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.
― Mordy, Thursday, 30 April 2015 19:35 (nine years ago) link
https://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/spain/bilbao/koonspuppy/0016.jpg
― ... (Eazy), Thursday, 30 April 2015 19:37 (nine years ago) link
i wish this was on spotify:http://www.amazon.com/Broadway-Kids-The-Petula-Clark/dp/B0011BJQ3O
― Mordy, Thursday, 30 April 2015 19:38 (nine years ago) link
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.
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 30 April 2015 19:43 (nine years ago) link
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)
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 30 April 2015 19:48 (nine years ago) link
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?
― Mistah FAAB (sarahell), Thursday, 30 April 2015 19:56 (nine years ago) link
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.)
― niels, Thursday, 21 May 2015 16:33 (nine years ago) link
an overarching need to reconcile theoretical concepts is a fine thing, in itself, once the turf is in for the year.
― thoughts you made second posts about (darraghmac), Thursday, 21 May 2015 16:42 (nine years ago) link
what do you mean by popular culture and what culture produced within a capitalist socioeconomic system wouldn't be an expression of capitalism?
― gong mad (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 21 May 2015 16:48 (nine years ago) link
LOL yes plz start that thread. Nearly all pop is capitalist propoganda.
― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, 21 May 2015 16:53 (nine years ago) link
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.
― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, 21 May 2015 16:54 (nine years ago) link
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?
― niels, Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:07 (nine years ago) link
i wd maybe read some Marx
― gong mad (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:07 (nine years ago) link
or probably William Morris in this case
― gong mad (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:08 (nine years ago) link
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
― niels, Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:09 (nine years ago) link
Formalism is a reactionary bourgeois aesthetic btw
― gong mad (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:12 (nine years ago) link
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?
― niels, Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:15 (nine years ago) link
can you please not say "marxist pop?" i'm pretty sure that's the "summon Momus" card
― ultimate american sock (mh), Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:16 (nine years ago) link
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
― curmudgeon, Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:22 (nine years ago) link
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
― gong mad (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:23 (nine years ago) link
oh and Marx really wasn't anti industrialization
― gong mad (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:24 (nine years ago) link
and it's okay not to like stuff, you don't need a theory for it
― gong mad (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:25 (nine years ago) link
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
― Mordy, Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:28 (nine years ago) link
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.
― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:34 (nine years ago) link
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!
― Matt DC, Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:54 (nine years ago) link
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?
― example (crüt), Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:56 (nine years ago) link
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...
― niels, Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:58 (nine years ago) link
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.'
― Mordy, Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:58 (nine years ago) link
well i've never read marx tbh
― example (crüt), Thursday, 21 May 2015 17:59 (nine years ago) link
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.
― niels, Thursday, 21 May 2015 18:00 (nine years ago) link
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
― Mordy, Thursday, 21 May 2015 18:03 (nine years ago) link
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.
― ©Oz Quiz© (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, 21 May 2015 18:07 (nine years ago) link
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
― niels, Thursday, 21 May 2015 18:08 (nine years ago) link
yeah even as a pretty dedicated Bowie fan I find his business-like approach to music a bit repulsive...
― niels, Thursday, 21 May 2015 18:11 (nine years ago) link
or at least it saddens and confuses me since I really like the product but cannot identify with the commercial message it's sending
― niels, Thursday, 21 May 2015 18:12 (nine years ago) link
"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
― thoughts you made second posts about (darraghmac), Thursday, 21 May 2015 18:31 (nine years ago) link
NV otm upthread (darragh otm too)
i’m not anti-capitalist
critic of but not anti-
― drash, Thursday, 21 May 2015 18:45 (nine years ago) link
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.
― an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Thursday, 21 May 2015 18:50 (nine years ago) link
been drinking cherry wine on an empty stomach all day
― an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Thursday, 21 May 2015 18:51 (nine years ago) link
is that a strong, weak or compromised aesthetic
fortified
― drash, Thursday, 21 May 2015 18:53 (nine years ago) link
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.
― Mordy, Thursday, 21 May 2015 18:58 (nine years ago) link
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.
― an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Thursday, 21 May 2015 19:01 (nine years ago) link
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.
― Mordy, Thursday, 21 May 2015 19:03 (nine years ago) link
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
― an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Thursday, 21 May 2015 19:06 (nine years ago) link
fuck i'm wasted
for me, aesthetics and morality are linked in a demisublime and often very inscrutable manner
― an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Thursday, 21 May 2015 19:07 (nine years ago) link
Go back to the pub.
― Matt DC, Thursday, 21 May 2015 19:08 (nine years ago) link
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
― an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Thursday, 21 May 2015 19:11 (nine years ago) link
i was more interested in the apprehending subject tbh but still, the privilege of the thing itself outside of context is cobblers
― gong mad (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 21 May 2015 19:12 (nine years ago) link