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

[koganbot]

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

Comments

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

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.

[(Anonymous)]

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.

Woops

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

That was me.

Re: Woops

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

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.

Re: Woops

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

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.

Re: Woops

[koganbot]

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.

Re: Woops

[koganbot]

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.