In Terms of Tunes

I didn't say much about No Age's actual music in the post yesterday, but if you're curious, I think Matthew pretty much covered it.

Labels: no age, notes

posted by Mike B. @ 3:49 PM 0 Comments

Punk Grammar

We are all afraid of turning into our parents. It may be a short-lived fear, and it may turn out that we like turning into our parents, but there's an inevitable anxiety there. It's a way of transmuting the unavoidable change of aging into something we can control. Time marches on, but we can remain cavalier about certain social niceties, keep our sense of adventure paramount over our sense of safety, and avoid wearing slacks. These aspects of personality seem like something we have control over. The biggest thing, maybe, is that we don't want to lose touch with that art that was important to us as youths. We want to stay relevant, up-to-date, and so forth and so on, but at the same time our tastes are mostly fixed somewhere in the past. The music that mattered to us as youths dictates what matters to us as adults, but because music keeps changing, our efforts to keep up inevitably result in us being out-of-date.

The problem with my generation, the generation that grew up with grunge and became indie, embraces a somewhat different consideration. It's not the anxiety of influence so much as it is anxiety about influence. When we were growing up, the biggest thing we had to fight against musically was the influence of our parents' generation. The idea that the music of the 60s is the only music that matters is pervasive and incredibly powerful to a general audience. Worse, kids like me tended to approach adult music through boomer bands like the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Doors, Led Zeppelin, and Bob Marley. Thus attempts to come into our own understanding of music inevitably demanded a rejection of that whole canon, while at the same time, again, our tastes were formed in that context, and so those standards never really go away. The music that resulted rejected certain tenets--social relevance, poetic lyrics, melody, careful production--while keeping others, like authenticity, sincerity, and an emphasis on guitars. What resulted certainly sounded, at times, like boomer music, and even had some explicit connections; most notably, Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo was (0r is, perhaps) a Deadhead.

In the end, it's probably safe to say that we failed. Most younger listeners in the indie-rock demographic still come to adult music through boomer staples, and many stay there. The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, and countless artists derived thereof dominate musical tastes across all ages. The question, then, is whether we should try and shape the tastes of the younger generation(s) in the same way the boomers did. Surely kids need to get out from under this myth of the 60s just as much as we did, and the music of the 90s offers a viable, yet complementary, alternative. There already is a myth of the 90s, that has been muted somewhat, but is still going strong, at least if sales of Nirvana t-shirts are anything to go by. But if we do that--if we impress our tastes on the young--does that make us as bad as the boomers?

Which brings us, of course, to No Age.

No Age is a two-man band from Los Angeles who have just released their second record, Nouns, on Sub Pop, the Seattle label that was responsible for much of the grunge boom. Though their name is a reference to the hardcore punk label SST, they sound like an amalgam of noisy indie bands like Built to Spill and Sonic Youth (who, in fairness, did release an album on SST). More importantly, at least for the sake of this post, they emerged from a scene centered around a club called The Smell, an all-ages venue that serves vegan snacks and offers $5 haircuts; a picture of the club serves as the cover of No Age's first album. Its communitarian spirit recalls the hardcore ethos of the 90s, and it has spawned various other noisy bands like the Wives and Mika Miko. Sasha Frere-Jones wrote an article for the New Yorker that spelled out the club's mythos explicitly, making sure to mention that it lends out books and zines. Though the band's connection to the club is interesting, it's not a necessary factor for embracing their music, which works within an established genre and would make sense to fans of similar bands.

It's interesting, then, to read the band's two Pitchfork reviews, one for the new album and one for their first album, Weirdo Rippers. The first review, by Brandon Stousy, places the band precisely within this genre, throwing out references to Harry Pussy, Lync, and Kicking Giant, none of which I've ever heard of before. (Nor do I feel particularly bad about this.) It pinpoints their appeal more broadly, however: "No Age bring back the DIY energy of Kicking Giant and Lync and '90s zines and, importantly, a life away from computer screens." There's a clear broadening of scope there: few can relate to Kicking Giant and Lync, but the appeal of "'90s zines" has only increased since we no longer have to read them, and we can all feel a certain longing for the pre-internet days, I guess. (Can we?)

In contrast to the first review's focus on sounds and influences, the second review frames the band entirely in terms of their scene, mentioning The Smell in the first sentence and through the two opening paragraphs before returning to it again in the final paragraph. Only two paragraphs of the review deal exclusively with the band. Despite having a different author, the second review (written by Amanda Petrusich) echoes the appeal the first review invoked: "regional culture has been fractured and marginalized by the internet," Petrusich writes, and though "being too focused on anything local-- except produce, maybe-- feels depressingly provincial in 2008," she still finds it "thrilling that a community-sponsored, community-supported art space can attract (and sustain) such a horde of admirable bands."

Thus, it's not only that the band's success beyond the noise/ex-hardcore community is being explained in these terms of being a throwback to a 90s social context, but that the case for its continued success is being made in these terms as well. The reviewing inducting the band into Pitchfork's "Best New Music" category begins and ends with a discussion of The Smell and the way it resembles the lost utopia of zines, community centers, and vegans.

I'm not sure if this is necessarily a good thing. For one thing, the best and more enduring American indie bands of the 90s, if they were part of a scene at all, existed on the outskirts of that scene: Nirvana, Yo La Tengo, Slint, Pavement, GBV. You wouldn't put any of these at the center of an artistic community like you would No Age, and it's hard to see how any of them would have been diminished by having the internet exist. The two exceptions would be Sleater-Kinney and Neutral Milk Hotel, neither of whom I like, so maybe this is just a matter of taste.

Then again, maybe it's not. Unless we're going to make an argument that there was something unique about that social environment that made bands different--a charge it would seem hard to sustain given that most of this decade's successful indie bands have sounded like variations on indie bands from the previous two decades--then the reason to hail a return of hardcore flair would be that the experience itself is worth preserving. Moreover, at least in the case of No Age, a band's association with that experience would have to say something about their artistic worth. There's a weird dance going on in that last part of the equation: the extrinsic narrative is being brought in as part of the artistic experience, and while I think that's a good thing to do--it's why I love pop, in part--I'm not sure how it squares with the expectation of authenticity that goes hand-in-hand with the valuation of this sort of music. Once we start valuing process over product, I'm not sure that we've having an artistic discussion anymore. Sure, I wish music now was more aware of, say, sexism, but would a return of "community-sponsored, community-supported art space[s]" really make that happen?

The first part of the equation, though, is where this whole thing gets tricky, and where the problem of anxiety about influence comes in. If we think that this was a valuable experience to have, and if we think opportunities to have this experience no longer abound, it should follow that we want to encourage what few there are so that kids these days can be fortunate enough to have the same kind of adolescences we did. Putting it that way is stacking the deck a bit, so I don't want to lean on this too heavily. Certainly the present decade has all sorts of problems, and there are many aspects of "the 90s" that I wouldn't mind seeing return. If there's anything that argues against merely accepting the social environment as it is, it's that it changes every seven years or so.

But ultimately, the things I want changed aren't specifics, but generalities. I would like to see more awareness of sexism, but I don't necessarily think that it needs to come via take back the night marches. Requiring that a new generation deal with the same issues in the same ways seems like Boomeritis. "Political problems? Well then, by gum, you need protest singers and protest marches! If you're not doing that, well then, you're not really dealing with the problem, and you don't really care! Unlike us! We cared, man!" Replace "protest singers and protest marches" with "hardcore music and community centers" and you have the critical discourse surrounding No Age.

What exactly is so bad about the internet, though? I no longer live in the kind of major urban area where community centers allowed great bands to flourish; I'm back where I grew up, in upstate New York, where there are no great bands (though there are community centers). The internet is now doing what it did for me as a teenager: allowing me access to this wider world and informing me about what's going on. For kids in Baltimore or LA, that information was available within driving distance, or from their friends; I had--and have--to go out and find it. You know what the big bands play in my current town, people? Ska. If I don't have the internet, that's what I'm into.

And it goes beyond that. If you want to see what it looks like when we become our parents, check out the idea that the internet is getting in the way of kids these days having an authentic indie-rock experience. That's only true if the internet is somehow inauthentic, e.g. not a culture of its own, and I think refusing to acknowledge that is much more evidence of being out-of-touch than not liking emo. Lord knows I'm no internet utopian, but it seems strange to deny that there are real communities online. They may not be able to give each other haircuts or provide venues for bands to play, but none of that is necessary for vital art to happen. There can still be the kind of encouragement, critique, and one-upmanship that we associate with productive artistic communities. When CSS first emerged, they made a good case for being a product of internet music culture, having gotten many of their influences from MP3blogs like Matthew's (if I'm remembering correctly). I think because the idea of online music is so debased for critics and musicians, bands may be reluctant to acknowledge these sorts of influences. But they're undeniably there.

I'm not sure indie is going to do itself any favors, ultimately, by clinging to the processes of the past. Certainly a longing for paradise lost is fine, and there's nothing wrong with reverence for the past. But indie was birthed out of the idea that new technologies (like 4-tracks, cassettes, and photocopying) could change the way music is made. Once new technology comes, that should change it again, at least if it wants to remain a vital form. Ultimately, we may end up no different from previous generations, soft and happy at middle age, listening to the music of our youth and thinking it the pinnacle of human achievement. That's fine, and good; no one's going to stand up for the music of an era except those who lived through it. But that doesn't mean we have to impose an arrested development on those who come after us in the same way the baby boomers tried to, and continue to try to. Let's not become exactly like our parents.

Labels: baby boomers, indie rock, no age, pop

posted by Mike B. @ 10:32 AM 0 Comments

So Very Special

Let's get something straight here: Prince is not covering Radiohead here. He is, rather, making "Creep" a Prince song, which is to say he is bringing it within the Prince scheme of rhetoric. This is not merely an instrumental thing, nor even a stage gesture thing, though the gesturing offstage is pretty great. The particular moment it happens is at the end of the second verse.

Recall: here, Thom Yorke usually says "You're so fucking special." That "fucking" is key, because it's supposed to sound snide. It's an insult. Prince, on the other hand, does not say "fucking." And not just because he doesn't swear anymore; he could have said what Thom goes with in the radio edit, which is "very." Instead, he changes the entire line, and in doing, he changes the entire meaning of the line. Prince says: "I think that you're special."

This is probably the best distillation of Prince's verbal seduction technique anyone's ever conjured. That Prince is awesome and desirable goes without saying. Prince's argument for why you should sleep with him takes that for granted. Of course you want to sleep with Prince; everybody wants to sleep with Prince. But it's also true that Prince probably wants to sleep with everyone, too. Prince desiring you is not news. Prince walks around desiring things. That's what he does.

Prince's argument for why you should sleep with him, then, is that you guys could do something really special together.  Prince wants to sleep with you because he thinks you're amazing.  You are his equal, and being the equal of Prince is pretty special.  It's all over his stuff, but maybe best expressed in "Gett Off": "twenty-two positions in a one-night stand / I'll only call you after if I say you can," and, of course, "tonight you're a star / and I'm the big dipper."  Prince does not think that you're hot, or that he's good in bed; Prince thinks that you are the awesomest thing ever.  That you are, in other words, special.

Labels: covers, pop, prince, radiohead

posted by Mike B. @ 11:12 AM 6 Comments

Signed, Sealed, Delivered

Hi readers. As you may or may not know, I am currently a grad student, and I could use your help with some research. If you are an American citizen or current resident of the U.S., please take my survey. It's very simple and should take, at most, five minutes to do, but will be very helpful to me. Thanks!

The survey

Labels: notes, surveys

posted by Mike B. @ 7:48 AM 0 Comments

You Can't Fight Forever

I neglected to link it below, but Todd's paper, on anti-rave laws in Britain, is online. You should read it.

Labels: blogtalk, notes

posted by Mike B. @ 8:47 PM 0 Comments

Four Minutes (To Save the World)

I haven't said anything about the EMP conference here because I've had something of a hard time figuring out how to organize my thoughts. While there were excellent presentations, particularly J.D. Considine's and Todd Burns', I came away with a general sense of unease, but without anything specific to hang it on. Specifically, I was uneasy about many presenters' understanding of the conference's theme: politics.

Now, though, I think I've found a good example of what troubled me in a post by a conference attendee, Carl Wilson. I don't want to seem like I'm picking on Carl here--I really am just trying to get at a persistent point of view that irks me. Most critics who espouse that point of view are unreadable, at least by me, and so I wouldn't be able to find an example in their work because I don't read them. Carl, on the other hand, I am happy to read, and consistently do. He is a very good writer who occasionally wades into this stuff and makes me cringe. I don't think it makes other people cringe, though. So that's what I'm trying to get at here: the source of the cringe.

Carl's post is not about the conference itself, but about Barack Obama's recent "bitter" gaffe. Nevertheless, I think it gets at something fundamental about how many cultural critics think about politics. Carl talks about how the gaffe reflects a problem the left has with understanding where people's beliefs come from and how valid those beliefs are.[1] He compares it to Thomas Frank's What's the Matter With Kansas?, with its theory that working-class small-town Americans had been duped by the right into giving up their economic self-interest in favor of socially conservative politics that did them no good, and to his own pre-book attitude toward Celine Dion. To quote:

I thought a lot about these questions with regard to Celine Dion. There was a time when I would have figured that listening to Celine, like going to big blockbuster Hollywood movies, was a kind of false consciousness - being seduced by a materialistic Disneyland escapism that says nothing about real people's lives. I could have written a "What's the Matter with Celine Dion?" critique parallel to Frank's, claiming that people were being duped into listening to fairy-tale fantasy music sold to them by the very people who were strip-malling and outsourcing their communities' cultures out of existence.

But when I listened to Celine's music more and talked to her fans, I realized that she did, in fact, reflect her audience's values and concerns back to them in complicated ways - how to be at once strong, modern and feminine, for example, or the fate of tradition and family and community in an era of globalization and mass media - and that the more "rebellious" music that I used to think superior to the mainstream is often indifferent or hostile to those values and concerns. So why should they want it?

I came to think that everybody has a "false consciousness" of one kind or another, because everybody's cultural tastes are the product of their social experiences and position (including critics and rebels and radicals, seeking affirmation in the beliefs and culture they approve). Which is the same thing as saying no one has false consciousness. It's not that all beliefs are equally valid, but you won't get anywhere by assuming or claiming that other peoples' beliefs are inauthentic...

If we want to assert the importance of multiculturalism, adventurous art, minority cultures, reproductive freedom, then we have to recognize that some other people are equally attached to and serious about their religions, their social values, their leisure activities, their "American" culture.

Coming from my particular cultural viewpoint and set of beliefs, to conflate "adventurous art" and "reproductive freedom" is ludicrous. In the sense that they are both things that people can have different beliefs about, they're in entirely different categories. Disagreeing about reproductive freedom is a matter of ethics and practicality. We can argue about whether the rights of a fetus are more important than the rights of a woman. We can argue about adoption, poverty, rape, or, if you want to be really tolerant toward the conservative viewpoint, "post-abortion syndrome." Such an argument can proceed from a well-structured ethical system to factual discussion about the practical consequences of different policies toward reproductive freedom.

Disagreeing about adventurous art, on the other hand, is a matter of taste. And while taste is important, the arguments you can have about it are based in nothingness. You can never really "win" an argument about the avant-garde. You can win an argument about abortion. And that's as it should be, because abortion policy has real, demonstrable consequences. I can acknowledge and respect your viewpoint on adventurous art because, if it's different than mine, it has no consequences for me. This is not the case for actual matters of politics, for matters of policy. If a lot of people dislike gay marriage, that means a bunch of my friends can't get married. If a lot of people like Celine Dion, I occasionally get annoyed while in a department store. That's not just a difference of degree, but a difference of kind.

Unless, of course, you really do think that cultural disagreements have substantial practical consequences. Carl does, I think. When he says that Celine represents people who are "strip-malling and outsourcing their communities' cultures out of existence,"[2] that's not just department-store annoyance. That is a sort of cultural genocide, and in that case, you can have a ethical argument about cultural issues.

Which, again, seems crazy to me. But there is an entire field of study devoted to just such an idea. They've constructed a complicated--some might say a bit conspiracy-esque--theory on how cultural actions have an impact on power relations and social structure as great as, or even greater than, economic interests or public policy. You can string it together from Habermas to Zizek to various other people, all working under the assumption that culture maintains the power relations in society by distributing the ruling class' dominant messages to the public and inclucating hegemony, the new word for "false consciousness." (Note: this is the only time I will say stuff like that in this post, I promise.) And the perspective came up again and again at the conference that cultural actions--which is to say, artistic actions--had real and substantial (and almost always negative) effects on entire communities. This seems plausible when it comes to individuals, and certainly the role of culture in shaping people's identities is undeniable. But that's not what people were saying. Their arguments ran more along Carl's lines, that a strip mall eradicates the culture of a community. Moreover, there was a creepy strain of intentionality going on there, that zoning boards let strip malls in precisely so that they could accrue the benefits of destroying a community's culture. Over and over again, the most misused word in academia was invoked as shorthand for "corporations and governments are trying to destroy cultures because that is beneficial for their nefarious interests": neo-liberalism. One guy even used it to describe Ronald Reagan's foreign policy, which there may be some sort of literature on, but which from a political perspective seemed as sensible as calling Jerry Falwell a socialist.

I don't want to bite off more than I can chew here; this is a big, big argument, and at the heart of it is a basic disagreement about how the world works. A cultural disagreement, I guess. So I'm just giving my own particular viewpoint here. Carl points out, rightly and usefully, that lefties have their own sort of "false consciousness" where they're always seeking out things that reinforce their beliefs. I think the perspective I'm highlighting here is a symptom of that. At a certain gut level, it feels right to dislike strip malls and Disney stores and multimational corporations. But which came first here? Does the elaborate theoretical framework exist, in part, to justify these beliefs? And if so, are these beliefs rational, or are they...taste? Is opposing Disney Stores merely a matter of aesthetics? From that same rationalist perspective (which, I understand, the Zizek dude dislikes?), the negative consequences of a Disney Store opening seem hard to pin down, and though we might all agree that they're distasteful, it's hard to compare it to, say, the closing of an abortion clinic, or a change in the gas tax, or welfare reform. Which actually has an effect?

So let's focus on culture for a second, to get out of this comparison. I don't think that the only problem here is the conflation of art and politics. There's also, and more immediately relevently, the consistent attempt to apply ethical standards of judgment to cultural matters. I'm happy Carl points out that we need to respect where other peoples' tastes come from. But I'm not sure you get a cookie for that. Being curious and respectful of what other people like isn't the goal of criticism, but the base standard for responsible criticism. I'm aware that this is not necessarily a consensus view, and I've heard many people say their minds were opened by Carl's book on Celine, which made a great argument for the value of understanding why people like things we dislike. And lord knows I sit around and bitch about bands I think are shit. But I recognize that this is play--that bitching about shitty art is part of art. It's how more art gets made, for one thing.

I don't think that people at the conference really acknowledged this distinction. They seemed very serious about the evils they were cataloguing. They were making ethical arguments. But as I said above, the only way you can make ethical arguments about cultural matters is to assume that not following proper ethical standards has some sort of practical effect on the culture itself. In Carl's formulation, "communities' cultures" are being driven "out of existence"--are being destroyed. But this argument springs from a not entirely convincing vision of what culture is and how it works. In this vision, culture is a single, unchangable thing, that is how it has always been, and when it interacts with changing conditions, it doesn't change, but is, instead, destroyed. Here is the local culture, a pure and unmediated thing; here is the strip mall coming in; and there goes the local culture, which no longer exists, replaced with corporate culture. Different culture are, here, like salmon roe: distinct, unchanging elements that don't interact with each other but merely wait to be consumed, and, once they come into contact with a larger element, are obliterated.

To my way of thinking, though, culture is more like a sourdough starter. It's a basis from which other things spring, that people can take from without destroying, and which reacts to the infusion of new elements by changing, not by ceasing to exist; in fact, we have to "feed it" in order to keep it alive. Any culture, no matter how "traditional" it might seem to us, is historically contingent, socially constructed, and contested. Rewind a few hundred years, or even a couple of decades, and it will look very different. Cultures have always come into contact with new things and changed, always been up for debate. By the terms we use for talking about art, almost any local culture is inauthentic. And that's how it should be. Culture doesn't thrive by standing still, it thrives through play and debate and negotiation and change. This is not to say that any change is positive--I'm happy to talk about positive and negative cultural changes. But to say that negative changes aren't changes but destructions reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of culture itself.

To bring it back to where we began: the problem isn't that we think people's beliefs are inauthentic, it's that we think their culture is authentic. The only authentic cultures are dead ones, certified and frozen by the museum treatment. Any culture worth worrying about is inauthentic as hell, and if it can't take a damn Disney Store, it's hard to see how it would've lasted very long at any point in history.

This taking of culture at face value is persistent, and, I think, unhelpful in our attempts to understand art, pop, and all the rest. To frame these debates in ethical terms is to attempt an impossible argument--to transmute taste to policy. It doesn't work. If we're going to talk about art, for god's sake, let's do it on its own terms. Let's not try and justify our tastes by making the tastes of others seem evil; let's try and figure out what's going on with those tastes in the first place, and what they have to say about the society they're situated within.

[1] Though he doesn't seem to acknowledge the contextual information about the quote that's come out, which makes clear that Obama was not so much espousing his own views as--to steal Carl's excellent language--reflecting the likely views of a potential volunteer in San Francisco in such a way as to help the volunteer be more tolerant toward the Pennsylvania voters they were going to be canvassing. Obama has stuck to his statement for political reasons--saying it was a gaffe would be a sign of weakness, and he's done very well so far with embracing his embarassments--but I think what it reflects is less Obama's own intolerance (though, let's be honest here, a black man might be forgiven for being a little intolerant toward rural Pennsylvanians) and more his continuing effort to try and get the left to think abut things in a moderate way while not necessarily giving up their actual beliefs. Maybe the difficulty he's run into reflects his occasional clumsiness at doing that, or maybe it reflects the problem with local primaries becoming national news.
[2] While this is in the context of discussing his old position, the only thing he reverses about that position is that the people who like Celine have been duped--he still believes that their communities' cultures are being etc.

Labels: carl wilson, emp, politics, pop, theory

posted by Mike B. @ 9:12 AM 15 Comments

Do You Know What That Means?

Webbie - "Independent"

The obvious reference here is Destiny's Child, not just to the two "Independent Woman"s, but to "Bills Bills Bills." But instead of being a response song, this is more of an...agreement song? It recasts professional women in the hip-hop ideal: rich, hard-working, ambitious, and only needing the opposite sex for, well, sex. And it does so, somehow, almost entirely approvingly. These are good things for women to be.

The video undermines this a little at the beginning with its scantily-clad female students, but then actually goes beyond what the song itself claims. "Female Doctor Wins Nobel Prize," reads a fake newspaper headline, hilariously but accurately, and as the video ends, an impeached white male president has been replaced with a black female president. (With, awesomely, a full contingent of hot female Secret Service agents.) You could talk about that one for days in the current political context (the dream Democratic ticket!), and it'll probably be even more notable as a historical document a few years down the line.

What I like about this is not just that it's feminist--which it is--but that it's a specific kind of feminist. Rather than being a sex-positive feminism like you might be able to claim, were you drunk enough, that Li'l Kim espouses, or a third-wave feminism of Beyonce, the song is straightforwardly endorsing a traditional 60s, women's lib, second-wave kinda feminism. The idea of women assuming traditional male roles and becoming powerful and independent is straight outa Ms. magazine. I don't want to give the impression here that I'm saying this is unusual for hip-hop: this is unusual for any pop music, especially in the present decade, where we're lucky to get a little post-feminism thrown our way. Moreover, it's coming from men. Not only is it praising the idea of an independent woman, but it's making fun of men for opposing it.

This might not be entirely clear, since it's being expressed in the language of pop. Indeed, you could criticize the song for contradicting itself and the video for contributing to the exploitation of women, etc. etc. But in its chosen context, this is silly. Pop has always picked surface over depth, beauty over truth, and while this does not mean there is no truth or depth (just as truth often walks hand-in-hand with beauty), you can't read those surface elements as endorsing anything but aesthetics. Feminism, on the other hand, has never been so good with aesthetics. When it does try and move towards beauty, it seems to move toward feminity-as-it-is-lived and away from justice issues. So does that mean that pop, with its emphasis on aesthetics, can't be feminist?

"Independent" says nope. Where many previous attempts to integrate feminism into pop have either been non-threatening (see The Mary Tyler Moore Show), overly serious (see riot grrl), or critical of its contradictions (see Ally McBeal, Sex and the City, ad nauseum), "Independent" really does deliver a traditional women's libber message in a forthright, positive, and unmistakable way. And it does so by presenting feminism's arguments not as arguments but as foregone conclusions--as facts. This is pop's power. By being explicitly part of the mainstream, any piece of pop implies that all it contains is within the mainstream too. Webby isn't making a case for women being independent, powerful, and professionally successful--he's saying that they are all those things already, and men should recognize and respect that, because otherwise they aren't going to get laid.

And that's why it's not a contradiction. Female doctors exist, and so do inappropriately-dressed teachers and their nubile students, at least in the realm of pop. The video is just presenting them side-by-side. By so doing, it takes feminism out of the realm of the contested. It's over; feminism won. And ain't that grand? What's not to like about independent ladies? After all, as Webby points out, they can buy their men some nice-ass Gucci hats.

Labels: feminism, pop, webby

posted by Mike B. @ 7:56 AM 0 Comments

I Will Survive

Just popping in from hell month (affectionately!) to throw a few notes your way:

1) If you liked my last EMP paper, I am going to be there again this year. Rachel Arnold and I will be presenting a paper on pop songs used as campaign songs. The paper will probably show up around these parts in the future.

2) Generally I think Stanley Fish is a tool. But apparently if you give him 40 years to think about something, he can come to a pretty reasonable conclusion on it, at least if his article about postmodernism is anything to go by. It's pretty close to what I think about all them Frenchies these days: they weren't trying to disprove rationalism or claim that physical reality doesn't exist, they were just pointing out the socially constructed nature of things and kinda leaving it at that. I don't know if that's what they were actually trying to do, but it seems like the sensible way to think about them. That said, though, there were significant differences between them, and they're important. In retrospect, we can probably call Derrida and Baudrillard the Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin of theory: provacateurs who probably didn't mean all of what they said, and don't really need to be taken seriously, even if some people do. Barthes is kinda the Robin Williams: playful and entertaining, but harmless, if occasionlly annoying in the repetativeness of his schtick. And Paul de Man is just crazy.

But--and not to be a grad student talking about Foucault here, but--Foucault is genuinely important and generally right. His histories applied the deconstructive mindset to concrete and meaningful subjects, and what he turned up helped make strange questionable truisms. In a way, what he did is basically what Gallileo did; both questioned widely-held assumptions that had a real effect on people's lives. But where Gallileo did it with geography, Foucault did it with language. And that has to be attributed, at least in some small part, to the Frenchies, or at least the environment they whipped up.

I go on about this because the rection to Fish's post is just baffling. Comment after comment complaining about postmodernism! Who knew? And this is why I point out that not all French theorists engaged in the kind of rhetoric Fish is talking about (and people are complaining about). There were some that did do legitimate work that really called into question certain things. Many people would, I suspect, agree with Foucault's take on mental illness. It's unfortunate that certain theorists have given the whole enterprise a bad name, but it's really confusing how, after Fish spends a good number of words laying out a reasonable position, people still get really worked up about deconstruction. I mean, it sucks that the one dude went to McGill and had to read Derrida, but I think most English departments these days provide ample opportunity to engage in traditional studies of literature. All the postmodernists went off and formed critical studies departments, didn't they? Oh, what do I know. Maybe Foucault isn't even part of this group.

3) I had previously posted about how much I liked the video for Mariah's "Touch My Body," but I only now realize that I really like the song too! It's dirty but assertive, the melody is really strong, and I like that Mariah's standing up for both her own sexuality and her control of the situation. The sweet way she sings "I will hunt you down" is amazing. I think it's my single of the year right now.

4) Oh yeah: thanks, Universal, for making my entire BYOP post a moot point by removing "Becky" (and two other songs) from the final version of Get Awkward. You are a bunch of enormous cameltoes.

Labels: academia, announcements, emp, notes, pop, theory

posted by Mike B. @ 9:21 PM 6 Comments