koganbot | Sadness

Trevor says, in his writeup about JJ Project's "Bounce," that:

"For me, there's nothing sadder than, say, a couple of self-described 'punks' arguing about what 'real punk rock' is and is not."

Guess you have to count me among the sad, then, since that's exactly what I was doing the other day when talking about Screeching Weasel and Britney in my "Are We NOT MEN?" post. (Ctrl-F "Screeching Weasel" and don't neglect to click the link to my 2007 Blackout ballot.)

I don't dislike "Bounce" (especially not outraged by any genre busting), though the track doesn't drive me, either. But the more abstract Trevor gets in his reasoning, the more I want to argue with it. Except what I'd rather do is prod him to argue with himself. So what I'd say to Trevor is: Ask yourself what questions would be most troublesome for your argument, and what counterarguments would be the strongest, richest, and deepest. I'll say as an aside — and this is an observation, not a criticism — that at least some of the terms you use to praise JJ Project feel very Sixties, very rock.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0eTeKT44mc [This video is age restricted and only watchable on YouTube, so click the link.]

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I love Bounce, but for different reasons than Trevor:

1. It feels like it's aimed at the export market. Like Bang & Zelo's "Never Give Up" it uses imagery that doesn't exist in Korea, where high schoolers wear school uniforms and generally don't die their hair;

2. I think the the super-ADD, borderline-obnoxious "Bounce Bounce Bounce Bounce" opening is an attempt to appeal to this international audience of young teenagers ("I whip my hair back and forth I whip my hair back and forth I whip my hair back and forth");

3. But when the actual rap comes in, it's not hyperactive at all, the flow is very relaxed and nostalgic. The title and the relaxed flow mark this song out as a throwback to early-90s Korean hip hop like DJ Doc "Run To You";

5. Meaning that teenybopper US (and Korean) kids are being stealth-exposed to "the classics"? ...Also this is nostalgic for me because I was an elementary school student in a mostly African-American (NYC) suburb during the mid-nineties;

6. Trevor and I are in agreement about liking the way the song switches genres, but for me it's mostly about the control on display through the effortlessness of the switch. Songs like Lovey Dovey, Oh My God are fast and energetic up but feel out of control in some way (and Lovey Dovey contributes to that feeling by subtly speeding up each time the chorus repeats). "Bounce" is hyperactive, but ultimately relaxed and comfortable, and gives a feeling of the singers being totally in control of the pace: they speed it up and slow it down according to their will. It's about mastery, or the good parts of a really good mood, before it all goes wrong;

7. I think the rock parts are also signaling that the song is aimed at an NAmerican audience or an audience familiar with NAmerican cultural exports.

Basically, I like to think that this song is appealing to teenyboppers and specifically NAmerican ones and that its ultimate goal is to interest them in "classic" Korean hip hop, which happens to have a lot in common with classic East Coast hip hop, but also has its own unique characteristics etc.

Edited 2012-06-16 17:01 (UTC)

It's fun to argue about what is and is not punk if your worldview is expansive enough to make room for Britney Spears, et al. But for most people, that's not the case. In fact, I bet there are quite a few people who, when confronted with your assertion, would shift the terms of the argument from "Is Britney Spears punk or not?" to "Do you even understand what punk means?" Meaning, there are a lot of people who wouldn't accept the terms of your argument to the point where the question of Britney Spears could even be considered in the first place.

Now, maybe you might say that it doesn't really matter if there are people like that or even if there are a lot of people like that (or a majority), because there's not a person who is the designated authority on "what punk is." Which means interpretation is really a free-for-all. Which is fine, because that's my assumption anyways, but are we interpreting because the act of interpreting creates meaning or because there is something tangible called "punk" and we can, if not objective then certainly something beyond subjectively, determine Britney Spears' relationship to it?

I guess that's where I leave behind questions of what is "real" punk or "real" hip hop (I think that word "real" is significant). I don't feel a need to relate it back to some essence, perhaps because I distrust essences when it comes to these things. I think this is a very concrete reason that I mentioned Cronenberg in an essay about K-pop, because his films are about the subverting of our attempt to stake out essences (and the necessary divisions that come along with them).

I think it probably makes more sense to frame this in relation to hip hop than punk anyways, because rapping is literally something you do, whereas punk is... take your pick, an aesthetic, an ethos, a worldview, etc. When people argue about "real hip hop," they are implying that it's really a debate about essences and thus also authority. This means group identity, exclusion, etc. Above all, it means that someone has the power of authority to decide how this essence is defined, and I instinctively react against any kind of authority like that (side note: my parents actually were, ostensibly, "punks").

I actually almost included a sentence comparing what JJ Project are doing (commandeering signifiers without taking into consideration their original meanings) to the development of rock and roll and its relationship to, among other forms of music, the blues. But that's a relationship fraught with all kinds of tension and asymmetrical relationships of power. What JJ Project are doing is more, well, "innocent." It ties more into my utopian fantasy of people creatively plundering one another's culture on a totally even playing field.

Hm, will say:

"there's not a person who is the designated authority on "what punk is." Which means interpretation is really a free-for-all."

That this isn't true ("if there's not ONE source of authority, that means there's NO authority." There can be both a lack of designated authority (though I would say that there is often consensus, which is a kind of designated authority, but then whose consensus matters, too, etc. etc.) and limits to interpretation. There are obvious ways in which interpretations are always bounded (most people would react to my saying "The gentle, lilting dulcimer chimes of Britney's Blackout really calm my nerves after a hard day" with confusion, or at least they should). But there are more complicated ways in which it's bounded -- i.e., whether the interpretation is any good. The question isn't whether certain people will agree or disagree with Frank's use of "punk" to describe Britney, but whether this interpretation offers something to the music that couldn't be offered by saying something else.

I can imagine a disingenuous argument that says, in effect, "Britney is so punk!" that isn't a very good argument (e.g., if she shaved her head for a video and wore a Sex Pistols T-shirt with a press release that said BRITNEY: NOW 100% PUNK!, she would fit a certain shallow vision for punk; when she shaved her head in real life and the a big swathe of the world reacted like it was actually kind of a big deal, she spoke to a kind of subversion, whether intentionally or not, that self-professed punks can't do so well anymore, at least not to the people they're aiming to confront).

Anyway, I guess all that that means is that "Britney is punk because she shaved her head" requires a lot more context -- and that's the point, that all authority and all interpretation require more specific context; just because they aren't "essential" features of a work doesn't mean that they aren't there, or that there aren't consistent patterns -- it just means these features are there for other reasons than dogmatic essentialism or designated individual authority. Which is good, because it would be boring to talk about that all the time, anyway, even if we should probably talk about it sometimes.

Speaking of Britney, what do you think of SNSD's "Oscar"?

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Less punk than "Gimme More," I'd say. Still like it, though. (What does "Oscar" refer to? A guy named Oscar?)

Research into O S C A R isn't getting me much in the way of song meanings. Here's a link to an English translation of the lyrics, however:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20111026180518AA68QHA

Doesn't seem to be Oscar The Grouch. Could be the statuette, though I don't know how "up in the sky" and bass volumes and audio frequencies would relate to that.

Is this punk? Oh the irony of parody!

Sadness

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Re: I Go Britney Because Of You (part two)

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