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

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.

Lemme try that again:

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