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

Re: Film friend discusses Benjamin, not rockism

[koganbot]

Not that I'm indifferent to how something is made (and as a critic I lean towards auteurism, actually, which doesn't have to evade the multiplicity of authors, in fact it encouraged my interest in the multiplicity), but I feel it (and maybe Benjamin) maybe misses something:

(1) As per Wittgenstein, to understand something you have to understand the social practices it is a part of, and so a mark or an "aura" (wtf) of an original or unique work (from an original and presumably unique artist or group of artists?) is not necessarily relevant unless such a mark is part of a social practice. That is, to understand a stop sign you don't need to know a lot about who made it but you do need to know about the social practice it is part of, so knowing the authorship doesn't do you much good unless you know the social practice. (Of course, if you know the author you can ask him about the social practice.)

(2) But how authorship makes it into the rock story of "authenticity" has basically to do with hero stories about class and resistance to authority etc., and my complaint about uses of the words "authenticity" and "rockism" is that they don't seem to bring people to a discussion such stories, though they do help people to wave their hands in that direction.