koganbot | Rules Of The Game #32: Where The Real Wild Things Are

Current Music: Beatnuts "Turn It Out"

Entry tags:

Rules Of The Game #32: Where The Real Wild Things Are

Here's the latest column, once again about antirockism.

The Rules Of The Game #32: Where The Real Wild Things Are

I agonized for about ten seconds as to whether I was being fair in the sentence "the antirockists put defeating an enemy ahead of trying to understand him, so in effect were seeking stupidity in others rather than trying to strengthen their own comprehension." Then I figured if I was being unfair, you'd tell me. It doesn't seem to me that those of you who used the word on ilX weren't trying to understand Patrick Hould or Dave Q or Sundar Subramanian or Glenn McDonald or Alex In NYC, but then I don't think the first three had anything to do with "rockism" as you guys seemed to be using it (though I think that Patrick was confused enough by your usage to think he might be a "rockist") or that your use of the term had anything to do with your actual attempts to interact with and understand these guys.

Also,

dickmalone made an interesting point at the end of last column's thread where he said "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." I didn't have the time to respond that day, but one of the problems I'd have had in responding is that I really really really did not know what he meant by "rockist"; if he meant what most of you seemed to be meaning, he's wrong, in that it was just as stupid in 1966 as it is now to say an act is no good if it doesn't write its own songs, and conversely if it was valid in 1968 to praise a performer for trying to oppose or stand outside an injust socioeconomic system, and to criticize performers that seemed to reinforce the injust system, it's just as valid now. Or if "rockism" means assuming that electric guitars mean electric excitement and that other instrumentation doesn't, yes that was more true in 1967 than it is now, but it was still dumb as a principle, and anyway that isn't what most antirockists mean by "rockist," I don't think. And also, I'd say the average rock critic in the '60s was probably more antirockist then than the average rock critic is now, if "antirockism" means something (obv they didn't use the word "rockism" then), though that's just because there are way more rock critics now and the average is someone who's a lot stupider.

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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I think my introduction to Rockism 101 would be slightly different from yours (and needs some fine-tuning): "The perspective of people who place more value on the creative process than the end product." Here the phrase 'creative process' covers 'originality', 'artist input' (writing/performing/whatever) and 'meaningfulness' (<---yuck!), and as such probably slightly extends the standard rockist criteria.

This 'creative process' may still be worthy of study (eg perhaps Britney's new album was written entirely on a comb & paper <--- tell me more pls!) and shouldn't be dismissed, but if the song is a pile of shite then any enthusiasm for said study surely goes down the drain! Perhaps the song is shite BECAUSE of some interesting part of the creative process, but at the end of the day I enjoy listening to music more than I like reading about how it was made. For some dudes it's the other way round, and as such rockism as I've defined it above isn't necessarily Evil.

I disagree. People may say that they're putting emphasis on the creative process but the result of their putting emphasis on the "creative process" is that they denigrate music made for a class of people they don't approve of (teenyboppers, housewives, fans of mainstream AOR, fans of soft rock, dance trendies). And to the extent that there's an underlying "principle" here, it isn't about "creative process" (how is John Shanks' creative process any different from Jeff Tweedy's) but about how the people the rockist disapproves of are supposedly making music for the Man rather than for the Muse. And that's why "authenticity" is an issue (i.e., whether you're speaking for the "corporation" or for "yourself"). And as I said in "What's Wrong With Pretty Girls?" (a piece you liked), the emphasis on "creative process" is a shuck, a stand-in. You simply can't take what people are saying at face value (which doesn't mean you shouldn't pay close attention to what they are saying). And the point I made there about stand-in issues is that "they allow us to feel class issues without actually discussing them and allow us to indulge our uneasiness with happy songs and the pretty girls who dance to them without our really exploring where the uneasiness comes from."

the people the rockist disapproves of are supposedly making music for the Man rather than for the Muse

Perhaps I can fudge my definition to include the intended audience under 'meaningfulness'? I didn't define that above, but it could be expanded just like 'artist input' could be. 'Meaningfulness' could cover not just what the artist is trying to get across, but to whom (if anyone) they are trying to get their message across, and why.

New link to "What's Wrong With Pretty Girls"

When I say "I disagree" I don't mean I disagree with your contention that rockism isn't necessarily evil, but I disagree with your def'n of rockism as placing more value on the creative process. I think that for the rockist, the emphasis on the creative process is a subset of an emphasis on "authenticity." And notice how my Busted guy jumps from talking about who writes the songs to denigrating the Jonas Brothers because they only attract young teen girls. So a lot of this is really about the rockists comparing himself to others, even if it's couched in terms of how Busted and the Jonas Brothers makes their music.

makes their music = make their music

rockists comparing himself = rockist's comparing himself

I didn't include 'authenticity' in my definition as I'm not sure what *I* mean by the word in this context, let alone what rockists make of it! I guess it would be a combination of originality and meaningfulness (ie James Bourne would write song X about fancying his teacher to overcome his childhood trauma at doing badly in Chemistry lessons, rather than writing for the Jonas Brothers to sell a bunch of albums to schoolkids who funnily enough like jumping up and down).

I think your Busted fan is probably a rockist by my definition, he's just not very good at it. If the Jonas Brothers *had* written their own stuff but still aiming at the teen girl market, I doubt our Busted fan would have had as much of a problem with them.

It seems to me that we're back at the beginning here.

As far as I can tell, the people who get called "rockists" don't place value in the creative process, nor are even interested in it - again, how many of them could say what the difference is between John Shanks' creative process and Bob Dylan's? how many of them know a thing about it? - but rather in who they think does the creating, and what the perceived motives are of the music maker, which they try to read off the style of music. So they're very interested in the product, but they "read" the product for a hero or villain story about who made it and what the music maker's social or commercial intentions were. (Aesthetic intentions never seem to come into the rockist's discussion.) In any event, what I want you to explore is why the rockist values "the creative process" or whatever it is he's valuing when he seems to you to be valuing it. What does he value about it? Why does he value X in the creative process but not Y?

I think this is why a lot of poptimist-minded folks groan whenever the rockist debate surfaces (ie ALL THE TIME). Perhaps we could rig up a big sign on the internets saying "ROCKISM: YR DOING IT WRONG"?

Your questions are still good ones though: WHY are the dudes getting it wrong, and why is originality valued and so on. For the latter, it could be a logical extension of 'making new things is good, otherwise there wouldn't be anything at all' that has been mangled into 'making the *right sort* of new thing is good'.

Sorry - I've just been distracted by the sight of Justin from Hollyoaks wearing a generic superhero's glittery cape and talking to Basil Brush on kids telly. I like being home from work sometimes :)

Well, one thing I keep emphasizing is I don't see how I'm so different from the "rockists," and another is that I don't see how the antirockists are so different either. So, rather than dismiss "rockism," is there a way to do it right, whatever "it" is? I doubt that anyone would say that there's no value in originality, after all.

I didn't include 'authenticity' in my definition as I'm not sure what *I* mean by the word in this context, let alone what rockists make of it!

Well, "authenticity" is a buzz word, so you don't have to have a definition yourself, and the "rockist" doesn't know what he means by it (when he's using the word itself) or what is stirring him up and bugging him when he makes an authenticity-type argument (which he can do whether he's using the words "authentic" and "real" or not). But the point is, you can recognize when someone is making an authenticity argument even if you yourself don't know what you would mean by the word in this context. And this (from my Busted fan) is a classic authenticity argument, even though it doesn't use the word "authenticity": "they don't give a shit about what people think." In fact, I'd say that this is the authenticity argument, and all the other reasons he gives (which were all over the place as to whether they're about the creative process, the music itself - its having and "edge" - or the audience (older than Jonas Brothers' and not exclusively female)) are subsidiary to this one. Except maybe for "originality," he wouldn't care about the other reasons if "giving a shit about what people think" weren't the big issue for him. And again, how am I different from him, other than being more self-aware and sociologically probing? I'm the one who wrote, "Now that Paris has been beaten down, Britney seems like the last remaining public figure who's not trying to say the right thing." How is this statement of mine not an authenticity argument, and how is it not "rockist"?

Your statement may well be rockist, but that in itself is not necessarily a bad thing - you have greater respect for Britney as an artist because she is doing whatever she's doing for herself rather than her audience. Others may have less respect ('anti-rockist', I guess) or be entirely unbothered (neither rockist nor anti-rockist).

I still think this example of authenticity can be included under the creative process umbrella. A lot of artists are criticised for 'pandering to the fans' or 'shifting units' rather than following their Muse, but the decision whether to do this or not surely occurs during the creative process? (OK, sometimes it can be the record label releasing *that* single instead of *this* single, but the artist had to have produced both songs in the first place.)

I agree that most Rockists, like Mr Busted Fan, haven't really thought about any of this in depth. This is why it's easy for Anti-rockists (who probably *have* given the matter some thought and *can* recognise Mr Busted as using authenticity arguments) to tear them apart in this sort of debate.

thinking a bit more about the "signal vs noise" version of the dichotomy, i guess what's being striven for -- not quite in so many words -- is a shortcut to a routine that can always deliver surprise?

(can it be taken as a given that part of a critic's role is to produce shortcuts -- either to do some of a reader's work for them, or -- less negatively -- to teach a reader where and how best to poiint themselves to get what they want, even if they don't they know that?)

Striven for by whom, the rockist or the antirockist?

But this is where we always stop talking to each other and instead talk past each other. If you define the rockist as "someone who fetishizes the old symbols of surprise but manages to evade actual surprise" or something of that sort (is this what you're saying? your being too condensed for me) then yes of course the rockist will be dogmatic - because that's how you defined him.

But then I don't see how it is that my friend Nathan, for instance, is a rockist by your definition. "The pretty girls had me in their spell, and I was never going to get anywhere with them. But I could listen to their silly music, vapid go-along/get-along tripe, and someday a nice girl probably would have won my heart, and I would have thought she was 'halfway decent' and been that much better for the experience." How does this register as Nathan preferring "signal" to being "lost in noise"? This registers comes across as a loser in the high-school social hierarchy rejecting the music of the winners. And as I send in response to your drunken poptimism post, a preference for "signal" to "lost in noise" is a temperamental characteristic, not an ideological position, and I don't see where this has anything to do with rockism - except that you've decided to only count someone as rockist if he's dogmatic or something, so someone like me doesn't count as rockist to you even though I have many of the very same values and concerns and impulses that the rockist does. (Also, I find noise more boring than signal, and I think creative types have less tolerance for noise than the average person does; Mr. Normal Person is fine with a little bit of noise, doesn't even notice it - doesn't notice the contradictions until they hit him in the face, whereas it's the creative guy who tries to rework systems and ideas so as to take away the contradictions.)

no i'm not trying to rescue "rockist vs anti-rockist" as a way to see the world -- i'm trying come up with terms that push the old conversation into better, more fruitful kinds of comparison and contrast (though partly by going back and trying to recapture what i felt i was chasing when i DID divide the world into rockists and anti-rockists)

"noise vs signal" seems to map some of the same impulses, but it maps them much more compellingly (and fairly), and -- as you say and i don't disagree -- we're all after both elements, just in different kinds of combination: i'm certainly not an advocate of noise-noise-all-the-time

and "surprise vs analysis" would also be a way to map them

my jab back at someone who was doing the defining-a-rockist-dance you pick up on there would be to say, well, WHAT KIND OF SURPRISE ARE WE TALKING ABOUT HERE? bcz a routine that always delivers surprises is kind of a contradiction, isn't it? so is it a creative contradiction (= possibly yes to start with) and when does it stop being one? when you walk into the avant-garde club and get exactly what you expected, and enjoy that for what it always is? IS THIS A BAD THING? (ans = sometimes yes and sometimes no: i'm interested in craft technique after all)

"creative types have less tolerance for noise than the average person does" <--- this for example seems to me an interesting point to pursue, bcz if true (and i think it arguably is) then it's a problem as well as a power, and i like that kind of tension

OK, well let's see how your idea of new fruitful convo as opposed to old might fit with mine. In "What's Wrong With Pretty Girls?" I ended with: "[stand-in issues] allow us to feel class issues without actually discussing them and allow us to indulge our uneasiness with happy songs and the pretty girls who dance to them without our really exploring where the uneasiness comes from." For me the logical next step is to say, "So let's talk about class issues and about why some people feel an uneasiness towards happy songs and pretty girls." And in the most recent piece I'm talking about "The impulses, tropes, and habits that get labeled 'rockism' existed throughout the culture from high to low, long before rock, and the general cultural debate and uncertainty as to the value of popular culture was also already in place, these impulses etc. managing to run simultaneously in contrary directions - towards respectability and seriousness and towards subversion and wildness, the subversion and wildness themselves being completely torn as to whether they're a form of respectability (albeit a supposed outsider's respectability) or of irresponsibility. There's simply no way to understand why 'real versus fake' is a big anxiety if you're not willing to think about people's conflicted attitudes towards social power, how authenticity and respectability are required to present themselves as opposition to authority." So for me the logical next step is to discuss "the subversion and wildness being completely torn as to whether they're a form of respectability... or of irresponsibility." And one way to have such a discussion is to ask, as I did in my book, in regard to similar conundrums, "What do we - as individuals and as a society - gain by trying to meld subversion to respectability and vice versa?" (I'm not so much a functionalist as to assume that because this conundrum exists that we must gain something from it, but I think the hypothesis that we gain something from it is a good starting point.)

So my question is how does "preferring signal vs. being lost in noise" help me in my discussion? It doesn't have to, and we could be having totally different discussions. Is there a way to combine our discussions? Don't say "authority" is signal and "opposition" is noise, and that "noise" is trying to become "signal" and "signal" is trying to pass itself off as "noise." That's too abstract.

Again, it seems to me that preferring "signal" or preferring "being lost in noise" are characteristics of temperament, and someone could have either one of those preferences while having no interest one way or another in social class and in whether or not the pretty, preppy girls reinforce social inequities.

So I think what I want from you here is:

(1) What is the signal vs. noise issue? I think you're relying on our already having an idea what those terms mean in relation to music, but I actually don't know what you mean by them.

(2) What the relationship is between the signal-vs.-noise issue and some other musical issue. What does it have to do with what "rockists" and "antirockists" are generally to say?

What does it have to do with what "rockists" and "antirockists" are generally to say?

"...are generally believed to say" (is what I think I meant).

haha better binary: reviewers are all about shortcuts, critics are all about "don't trust that reviewer-shortcut!"

I'll respond to your response in a sec, but first I wanted to say to this:

“you guys think you’re the real thing, but really you’re just spouting a temporary ideology, and we’re the real deal as critics, the ones who can see through you.”

...that my big problem with rockist standards is that they're so codified, so set, so unable to move with the times. I don't think a pop-centered criticism is going to stand forever and always, but it is more reflective of the current state of art and of mass entertainment (with which music criticism has ALWAYS dealt) than is rockism. As you quoted me saying, I do think rockism was once a valid set of standards--it did make sense to see the Beatles as something new and exciting because they wrote their own songs in 1962, it did make sense to see the heroic simplicity of punk as exciting and new in 1977. It may not make sense to use those terms to deride their peers, but those terms needed to be invented in order to justify/make sense of/explain what these new acts were doing. That is not the case anymore. Rockism's terms of discourse fall into a clear historical tradition (thank u Greil Marcus) but we need to tap another historical tradition to understand what's going on now. My concern with this is primarily in moving criticism forward.

Being interested in authenticity as a phenomenon is great, but as I've said to Dave before, it's frustrating when someone comes into a conversation and attempts to invalidate its entire existence by using this standard that is utterly alien to the art under discussion. I don't think it helps move things forward right now, in part because the discourse has been so poisoned by the all-or-nothing tone of rockism. It's problematic that authenticity is THE consideration, not A consideration--the ONLY way to judge something. When I talk about TV, for instance, an authenticity argument would entirely negate anything I say, because TV is entirely inauthentic. I could try and construct an argument as to why TV is authentic within its particular medium, and that's certainly possible, but I'm not sure it would serve the cause of criticism very well. Like when I was bitching about Thompson and applying modernist/novelistic criteria to television, carrying on with the established standard of quality will serve to negate many of the most amazing pieces of art the medium has to offer.

This isn't a well-developed argument, and probably made better elsewhere by someone else, but I think rock as a genre (and arguably pop music itself) is crippled by its memory of a socially relevent past. If the standard is an era when music had a demonstrable impact on society as a whole, then today's low sales dictate that music sucks now, no matter its artistic qualities, and musicians' striving from this lionized golden age of cultural impact produces increasinly irrelevent art. I think we need to look at the smaller things music does, the more aesthetic things, and authenticity gets in the way of that.

it's frustrating when someone comes into a conversation and attempts to invalidate its entire existence by using this standard that is utterly alien to the art under discussion.

I might not even be getting at what you're talking about specifically -- re: TV, I'm not sure what you mean by it being inherently "inauthentic." Surely the idea here is that anything might be relatively authentic ("authentically funny," "authentically moving," "authentically challenging") so long as we understand the terms of the debate. A dismissive attitude that makes a blanket statement of "inauthenticity" is just plain ignorant and stupid, as are attitudes (which I keep rubbing up against in a quasi-boho program myself) that want to use words like "materialism" and "commercialization" and "corporate _____" without (1) even remotely understanding the complex interaction of socioeconomic blah blah blah that brings about these words in the first place (how much do you know about how the film industry works, and anyway what the fuck does that actually have to do with what Transformers is "saying"?) or (2) acknowledging that they are a part of these processes, and that they aren't inherently harmful, but contingently harmful, based on how they're used in specific situations. I'm not prepared to decry "marketing to children" or "propagandizing" as a means of conveyance, but that doesn't mean that the way it usually happens isn't totally fucked.

I guess the whole point here is that conversations like these (maybe of the antirockist or "alternative film" or fill-in-the-blank variety) create no new knowledge but congratulate themselves for "figuring things out." (Which strikes me as the "Jezebel tone" you noticed too -- applying this to popular culture.) I think all of these media frameworks are related to an utter failure to actually learn -- or want to learn -- much of anything; almost a form of media illiteracy often most noticeable in people who are incredibly savvy users of media.

That was me.

Again, it's the problem of "rockism" having so codified the definition of "authentic"--authenticity now revolves around production practices rather than artistic intent or reception or anything else. If it's not DIY, it's not authentic. Like you say, there are ways you can define TV as authentic, but it moves the terms of the debate in the wrong direction. Then you just get bogged down in arguing about competing versions of authenticity rather than artistic merit, and after 4 years of doing that, I don't see it as a positive anymore.

Your last point's very good. It's a problem I bump up against in my program too--people being too eager to continue (and repeat, and repeat) a critique of media rather than try and understand it on its own terms.

I'm not sure how one would approach media literacy for the media-savvy -- ML is a huge issue in a few of my mass media-oriented classes (we have a pretty big-name scholar/activist on the subject working in that department whom I'm taking a class with), but it deals a lot more with the digital divide than, y'know, refining the comprehension skillz of people already on the other side of that divide. But I think you can read a lot without being able to read very well.

And to touch on your first point, I do think that moving the conversation (without worrying about "authenticity") toward non-speculative, data-based reception theory is hugely important in film studies (where psychoanalytic bullshit hangs around and just refuses to DIE DIE DIE), but I'm not as convinced about its usefulness in a rockcrit debate in which most criticism is by definition part personal essay and academia for the most part hasn't tainted (or supported/protected) music criticism in any meaningful way. Hmmmmm.

I think that academic theory has very much contaminated the antirockism discussion, the bad aspects of the supposed postmodernist critique of modernism and the poststructuralist critique of logocentrism being lifted and recycled as antirockism.

The first point I want to make is that my piece wasn't a critique of rockism but of antirockism - I'm not happy with the behavior that gets called "rockism," but that particular unhappiness wasn't what I was expressing in the piece.

And my critique of antirockism is that the antirockists refuse to ask themselves why the supposed rockist likes what he likes and says what he says, and the antirockists refuse to address the issues of authority and class that the rockist stumblingly hints at. And I don't say it in my piece, but I have here, which is that you simply must say whom you mean by the antirockist and what you mean by "rockism," or you I won't understand you.

Your explanation for the persistence of rockism is that there is a generation gap and that the rockist is using old values. I don't see this. The DIY guys and the anti-Jonas Brothers people are as young or younger than most of the people at

poptimists, for instance, and the "rockist" arguments are in full force today or we wouldn't be bothering to have this discussion. But also, and more to my point, anyway, whatever the sources of "rockism," I want us to explore why the rockist makes the arguments he does (whatever they are, wherever they originated). Were the rockist arguments once valid? If so, why? To whom? If it was new and exciting that the Beatles wrote their own songs (and btw, their best album in my opinion, the American release called The Beatles Second Album (which was their third album here), was swamped in cover songs), why wasn't it also new and exciting that Smokey Robinson and Neil Sedaka wrote their own songs? And if it was artistically debilitating that the Monkees didn't write their own songs, why wasn't it artistically debilitating for Aretha Franklin that she didn't write "Natural Woman" and for the Animals that they didn't write "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" and "It's My Life," all three of which were written by people who wrote for the Monkees? If we're to understand the "rockist" of the '60s (if there were rockists in the '60s) we have to understand this apparent contradiction, why it was a big deal for him that the Monkees used paid songwriters but that it wasn't a big deal that the Animals and Aretha used the same paid songwriters.

I don't see "rockism" as being codified or set. "Authenticity" isn't a standard, it's a buzz word, and a wild card, shifting all over the place as to what counts as "authentic," and arguments such as "they didn't write their own music" are specious. This doesn't mean they're meaningless, however, any more than the word "authenticity" is meaningless. But to understand "rockism" we first have to understand that it's inarticulate. (I'd say the same about antirockism.) The rockist uses "They don't write their own songs" as a symbol, but he hasn't worked out what it is that it symbolizes. It feels like a critique, but that doesn't mean it is one. And my contention is that calling the fellow "rockist" does nothing towards helping us understand him. That's just applying our own buzz word to him. And has no explanatory value.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Rules Of The Game #32: Where The Real Wild Things Are

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Woops

Re: Woops

Re: Woops

Re: Woops

Re: Woops