Rules Of The Game #31: Rockism And Antirockism Rise From The Dead

[koganbot]

Here's my latest, in which I reveal myself to be a rockist, unless that's not what I'm revealing. I also don't come to a conclusion about what rockism is. Stay tuned for the exciting sequel.

The Rules Of The Game #31: Rockism And Antirockism Rise From The Dead

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

[mcatzilut.livejournal.com]

I hadn't heard your 'authenticity' request before this article (that you want it only as an adjective, not as a noun). If I had heard it before, I would've contested it immediately. After all, the king of 'authenticity,' Walter Benjamin, didn't feel that it needed to operate upon a noun. He said that an object could have an aura or not have an aura. And that aura was totally a function of the object as a unique piece of art. Not as an object when contrasted to similar objects. Something can be inauthentic without relying on trope (genre or otherwise).

Probably, without hearing your answer first, I'm gonna guess you'd have no problem with someone using the word like that. Your problem is probably that when someone says Ashley Simpson isn't authentic, what they mean is she's not an authentic singer/songwriter or something like that. And you want them to make it explicit so that you can parse it. But it can also be used in the Benjamin sense.

[mcatzilut.livejournal.com]

Something else:

"In fact, I’d say that as a critic I’m the real deal and Geoff isn’t in that I challenge my readers whereas Geoff throws them bouquets."

Sounds like an argument between being proscriptive and description, which is somewhat at the heart of the rockist/poptomist tension. Geoff wants to talk about Underwood, because people are listening to her already. You want to talk about Miranda, because you think people should be listening to her. But the truth is that neither of you are being totally honest. Because Geoff isn't throwing them 'bouquets' to make them comfortable. He's throwing them 'bouquets' because he thinks that it's more interesting to anthropologize and discuss what people are interested in. And you aren't discussing Miranda to challenge people, but because you find her artistically interesting. If you thought she'd challenge people, but you didn't find her interesting yourself, you'd discard her. Just like if Carrie sounded VERY popular but wasn't actually popular, Geoff wouldn't bother with her.

Film friend discusses Benjamin, not rockism

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

My friend's response:

"let me know if this helps:

you've kind of got it right both ways -- that's part of the beauty of this essay. Benjamin mourns the loss of the aura, but also argues that, with mechanically reproduced art, it's important to acknowledge that the aura is gone. The significance of the aura might be boiled down to the work of art bearing a mark of its having been made. Perhaps this comes in the form of brush strokes in a painting or layers of soot on a sculpture. When encountering an artwork that has an aura, Benjamin finds it difficult to ignore the unique perspective of the work's maker. In other words, objects are not neutral, and the aura reminds us of this.

Mechanically reproduced art, removed from the touch of its maker, has the ability to appear unbiased. The way that fascist filmmakers manipulated this factor scared Benjamin so he called for makers of mechanically reproduced art to include other elements that would remind viewers that the object in question is not free from bias. With "aestheticized politics," Benjamin basically refers to this practice. "Politicized aesthetics," on the other hand, describes the act of consciously mobilizing art for political ends -- and acknowledging that intention somehow through the formal elements of the work (think dada photomontage). "

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

that's not an asterisk, it's a peephole through into the REVEALED MACHINERY OF MY BRANE

But what about what *I* wrote

[koganbot]

Does anyone have something to say about whether I am or am not a rockist? (The Benjamin stuff so far seems too vague and speculative for me to get much of a handle on.)

CONTEMPT

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I'd change the name of my blog to Le Mepris but I don't want to be associated with a buncha assholes. (At least not French ones.)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

follow-up splurge on some of the above here: i am off the net for the next three days so yr on yr own!

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

I think there was a very, VERY strong generational aspect to the rockism wars. A good moderate position to come down on might go something like this: applying "rockist" principles to acts from the rockist era (60s/70s) is totally fair, and that's why those terms of discourse came to be so prominent. Similarly, applying rockist principles to modern (post-rockist?) groups that consciously derive from that tradition--or at least the PARTS of those acts that are trying to be rockist--is fair as well. And at the end of the day, using rockism as one way to find value in an act is fine; the problem is when it's viewed as the ONLY standard of assessment and whole swaths of the musical landscape get dismissed out of hand. It's a problem when instead of being used as a metric to explain individual dislikes, it is expressed as a standard under which you MUST dislike certain things. That's problematic rockism.

What's NOT OK is for critics and fans who grew up in the post-rockist era to still be holding these terms as sacrosanct. Either you experienced rockist groups in non-rockist ways (you saw a Zep poster in Spencer Gifts and thought it looked cool, so you stole the LP from your parents' record shelf) or you are trying to wedge post-rockist groups into the rockist tradition. It represents a shocking lack of growth and a concession to the values of the generation that preceded us, which you'd think rockists would have a problem with! Similarly, as I say above, it's not OK for people who grew up rockist to try to impose those terms on new groups that have nothing to do with rockism, because it's a way of keeping the young folks down. Rockism was (is?) frustrating because it severely restricts the conditions for quality assessment in an era when music changes every few years (as it always has). Viewed by pre-rockist standards, rock was crap. The fact that rockist standards developed was a good thing; it gave a way for people to appreciate the art on its own terms.

I'm aware that the above was not a position many people (myself included?) would have actually taken in 2004. But I do think the squabble was at least partially legitimate, and that it was so divisive that many people got turned off by the whole thing and retreated into their own little corners, whereas at the time it really seemed like something was building to encompass more than just sub-genres.