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: But what about what *I* wrote

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

Re: Are you a rockist: Aren't we all?

(I'm not being sarcastic.)

Re: But what about what *I* wrote

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

"But rockist writing is certainly not always bad, and we all have our rockist sides. It's a silly word really." - that is from, as far as I can see, the first thing I ever wrote about rockism on ILX, in December 2000.

So, yes!

Re: But what about what *I* wrote

[koganbot]

Tom, do you remember when Mark did all that work putting threads into categories, "rockism" being one of those? I can't seem to find categories in the current ilX, though maybe I'm just being dumb and they're easily findable. But if not, did you or Mark or someone keep a record of that work, so those threads would be findable? (There are a number with "rockism" in the title, fortunately.)

Re: But what about what *I* wrote

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Unfortunatley I think the categories are dead. I got that from putting "rockism" into the thread title search and looking at the first ILM thread that came up. I read a bunch of the others too, all of which confirm your basic view that the word is indefinable, I think!

Re: But what about what *I* wrote

[koganbot]

But "undefinable" doesn't mean the term is of no value, or anyway that it didn't have value in its heyday. Which is to say that just because I'm generally thinking we'd have been better off without it (and so I'm assuming that people would have found different and maybe better ways to say what they were saying), doesn't mean they weren't saying something interesting, and wouldn't have yet more interesting things to say if they followed up on what they were saying.

(Note below that I just said to Mordy: "And then the next point would be, can't someone present such an argument not because he's a rockist but because the argument is right in that particular circumstance?" That is, I wouldn't be committed to the idea that X necessarily declines into non-X, but I think (or thought) in this particular instance that punk had declined into fake punk.)

Re: But what about what *I* wrote

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I'd argue that its value in its heyday worked socially, not intellectually: it was used in the formative months of ILX as a way to blank or short-circuit arguments, not to develop them. The word was useful as part of the culture emerging in ILX, viz.

1. We have started a music board in which we are talking seriously and hopefully intelligently about music which a lot of people dismiss, putting it on equal or better footing with what they don't dismiss.

2. If a lot of the dismissers joined the board it would most likely lose the character it was developing, because it's quite small and there's a lot of them out there.

3. If we have a word that dismisses the dismissers then it will work as a filter on the numbers of them coming in. The fact we can't agree on EXACTLY what it means is, AT THIS STAGE IN THE COMMUNITY, less important than its existence and the fact that we generally agree on the badness of the arguments it dismisses.

4. Oh bollocks the word has taken on a massive life of its own and has become a total rod for our own backs.

This is all huge post facto rationalisation in that nobody thought through "rockism" working like this, but I think it's how it *did* work.

Re: But what about what *I* wrote

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

I mean, rockists are just making value judgments: this music is valuable because it is "authentic," and that music is not. This music matters to me, and that music doesn't.

Trade "authentic" for "well-written" or "aggressive" or "fvcking mental" and it's just another day at poptimists.