Why are there far fewer advocates for popism/poptimism related to art forms OTHER than music?

Maybe I'm not reading the right people, but I feel like I don't read many insightful, clever people who push the "ascribing shame to pop pleasure is itself a shameful act" thing to Michael Bay movies and Dan Brown books or whatever.

It definitely seems like the idea that 'there's no such thing as a guilty pleasure!' is much more generally more accepted with music than other art forms, right?

Music is maybe more of an instinctive pleasure that doesn't invite such intense intellectual engagement as other forms? This is of course a massive, massive generalisation and I fully expect Tim F to come along and school me & u all

not only are you not reading the right ppl, you're posting to the wrong board

ILE seems like the best board for this.

It seems like there may be a few ILXors who are pretty knowledgeable about other art forms, but the majority seems to favour music, obviously. So, yes, I think your question may get more interesting responses in a film message board.

But I guess it depends what type of feedback you want.

There was discussion of this on some poptism thread several years ago, at least as it relates to books. Art forms are all very different, so "Pop" means very different things. Arguing the merits of Beyonce vs. Laurie Anderson is a completely different conversation than Thomas Kinkade vs. Jackson Pollock.

This is prob the closest thing I can think of to a 'poptimist' book on cinema (it's not that good, unfortunately):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_%28book%29

But since the 1950s at least, 'film culture' has been a big enough space to accommodate, or allow, almost any 'critical position' (eg luc Moullet's 'Charlton Heston is an axiom of cinema')

I'm afraid many "clever, insightful" critics tend to be big fans of shaming the unwashed masses. I said fuck it a long time ago and got a subscription to Entertainment Weekly.

michael bay kinda stands out these days for being a blockbuster filmmaker w no respect, imo

plenty of marvel/abrams poptimism going around

as for books, yeah everybody laughed at 50 shades of grey and dan brown but not at those swedish hacker rape books or george r r martin or (some of the time) stephen king. lotsa critics who <3 tswift hate the black eyed peas, or did last time i checked, this may have changed.

i mean i guess james wood doesn't write about george r r martin. but idk this stuff seems covered.

yeah i mean those are v good points - that a lot of the stuff critics and ilxors do like is simplistic boardroomed by-numbers artless trash, BUT THAT'S COOL

*flags own post, dies*

Is poptimism different from fandom? Because fandom tends towards hypercritical vehement hatred towards the people responsible for steering their properties wrong. (Lucas, lindelof, etc...)

Art history person here. Seems to me this is a fossil in the art world. I think those analogs don't work so well. In painting, for example, old masters have a "mass" audience, while it took a long time (and two world wars) for acceptance of "pop" language in art. This is an exciting time for us visual peeps because we can all, globally speaking, become more verbally literate.

Puritanism has always dogged music in particular, I think it still does. I think many people in the Western world still frown on pop and dance...or "pop" language.

Personally I quite enjoy pop, or "genre" literature, and I don't understand this meme that you are politically suspect if you prefer pop lit. Fact is, I like to stay in touch with mass culture, I think we should in democracies. I have nothing against "avant", then again, I'm not sure "avant" means "inaccessible" and vice versa.

I meant "visually literate" not "verbally literate" whatever that is.

Personally I love the early surrealists idea of destroying barriers between artist & audience, introducing new techniques (automatic writing, collage, dreams) that make it possible for the proletariat/workers/unwashed masses to not only understand a new art but to create it. To this day I have a lifelong hatred of art snobbery.

I think many people in the Western world still frown on pop and dance...or "pop" language.

I think last week when the new Grimes track came out and people were poo-pooing it because of the drops and the dubsteppy influences was good evidence that dance/electronic music is still looked down on.

.. or perhaps people praising it despite it's derivative & predictable influences provide good evidence that dance/electronic audience is a pretty uncritical one.

xp - looked down on by whom? The "art world" loves it

the surrealists, great champions of populist art that flatters audience's expectations.

Which sources in the " art world"?? And are they wrong?? Is dancing "uncritical"?? Should they exploit black "high culture" (jazz) instead? Also "opinion" does not mean "academic opinion" or "opinions in Artforum". It could mean "opinions of people who pollute Faebook walls". It could mean your neighbor's opinion.

I worked at an art museum for over a decade, as well as other high art/avant-garde institutions and it felt - to me - that there was less criticality of electronic and dance music than other musical genres that straddle pop and "high art."

I feel like there are a number of factors at play:
1. association of dance music with a constant progression of genres and sub-genres that tends to be something that appeals to a sensibility that is always looking for "the new," as well as its connection with technological innovation and it's experimental origins
2. electronic and dance music's social function re subcultures, which is something that also interests "high art" people
3. it is conducive to being played at galas and parties

When I say "the art world" I mean the musicians and music that gets presented by institutions, as opposed to what individuals in "the art world" happen to like or personally rep for.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/7/3/5867225/digital-revolution-barbican-london-exhibition-photo-essay

on the film side, farber's elephant and termite and related (and along with that in fact, french new wave crit) was a huge influence on proto-poptimist rockwrite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manny_Farber#.22White_Elephant_Art_vs._Termite_Art.22

the "poptimist" moment was in a sense about a dispute _within_ popculture where one _wing_ of it was taken as superior to the others in a particularly stupid way (and still is, by many, apparently).

"real art" (so constructed) doesn't enter the dispute here. Rather we've got (had?) a situation where the equivalent of exponents of mid-90s amerindie-derived "a family gets together, people die, people cry, there's a holiday, someone learns something" flix were insisting that everything with an explosion or a bank robbery or idk the romcom equiv could not possibly be good. But you don't have that in the film world. Like on the contrary the canonical "great" american films of the 70s and 80s are almost prototypically genre pieces.

Lit is a different story. There's a huge "poptimist" thing going on now with the explosion of "YA" genre stuff as a serious category for ppl to enjoy, but idk how i feel about it. On the other hand, there's also been the canonization of classic "genre" sci-fi and mystery stuff, and even a slow turn of modern "high lit" towards it. But lit is driven by other things than blockbusters and money, since the lit scene as such is insular in a sense, not by choice, but because "literary-lit" just matters less and less.

Those are my scattered thoughts, at least.

otm

There's this detail about Popism vs Rockism, which is that the argument still takes place within popular music. A rockist doesn't have a problem with popular music at all, just with pop music. Even though one often suspects that Rockists would rather be involved in classical music, they're still a faction within popular music.

So that might be why it's not easy to map popism and rockism on to other art forms?

As for literature, you'll see a ton of words defending YA and genre literature, but mainly defending it qua literature ('GoT is serious literature too, here's why ...') - doesn't sound like true poptimism to me.

what would a poptimist defense of it sound like?

read what makes you feel good, mayne

i haven't read it, but that series seems to be designed to make the readers feel terrible! the conversations I hear are like, "did you get to that part yet?" "oh my god, that part was the worst! I can't believe that happened!"

and the new yorker piece about the YA author is about a book where the main character is dying of some terminal illness. maybe poptimism is incompatible with YA because YA is about making you feel bad.

Popist defense of GoT would be along the lines of: the plot kept me reading it, I got angry when people I liked died and punched the air when people I liked got their own back; I like entering the world of the book, and everything in the story that could be called ridiculous, I find thrilling and exciting

Same with Twilight and Harry Potter more or less

If you had a GoT fan saying GoT was better than 50 Shades of Grey because it was serious and literary, and the 50 Shades fan responded by saying they just got off on 50 Shades, that might map on to rockism vs popism? Both people are talking about mass market products, but one of them wants to elevate one product above others, whereas the other just enjoys the product for itself without caring about its status.

Don't think either of those books would appeal to a a rockist. Seems like "rockist" literature would have to somehow feel (to the litist) like the natural state of the form, the bedrock from which all subsequent diversions are just novelty or temporary experimentation, a real book as opposed to an ebook or whatever, apparently timeless and classic, authentically created as an artistic expression and not specifically created for an existing market. Steinbeck maybe, or Kerouac?

its maybe a more interesting question with visual arts. we don't have the same low/high divide there because there aren't really even low visual arts, or to the extent they develop, like graffiti, they're adopted incredibly rapidly by the art world. so arguably the 'challenge' to the low-high divide (challenge in quotes because you can't just keep challenging it forever like its a thing) in the art world for the past 50 years (70? 80?) has been probably the defining narrative.

on the lit side, there is actual genre lit that gets written out of the 'real' lit story even as there's been a place made for westerns long ago and sci-fi more recently and YA today (sorta): http://www.gorillaconvict.com/2011/10/vickie-stringer-keeping-it-real-3/

there aren't really even low visual arts

jack vettriano

There are a lot of very well-read people who will rep for mass market fiction, even when the fiction in question isn't particularly well-written. Usually it's based on enjoying it for what it is rather than criticising it for what it isn't (and usually isn't trying to be).

Garden variety comments box rockism usually looks ridiculous when you invite the poster to compare Mozart or Beethoven or Shostakovich to whatever band they're holding up as an objectively superior to modern pop music (usually the Stones), usually because they miss the point that both are pop and both are trash. And they're either both "art" or neither of them are.

There's still a big (albeit shrinking) contingent in the world of classical/notated music that looks down on all pop whether it's Beyonce or Led Zeppelin or "art-rock" and where these barriers still firmly exist with very few pop performers allowed over the line, but that debate happens even there.

Variations of this debate also appear to exist in dance, film, architecture and visual art from what I can see. I suspect they're only really absent in areas without proper rockism but my ignorance is betraying me here - I've no idea if rockism and popism exists in the world of, say, topiary.

Was going to mention Manny Farber too, although not so much that essay, more his example throughout Negative Space. You see the reviews of B&W b-films (actually I haven't seen enough of those) and then he ends w/Fassbinder and Structuralist cinema.

But beyond that, its something more ingrained in in film culture and the way cinema worked. Lotsa auteurs never forgot -- while shooting in beautiful colours and framing the image -- that it was all to show that people's faces (and women if you were male) were beautiful. Yes you add more but its not something that is forgotten about.

Although now we are all well into a separation.

Don't really like the way the question is phrased. I don't think it needed poptmism to come along -- insofar as it is a thing at all and I'm not sure on that -- for people to have a problem w/ guilty pleasures.

I mean really the question should be turned inside out - the question is the extent to which other art forms erect objective (or more often pseudo-objective) measures of quality. You need that to happen first before popism can exist.

garden gnomes still prohibited from display at the chelsea flower show iirc

^pleasingly gnomic interjection from nickb

Gnome Chomsky over here weighing in

Both people are talking about mass market products, but one of them wants to elevate one product above others, whereas the other just enjoys the product for itself without caring about its status.

imo there are regular large-scale-hits that people can treat as *real books* (eg The Corrections, maybe Gone Girl more recently, David Nicholls even, David Mitchell… it's not an especially coherent list).

I don't think it maps especially well to a "Jake Bugg – *real music*" (haha though ok, I like particular forms of psychological and domestic realism as equivalent to 'plays a real instrument'), just because the histories, borderlines, means of transmission, cultural positions are so different.

, a real book as opposed to an ebook or whatever, apparently timeless and classic, authentically created as an artistic expression and not specifically created for an existing market. Steinbeck maybe, or Kerouac?

I'd see someone like Roth in a Dylan/Stones-ish role of 'The Real'.

oh shit david mitchell is radiohead

& i think an active(*) poptimism of books would/does look like what I've seen of the fandoms – participatory, creative, partisan about characters, etc etc. But as ppl have said upthread it doesn't really occupy the same space as the self-conscious literary world, they just don't rub up against one another enough to generate friction/a theorised debate.

(one cause of that I suppose is that you'd rarely accidentally read The Hunger Games whereas – particularly in youth/20s – you just hear an awful lot of stuff everywhere. Also see times - hours vs minutes to consume book vs pop song)

(*) as opposed to just really enjoying eg urban fantasy

hey just don't rub up against one another enough to generate friction/a theorised debate.

Janeites might be a flashpoint.

There's still a big (albeit shrinking) contingent in the world of classical/notated music that looks down on all pop whether it's Beyonce or Led Zeppelin or "art-rock"

yeah thinking of the kind of fusty Private Eye mentality where all one has to do to get themselves into Pseud's Corner is equate any sort of non-classical/jazz music with established notions of Art

As for literature, you'll see a ton of words defending YA and genre literature, but mainly defending it qua literature ('GoT is serious literature too, here's why ...') - doesn't sound like true poptimism to me.

disagree here -- I think lots of YA-crit is more along the lines of "I enjoy this stuff, I laughed, I cried, so do lots of other people, the virtues Roberto Bolano has are not the only virtues books can have and aspire to" which seems pretty close to poptimist to me.

I realised the other day that I'm a poptimist with music but basically a rockist snob when it comes to TV and novels and I'm not sure why.

So how do we interpret this quote from Kingsley Amis, talking about John D. MacDonald, writer of the "Travis McGee" series of crime thrillers:

MacDonald is by any standards a better writer than Saul Bellow, only MacDonald writes thrillers and Bellow is a human-heart chap, so guess who wears the top-grade laurels?

He seems to be stopping short of calling it serious literature, but perhaps is saying that where the author directs the reader's attention - or the stance of the author toward the subject matter - can disguise the craftsmanship of the writing.

Genre writers do get posthumously co-opted by literary types though - Jim Thompson springs to mind, I dunno how highly rated Chandler was when he was alive, etc.

X-post addendum: But he's also judging MacDonald's approach superior, so he's trying to rearrange accepted literary values to some extent

To Matt's point: In my example, Amis wasn't speaking of MacDonald posthumously - it was in 1971, in the thick of MacDonald's career

Wouldn't be surprised if Amis was saying that partly to wide up his son, a well-known Bellow stan.

WIND up

Jim Thompson and Philip K. Dick too - but you know, lotsa film adaptations help.

More from Kingsley Amis:

I think it’s very important to read widely and in a wide spectrum of merit and ambition on the part of the writer. And ever since, I’ve always been interested in these less respectable forms of writing—the adventure story, the thriller, science fiction, and so on—and this is why I’ve produced one or two examples myself. I read somewhere recently somebody saying, “When I want to read a book, I write one.” I think that’s very good. It puts its finger on it, because there are never enough books of the kind one likes: one adds to the stock for one’s own entertainment.

Amis wrote a James Bond novel in the late 1960s, lest we forget

Well again, I think his love of genre fiction fed into his dislike for the experimental, and his increasing sense of himself as a cultural and political conservate. He didn't much like it when ppl like Aldiss and Ballard moved in a more avant-garde direction.

Chandler's reputation was pretty strong during his lifetime iirc - I think he was pretty quickly perceived as having literary weight.

Amis (and Larkin and a few others of that generation, The Movement generally really) are slightly unusual cases because I think it's a major pre-60s culture war – like from early on it's a combination of taking pleasure in jazz or SF or erle stanley gardner or what have you, along with a self-conscious opposition to Oxford/establishment/Eng Lit high culture – it hardens into a slightly trolly antagonism to most modern literature over time.

It comes up a bit here as we fall into Dick Francis chat:

beckett's reading list

vague idea that the crude large scale process for genre moving to something like literary respectability is basically a slow generational/class movement – as readers who grew up on the stuff (which I think tends to be a class marker, ie they're not-quite-establishment) move towards hegemonic middle age/cultural authority, they make a case for the genre fic that they regard affectionately, which then becomes a kind of alternative establishment or gains some liminal 'respectability', leading to cross-bleed, greater respectability etc. (Not very satisfied with it as an explanation though – why hasn't horror made this sort of transition, when crime and then SF have?)

Lovecraft and Stephen King have, apparently

Books have also been around far, far longer than recorded music. So there's been more time to break down book hierarchy. Recorded music is also perhaps the most recent of any technological media, so it lends itself far easier to postmodern criticism.

xp
yeah, there are definitely a few exceptions, but I'd say there isn't a well-populated or stable border region, as there is with crime, SF & thrillers. Maybe it's a timing thing – a Clive Barker/Frank Herbert raised generation of serious literary writers could be due.

otoh elements of older horror were certainly incorporated into "transgressive" high-lit ages ago -- burroughs, acker, heck kafka.

and on the "border region" there's also certainly patricia highsmith!

So what about people who are a) very heavily invested in video games and comics but b) look down on pop music

That's a common one that interests and frustrates me

Pop music strikes me as way more problematic than video games and comic books just on its cultural footprint.
They're closer to metal? Somewhere between a niche genre and major commercial entity

Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson and plenty of old ghost story and gothic writers. There are quite a few contemporary horror authors who are pretty well respected but just aren't that well known.

Been reading (horror/weird fiction critic, scholar, editor) ST Joshi recently and he points out several times that a large amount of the most famous writers of 1700s to early 1900s had a few if not a whole chunk of horror stories, some of these writers are only remembered or just best known for their horror stories. In Britain major publishers were fine with printing horror at a time when in America the genre was too associated with lowly pulp magazines; I think Britain changed its mind in the 50s.

The conversation about genre fiction acceptance is overdone but Jeff Vandermeer wrote a really good piece about it.
http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/vandermeer_11_07/
Bruce Sterling insulting another writing by calling her "Shania Twain" might be relevant here.

writer not writing

One of the things that makes it hard to draw parallels in other media re the rockist/poppist dichotomy:

Rockism (re music) wants to value forms of musical creation that provide some guarantee (supposedly) of authentic self-expression, with a minimum of artifice (there's obviously a slew of dubious assumptions at work here, but as I understand it that is the ideology: distortion pedals are seen as extensions of the guitar which itself is an extension of the musician's body (loins really)). The thing about fiction (in books or film), however, is that the entire enterprise is about artifice. Works that are relatively direct expressions of the creator's inner soul are a specialized few (poetry provides lots of room for this, but these days it is a specialist genre read by few).

Painting is another beast altogether. I suppose expressionists of various types (Van Gogh, Pollock, etc) embody some rockist values, but the issue of representation or truth value seems so different here than in music, that I can't get my head around how you can fully deploy the dichotomy in this context.

There are actually a number of Horror dudes who get mainstream praise, Thomas Ligotti, Nate Kenyon, Laird Barron. you could add Brian Evenson too, though he has a range.

There's sort of a highbrow small press Horror writing world going back to those T.E.D. Klein Twillight Zone Magazine days and centering around Cemetary Dance

Glamorizing alcoholic/addict poets/writers feels like a rockism, the idea of suffering for your work in order for it to be great. The suffering artist given license to indulge themselves for the public as long as they can be sacrificed as cautionary dreamers.

popism is a myth perpetuated by those who give credence to other myths

so is zeus but he has awesome lightening bolts and shit

that was CGI:(

It definitely seems like the idea that 'there's no such thing as a guilty pleasure!' is much more generally more accepted with music than other art forms, right?

― I am Nicky-napped

Haha, away from smartarse music forums I find exactly the opposite to be the case! I know plenty of people who would be perfectly cool with watching an Adam Sandler movie or whatever as just a bit of fun, but turn their nose up massively if you admit to digging a cheesy pop song.

Music is generally seen as far more of a lifestyle/philosophy signifier than any other artform in my experience.

I don't think that the popism vs. rockism model of discourse fits literature very well. But then, I don't think it fits music all that well, either.

In regard to literature, authors each have some end in view when they write a book, but they differ greatly in what those ends might be and in their ability to achieve their ends. A well conceived and well written book does what it sets out to do and speaks to the audience it was written for.

I read The Da Vinci Code and found it to be an excellent book of its kind. I found the same to be true of Infinite Jest and 2666... just to pick two other recentish examples of books that connected with their audience. There is no earthly reason why one ought to set up any of those three books as being in opposition to, or antagonism toward, one another. They aren't.

There was a bit of rockism/popism in the lit establishment's hatred for Stephen King in the 70s and 80s (with Harold Bloom continuing it into the 90s and beyond) and the influence he was actually having on future literary novelists growing up in that period.

Harold Bloom is exceedingly well-read and thoughtful, but he can also be a pompous ass. That can happen when one is a serious person and begins to overapply that seriousness to oneself.

I remember a fiction writing teacher passing out an essay he'd written about why "mainstream fiction" (literary) was superior to genre fiction--because tv and the movies had made plot-dominant fiction obsolete.

I can understand why people might get annoyed at King's success and winning the American Letters award, even if someone totally loves his work, I don't know how they could deny how severely flawed his work often is. I don't think it's pompous to say he isn't a great writer and that other writers maybe deserve that success more.

I read King's acceptance speech for the award and he sort of said he was claiming it on behalf of all the bestseller authors who weren't really that respected. It was a nice speech but I didn't agree at all that people should pay attention to whatever is popular in your culture. If I did that I'd be totally miserable and never have time for what I really liked.

There's a median between "S.King is a great writer who deserves big time awards" and "S.King is a sign of culture decline who sholuld never be taken seriously by any SERIOUS person" that I don't think many gatekeepers respected.

in 70s/80s I mean

I've always thought 'poptimism' had a lot to do with acknowledging other people outside of white males with guitars. The problem is, (almost) all the mainstream films are made by an elite of white male directors, serving up stories of other white males proving there mettle as white males. There really isn't anything filmicly to most genre-films, which sets it apart from an oscar contender. And when there is - be it Michael Mann, Paul WS Anderson or the LEGO Movie - the critics usually point it out. Plus there is the whole history of weird pulpy stuff becoming acknowledged: spaghetti westerns, film noir, wuxia, grindhouse, etc.

I've been wondering recently what people mean when they dismiss a book or a tv drama as "not serious".
Seriousness isn't objectively measured, but how serious does anything need to be? Seriousness of the effort in creation or seriousness of subject matter? Is seriousness equated with quality?

I see the word used over and over by critics and I find it quite suspect a lot of the time. Usually by people who have overly specific criteria for deciding what is worthwhile.

Tristam Shandy is not a serious book. To which I say, "Hurrah!"

It's possible to put forward a very serious subject with real lightness of touch, I think that's what I'd say to someone who wanted everything serious - like The Wire is about awful things but the plot moves so gracefully and the characters have this wit

And speaking of 'Why so serious?' that recent good Batman film with the joker in it was a more or less pitch perfect picture of evil put across with silly costumes, almost literal clown costumes in the joker's case, and car chases, explosions, etc

a film that spawned a slew of light-hearted silliness

Does "poptimism" really exist in the U.S.?? I think chart hits are more respected today than it was twenty or thirty years ago... but not as much as it was in the sixties. But it seems to me that the term "pop" is quaint here in the states.

no it isnt

I'm not sure that the popist equivalent of writing about books/movies/tv is necessarily "I enjoyed it because that scene was awesome, and then X made my cry and OMG what is going to happen to becky?"

I would have thought a more obvious model is, say, the rigorous even-handedness of Emily Nussbaum w/r/t TV. If anything, I would say that when e.g. Nussbaum criticises 'House of Cards' for not being as good as 'Scandal', it feels a lot less self-consciously oppositional than a music equivalent of that comparison would be.

That's because the spectrum of visual media that Nussbaum acknowledges is so attenuated that any stark opposition is difficult. I find this more pernicious.

I don't know, I would have thought that oppositional approaches are easier the less material you're working with. Certainly music fandom normally works that way.

The bigger issue with TV - but it applies to film, books etc. as well - is that TV fandom is less tribal in nature.

Less tribal, absolutely. Hard to imagine anything like the viscerally felt "Disco Sucks!" phenomenon of the late 70s/early 80s (which was rockism running amok, after all) in other media.

One thing about music that seems unique here is the extent to which it involves the body. I mentioned this upthread in terms of the production side of things, but it's possibly even more relevant on the consumption end. "Pop" is, among other things, the music of the dance floor. The body is engaged in very specific ways quite distinct from the rockist context (with its head nodding, head banging, and occasional thrashing). This physical dimension means that more intimate things seem to be at stake with music, including different notions of masculinity.

has anyone read renata adler's 70s/80s thing on pauline kael

Now, when a pop star reaches a certain strata of fame — and we’re talking Beyoncé, Drake, Taylor Swift, Arcade Fire levels here — something magical happens. They no longer seem to get bad reviews. Stars become superstars, critics become cheerleaders and the discussion froths into a consensus of uncritical excitement.

This is the collateral damage of “poptimism,” the prevailing ideology for today’s most influential music critics. Few would drop this word in conversation at a house party or a nightclub, but in music-journo circles, the idea of poptimism itself is holy writ.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/at-the-top-of-the-pop-music-heap-theres-no-criticizing-the-view/2015/04/16/d98d53a8-e1f2-11e4-b510-962fcfabc310_story.html

personally i drop the word poptimism in conversations with my dog but she always looks at me like she has no clue what i'm talking about

goddd get one irony, Karl's dog

Critics who would trash Taytay, Beyonce etc simply don't tend to review them - music reviewing has specialised to a degree imo

The only place non-Taytay fans will come into critical contact with Taytay is in an ROY poll, with superb consequences

EOY, even

meta music crit is so pass-agg. there are only like 10 music critics in the world. this article would be more honest (tho also more vulgar) if it was like "hey X, u have shitty taste in music. stop voting in the EOY polls."

u missed the il

there are only like 10 music critics in the world.

And there are 143 of them on ILX.

Left a yet out there... but it'll do.

it's the same 10 critics each with a dozen sock puppets

Taytay??!?

really????

http://directory.ucanews.com/uploads/dioceses/promo/1357813593.jpg

new board description

Mordy otfm

That's a great article btw. Doesn't mention/take a crack at Pazz'n'Jop, but that's presumably because the writer is complicit

Great but I must add only as relevant as music criticism is

*cough* no

hmm?

i don't know if it's good or not that we now have a climate where people who don't like pop music feel like they have to take a 20 mile detour in their "i don't like pop music" articles but tbh if you don't like pop music that's lovely, just write about something else and stfu about pop music

corporates influencing self identities

yay full house

The writer clearly doesn't hate pop music, and nor do I

it's totally immaterial, it's not a negative quality, but anybody who writes a wrinkled brow piece about "poptimism" in 2015 does not get popular music and wants to draw hierarchies. good for them! get on with it

"where are the people criticising today's hottest pop stars?" you're on the internet dude, there's fucking millions of them

"actually, it's about ethics in music journalism"

idiocracy

what's pop music

you asking me, Noel Coward or John Julius Norwich?

Was gonna crossly point out that this thread shd be about forms OTHER than music, then took a closer look at this revive and uh carry on

The article pays lipservice to the real issue here - the marketisation of all online editorial decisions and the click-chasing culture that results, but blaming that on "poptimism" shows that the writer doesn't actually understand what he's talking about, and his use of the Arcade Fire and Drake to illustrate that point is hilarious.

Feel obliged to point out the irony in his "no one would say 'poptimism' in a nightclub" remark*, considering the phrase was coined to promote a club night.

*Even if it is probably true, if only because 'poptimism' only actually exists when it is misused on the internet.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/70/Mr_tayto.jpg

Yeah, the writer uses some weird examples - U2 to signify rockism comes off a bit weird, unless we're talking the most oafish form of rockism that would also claim rock supremacy for, say, Glasvegas

Would like it more if his angle concerned the ignorance many critics show towards the avant-garde or even the unheralded lower echelons of pop, but then I doubt he's a Micachu fan

adjective
1.
understood by or meant for only the select few who have special knowledge or interest; recondite:
poetry full of esoteric allusions.
2.
belonging to the select few.
3.
private; secret; confidential.
4.
(of a philosophical doctrine or the like) intended to be revealed only to the initiates of a group:
the esoteric doctrines of Pythagoras.

I don’t think you can talk about progress in art—movement, but not progress. You can speak of a point on a line for the purpose of locating things, but it’s a horizontal line, not a vertical one. Similarly the notion of an avant-garde is a bit off. The function of the advance guard in military terms is exactly that of the rear guard, to protect the main body, which translates as the status quo.

ILM poptimism gets owned again and no one can come up with a coherent response that isn't just 99% ugh snark

Snark

✓

noone

augh

http://publicdomainreview.org/files/snark-strip.jpg

Tanook composes a post

Would like it more if his angle concerned the ignorance many critics show towards the avant-garde or even the unheralded lower echelons of pop, but then I doubt he's a Micachu fan

Oh boo-fucking-hoo the avant-garde, and I speak as someone who's spent many an evening sitting on a plastic chair in a draughty hall watching a man scraping some cymbals with a violin bow etcetera etcetera.

A measure of anti-rockism in critical discourse is always vital, but Nooks is a troll account surely so the argument is not only facile but extraneous

At least he's been frightened away from more profound stuff back to bitching about people liking Charli XCX.

I like it when 'weird' or 'experimental' artists namecheck and show props to pop artists, because it demonstrates the synthesizing of the discourses and the sublimation of the avant garde - it feels conversely irritating if the pop discourse does not reciprocate. Which is why something like that Amel Larrieux album felt so exciting - approaching the synthesis from the direction of pop

posts that you assumed were c&ps until about a third of the way through

just reminding everyone itt that you are contributing to a 147 post thread that began with the post

Maybe I'm not reading the right people, but I feel like I don't read many insightful, clever people who push the "ascribing shame to pop pleasure is itself a shameful act" thing to Michael Bay movies and Dan Brown books or whatever.

It definitely seems like the idea that 'there's no such thing as a guilty pleasure!' is much more generally more accepted with music than other art forms, right?

― I am Nicky-napped, Thursday, 3 July 2014 17:03 (9 months ago)

i flag posted him this morning just in case

I'm ill but I've agreed to play 90 minutes if football and I'll embarrass myself and Ken C will be there to mock me, let me post idiotic things about the art music discourse fgs

woah woah woah thats not cool man

I. M. Nuki-napped

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bh_LKM3CAAAFygk.jpg

just couldn't take the shock to the system when he found that max tundra included both the vengaboys AND maryanne amacher in a recent mixtape

shooki

LOL (xp)

Which is why something like that Amel Larrieux album felt so exciting - approaching the synthesis from the direction of pop

Since you're on an "untapped potential of pop music" tip at the moment, have you deigned to listen to the new Dawn Richard album yet or are you just going to wait until the end of year poll before freaking out?

you could, like, ctrl+f 'imago' in the thread (yes, i have, it's great)

Surprised this "untapped potential of pop music" trope isn't continuously laughed at.

Or maybe its a quiet, internal laugh.

It's a fairly hollow laugh tbh.

That's the problem with pop music, it's never really come into its own.

it could be so much more popular

It could experiment every now and then - shake things up a bit.

Oh boo-fucking-hoo the avant-garde, and I speak as someone who's spent many an evening sitting on a plastic chair in a draughty hall watching a man scraping some cymbals with a violin bow etcetera

― Quack and Merkt (Tom D.), Sunday, 19 April 2015 14:02 (2 days ago) Permalink

pop has already incorporated this, all the did was put "re rewind.." in front and hey presto smash hit

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81v9v0QjlXL._SX425_PJautoripBadge,BottomRight,4,-40_OU11__.jpg

I seem to be misunderstood as someone who dislikes pop music. Simply couldn't be further from reality. It's always been proudly part of my domain.

if we could have a thread for imago and the raccoon, and confine them there, that would be sweet

(xp) I hate to break it to you but I don't think anyone really cares :(

Most important takeaway from the article is U2 being fully enshrined in North American rockist canon

why yes I do take Katy Perry as seriously as U2, U2 is ridiculous, writer man

(xp) I hate to break it to you but I don't think anyone really cares :(

― Quack and Merkt (Tom D.),

Hate to break it to you Tom D but you reply to 90% of my posts

wooo!

auk nae

glad i've made a friend today

these kinds of threads are the worst on ilm. will happily never see another popism/rockism debate again as there's nothing interesting or new to say about these in 2015.

i think thats less true in 2015 than its been in several years! its hard to say interesting things tho, cant fault bloggers for not being up to the challenge really

https://twitter.com/perpetua/status/591297957267382272

xxp - meanwhile there are super fascinating things to say about CDs vs vinyl vs streaming in 2015

there are only like 10 music critics in the world.

And there are 143 of them on ILX.

― Quack and Merkt (Tom D.), Saturday, April 18, 2015 4:05 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Talk to an ILXer about the right band, and s/he becomes a (music) critic.

we are all music critics, but some of us are gazing at the stars

only two things in life are inevitable, bands and music criticism

a music critic is one who knows the band of everything and the critic of nothing

i have a dream that my four little children will one day post on a board where they will not be judged by the color of their band, but by the content of their critic

our band could be your critic

http://skynetandebert.com/2015/04/22/music-was-better-back-then-when-do-we-stop-keeping-up-with-popular-music/

lot of bullshit assumptions there imo

imo too much looseness around the meaning of relationship btwn popular listening and age/gender/parenthood - he says it means tastes calcify + mature but it could also mean that tastes just become more specialized + niche, which you'd expect from a developing music taste

yup and niche stuff is by definition "less popular" because fewer people are listening to it and it isn't on top 40 radio.

feel like there's also some tautological loop going on there about Top 40 radio = popular music but I can't quite articulate it.

on a personal note, the thing about ID'ing parents by streams of kids' music just seems really wrong - parents who specifically seek out children's music for their kids are a small subset of parents ime.

I mean we have a couple kids' albums thing around the house (mostly given to us as presents) but the vast majority of music my kids hear is just whatever I play around the house + what mom plays on the radio

most of what my kids hear is our music but we do occasionally play children's music for them - sometimes seeking it out (esp stuff we loved from our childhoods like raffi, broadway kids, older disney soundtracks) and stuff they specifically request (frozen almost exclusively)

it seems like he completely avoids one of the more obvious conclusions - that Top 40 radio is popular because it's the primary (if not sole) source of music for a certain demographic

popular music really means top 40, esp in poptimism. the movement to take traditionally popular folk + religious music seriously is an anthromusicological concern. pop music is what they play on the radio.

https://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/spain/bilbao/koonspuppy/0016.jpg

i wish this was on spotify:
http://www.amazon.com/Broadway-Kids-The-Petula-Clark/dp/B0011BJQ3O

pop music is what they play on the radio.

I don't really have a problem with the semantics of this - it's just nomenclature - but I would think it's obvious that what gets played on the radio is going to correspond to who listens to the radio, who is targeted, etc. Concluding that teen girls listen to top 40 radio and that the farther you get from that demographic the less people listen to it is not really earth-shattering news. And I don't think that really reveals anything about what is going on with people's tastes - like moving from "I am no longer/am not a teenage girl" to "omg my tastes have calcified!" seems spurious.

it seems more accurate to consider Top 40 pop as a genre in the same way country or metal or rap are considered genres. Just because teenage girls make up a large portion of the audience for top 40 and a smaller portion of the audience for others doesn't make top 40 any more relevant (and I'm skeptical that actual numbers would support that it's any more popular than other genres)

this is just based on spotify use data which isn't entirely neutral itself. When do they listen and under what circumstances? Are people putting it on in a shared work environment? Is it private listening?

Sometimes I find it a bit difficult to embrace popular culture, not because of the way it looks/sounds/reads but because it's an expression of a capitalist system I don't particularly endorse. From a marxist perspective it's probably a good thing to criticize elitism, but there's also loads of problems with pop as culture industry. So anyway, I was thinking of starting a "Popism >< Marxism" thread, but I'll just ask on this active popism thread: any popists out there who find it hard to reconcile popism with marxism? (not dogmatic marxism or communism or anything, really just the line of critical thinking that has its roots in marxism and also finds expression in queer theory etc.)

an overarching need to reconcile theoretical concepts is a fine thing, in itself, once the turf is in for the year.

what do you mean by popular culture and what culture produced within a capitalist socioeconomic system wouldn't be an expression of capitalism?

LOL yes plz start that thread. Nearly all pop is capitalist propoganda.

You can make non-capitalist culture but it doesn't take long for it to be commodified. But you can certainly go to Kinkos and print out anarchist lit or something.

Yeah, I can see how that was maybe not so clear but I don't mean that I want cultural products (!) that are somehow disconnected from capitalism, but there seems to be a difference in the way capitalism expresses itself when some hardcore punk band does a diy tape release and when Taylor Swift sells millions of copies of something and while I enjoy "I Knew You Were Trouble" as a great pop song I also kind of resent the commercialism of it all? And when rappers celebrate their riches I can enjoy it as genre characteristics, and actually also from a marxist perspective if it represents power to the lower classes, but the glorification of success & money in itself, not so cool?

i wd maybe read some Marx

or probably William Morris in this case

Nearly all pop is capitalist propoganda.

― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, May 21, 2015 5:53 PM

I agree and find this kind of problematic

Formalism is a reactionary bourgeois aesthetic btw

I'm not totally sure I understand your point - is the idea of popism formalist and therefore bourgeois and therefore not cool from a marxist perspective?

Also, will reading William Morris soothe my soul or convince me that there can be marxist pop and is it a real recommendation or do you just mean my "analysis" overlooks that there's a lot of leftist pop?

can you please not say "marxist pop?" i'm pretty sure that's the "summon Momus" card

slightly off-topic of marxism and pop culture

http://www.filmcomment.com/entry/bombast-pop-pop-pop-popular

Popism/Poptimism and movies(art-house faves and blockbusters) and music

briefly: there is no single Marxian analysis of culture but drawing divisions like popular/elitist feels broadly antithetical to the spirit

Morris advocated a form of hand-crafted artisanal moralism that feels closer to this kind of argument

any critique of culture that centres meaning in the object itself is a bit rubbish

the size of your market is no real indicator of how capitalist yr product is

+ culture that situates itself oppositionally to the hegemony is still an expression of the hegemony in many many ways

oh and Marx really wasn't anti industrialization

and it's okay not to like stuff, you don't need a theory for it

i like the idea that resistance to capitalism could possible emerge spontaneously within a broadly popular capitalist process but it seems more likely that if resistance does exist it does so outside the industry. rockism was never simply about resisting corporate sponsored music tho bc plenty of rockist canon artists are pretty capitalistically situated

Haven't read much Marx actually, I really need to rectify that soon.

I have been reading a book called "Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism" and came upon this point:

Both radical feminists and socialist feminists agree that patriarchy precedes capitalism, whereas Marxists believe that patriarchy arose with capitalism. Patriarchy today, the power of the male through sexual roles in capitalism, is institutionalized in the nuclear family. -- Eisenstein, pp 24-25

Maybe a bit off-topic but the sexual division w women dominating pop and men domination rock probably has a lot of implications wrt undercurrents in rockism/popism. Certainly exploitation of artists seem to fall along traditional gender lines.

Just knock yourself out dude, it's now possible to enjoy that Taylor Swift album to your heart's content without giving a single penny to a capitalist entity (except the ones who created the technology on which you're listening to it and even then I'd be more worried about, say, the Congolese tin in yr smartphone rather than what liking Taylor says about your Marxist credentials.)

Unless you get similar pangs of contradiction every time you enjoy a coffee / a beer / a KitKat then I'm going to assume you're trying to rationalise a socially acceptable reason not to like pop music. It's okay just not to like it!

So the question we are trying to answer here is "How does one reconcile the West's history of oppression with one's desire to shout 'I love Britney Spears and hate Oasis!!!' at everyone?" right?

xp but my problem is that I like pop music! It's just that if you try and figure out the ideology of pop it's not very nice...

marxism has been so effectively commoditized by post-colonialism that in a heartbeat the conversation turned to Congolese tin and the 'West's history of oppression.'

well i've never read marx tbh

and yeah, I do get pangs when I buy stuff in general but this is a special kind of pang, maybe more similar to the pang I get when I really enjoy a Woody Allen movie and then I realize maybe he sexually abused his adopted daughter.

i have no sensitivity left to my participation in capitalism except for the anxiety that gnaws away at me as a participant + the fear that there isn't enough

Popism does seem to value quantity over quality, a short shelf life, so that the pop can be disposed and a new product purchased as replacement. This is even seen in the more long-lasting stars like Madonna and David Bowie who constantly must "reinvent" themselves, killing off the old model to make way for the new. The many phases of Britney. The tabloid tear-down/redemption culture.

wrt drawing divisions like popular/elitist I think it's fair to suggest that popism can be framed as in line with "critical theory" (note the quotation marks, I realize that all of these concepts are problematic) because it legitimizes the taste of a "lower class" (contradictory as that may sound) but then again it's not very good for a critical theory when you consider the ideology of pop

yeah even as a pretty dedicated Bowie fan I find his business-like approach to music a bit repulsive...

or at least it saddens and confuses me since I really like the product but cannot identify with the commercial message it's sending

"any critique of culture that centres meaning in the object itself is a bit rubbish"

any critique of an object that centres meaning in the culture it came from rather than that object is equally so tbh

NV otm upthread (darragh otm too)

i’m not anti-capitalist

critic of but not anti-

this comes down to aesthetic compromise, really - and strength of aesthetic. it is entirely possible for pop to manifest in an uncompromised aesthetic that the critic regards as strong. personally i find plenty of pop aesthetics weak, but i find many strong as well. i even find a few compromised strong aesthetics to remain strong, although of course compromise weakens the aesthetic in almost every case. what am i on about. flag my post.

been drinking cherry wine on an empty stomach all day

is that a strong, weak or compromised aesthetic

fortified

this is a little off-topic but i was just thinking yesterday that while there are lots of movies, music, art etc that i find emotionally + aesthetically resonant, these art forms rarely do much for me on a political, ethical or philosophical level. sometimes there are exceptions but even the biggest exceptions ime access one of these other dimensions through their aesthetics and not in a direct confrontation. literature can be a little better at handling those questions but really despite its pretensions to leading the broadsides of politics, the -arts- rarely have anything particularly sophisticated to say.

i think that the very best music infers a sort of state of mind which could approach politics and ethics in a productive and interesting way. and that's the most primal & instinctive art form (imo) - film and literature can obviously be more didactic, and i find that sometimes it is so successfully.

i wouldn't disagree w/ an assertion that the arts are more important than politics/ethics/philosophy, or that they reach a deeper, more subliminal state of human consciousness. just that when they speak to these other things (and esp when they explicitly try) it doesn't work for me.

it is entirely possible that politics/ethics/philosophy are rationalist contentions forged in an esoteric thought-web of artistic immersion, but the process of forging need not be entirely subliminal. of course i would agree that the arts are more important, insofar as they can be separated - even they depend upon decision, aesthetic remove, possession of stance

fuck i'm wasted

for me, aesthetics and morality are linked in a demisublime and often very inscrutable manner

Go back to the pub.

i'm at the computer drinking at home and i intend to be here all evening, lucky for you i'm writing my frankly amazing novel mostly

any critique of an object that centres meaning in the culture it came from rather than that object is equally so tbh

i was more interested in the apprehending subject tbh but still, the privilege of the thing itself outside of context is cobblers

ah man it's good to have you back

its all down to the object and the subject of the object obv

not sure most worthwhile objects even have a subject but this is getting ridiculous

on the other hand given the circumstances

unrelated to what's happening itt right now, but i have a memory of a zine piece from ages ago (hermenaut, i think?) from a guy who was going thru architecture school, and was on a serious anti-modernist, anti function-as-form kick, and one of his projects was to design a mausoleum. of course the rest of the class came back with these grim slablike designs, half wright, half maya lin. but he had a simple open structure dwarfed by a towering mess of neon and statuary bolted on top, maybe (iirc) giving the pagan intent away with some kind of sphinx-like embodiment of the deceased. he tried to say that it was honest and celebratory (and by extension everyone else's were cowardly and ideologically constrained) but everyone incl the instructor looked at him like he was losing his mind.

so yeah no there are far fewer advocates for popism/poptimism related to art forms OTHER than music, it's true. except maybe TV.

I know of nothing better than the Appassionata and could listen to it every day. What astonishing, superhuman music! It always makes me proud, perhaps with a childish naiveté, to think that people can work such miracles! … But I can’t listen to music very often, it affects my nerves. I want to say sweet, silly things, and pat the little heads of people who, living in a filthy hell, can create such beauty. These days, one can’t pat anyone on the head nowadays, they might bite your hand off. Hence, you have to beat people's little heads, beat mercilessly, although ideally we are against doing any violence to people. Hm — what a devilishly difficult job!

I like pop music but I don't like economic inequality, and I will be very surprised if it's controversial to suggest that most pop stars are rich and most fans are not rich.

I don't think pop music or pop stars are to blame for this and I realize there's probably a lot more rich record label people than pop stars (and even more rich warmongers etc.), but as a pop fan I still find it problematic - maybe because it legitimizes inequality, maybe because it's just weird, like I don't idolize CEOs, fuck CEOs, but I like Jay Z what's up with that I don't know.

When I've come across thinkpieces/discussions/reviews that maybe could have been labeled "popist" I've been impressed with how engaged with the world the writing has been when for instance focusing on politics of race and gender, and it seems like it would be logical for "popist" criticism to engage with pop economics (apart from reviewing sales, billboard chratings etc.)

I dunno, maybe there's nothing to be said, maybe it just kind of sucks and then you get on with enjoying great pop.

I enjoy pop music and dog-fighting

my interests include pop music and antisemitism

among my hobbies are pop music, the listening thereof, and the grinding of to powder the skulls of illegitimate children. my thoughts on income inequality I prefer to keep to myself.

u can have ur cake and eat it imo, contra bad readings of marx it isn't necessary to interpret everything solely in terms of its relation to capital, there are plenty of other criteria of analysis and judgement there for us which aren't wholly reducible to its value-form. though they are nevertheless utterly compromised and yeah that can be a bit of a bummer.

aren't two things going on there though? on the one hand yeah the big pop stars are rich, but they're not anywhere near rich by "masters of the universe" standards. but a different point concerns the topics of pop songs as celebrations of materialism. but if you're talking about African-American pop stars those markers of aspirations mean something very different than they would from someone privileged.

you get both these points made in criticism of salaries of sports stars, and similar replies are valid there too.

Are most pop stars that wealthy? I thought quite a lot of them didn't get their fair share of the money and go back to a modest life after their chart success is over.

totally agree two things are going on but my attempts to suggest that the ideology of pop is problematic were not well put/received so I figured I'd try a different approach

agree all this totally applies to rock/sports/books/Letterman/lots of mass culture, just figured popism was a poster theory for contemporary internet critical discourse and so it was extra obligated to engage or something

Can you be more specific?

It reads to me like you're being considerably more ascetic about pop music than you would nearly any other aspect of life: like, do you have an iPhone?

uhm don't want to come off as ascetic but no, don't have an iPhone, don't eat meat, try to buy most stuff 2nd hand

But yeah, that's maybe actually a good way of framing it, I see myself as a critical consumer and I have issues with my pop consumption since I can't buy organic/fair trade pop

or popism is liberating wrt my aesthetic choices which I really enjoy and I don't want to limit my cultural consumption but I feel like maybe I should

A lot of the "ideology" of pop music is basically the ideology of being a 15 yr old kid IMO.

wtf is "fair trade pop"

I mean if your issue is exploitation at the root of the business that's one thing but it's not the artist's welfare you're concerned with, it's more like ur worried about spiritual pollution from pop's ideologies which tbf you treat fairly reductively

The fair trade thing was meant to be funny, taken literally I recognize it doesn't make sense. I also don't mean to suggest I've presented any sort of analysis of pop or popism, just wanted to hear what other people thought about what I experience as a clash between my aesthetic preferences and my political convictions. But I guess people don't find it that interesting and that's cool.

Just accept that beauty is inseparable from decadence and roll with it imo.

But I'm suprised by what I interpret as a reluctance to criticize pop ''ideology'' or what ever you want to call it. To use a somewhat exaggerated example, suggesting pop is close to politically neutral, to me, is like suggesting macdonalds are just trying to serve food, or that the fast food industry is too complex to reduce to macdonalds as an example, which, cool but this is a message BORAD not an academic paper so maybe some inaccuracy or hyperbole could be excused

That's a pretty cool answer! Maybe you're right...

What about the way in which pop music is more accomodating to people's busy working lifestyles? Is it a bad thing to demand less of the listener? Isn't it kind of pro-working people to prefer something that doesn't demand your labor? Thinking too much about music is labor. It's free labor. What is liberal about that?

I've always felt that the preference for "the difficult", the arduous, the heroic, is anti-labor. Most of us work hard enough. Even the rich work long hours.

Talent should be the ability to accommodate US.

thinking too much about music isn't labor, free or otherwise

it produces nothing

But I'm suprised by what I interpret as a reluctance to criticize pop ''ideology'' or what ever you want to call it. To use a somewhat exaggerated example, suggesting pop is close to politically neutral, to me, is like suggesting macdonalds are just trying to serve food, or that the fast food industry is too complex to reduce to macdonalds as an example, which, cool but this is a message BORAD not an academic paper so maybe some inaccuracy or hyperbole could be excused

― niels, Sunday, May 24, 2015 3:22 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

who is reluctant to criticize pop ideology? All I see online are (often facile but) arguments about pop's ideology & what it all means.

like, are you looking for ppl to explicitly come out against the listening of certain artists or songs? the only time I can think of that kind of advocacy happening has been w/r/t R Kelly, at least recently. and that doesn't have as much to do w/ the ideology of his music as it does supporting someone who as abusing other people in the real world

to continue this discussion i need some IRL examples cuz i don't even really understand what you're advocating...like, are you saying we shouldn't celebrate Big Sean's "IDFWU"? "Blurred Lines"? I think there are def examples of people rejecting individual songs because of the ideology they propagate but they don't become wider movements bc everyone except for extreme right christians tends to treat their relationship with pop music as a fairly negotiable set of values

Totally agree that there's plenty of criticism regarding ideas expressed by specific songs/artists/genres. I'm looking for a critique of pop for being capitalist or a critique of popism for ignoring capitalist aspects of pop. I can see how that maybe sounds totally crazy since popism can maybe in part be conceived as a reaction against only understanding pop as capitalist product/propaganda. I guess I feel like the current engagement with pop lacks balance, and I understand this is not an uncommon suggestion. I don't mean this to sound wrong, but maybe it also has to do with my Danish perspective: in Denmark it's not very common to celebrate wealth and success, and pop/popism does this a lot.

btw I also feel weird about for instance Bob Dylan being a very very rich blues/folk/singersongwriter, but maybe because his wealth is celebrated less and not so visible it's easier to ignore

thinking about the celebration of wealth and success within African-American art, religion, life generally, would be helpful for you, I think. I don't know what to point you to read on this, though.

I tried to get my head around the idea that e.g. Brian Ferneyhough is in fact exploiting the proletariat by by writing difficult complex music. Then I decided to revolt against the unpaid labour of thinking about it.

kickstarter to fund Sund4r's thinking on this important question!

I think the pseudo-intellectual jerking off over Mad Max proves that this is not true btw

pseudo intellectuals jerk off over everything I'm not sure the topic matters

i mean, i don't think 15 years ago the movie-review landscape would have been so unabashedly "YOU GOTTA SEE THE NEW 3-D CAR CRASH REMAKE OF A FRANCHISE FROM YOUR CHILDHOOD"

i guess the only way you could be more "film poptimist" is stanning for Pitch Perfect 2

And I think the whole "TV is the new film" attitude is basically a poptimist rescuing an entire format once referred to as "the idiot box" and reserved for killing hours before you fall asleep. See the increase in the auteur theory (ie., saying "showrunner" instead of the less-sexy "executive producer").

what did you think about mad max whiney

mainstream movie critics has always been populist/poptimist - the shitty local critic who ends with "FUN!" for every review of a summer blockbuster and with the snobs it sorta happened already with the future French new wave guys when writing and loving mainstream American filmmakers like Hitchcock and Preminger and it's never really left -- annoying aspect is that they can act self-righteous about loving popular movies now too.

whiney ffs

Whiney otm about marketing of TV. I think TV is much better than it used to be but also think long-form serialization is mainly a crass capitalist move more than an artistic one.

I think w the rise of Facebook and Myspace and social networks where most of your profile is made of products you consume has lead to an era where consumers are more vigilant than ever about being better at consuming than their peers.

Mainstream film critics might be populist but they all hate Adam Sandler and don't his movies still make tons of money? Also Paul Blart, etc.

trenchant thread

Mainstream film critics might be populist but they all hate Adam Sandler and don't his movies still make tons of money? Also Paul Blart, etc.

But do poptimist music critics love e.g. Nickelback?

But do poptimist music critics love e.g. Nickelback?

No, because poptimist criticism defines pop aesthetically (music by black people, mostly, that you can dance to, mostly) rather than by the numbers (music that's popular = pop). Thus a rock band (e.g. Five Finger Death Punch or Theory of a Deadman) can have multiple high-selling albums out, with songs that get played all day long on rock radio formats, and never draw the attention of critics, because a) there's no big rock radio station in New York, and b) a lot of music criticism these days is about preening for other critics (cf. the annual EMP Pop Conference, which I have presented papers at twice), and if a band is just four white guys with electric guitars, there's no intra-group status to be gained by, and therefore no value in, analyzing their work.

mj eddie vedder eating popcorn.gif

No, because poptimist criticism defines pop aesthetically (music by black people, mostly, that you can dance to, mostly) rather than by the numbers (music that's popular = pop)

This entire post is so wrongheaded that I had to just check to see if you were Raccoon Tanuki.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oBTzbKx0jo

^curvy Columbia dive

when poptimists stare into the void, Nickelback stares back at them and smirks.

I don't know everything all ya'll are talking about, but it might also be fruitful to talk about how the music is used?

Everyone already knows that when you give someone a dime for something that costs five cents, you're going to get a Nickelback.

See the increase in the auteur theory (ie., saying "showrunner" instead of the less-sexy "executive producer").

These two titles are very far from interchangeable and while the former might usually be the latter as well, they're not the same job

Art historian here. Visual art had its "popism" moment in the nineteenth century, with the advent of photography. Critics argued over whether these machine-produced images could be "art". Ditto the value of mass-produced images such as book and magazine illustration. Would be worth reading the anti-photography essays published at the time - these would be the "rockists" - no?

Photography's influence on painting is a fascinating topic.

Also you misunderstand me, and also take my earlier post too seriously. I DO think that rockist critics who demand that hard-working people listen to their twenty-five essential rock albums are being classist. I don't have time in my stressful working life to listen to boring depressing shit like Astral Weeks. A liberal music writer ought to understand labor and economics better. NOT that Van Morrison exploits workers, but I think critics do. Or at least lack sympathy for them.

the working class find it very hard to avoid rockist music critics

From the boss' kids'Mecca that is ILX. I come from three generations of steelworkers AND attended an elite university. I know both sides.

Rock music is working-class AND black in origin, it is amazing how many white male critics and editors pay no mind to this, nor are they grateful to the originators of a music that they STOLE. I don't like some privileged ass telling me that I'm not musically literate enough because I didn't like his pet rock albums. Ditto for rich old white guys who sneer at blue-collar students who haven't read all of the "great books".

The working-class has every right to read bullshit criticism produced by the bosses' class. Don't think they don't. Esp. when critics pretend to be "liberal".

Jesus be quiet

critics exploiting workers, what is the world coming to

There is something suspect about all these critics who put all these long movies like the Godfather on "Top Ten" lists when they could be recommending Youtube clips or 30 second ads to the overworked masses

xxp
it must have been pretty shit for that first generation of your steelworker heritage, waiting for the Bessemer process to be invented and just making horseshoes and stuff in aid of sending a future progeny to an elite university centuries later:p

astral weeks is a dope album fuiud

would rock critics still be rockist/classist/racist if they recommended "are you experienced?" to their working class readers instead of "astral weeks"?!?

i guess the only way you could be more "film poptimist" is stanning for Pitch Perfect 2

That would indeed be much more "film poptimist," in that one notable feature of poptimism is "what if we accorded mass media whose primary audience is women something like the same benefit of the doubt we do mass media whose primary audience is men."

I tried to get my head around the idea that e.g. Brian Ferneyhough is in fact exploiting the proletariat by by writing difficult complex music. Then I decided to revolt against the unpaid labour of thinking about it.

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Monday, May 25, 2015 4:43 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is similar to what Cornelius Cardew argued in Stockhausen Serves Imperialism (1974), isn't it?

i posted some stuff about popism and capitalism earlier on this thread, in a piece on gawker linked on taylor thread similar ideas are expressed, a decent read apart from the somewhat polemical tone:

... the part of Taylor’s persona that doesn’t get talked about enough: she is a ruthless, publicly capitalist pop star. To think of her as womanhood incarnate is to trick oneself into forgetting about “Bad Blood” and “Better Than Revenge.” Swift isn’t here to help women—she’s here to make bank. Seeing her on stage cavorting with World Cup winners and supermodels was not a win for feminism, but a win for Taylor Swift. Her plan—to be as famous and as rich as she can possibly be—is working, and by using other women as tools of her self-promotion, she is distilling feminism for her own benefit.
http://gawker.com/taylor-swift-is-not-your-friend-1717745581

how is feminism the way this writer defines it possible in a society that's not capitalist?

Are you referring to this paragraph?

I often have conversations with my female friends about the two sides of feminism: the complimentary, bestie feminism—the kind that Swift is currently selling—and the cutthroat, realistic, we-exist-in-this-male-world-too feminism, the kind that expects women to act to standards that have already been set for us, and to do so by acting better and stronger and in alignment with each other. I think that neither are necessarily “wrong,” though I do often find myself on the latter side of the fence.

If so, it's pretty late in Denmark and I'm not clearheaded enough to understand what it's supposed to mean. But I thought the point about Taylor's capitalist values was relevant (although I'm sort of feeling that maybe other people itt will find it too self-evident to be mentioned).

Maybe both sides are just different points of view seen through this critical lens that is being reduced into yet another cultural football team.

Is a non-capitalist pop star possible?

I thought popular music depended on the existence of capital.

Just thinkin' aloud here.

Taylor Swift Burn a Million Quid

cultural football team hehe

Were there stars in communist Russia? Jurij Gagarin? Anyway, I agree, in a capitalist society it's hard to imagine pop being in opposition to capitalism. But maybe some pop embraces capitalism more than other - or maybe Pitbull (my go to reference, but really, the guy had a sponsorship deal with Kodak where he would say the word "Kodak" in his songs) is no more capitalist than the Beatles were, he's just up front about it?

I'm pretty much repeating myself here - but I thought it was nice to see an article/thinkpiece that pointed out however obvious, that there's some tension between the down-to-earth-friend and larger-than-life-business Taylor Swift.

flappy bird heroically stanning for the angry birds movie reminded me of this thread

Feel like a lot of people used to be into way more interesting stuff.

they were also shorter and lived near the water

I'm picturing intelligent people looking in the mirror and crying after a long degrading day of writing and arguing about mediocre pop film and tv.

I'm picturing a tree

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQDeU6dHX-c

I'm picturing a tree

― saer, Thursday, 6 July 2017 14:33

I hope it's an interesting tree.

And when I die, I want to be a ghost that feeds on the regretful tears of dying popists who went too far in their apologia and analysis.

Before I die there will be ghosts who suck the tears from my eyes because I spent so much time sneeringly lurking around discussion of mediocre to poor pop culture.

Morbius will feed these ghosts more than I will.

They will whisper to me about the potent flavour of my Ready Player One movie vintage tears.

Last night a ghost said all this intermittently when sucking on my eyes...

"You wanted to remove that Ready Player One movie thread bookmark, you wanted to spend your life more meaningfully, but you were just like the rest of them, far too weak to resist.

You told yourself that there might be something that made it worthwhile, like that hilarious Jared Leto fashion photo sequence in the Suicide Squad movie thread, but even that wasn't justification enough. No ILX poster has the power to save these threads.

Those Mahavisnu Orchestra, Judas Priest, Sisters Of Mercy, Mahler, Sibelius, Delius and Incredible String Band box sets and Cardiacs piles have been sitting unfinished for years and you still look at these threads. "

Then it told me about Οὖτις's delicious Game Of Thrones tears.

lol

flappy bird is giving this a good go maybe

Poetry rockism: http://www.pnreview.co.uk/cgi-bin/scribe?item_id=10090 - the terms of this argument are more or less identical to ye olde rockism-about-rock.

The controversy sparked (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/23/poetry-world-split-over-polemic-attacking-amateur-work-by-young-female-poets ) suggests poetry anti-poetyrockism is nascent, or at least possible.

Unfortunately the Poetry world is always full of this “THis is not real poetry” shit. I remember when political poetry wasn’t real poetry, or performance poetry wasn’t real poetry or LANGUAGE poetry wasn’t real poetry or basically anything that was not to the taste of the editors of the twenty or so highest profile journals wasn’t real poetry (this used to include most poetry by POC.) I’m not sure why different genres of writing can’t be allowed to co-exist—like, are Dance music writers always issuing denunciations of Metal?

Protecting standards used to be a big deal in academic writing programs. I remember a fiction professor on the first day of class handing out an essay he had written explaining what was literary fiction and what was genre fiction and why the latter was inferior. He compared Moby Dick and Jaws because they were both about sea creatures.

cross-ref w/ literary clusterfucks thread

just read the links on the pre-bump revive. i mean the poetry she's critiquing is properly ghastly tbh

I'm afraid many "clever, insightful" critics tend to be big fans of shaming the unwashed masses. I said fuck it a long time ago and got a subscription to Entertainment Weekly.

― Darin, Thursday, July 3, 2014 3:04 PM (five years ago) bookmarkflaglink

thread honestly should have been over here, this is the undercurrent of so much discourse that purports to be about something more elevated than this

https://giphy.com/media/94EQmVHkveNck/200.webp

Lemme try that again:

http://giphygifs.s3.amazonaws.com/media/94EQmVHkveNck/giphy.gif