have been to say that an analogy to "doing it wrong" - and to using "doing it wrong" as a strategy to get out from under something or other - would be our liking what people such as us are not supposed to like (e.g., liking Celine Dion). I think this formulation is good as far as it goes - i.e., that liking Celine Dion may get us out from under something (though that's not a particularly good explanation of why I like Celine Dion) - but it's still wrong, in that what we're doing isn't particularly liking what we're not supposed to like (is "what we're not supposed to like" all that self-evident?), but rather taking seriously what other people aren't taking seriously - the other people sometimes including fans of the artists we're taking seriously.

I don't think it's cool that the intelligentsia was able to sneer at Elvis in '56 and that it sneers at Ashlee now. But I also don't think it's cool either that, e.g., poptasticuk, who loves loves loves pop, says that "for me all this analysis is unnecessary when it comes to pop music."

But isn't "taking it seriously" a big hunk of what we're trying to get out from under, what Leslie was trying to get away from when she had us detune our guitars? Give ourselves some space, some relief? Isn't the weight of "seriousness" what makes so much of respectable culture so stupid and dead? The question here might be "which form of seriousness is at issue?" But I like Ashlee (especially) for pretty much straight-up "respectable" reasons, and if the fact that her being confined to an area that stupid respectable intellectual culture holds in disrepute is one of the things that protects people like Ashlee and helps them to flourish, well, I'm trying to get rid of those protections.

I'm not saying anything I wasn't saying two decades ago.

EDIT: Here are links to all but three of my other Rules Of The Game columns (LVW's search results for "Rules of the Game"). Links for the other three (which for some reason didn't get "Rules Of The Game" in their titles), are here: #4, #5, and #8.

UPDATE: I've got all the links here now:

http://koganbot.livejournal.com/179531.html

Comments

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Didn't we have a conversation about this over on the teenpop thread at one point, where it got to be that "seriousness" as concept started getting too big to be useful? Only because you can "take seriously" without being "serious."

I think the seriousness at issue is the one that says: "anyone could make good music." I don't think there's anyone that would deny this in the abstract, but the problems tend to start (in terms of Ashlee, anyway) when you start running down a list of whom the category "anyone" includes. "Britney?" "But shedo with it." Etc.

Clearly "stupid respectable intellectual culture" is itself "hiding something," i.e. you're suggesting that there's something actively anti-intellectual about the way it conducts its business. Respectable isn't inherently a negative trait; it's just a trait like "good taste," which has been tainted for rock criticism -- I like Ashlee respectable. I think her music will probably suffer if she goes frivolous on her next album. But that doesn't mean that I have to privilege "respectability" above any other trait when I like a given piece of music.

One thing a lot of music fans seem to get themselves out from under is the mess that happens when you realize that you have to take music note by note, and there are no universal generalizations to be made. This doesn't sync up with how we usually use music, to differentiate and define ourselves generally. (I'm not "the kind of guy who likes the bridge from 'Pieces of Me,'" but I might be "the kind of guy who likes Ashlee Simpson," which means something very different (and isn't true; I AM ME).

The role of the critic, or at least the critical thinker, is to be able to take everything in and "judge it fairly," which becomes impossible when it rubs up against parts of your personality that don't want you to judge fairly. Which is why we tend to ignore a lot of music -- not just the pop connection, but music from other cultures, musical history that requires a broader context of understanding. (Logic might go, "if I start with Ashlee, where might I end up?" which is dumb, because by the same token you don't necessarily end up anywhere, like some "slippery slope" type deal.)

To me, judging fairly also includes a certain standard of analysis, and I think that Jessica does analyze the music she love love loves, and that what she's referring to is something less like "analysis" (that'd be a funny thing for someone with like seven blogs to say) and more like "seriousness," which in this case might be closer to humorlessness. (Humor's perhaps a point where you start to lose people more or less intuitively -- sometimes getting jokes requires broader context, too, and once again you're faced with the prospect of immersion in a place your brain doesn't want to go.)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

*uh, that should read she had nothing to do with it.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Also isn't there a potential BIG disconnect between humour and fairness?

[koganbot]

"Judging fairly" feels like the wrong phrase here. Maybe "fair" is a word that's contaminated too. It seems so dispassionate. I'm all about social complicity in what we're listening to, whereas "fairness" implies a site of neutrality from which I'm doing the judging. Really, I have a feeling what galls you and I is something along the lines of "Projecting stupid things onto Ashlee and Britney and Celine and whoever (even the Cheetah Girls) that aren't true and allow you to remain smug and ignorant and stupid while maintaining the idea that you're taking a critical stance." But "judging fairly" seems like a pale virtue in response to this vehement flaw.

In one of my rough drafts to Intro number one in Real Punks I said that humor was the rock critic's substitute for personality. My idea was that the standard record review went "Identify the genre, compare to previous groups, say whether it's good or not, and throw in a joke to show that you're real and not just a hack." Of course, throwing in a joke makes one a hack, too. But also, high-flying invective in Meltzer and Bangs glory days was one thing that made their writing rock, and too many subsequent writers didn't get the other things that made M & B's writing rock, which was their ideas. But anyone, "humor" came to represent the wild beat of the music, rumbling up in your own prose. And then became a shtick and then became a bore.

Jessica was commenting in response to my first Ashlee column, ("Embracing The Ashlee Whirlpool",which was hardly humorless. I interpreted her as meaning that all this analysis missed the point, was taking the fun out of chemistry, though she could have just meant that she doesn't feel she needs to analyze pop for her own purposes (but of course she does analyze pop).

What Jessica actually wrote was: "I still think Ashlee's European counterparts are far, far superior to her and others like Paris and Hilary. The songs are just better, and for me all this analysis is unnecessary when it comes to pop music. Although I must add that Ashlee's general persona doesn't appeal to me at all - she doesn't seem like the kind of girl I'd want to be friends with or would admire if I met her, whereas Robyn or Margaret Berger for example would be the complete opposite." Of course, the final sentence contains an incipient analysis that she ought to have pushed further.

But it's strange her lumping Ashlee and Paris and Hilary like that - I just don't think that Jessica knows their music very well - and her setting those three off against Robyn and Margaret Berger; sure, DioGuardi has worked with all three of them, but then Robyn (don't know about Berger) has worked with Maratone people and so has Paris (Robyn with Max and Paris with Luke)*. But in personality, and I mean the personality of the music as well as the personality that comes across through the music, Ashlee reminds me way more of Robyn than of Paris or Hilary.

(*I think there's this interplay between Max Martin and John Shanks: Max is someone Shanks heard before he himself went into teenpo, and then the new Max sound that appeared with "Since U Been Gone" drew on the teen rock confessional that Shanks had helped invent; as far as I know the closest there's ever been to an actual Shanks and Max collab is Bon Jovi's "Complicated," co-written by Max and Jon Bon Jovi (and I think Billy Falcon) but produced by Shanks and sounding very much like a Shanks song.)

[koganbot]

I use the phrase "what galls you and I." What's wrong with me? Or should I ask, what's wrong with I? (Will, I heard the phrase "with you and I" recently on a pop record. Was it Britney? DeAnda? Vanessa H.? It normally makes me grit my teeth.

[koganbot]

Will = Well
Anyone = Anyway (in the post above that)

Parentheses, I order you to close. Close, I tell you. Close.

)

DUB NOT LEST THOU BE DUBBED

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

the issue with fairness -- which i am temperamentally rather pro myself -- is that it can seem to trap you in endless self-filibuster (as in: have i read-heard-seen everything i need to be a competent judge of this in particular?), with the sheer bulk of stuff in the world that you'll NEVER hear-see-read...

it's quite hard -- and obviously makes you quite vulnerable as a commentator -- to begin a judgment by saying "actually i know nothing about [x]", UNLESS you can effectively (if manipulatively) turn this ignorance into some kind of badge of achievement

NOTHING riles me more than versions of the following: "obviously to care enough about [insert topic here] to be able distinctions is to rule yourself out as a critic"

i don't find it very SURPRISING that the triage-point is hedged by by moral posturing -- a bigger-than-needed justification why you have little interest in checking out jazz fusion -- but i always find it disheartening

Re: DUB NOT LEST THOU BE DUBBED

[koganbot]

I was the inventor of the "I haven't heard this but..." review template in Radio On. (Phil referred to it in his brief explanation of "Why it is easier to write in this magazine than any other.")

Vietnam Is Our Paris Hilton

[koganbot]

Xhuxk just sent me this link:

Vietnam is having a Paris Hilton moment

Lone loonies

[koganbot]

"A few lonely voices have sprung up in Thuy Linh's defense."

the wig theory of history

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

In a courtroom, there are two different types of fairness: fairness of trial and fairness of judgment

It always seems to me one of the basic manoeuvres in the anti-relativism dodge is to confuse the former -- "innocent until proven guilty" as the basis for judging that a trial is fair -- with the latter: of insisting that "keeping an open mind" PRIOR to the process of judgment is the same as saying "there is no way a judgment can be made"

(of course the "courtroom" for culture is culture itself, and judgments are constantly overthrown by challenges as to the capabilities and interests of judge, jury, witnesses etc: but that's exactly the thing we're exploring)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

further:
if yr at all unsure about fairness of trial, fairness of judgment (provided you are yourself just) will likely be bland; the more insistent you are abt fairness of trial, the freer you will be to give yr judgment bite and grip and force and use

(not sure how humour affects this claim -- probably sometimes by deliberately confusing the two, but even then it won't be funny if ppl don't know the two are actually different)

[koganbot]

The complaint that seemed to be lodged against me and - especially - Xhuxk was that we were coming up with powerful judgments right off the bat without pausing to get it right; whereas I and presumably Xhuxk think that coming up with powerful judgments off the bat are part of the long-run process of getting things right (or better, when "right" doesn't seem relevant).

(But then I'm really pissy when people get me wrong. But often those people have no interest in taking the process beyond the initial opinion.)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

part of the process of judgment at trial includes statements for prosecution and defence obviously -- and prosecution is ONE of the roles a critic plays, clearly, but again, it seems to me that an awareness of procedural fairness is basic to good prosecutorial criticism (in other words if yr goin to make a vividly powerful claim, you radically diminish its worth if you make rebuttal by definition impossible) (which is to say cut the process off short with you)

also i think in a "cultural court", the protagonist and antogonist -- haha if not actually called THIS -- are more like proposer and antiposer, or maybe deposer and reposer (is that why they're called depositions?)

and the "course of the trial" in reference to cultural judgment is radically open compared to actual law courts *(where there are time limits and questions of relevance and are very strict rules about retrials and ect ect)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

well not just rebuttal but (for me always more interesting) EXPANSION -- which i guess was the project i had in mind with ideas buried in jess's piece that you disliked, bcz i saw how it expanded into areas i am obsessed with

(disclaimer: i have not done any of the work on this expansion that you suggested, though yr right, it def feels like something i shd do)

(second disclaimer: this discussion happened in emails unread by anyone except an elite lizardgod Council of Three made up of frank me and dave, so apols to everyone else for being incomprehensible here)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my use of fairly-in-square-quotes is trying to avoid some of the neutrality baggage. "Standards of analysis" is a bit more fudgey, since those aren't set standards, but there are standards depending on what it is you're talking about.

The court metaphor is pretty good, though one thing I'm thinking about is that there are often legitimate reasons not to WANT to listen-according-to-standards. I'm thinking of it in terms of reading theory, which is often more explicitly intertextual: if a piece makes no sense without my having read another piece, but it isn't really engaging me to actually read that other piece, I will probably ignore it. But I also won't understand it well enough to attack it very well (prosecutor tactic #1: KNOW YOUR SHIT).

Sometimes this isn't true, and some arguments are just terrible regardless of what theory, however valid, it's based on (and probably misinterpretations of the underlying theory anyway). At what point willful ignorance goes from reasonable/sane/useful, even (in the case of the Radio On stuff) to just plain ignorant can be tricky, I guess.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

those are SCARE quotes, not square ones.

[koganbot]

Aren't scare quotes usually trying to be hip quotes?

[(Anonymous)]

They can be plenty square! Observe: "I think we could be focusing our attentions toward 'hip-hop' music as a productive avenue of thoughtful discussion."

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

They can be plenty square! Observe: "I think we could be focusing our attentions toward 'hip-hop' music as a productive avenue of thoughtful discussion."

[(Anonymous)]

Uh, double post. Hm. Anyway, that was square-scare-quotes-within-a-square-quote.

[koganbot]

Good thing the quote wasn't uttered by Crow in MST3K or else that would make Crow square, and make the quote itself one that contains a square scare quote within a square quote from a square crow.

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

Oh Jesus.

[koganbot]

A limitation of jurisprudence as metaphor and of "fairness" as our virtue is that jurisprudence favors outcomes over curiosity, the outcome supposed to represent fairness but not necessarily speaking for either curiosity or, as Mark calls it, "expansion."

Of course, a problem with a lot of rock criticism and a lot of journalism is that it falls down on both values: fairness and curiosity. But most criticism heaped on journalism is for falling down on fairness, and "journalism" as a profession, both in its official ethics and its tone of voice (whether it be "objectively neutral" or wildly snide) values knowingness and getting things right whereas doesn't seem to pay much (official) attention to curiosity and expanding one's ideas. The NY Times ombudsmen don't feed complaints about lack of curiosity, usually. At least they didn't back when I was still reading them, before I got bored.

So there's one thing the tabs may be doing better: even though, instead of displaying genuine curiosity, they're often making their shit up and finding which pre-existing story to fit what they don't make up into, nonetheless they do value curiosity over fairness.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

yes i'm not sure i think of jurisprudence as a metaphor -- i think it's good as a model and a comparison, for the purposes of clarification

if the purpose of criticism is just to say this good that bad -- to provide a judgment for everything -- then yes, exactly: is this a process that generates curiosity? i agree that it somewhat damps it (the moral hazard introduced: yr incentivised to be incurious bcz curiosity is more likely to generate hostile judgments)

in other words, if curiosity is considered a value, criticism had better (in way to be determined) be LESS like a trial -- in other words, its undoubted similarities to a trial had better NOT be the only thing going on

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Hm, y'all are probably right about this, though there's something appealing to me about jurisprudence-the-metaphor. As long as we're finding limited comparison points and not suggesting (as "fairness" in a certain way suggests) a (relatively) inflexible value system with clear outcomes (but of course there are outcomes -- Ashlee Simpson's Autobiography will never stop being good, which isn't to say I've exhausted its possibilities by a long shot.

But judgment doesn't damp curiosity because it never acts alone, or if it does, it's not really criticism (along these lines, is jurisprudence really primarily about the outcome to the prosecutors?). "GOOD" doesn't describe why I like Ashlee Simpson, so the curiosity isn't just in listening to it instead of not (though I basically went through this phase a few years ago and said plenty o' dumb things), but in trying to understand it. This is one thing that's (allegedly) affected by shortening hype circles, the ability to sustain engagement or whatever, but frankly I don't think you can blame a fast system for widespread critical inadequacy (i.e., if you feel overwhelmed by too much information or whatever, the problem is probably YOURS, not "the culture's").

Reminds me a bit of Eco's "literary detective" who is basically paid to be a pre-internet high-end Wikipedia for scholars (one who mostly hangs around shooting the shit in bars). Dilettante investigator/instigators. Part Marlowe, part Woody Woodpecker. (The Pecker Detectives -- that'd be a better band name, too.)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Simon R used this line of reasoning: "an actual opinion is where the process of thinking comes to halt. if you're dedicated to the thought process as supreme value you can get into this thing of making and unmaking your mind up that goes on forever."

No, an actual opinion can come to a relative halt and still entail total openness. Good criticism remains open but isn't afraid to know what it likes!

"Making and unmaking your mind" might deal with specific strategies of music/how it works for you, without ever having to undermine whether or not your Big Judgment (GOOOOOD or BAAAAAAAD) is final (it usually is; as I've said before, I've never disliked something after liking it, and I've often liked things after disliking them, after which point I never dislike them again!).