This first appeared on Splice Today.
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“If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel I could make a billion dollars.” Elvis’ discoverer Sam Phillips denies ever having said it, but the quote keeps getting repeated because, apocryphal or not, it resonates like truth. Folks like Jackie Wilson and Junior Parker and Mama Thornton were performing in Elvis’ style before Elvis was. But they weren’t white, and so they didn’t have access to the same kind of mainstream success that Elvis did. The quote underlines the extent to which Elvis was a product not just of his own individual genius (which was considerable), but also of America’s conflicted history of segregation and racism.
You could argue that Elvis’ success is built on cultural theft — and many people have. But you could also argue that it’s built on a particular kind of performance. That is, the excitement, the sexiness, and the thrill of Elvis isn’t just that he’s performing in a black idiom, but specifically that he was a white man performing in a black idiom. The charge wasn’t just the styles being appropriated, but the appropriation itself.
The soul of rock, then, is not its authenticity, precisely, but its fakeness. Elvis is edgy because he’s adopting a persona that isn’t his. His success/failure in passing for black is what makes him rock n’roll, and the failure is every bit as important to the mystique as the success. Similarly, middle-class Jewish Zimmerman is rock because he is pretending/failing-to-pretend to be an earthy Okie hillbilly. Mick Jagger’s charisma is a function of the fact that he is pretending/failing-to-pretend to be a working class American (of vacillating races), rather than the art school snob he is.
Elvis and Dylan and Mick Jagger are all performing differences of race or class…but those performances are all also about gender. When Elvis wiggles his hips, or when John Lennon declares “you better run for your life if you can, little girl,” they’re not just pretending to be (respectively) sexy black performers or sexy American performers. They’re also pretending to be men. The pretense of authenticity is also a pretense of manliness — of greater sexiness, swagger, violence, and danger. And, again, the fact that the pretense isn’t perfect, that the façade is an aspiration and in part a failure, is an aspect of the excitement, not a negation of it. Rock gives you the chance to be someone you’re not; to feel the giddy rush of swapping up for a better race, class, nationality and/or phallus. If the mask was too perfect, you’d think it was real, which would make it not sexy but stodgy, like parents who can’t be bothered to put on a costume for Halloween. Thus, David Bowie’s flirtations with androgyny (not to mention Elvis’ flirtations with mascara) were a logical fulfillment of rock rather than a queer twist on it. The music was in part about the sexiness of mimicking a man; but it was also about the sexiness of micking a man.
All of which helps, perhaps, to explain rock’s decline, if not entirely as a commercial force, then at least as a libidinal, barbaric yawp. As Jonathan Bogart says,
Rock has been undergoing something of an identity crisis in the past several decades. Its position as the dominant sound of youth culture has been usurped by hip-hop and dance music. Its reputation as the voice of rebellion has been co-opted by three generations of advertising and corporate culture. Its claims to righteous authenticity and working-class grittiness have been undermined by a multimillionaire celebrity culture and the rise of of a blue-collar generation that’s a lot less white and male than previous ones. It has only managed to retain any cultural capital in the world of indie rock, where its original vulgar aggression and sexual drive has been replaced by the kind of patient sensitivity, faithfulness to tradition, and self-conscious artistry that rock was once a reaction against.
Rock’s edge is gone. And the edge that’s gone is, I’d argue, not its truth, but its falseness. Rock hasn’t lost itself; its found itself, which is worse. A performer like Jack White isn’t pretending to be Howlin’ Wolf or Woody Guthrie. He’s pretending to be Led Zeppelin or Aerosmith. That can be entertaining to listen to, but it’s not enough of a lie to be either dangerous or shocking or sexy. Instead, it ends up looking more like nostalgia. Decades of history mean that, as a rock star, White can only claim to be more or less the man he actually is — and where’s the fun in that?
Which is why, as Bogart says, Ke$ha, despite her dance-pop roots, is able to pull off the rock-star pretense in a way Jack White can only dream of. That is, she’s able to pull it off precisely because it is a pretense. Ke$ha — because she’s dance-pop, and even more because she’s a woman — has a distance from the (mostly) male history of rock. And that, makes her appropriation of that style — like Elvis’ appropriation of black styles —sexy, daring, irritating, and charged. When on “Dirty Love” she shouts at Iggy Pop, “You’re not my daddy/baby I’m full grown,” the gleeful lasciviousness is in the brazenness of the disavowal. Iggy Pop is her daddy; she’s lifting his attitude, his moves, and his mojo.
And yet, as the insanely catchy bubble-gum chorus charges ahead, she nasally insists that she’s not imitating the man, but is instead inside his very pants. The flirtatious byplay isn’t just skeevily intergenerational; it’s incestuous and cross-dressed, inasmuch as Ke$ha is adopting Iggy’s masculinity in the interest of getting it on with herself, or himself, or whichever self it may be. It’s not convincing; Ke$ha is a far cry from the Stooges, just as Iggy was a far cry from the blues. But the distance is the point — which is why, these days, it takes a woman to rock like a real (i.e. fake; i.e. real) man.
All I can hear is the flaming shrapnel of rock critics’ skulls tinkling to the earth.
Heh. I wish. I think Ke$ha has at least some cred though…I may not be as much of an outlier here as you’re thinking.
Ke$ha is critical darling from what I’ve seen. Pop-rock critics are notable for their awful taste — listening to years and years of drek, having to write something that isn’t as dismissive as the subject deserves, tends to cause that. How could anyone do the job otherwise? Having lived in Detroit when that scene was happening, I know for a fact that Jack White knows his shit when it comes to blues and old country, and that, if anything, his influences are the same as Led Zeppelin’s, not an imitation, but with a whole lot of garage rock thrown in. If you want to call him an imitator, try Flat Duo Jets. That’s why he isn’t likely to produce a schizophrenic effort controlled by producers and demographics where every song is a ducticle token from a different genre (don’t want to leave anyone out). He has his own taste from being a music listener first and foremost. Not that I expect this to have any effect on the cutting edge corporatism being promoted here.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m no fan of White, finding his musical existence pretty much pointless, but has the culture industry really come to this: scoring points for being an “artist” whose chief virtue is her honesty about being a product? At least he’s making the Document catalogue available again on vinyl — that’s more worth than Ke$ha will ever obtain in her few years in the spotlight …
“is a” and “ductile” and whatever other mistypes I made …
Your bog-standard rockism always throws me, Charles. I guess it’s just because we don’t talk about music that much here….
I don’t think Ke$ha’s any more market driven than Jack White, or any other extremely successful performer in a capitalist industry. Having said that…the point here really is not that Ke$ha is a self-aware product (that would be Madonna’s schtick.) Rather, the point is that mimicking is central to rock performance and attitude.
I’m sure Jack White likes country and blues. That’s what all the rock stars he’s imitating liked, so why shouldn’t his imitation cover that as well? But…history happened, and he can’t be Led Zeppelin as if Led Zeppelin never existed, no matter how much he or his fans might wish that he could.
So, are things like Pissed Jeans and Les Aus and whatever, all post-Pixies alternarock, is that authentic-fake too? And, dare I ask, metal? I have my own opinions, of course, and also of course, I’m using the term “authentic” as something of a put-down. Even if the Pixies are better than Ke$ha.
The Pixies are definitely better than Ke$ha. Ke$ha is better than the White Stripes though.
I think, as the quote in the article sort of says, that indie rock kind of has abandoned the rock swagger in a lot of ways. It’s not really about the frisson between authenticity and mimicking, I don’t think. The Pixies are sort of imitating rock stars, I guess, but the imitation gets resolved through irony rather than through glamour per se, if that makes sense.
Metal too…I mean, they’re sort of all pretending to be the uberfather/daddy-thing, right? But it’s a projection onto a not-there other rather than a real life breathing other, which is why they end up as zombies rather than sex icons.
Yeah, I buy that– although Zeppelin’s Rock and Roll just came on, followed by Dazed and Confused, and both really sound like the Pixies. For all of their surfer-punk influence, they really really sound like Led Zeppelin a lot of the time– in guitar and vocals particularly.
And so, I submit, authenticity is central to all proper rock idioms, which is a hillbilly-blues hybrid, versus pure Eurotrash (country, metal, folk) or pure funky (rap, soul, R&B), or the yawning abyss of pop.
Yeah, some people make music because they want to do that. Others make it because they simply want to be stars. This is a fact. How far would you carry the pretense: Schoenberg composed his music to be popular with teenagers?
If you think Jack White thought he was going to be multi-millionaire world famous star by forming a 2 piece, you don’t know much about him. That’s precisely Ke$ha’s raison d’etre, as it is Katy Perry’s, and as it is Lady Gaga’s. One has but to ask: would Jack White’s music still function the same in a small dirty Detroit club? What about Ke$sha’s? The answer seems pretty clear and the reason is that one is somewhat about music (however lame or dull one might want to argue White’s music is — doesn’t matter to me) and the other is merely about fame (i.e., base-level, reductio ad crassum commerce). I don’t find it particularly challenging to argue in favor of those who only want to sell out from the beginning. For you, that’s authenticity. I’m skeptical of authenticity — at least how it tends to be used — but I’m even more anti-anti-authenticity, as it leads one to make elaborate defenses of corporate shilling. If your ideological agenda won’t countenance a distinction between Katy Perry and Jandek, because performance is involved in both cases, there’s a problem. (And, no, I don’t care for Jandek, either.) Of course, all you have left is some twisted notion of honesty as authenticity. I’d suggest instead that some images are worse than others, irrespective of whether they attach to an originary bedrock Real.
I really don’t care how the music sounds in a random club in detroit. I presume it would depend on the sound system.
I don’t see Ke$ha as selling out. She makes interesting music that I enjoy listening to. You don’t like it…so suddenly she’s immoral? Or, what, you have a magic crystal that lets you see into her heart and know that she’s making music I like for the wrong reasons?
You don’t like slick dance pop. Great for you. I just don’t see why that means you get into heaven, exactly.
And…I’m making lots of distinctions in the essay. You’re problem isn’t that there are no distinctions. You’re problem is that they’re not the same distinctions you would make.
And you get upset at me for ideological criticism. Sheesh.
Incidentally…you might think about reading Anthony Heilbut’s essay about Robert Johnson in The Fan Who Knew Too Much. Heilbut knows more about music than you, or I, or all the people who are ever likely to read this blog combined. And he has quite funny things to say about white blues boys who fall over themselves to praise small clubs in Detroit.
Well, in case you don’t want to read it….
Heilbut argues quite convincingly that the original black sources or the blues were a lot more interested in vocal performance than in instrumental work. The white folks coming along and fetishizing guitar technique was basically a mistake. So…the things you’re pointing to as authentic — White’s guitar playing, the scrappy but high-skill instrumentation — are actually the sign that he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Someone like Beyonce — an extremely talented church-trained singer — is much closer to the source, if source is what you’re looking for.
And, just fyi, Robert Johnson sang to make money. Anyone who is actually poor pretty much sings to make money. The idea that it’s selling out to sing to make money, or that not caring about money is a sign of one’s connection to working class heritage, is really extremely confused. Only in a country in which the understanding of class is almost completely nonexistent could anyone make such a claim without being laughed at.
Along somewhat parallel lines…punk is in theory supposed to be about annoying people, and Ke$ha’s bratty adenoidal dance pop is way more effective at that than White’s retro-rock. You’re basically arguing that Ke$ha demonstrates the moral decay of society. No one would argue that Jack White demonstrates the moral decay of society. But they did argue that about Elvis and Johnny Rotten. So…who is whose heir, exactly?
“You’re problem is that they’re not the same distinctions you would make.”
Well, yeah. I’m trying to save your soul here.
Got no problem reading that essay, but I’m no defender of Detroit music clubs — hated that scene, but had friends in it. I only used that as a reference because that’s when I first saw the White Stripes play, in a seedy little bar there with maybe 30 or 40 people. Well, Detroit clubs are a lot better than LA clubs — so I’d maybe defend them to that extent. Jack White’s never really altered his agenda, the crowd came to him. He’s gotten more people interested in old American music, so I just can’t find it in my heart to completely knock him. Just like I’m glad that Radiohead gets people into Penderecki — that suggests that there’s something more going on than making money. I believe one can have an authentic struggle without there being some actual place to reach. It also doesn’t mean that the music is going to be any good at all. (I mean, I’d rather listen to Katy Perry than Jandek.)
Overall, though, I think rock started going bad with the Beatles. Blues started rotting around that time too. Basically, my problem is with the British.
That was to your previous post.
Having just read your next post, I believe my problem with the British is similar to Heilbut’s problem with Yankee blues clubs. I like old song-based blues, not the wanky variety like later Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker … and particularly not shit like John Mayall or that cretin that formed Fleetwood Mac. You’ll never catch me arguing that wanking is the sincerest form of authenticity — don’t know where that came from. Guitar solos were always what I hated about metal even when I was a metalhead (at the time I thought something was wrong with me). Slayer albums should’ve been shorter, in other words.
And many of the people recorded by Lomax and Mitchell didn’t sing to make money, but they were poor.
I like Jack White! Not Radiohead so much, I’ll admit.
Muddy Waters is kind of boring, though can be enjoyable in small doses. John Lee Hooker can be pretty fun too. I like Led Zeppelin more than both, though.
I just don’t think that you necessarily learn anything significant about those preferences by trying to figure out which of them is in it for the music’s sake and which of them is in it for the fame or money. Generally, folks with more money have a greater ability to make art as a hobby…but, again, just because the Rolling Stones went to art school doesn’t mean that they’re morally inferior to the Beatles.
You know John Lomax made Leadbelly dress up in a prison outfit to perform so people would see how sincere he was, right?
Maybe the people Lomax recorded weren’t interested in money or fame (though some, like Woody Guthrie and Jelly Roll Morton absolutely were down to their socks.) But Lomax was interested in fame. Basically if someone, somewhere, didn’t want you to hear the music, then you wouldn’t be hearing it.
Incidentally, I’m pretty sure it’s Heilbut who talks about how many performers who wouldn’t do diddly for the field recordings would light up in a studio or before a paying audience. Which seems natural enough, really. I’m sure Ke$ha or Jack White would do the same.
Just to be clear, I love earlier Waters and Hooker, but they began to change with the influence of rock (at least, that’s my theory).
I just can’t believe you can detect no difference between the Stones’ commitment to music and Ke$ha’s. I don’t think it takes a whole lot of psychologizing to see a difference there.
Finally, going back to the previous post: your view of annoyance is really a commodified one. It doesn’t matter who’s being annoyed or why, just that they’re annoyed. So being annoyed at the overly commercialized nature of reality these days is no different than trying to annoy that status quo. The capitalist is just as radical as any radical, in other words. That’s a distinction that shouldn’t be eroded.
Yep, I used that Leadbelly example in my Godard essay, actually.
And it’s not that performers want to make money that’s the distinction between our positions here, it’s that I believe some performers make music for more than just that, whereas you don’t want to acknowledge that distinction. When an album has a sampling from dance pop to new country on it, call me skeptical that the performer has a vision other than merely trying to make a buck from someone, anyone. Ke$ha’s album was made with a throw shit and see what sticks method.
It’s not me who refuses to make distinctions between different kinds of annoyance; it’s rock. And you think people weren’t upset at Johnny Rotten for not being sufficiently serious about music? You think jazz heads weren’t mad at Elvis because they thought he was a crappy musician just out to make a buck?
And now eclecticism means that you’re not a serious artist? Bill Monroe tried gimmicks all the time to try to get hits.
Weren’t you talking about the intentional fallacy sometime recently? You’re really pretty much saying that you can read people’s minds and determine their moral worth on that basis — and that anyone who can’t read their minds and see the same thing there is a threat to our republic. I just have trouble taking any part of that argument even a little bit seriously.
You don’t like the Beatles White album either, right? What about Jimmie Rodgers recording with the Carter Family and blues musicians and jazz bands? Or Johnny Cash throwing in weird Mexican horns on ring of fire? An artist has to be boring and sober or else they don’t really care about music?
I’m sure Domingos hates all gimmicks…but he hates all pop music. Getting upset at gimmicks if you like any rock at all seems pretty goofy.
I think there’s something to this, Noah, but you haven’t quite gotten at it yet.
History gets rewritten all the time, so solos in and of themselves are not a bad thing. But Slayer’s solos are too ling??? What is it, grindcore or nothing?
Slayer guitar solos are like 20 seconds long, and define the term “shred,” because they sound like a person (or a herd of animals) being shredded. Solos in metal are totally fine. Long songs are also fine, especially in metal.
Their solos are like holding your breath until the song gets going again. And it’s pretty much the same solo (well, 2 if you make a big distinction between King and Hanneman) weaving between each song, album after album. I’ve actually extracted the solos from the first 5 albums (for the hell of it), and they really are pretty much continuous. “Raining Blood” is a notable exception (yes, it was a silly thing to do, but a lot of fun).
I have contradictions to my no wanking stance: Frank Zappa, for one. Generally, though, I prefer composed solos that fit within the fabric of the song, such as Tony Iommi, or repetitive, minimalist musical interludes a la James Brown or early Lou Reed.
Didn’t the Stones try disco (and country on the same album!)—blowin’ with the wind. I liked it actually…
Some live Zeppelin solos are really interminable…but the studio albums themselves avoid that kind of narcissism for the most part.
Noah,
Johnny Rotten is a joke. Not rebellious, not radical, but a future TV host. I still quite like PIL, because he was with good musicians and has (to my ears) a great voice that really echoed through that heavy dub sound. He does make me laugh, though. He was a noisy fashion statement fronting an ugly boy band that paved the way to Madonna. When the Sex Pistols did the classic rock circuit, there should’ve been no surprise. When Gang of Four did it, however, one might justifiably feel a little disappointed. I think that’s because the images were different, meant different things. I don’t begrudge anyone from making a living, though, and the latter will always be a far superior band in every way.
And, really, if there’s any indication that Adorno’s still more relevant than any postmodernism, you go from talking about some bauble created by marketing demographics to musicians bringing in various influences to their work. It’s all just commodities, folks. Yeah, there’s no difference between a producer trying figure out how to sell an album to the most people while offending the fewest and Johnny Cash having Mexican horns in a country song. Jesus help me …
Well, the punkist detracting of all non-critically-lauded guitarists is certainly Adorno-esque.
How about hip-hop? The authenticity issues in rap definitely cut against both rockists and popists.
Johnny Cash worked with producers. You know that right? One of his most important was Jack Clement, who is a really gimmicky pop producer.
Cash was a pop singer. He tried to get hits. He sang goofy novelty nonsense like Boy Named Sue.
Folks who are making commercial music are making commercial music, Charles. Telling yourself that some of them don’t *really* want to be making commercial music is silliness. If you’re in the room, you’re in the room. What you do there matters, of course, but arguing that what matters most is whether you’re just pretending to be in the room is…well, again, it’s silliness.
The Nashville Sound worked for some, not for others. It really hurt Van Zandt’s first album (that was Clement), but it improved Don Gibson’s sound. It certainly did Willie and Waylon no favors. And that’s the problem with producer controlled artists, isn’t it? Occasionally you’ll get a Phil Spector (who just as often fucked up albums — cf. Ike & Tina) or Chet Atkins (who went too far with the NS) or Sam Phillips (who, I’d argue, was Cash’s best producer) as possible exceptions, but most of the time you get contemporary dance pop, where the producer is just as empty as the artist, concerned only with the bottom line. Now, there’s Dr. Luke for production and Diane Warren doing the song writing. We’ve come a long way from the Capitol days of Sinatra. Your pop aesthetic seems to be about making older pop just as cheap and shoddy as modern pop, because commerce was involved in all of it. Plenty of it was shit, but it seems pretty reductive to see none of it as anything more than the current shittiest artists on the charts just because you happen to inexplicably like some current song. Not all commercial music is the same. There’s Hitchockian entertainment and then there’s the culture industry’s.
And Shel Silverstein’s “Boy Named Sue” is a great fucking song. Humor doesn’t make something cheap or a novelty, contrary to popular opinion. Being serious and funny aren’t mutually exclusive. Zappa was right about that.
Eric’s comment on the Stones got me thinking about country performance and authenticity:
I also don’t mind people performing country, e.g., Jagger’s southern voice. My favorite Stones period is with Mick Taylor during the Parsons influence (another country “pretender” that did it pretty well). I love all kinds of country music, but my favorite is the literary type (sometimes wrongly lumped into folk) of the late 60 through the 70s: Kristofferson, Allen, Prine and Van Zandt. I don’t think it does a service to aesthetics or the cultural commonweal to just dump the notion of authenticity along with some ridiculous notion of birthright through region and class status. Good artists try to say something of a relevance about the world in some way. They should have enough of a commitment to their art that they won’t just sell it all down the river to satisfy the market. That’s an authentic struggle to me, “performance” or not. I don’t think Van Zandt is on the same level as a group of former Mickey Mouse clubbers, even if he chose a certain lifestyle (the drunken troubadour) that he believed was a necessity for creating authentic Americana. The point was his commitment to that myth/image … and his talent, of course. (And, yeah, I think that image is more important than another huckster for the image of stardom.)
I think Fleetwood Mac actually had quite a bit of studio control– Lindsey Buckingham in particular. Which is why Stevie Nicks’ solo efforts blow so hard. It’s the production, not the songwriting.
No takers on hip-hop? Come on, who’s more authentic, Lupe Fiasco or Chief Keef?
Boy Named Sue is awesome. But I don’t exactly know how you manage to get there if you’re sneering at gimmicks. Unless, of course, the sneering at gimmicks is just a way to give moral oomph to your aesthetic preferences?
Lots of producers suck. But lots of performers suck. So what?
And I’ll say again your whining about Ke$ha the way people used to whine about Elvis doesn’t really make me think that I’m wrong in saying that the two are similar. And your completely incoherent explanations of why the two must be different they must they must they must, and also moral decline, just underlines the extent to which rock has become that thing that it claimed (not very convincingly, but still) to be destroying.
I wasn’t whining about Ke$ha, only questioning your equation of her with Elvis. I guess I’d find it hard to muster the energy to debate the value of American Idol artists and the like versus Sinatra and the like. That’s soul-sucking to me.
And you used the word gimmick. I’m not quite sure why “Boy Named Sue” is an example, or what you mean by the word. Is clever phrasing “gimmicky” — if so, then I don’t have a problem with gimmicks. If you mean having a management team direct what songs will appear on your album in order to maximize not the aesthetic value, but its market value, then I have a problem with gimmicks. I watched the Grammys the other night. Justin Timberlake has made another boring excuse for modern R&B, but this time he’s dressed as Sinatra. That’s gimmicky and empty. There’s a reason that these performers all have the same basic stage show template, only with different costumes and colors, you know? It’s to distract from the lack of anything else. It’s novelty in pretense of the new. Oils the machine. Keeps it running. That it started a long time ago, I don’t deny, but the disguise is really wearing thin.
Elvis had talent to burn … and burned it he did. He’s pretty much the classic case of selling yourself out. His later years are a punch line. Ke$ha’s similar, I guess, to the extent that she just wants to be fat Elvis in a Captain Marvel cape.
I just don’t know or care enough about current hip hop, Bert. I liked the Killer Mike with El-P album, but that’s about the extent of my listening this past year.
Justin Timberlake– good example of how producers matter. His Timbaland-produced album is a poop clasic, unlike perhaps anything else JT will ever emit.
And man, crossover hip-hop may have lots of critical support, but it is a pretty alienated, compromised version of authenticity. The kids I teach (few if any) would really give El-P any time, even though I would.
Ke$ha’s really pretty weird though…she’s not like Beyonce or JT. Her latest album is a rock album, and she’s always had the snotty pop thing going. Her main touchstone is really the Beastie Boys, not Michael Jackson.
Gimmicks are gimmicks; they’re catchy or clever or goofy or novel ways to catch your attention and get people to buy your music. Boy Named Sue is a novelty song; it’s a gimmick almost by definition. Novelty songs define a lot of rock, really; rockabilly was nothing but novelty songs, in a lot of ways.
Again, your only recourse seems to be to the intentional fallacy. Bad gimmicks are created by management teams for bad reasons, good gimmicks are created…from authentic suchness? Or what?
And if the producer is in control, why is that bad? Producers are automatically less artists than performers? So you hate the Coasters? Maybe you do hate the Coasters…but somehow my guess is that you’ll say that they’re authentic musicianness is obvious and that pointing out that they were catspaws for Leiber and Stoller is to demonstrate my participation in society’s moral decay….
I think the way folks usually handle hip hop authenticity issues is to say that early hip hop was real and now that it’s big and successful it’s less real, except for some few artists who aren’t big and successful who then maybe get to be okay on those grounds. Folks like Kanye are thoroughly embraced by popists, though, I think. So I don’t know that it really challenges the usual binaries.
Metal’s a little weirder. Not popular enough for popists, not authentic enough for rockists.
“Pop classic.” For JT’s sake.
I thought that was intentional! You even followed it with “will ever emit,” haha.
Noah, I like some Coasters, sure. Like many of their kind, they’re best in a mix as it gets a bit repetitive (I think the same of most old country and pop, too). I never really thought about how authentic they were, as that only comes up in debates such as the current one. I like some mass produced and replicated things that were built with target demographics in mind: some cars are pleasing to my eye, the MacBook Pro is enjoyable, etc.. And that’s no different with bubblegum pop of the 50s, my love of Olivia Newton-John or whatever (but there is only one Olivia). I believe some good things come out of the culture industry while still basically agreeing that it’s on a moribund course. Thus, I don’t believe we should become reader-response libertarians where everything is of equal value so long as someone thinks it. Similarly, we shouldn’t just dismiss the distinction between artists who have some authentic commitment to their art and some guy editing a TV commercial. That is a way to critical hell.
“Thus, I don’t believe we should become reader-response libertarians where everything is of equal value so long as someone thinks it. Similarly, we shouldn’t just dismiss the distinction between artists who have some authentic commitment to their art and some guy editing a TV commercial.”
The second sentence doesn’t actually have anything to do with the first, is the problem with that reasoning.
I mean…you’re telling me that I shouldn’t just love everything? I hate everything! Just ask anybody. I’m totally fine with sneering at tons of processed pop. Beyonce’s last album was pretty bad. Rihanna’s last few albums have been boring tripe. That recent Dark Knight movie was dreadful. And so on and so forth.
But. Retaining critical standards to me doesn’t mean trumpeting one genre over another, or pretending to have mind-reading powers, or retreating into a crotchety defensive crouch and whinging about kids these days. And it also doesn’t mean waving authenticity like a flag, and/or ignoring the extent to which authenticity and realness are themselves a marketing scheme (Tom Frank was certainly right about that.)
Some television commercials are better than some Bob Seger songs, no matter what his commitment to his art may or may not be. You can bewail that if you want, I guess.
Yeah, Beyonce stopped working with her father– her producer. But I like plenty of her recent mediocre output more than Pearl Jam.
I don’t think Beyonce’s dad was her producer? He managed her, I think…don’t know that he was involved in the music really at all?
Also– I just wanted to point out how the ever-beloved gender distinction applies, in the case of both metal and hip-hop, messes with the supposedly male/female rock/pop dichotomoy. Metal definitely gets cred for being obscure, but the most popular stuff (Vader, Mastodon) is usually the most technically proficient (and thus masculine), while black metal is sloppy and full of jouissance, frequently folky, and far more feminine by comparison. Rappers who get locked up are obviously more masculine and authentic, but, for the most part, those are the ones with record deals– from Wiz Kalifa to T.I. to 2 Chains, whereas the more educated (bourgeois), less authentic stuff is more critically appreciated and obscure, but undoubtedly also less authentic by any but the most myopic Zulu Nation nostalgic measure.
Oh, I think Beyonce’s dad was quite involved in the music. We just watched the (quite tiresome) documentary she just put out, and that was strongly implied.
I though Bob Seger songs and television commercials were one and the same.
Noah, you’d probably like this book about rock and authenticity…Most books/articles about rock seem to be about authenticity, but I particularly liked this one… I’ve been doing some reading/research into the field lately for the purposes of this article I’m writing (which is going so poorly that I’d rather recommend books on your blog instead).
http://www.amazon.com/Wanna-Be-Me-Politics-Identity/dp/1566399033/ref=pd_sim_b_12
Also…when is Suat going to finalize his big “best comics criticism of 2012”–It’s almost 2014 for god’s sakes!
“Just to be clear, I love earlier Waters and Hooker, but they began to change with the influence of rock (at least, that’s my theory).”
That’s about right. There was also a changing of the guard with the younger blues guys. Buddy Guy was among the first to come out with the louder style, well before Hendrix.
“I have contradictions to my no wanking stance: Frank Zappa, for one.”
Yeah, I really dug his Imaginary Diseases. It’s an instrumental live release featuring a date from the early seventies, and pretty great.
“Which is why Stevie Nicks’ solo efforts blow so hard. It’s the production, not the songwriting.”
No, surely it’s both, plus the performer. Stevie’s easier to take in smaller doses.
Working on the criticism; he’s trying to get judges to submit their choices I think.
Thanks for the recommendation!
Oh…and Bob Segar songs and tv commercials are one and the same. And yet, at the same time, he’s actually kind of respected for his earnestness and authenticity, as far as I can tell. If authenticity is sounding more or less the same in a small detroit club (as Charles postulates) then I’m not sure how Segar wouldn’t fit.
You could sub in Bruce Springsteen, I suppose if you wanted. I like many of his songs, but his last album had some dreadful stuff on it. Definitely watch good television commercials rather than listen to that thing again….
“The second sentence doesn’t actually have anything to do with the first, is the problem with that reasoning.”
Sure it does, you demonstrate it once again here:
“authenticity and realness are themselves a marketing scheme”
You don’t see authenticity as anything more than another marketing creation. Your defense of Ke$ha isn’t about what you like in her music, but that she’s more authentically phony than everything else in pop music. As if ironic detachment justifies being another shitty artist. But self-aware shit is still shit — that’s what the 90s should’ve taught us. That is the source of our disagreement. I think you can still retain some notion of authenticity, that it’s important to try, and you think everything is equally cheap, its spectral value determined by the marketplace of ideas. That is what I’d call reader-response libertarianism.
If you were to make the argument that Ke$ha is no worse than Pat Boone or Andy Williams, then I probably wouldn’t have disagreed.
As for Seger, yeah, authenticity doesn’t guarantee quality — if that’s what you want me to say (again).
I never understood Bob Segar, that’s for sure. One or two passable songs…but that’s about it. Springsteen way better…though on the decline for 25 years or more.
“I just don’t know or care enough about current hip hop, Bert.”
I haven’t ever followed it that closely either. Though one not-quite recent release I can recommend is Edan’s Beauty and the Beat. Given that, if I ever do get into the genre, it’ll be the underground variety.
I’ve also seen some beautiful commercials. Lynch did a pretty good mini-movie for a purse. Wong Kar-Wai made a great BMW ad (actually, his whole career is one of really long commercials that don’t add up to much other than eye candy).
At this point, you actually have a more eclectic musical variety in ads than on the radio. Many people learn of new music from ads. But this hardly rebuts my worldview expressed above. In fact, it pretty much confirms it.
People in Detroit really love Seger. Good grief, every friend I have from that city swears by him. I just don’t get it.
Sinatra said his only influence was Billie Holiday and you can hear how much he stole from Lady Day. The appropriation of the music of the the slave, underclass, marginalized, oppressed, etc. by anglos is pretty much the history of all popular music from Sinatra on, as near as I can tell. That godawful song that is the monster hit of the past year, the one Sting sings on with the guy who sounds like Sting who sounded like Bob Marley, is a case in point.
The vital importance accorded to popular music,its manufacturers and figure heads, the adulation, the dominance, the precise and exhaustive critiques, is damn pathetic and shows how powerful the music media is in the first place.
I think Ke$ha does interesting things with authenticity. I think rock is importantly about mimicry. But that’s really not the same thing as saying that Ke$ha is more authentic because she’s more fake. It’s more like saying she’s more interesting because she’s playing with tropes around authenticity and fakeness.
Someone like Madonna I think really is trying to be more authentic by being more fake. I don’t like her that much (don’t hate her, but don’t love her)…but I like David Bowie.
Are you willing to admit that authenticity is in fact sometimes used as marketing? I mean…you’re claiming you’re pro-Adorno, but any pop music as the real is extremely dubious from a Marxist perspective, it seems like to me. If there’s a real, that real should be injustice, or suffering, or the working class…or, if you’re willing to go further afield, God. You’re claiming that the world will collapse and modernity eat itself if I don’t admit that the White Stripes are more real than Ke$ha…don’t you see at all how that might possibly be seen as endorsing a shallowness more thorough than anything I’ve postulated?
I think the issue is kind of that you worship art, right? Your position makes sense if art is the only real — but not otherwise, I don’t think. If there’s any possible referant outside art for art’s sake, then the desperate insistence on an artistic real becomes pretty puerile — especially when you get down to making distinctions between pop stars on the basis of your telepathic intuition as to their intentions.
” You’re claiming that the world will collapse and modernity eat itself if I don’t admit that the White Stripes are more real than Ke$ha…don’t you see at all how that might possibly be seen as endorsing a shallowness more thorough than anything I’ve postulated?”
Where did I claim this? To save time: I didn’t. I’ve been arguing that authenticity has its place, that dismissals under the rubric of ‘rockism’ and such only ultimately serve the commercialization of everything under the sun. This has nothing to do with Jack White in particular other than he was your example of phony authenticity who wishes he could be as authentically phony as Ke$ha. That still seems like a bunch of made up hooey to me. Perhaps if you did return to Pat Boone, you’d see that he’s even more authentic than either, since he perfectly understood his place as a safe substitute in the teen market, neither pretending to be authentic (he was happy not being black) nor pretending to rebel by being ironically authentic (no one would mistake him for doing anything other than filling his place in the status quo).
Adorno hated jazz and Wagner. Stick it to the man, Adorno!
Authenticity definitely has a place in discussions of pop culture. But privileging that place as the guarantor of value just leaves you saying silly things.
For instance. Jake Austen at Roctober went and talked to a bunch of old rock hands (including Dale Hawkins and Sonny Burgess) about whether Pat Boone should be in the rock hall of fame. Many of them said he did, and generally expressed admiration for his music and his contribution to early rock.
Pat Boone’s music isn’t all that good (except for his cover of Metallica’s Enter Sandman, which is awesome.) But I don’t think that reflexively calling him a sell out, or sneering at his lack of authenticity, doesn’t really get at much.
You say authenticity has its place. Where is that place, exactly? You like the Coasters, so authenticity isn’t necessary. You don’t like Bob Seger, so it’s not sufficient. You admit (I assume?) that authenticity can be used as a marketing technique. You deny that authenticity actually has moral value in any thoroughgoing way — when pressed to stand by your vague moral handwringing, you repudiate it and back and fill. So..again, what is this authenticity? Why is it useful as a filter? How does it help you understand music, or appreciate music? I just don’t see that you’re getting much insight out of the term.
“Your position makes sense if art is the only real — but not otherwise, I don’t think.”
Eh? It makes sense if we’re talking about art, not something else is how I’d phrase it. Is the empty spectacle of musical entertainment as important as oppressed workers? No (but I don’t think they’re unconnected, either). As we know from Brave New World, a basic level of comfortable subsistence doesn’t mean everything is great, either. But I guess you do have to believe that some ideas — including those expressed in art — are more worthwhile than others to understand that. Is that your idea of ‘worship’ — believing that ‘true’ still has meaning? Can’t imagine how you could critique anything about capitalism (or anything else for that matter) without such a notion, though.
Pat boone’s cover of “Enter Sandman” is pretty memorable.
The dominant music in commercials now seems to be indie rock, frequently of the stripped-down twee precious post-Olympia post-Daniel-Johnston variety. Every bit as simultaneously authentic and sold-out as Bob Seger. And sometimes it’s pretty good, despuite its breathless pretention.
I do think there is truth and moral values, both. That’s precisely why I think it’s stupid to locate truth and moral values in whether or not Jack White really believes in his music.
It’s interesting in that roctober article; the old (more authentic) performers tend to give Boone credit for being a popuarizer. That is, they think selling to the mainstream has value in itself. Other, younger, less authentic folks on the other hand tend to downgrade him for not being authentic.
It’s like one group needs authenticity as a trope, and the other doesn’t, for some reason….
Bruno Mars?
What does authenticity give you? Well, an understanding of why so much music is shit. If people aren’t really even trying to make something for themselves, but simply to appeal to the largest demographic, that goes a long way in understanding why most popular music is so fucking empty, yet it still sells. Most people want brief distractions; such music gives them that, so it sells well. Most people don’t want to take the time to listen to Morton Feldman, so he’s not as popular. Is this even controversial (outside of libertarian true believers and sensitive fanboy types on the web)?
And, for the last time, it was your reduction of all authenticity to fakeness that I took issue with, not so much the merits of Jack White. I happen to know from personal experience that you’re wrong about him. However, I don’t like his music much, so I don’t care how one insults it, unless the insult pretty much reduces all of criticism to a variety of marketing research.
But…it doesn’t tell you why music sucks. You’ve already said that a lot of authentic music is bad, and some inauthentic music is good. And you haven’t really managed to explain how you know that one popular artist is keeping it real and another isn’t, except through vague references to Adorno and telepathy.
It just seems like the authenticity claims are being driven by the desire to bitch about popular music, rather than the other way around. Again, if you really did hate all popular music (the way Domingos does) then there’d be some consistency there, and it would at least look like you believed in the authenticity you’re touting. As it is, to me your arguments just seem really incoherent.
See, I knew it was about false consciousness. “Most people” are mindless philistine sheep. I don’t believe in either crowd-sourced approval or disapproval, but “false consciousness” is one of the most perniciously hypocritical delusions nurtured by the Left, and its absurdity is proved by the fact that it allows culture to be collapsed unreflectively into politics.
I like Jack White! Probably more than you do. I don’t think it’s an insult to explain why his music today doesn’t have the charge that rock music used to.
And I’m not reducing all authenticity to fakeness. I’m saying that rock derives its power not from its authenticity, but from the distance between authenticity and fakeness.
I’d say it was about options, Bert. What’s false in the term is that people are really conscious of all the options, so can’t, therefore, be conscious in choosing between them. It’s not an insult to people everywhere to say the system limits one’s purview. Your interpretation is more of a reactionary sendup of Marxism. (Not that I’m comfortable calling myself a Marxist.)
And if you doubt that, go to Oklahoma, turn on the radio to hear Morton Feldman.
Noah, sometimes a guy who doesn’t much care about the table he’s making might make a really good one. But, most of the time, the chances aren’t as good that the table will be as well made as a guy who’s really invested in making tables. The effects of an authentic commitment to art aren’t an on/off switch, but probabilistic. Statistically speaking, it will have positive effects on music if the people making the music care about the music more than getting on TV or attention at media events. Of course, this “authenticity” is an interpretation, a part of the explanation of why so much shit is, indeed, shit. If you throw it out, what do you put in its place? Quality reduced to the vicissitudes of interpretation and commercial demand. Maybe everyone is just as likely to produce a masterpiece in any art whatsoever, because there is no such thing, really.
No, the table analogy doesn’t work. Tables have utilitarian functions; someone without the skill to make a working table won’t make one. Someone with the skill will…and in most cases, that’ll be irrespective of their commitment to making the table.
If you’re talking about making beautiful tables…then you’re talking about art, and you’re back where you started.
Your nervousness about the vicissitudes of interpretation seems telling. So does you’re edging around anxiety about credentials. Art doesn’t give you anything solid to hold onto; it’s not about credentials. There aren’t objective standards. That’s a big part of what’s maddening/fascinating/beautiful about it. The rage for authenticity seems like a way to pretend that you can get around those things; that if you could just peel back the heart of each and every artist and jam your scalpel in there, you’d be able to extract the real bit — the guarantor of value.
The world doesn’t work that way. Great art is always a kind of miracle, related to, but not really contingent upon, the market, or intention, or commitment, or skill. There isn’t a key…not even a statistical one. I think you actually tend to recognize that in your film writing. Not sure why you’re so resistant to the idea when it comes to music…. Perhaps just because you find a lot of the current pop landscape alienating, for whatever reason?
Sort of paraphrasing Luke Skywalker, I’m certainly willing to believe if there was a golden age of radio pop, we’re not living in it. Call me reactionary if you like. nut things need to suck for actual reasons. Disney sucks partially because Disney was a racist anti-Semitic bastard, and fascist themes continue to exist in their output and behavior. But there are some visually stunning Disney movies– even parts of the racist and trite
Dumbo, for example.
The author may, like a zombie, not be precisely dead, but s/he is not alive as an actual person, but as a commodified image/product. I have a lot of sympathy for leftist historical readings; I got sneered at on this blog for suggesting that the interest in police procedurals was related to the surveillance state.
But smart leftism lets you know that when you feel that you truly understand an artist, or truly understood by an artist, that’s ideology at work. And, quoting Mission of Burma and Hermann Goering, that’s when I reach for my revolver.
Yeah…I’d agree it’s not the golden age of radio pop. But that’s partly because radio is increasingly irrelevant, isn’t it? In terms of the availability of great music, or even the production of great music, this moment isn’t so bad.
I mean, it’s just non-golden. It’s fine. I really like Kendrick Lamar and Drake, Asap Rocky maybe, but that’s about it.
And maybe it was always about this bad/good. I mean, Huey Lewis is less present on the radio than he used to be– but more present than he should be.
Speaking of sincerity, great timely piece on neo-“New Sincerity” post-postmodern culture: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/11/sincerity-not-irony-is-our-ages-ethos/265466/
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Charles Reece says:
…has the culture industry really come to this: scoring points for being an “artist” whose chief virtue is her honesty about being a product?
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Well, I remember — was it ten, twenty years ago? — Madonna being feministically praised for choosing to be a sex object, consciously marketing herself as one. Which was supposed to be “empowering.”
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Noah Berlatsky says:
…And, just fyi, Robert Johnson sang to make money.
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Did he only sing to make money?
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Anyone who is actually poor pretty much sings to make money.
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Just like in church, old-time events and family parties, slaves singing in the fields while picking cotton?
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The idea that it’s selling out to sing to make money, or that not caring about money is a sign of one’s connection to working class heritage, is really extremely confused. Only in a country in which the understanding of class is almost completely nonexistent could anyone make such a claim without being laughed at.
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Ah, the classic “accuse somebody of making some outrageous/absurd statement which they in fact did not make, then attack them for making an outrageous/absurd statement” tactic!
With the “you’re completely lacking understanding about the issue of class” tossed in.
A creative person can be utterly driven and serious in their art, find out they can at least supplement their income with it, and do so. Without radically altering their subject or approach to suit the “demands of the marketplace.”
And for another who may have modest gifts, or be talented but not personally driven about it, money may indeed be their main reason for creativity.
I think it was Jim Woodring who recalled, when working at an animation studio, how all the artist/designers there had some amazing sketches put up in their cubicles, but once they “got off the clock,” had no interest whatsoever in doing “personal” art.
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Along somewhat parallel lines…punk is in theory supposed to be about annoying people, and Ke$ha’s bratty adenoidal dance pop is way more effective at that than White’s retro-rock. You’re basically arguing that Ke$ha demonstrates the moral decay of society. No one would argue that Jack White demonstrates the moral decay of society. But they did argue that about Elvis and Johnny Rotten. So…who is whose heir, exactly?
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Punk was born from protest at hopeless economic conditions and lack of opportunity for the less-moneyed youth of England. (Though I certainly agree with Charles’ “Johnny Rotten is a joke” bit.) That “is in theory supposed to be about annoying people” malarkey thereby lowers down to the same level whatever is wedged in.
A demonstration against Globalization and some frat-boys’ university-statue defacing prank? There’s no difference, it’s all “about annoying people.”
If anything, it’s that refusal to take a stand or quantify the moral worth or lack of certain actions, that “demonstrates the moral decay of society.”
And certainly Ke$ha’s revolting stage name does likewise. What’s next, some hip-hop performer calling themselves “Greed,” or “Bling”?
Which reminds of…
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You know that [comic strip] The Boondocks? …when rapper C-Murder first got arrested for murder six years ago, they had a…strip where the younger brother screams out, “Hey, C-Murder just got arrested! And you’ll never guess what for!”
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http://www.starzlife.com/20090811/guess-what-c-murder-just-got-convicted-of/
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Noah Berlatsky says:
… it also doesn’t mean…ignoring the extent to which authenticity and realness are themselves a marketing scheme…
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Because something can be used as a “marketing scheme,” doesn’t mean that “it’s all a PR-manufactured product, like the ‘New Nixon’…” (“He can now laugh at himself,” some article sub-head proclaimed re Tricky.)
Certainly marketing can get involved in even “authentic” artistic creation, though; pushing aspects which make it more “salable”…
Bert: “Disney sucks partially because Disney was a racist anti-Semitic bastard, and fascist themes continue to exist in their output and behavior.”
Why couldn’t something similar be said using authenticity? This X (song, movie, etc.) demonstrates a lack of concern for anything other than being the most easily digestible product for the largest amount of people. There’s multiple TV shows that produce such artists.
Noah: “Great art is always a kind of miracle”
And I’m supposed to have a religious view of art? What I believe to be pretty much a statistical fact is that more good things in will more likely produce good things than fewer good things in. The reason why a beautiful table isn’t likely to be made by some guy who has only passable carpentry skills has a lot to do with what he knows of furniture, aesthetics, craft, etc.. He lacks what one might call an authentic commitment to the artform. And I don’t believe the evidence is on your side that people who never read have produced just as many fine books as those who have, people who have little interest in painting have painted as many masterpieces as though who do, etc..
Someone like Sinatra wasn’t just a prop for people to get songs on the radio. The guy had a deep appreciation of pop singing, pop song writing and what he wanted to say and how he wanted to sound. The guy worked and worked on the quality of his voice: his breathing, his pronunciation, his phrasing, etc.. All of that didn’t guarantee his aesthetic success, but it improved his chances. Look at his catalog and look at those from management assembled boy bands. It’s not mere accident that half of all country artists aren’t on the level of Willie Nelson (as if one’s chances regardless of commitment were determined by a coin flip).
Sure, everyone compromises in the pop world, but some are just compromise, so aren’t as likely to produce something of worth.
You know there’s been this radical deskilling in much low and high art, right? It’s one of the most important art movements of the last couple hundred years — and it has certainly had a massive effect on pop. Punk music? Yes? Perhaps you’ve heard of it?
And actually rock itself is in a lot of ways about deskilling, which is why punk was a return to rock’s roots, rather than a departure from them.
Again, you’re garbling together intentionality and commitment with skill in a kind of desperate effort to gain some sort of objective purchase (statistics!) for your dislike of contemporary dance pop, so that you can call it a moral failure without actually having to think about it.
I mean…you like Spielberg, right? Are you contending that he is somehow less a creature of the market than Ke$ha? Or than anybody? There are things to like about Spielberg, but surely you’re not going to tell me that he’s somehow an icon of scrappy authenticity?
Oh, and there’s lots of great literature by people who can’t write. Oral traditions have been hugely important in the development of the western canon. Homer was quite possibly illiterate, for example.
Yeah, Spielberg isn’t simply about making money. There’s a difference there, even if both are entertainers. If we were arguing film, you’d be finding Hitchcock comes up short on authenticity compared to Bay’s genuine commitment to being nothing but product placement.
Can I skip the anti-craft nonsense? I think it’s boring and goes nowhere. Plus, I hate when people use ‘punk’ as a description. It means nothing. Punk music had just as many craftsmen as anti-craftsmen. Wire and Gang of Four offer far more on their albums than most punk bands, but people might call them ‘post-punk’ to fit the ever-shifting argument. And the Ramones were hardly anti-craft, rather they appreciated a different aesthetic than what was currently popular (and I agree with them). ‘Deskilling’ isn’t the same as ‘no skill’. And granted, you occasionally get Joy Division and Bauhaus, but we don’t know what they would’ve sounded like had they practiced longer. (From electronic music, I’m a big fan of Tod Dockstader who had no musical training at all, but he had an amazing collection of sounds due to being a sound engineer. His artificial environments are like no one else’s. Music to my ears.) But there’s a reason that so many punk bands didn’t last very long. They had nowhere to go once they blew their wad on the first album or two. Anyway, I’m not questioning their authenticity, so why is this relevant? A guy who knows how to play a guitar, plus also has a vast knowledge of music is more likely to produce something interesting than a guy who can’t play a guitar but has the same vast knowledge or a guy who can play a guitar but is only familiar with what’s currently being played on American Idol. Or J.R.R. Tolkien versus Henry Darger — who’s alternate reality was richer and better constructed?
I’m burning out, so I’ll summarize my take: You’re bent on not acknowledging any role for authenticity in our evaluations of popular music. That’s not so different from the snobs, I guess, only you would dismiss their claims for aesthetic legitimacy when it comes to seeing “high art” as more authentic. I prefer to walk the line between acknowledging how the culture industry functions — Adorno and the boys were pretty much right about the direction of our culture — while still seeing little areas of resistance where artists occasionally produced something of value against the market-driven odds. To me, I don’t think you leave any room for meaningful critical discourse about quality without seeing some role of an authentic commitment to the art — that art is more important than what it can be used for (it’s exchange value, it’s status as commodity). Ultimately, your position entails value being random and accidental, pure chance. Pure chance is the last resort of capitalists. “What can we do, that’s just the reality of the market?” But I’m pretty sure that’s not where you want to end up.
Anyway, I don’t have a lock on authenticity. I just know that it seems really wrong to get rid of it altogether. This discussion has helped confirm that, so thanks. Until next time …
yeah, i know the difference between it’s and its.
Most bands, punk or otherwise, fall off after their first album.
And claiming that Spielberg is somehow not a creature of the market seems to pretty thoroughly deconstruct your entire argument. If you’re saying that, then authenticity really is just an excuse, not something that has any coherent meaning or analytical usefulness, as far as I can see.
“Ultimately, your position entails value being random and accidental, pure chance. Pure chance is the last resort of capitalists.”
Oh…and not pure chance, I don’t think. Just individual and not reducible to formula. As I’ve said before, it’s not math. You want to say art does not equal commerce. You’re so committed to that that you seem unable to interpret my objection in any way other than art = commerce. Instead, I’d say that any art in a capitalist system is going to have something to do with commerce — and the way artist negotiate that and think about that is part of what’s interesting about their art. But to anoint some artists as more sincere doesn’t tell us much except what brand you prefer buying.
Sorry one more thing.
I don’t think Ke$ha is more authentic than Jack White. I don’t even necessarily think she’s less concerned about authenticity than Jack White. She’s really into being a rock star, as far as I can tell, and goes about showing she’s a rock star in the way people show they’re rock stars — by being profane and sexual and snotty and, occasionally, by shouting out to rock stars past like Iggy Pop. You really do seem to be conflating her with someone like Madonna, Charles — which suggests to me that you’re so uninterested in the genre that you can’t bring yourself to pay attention to it.
I said I was quiting, but …
“And claiming that Spielberg is somehow not a creature of the market seems to pretty thoroughly deconstruct your entire argument.”
Mike, help! No, what I said was that he was more than a market creature. He’s a commercial artist, but an artist.
I believe some art is more authentic than other art. It’s not only about artist intentionality, which is read from the art evidence for the most part: e.g., is this a short film or something selling me a car? To what degree was the artist working as a filmmaker or ad man? These are questions of authenticity. If you get rid of authenticity, then the discourse becomes meaningless. Which only serves the market, not art. Maybe that’ll clear up my position for you somewhat.
Also, I’m not arguing for an algorithm here. I’m saying that probabilities exist and that you can increase the likelihood of an outcome by weighting some of the factors at the beginning. There will always be accidents, but that seems to be all you want to consider as if they’re the rule.
On your last post, and then I’m finished:
I think that’s your take on it, but I do believe you’re really letting authenticity back in by admiring her for the brazen fakeness. That’s her authentic artistic message for you. I know that you don’t want to call this ‘authentic’, but it’s functioning in the same way as the rockist notion, just with a different Real in mind.
But…I don’t think her fakeness is any more brazen than Elvis’. He was ostentatiously mimicking black performance styles; she’s ostentatiously mimicking male performance styles. That distance is exciting, because it’s aspirational…and perhaps because it mirrors the distance between observer and performer.
Jack White’s imitating other white guys. That makes him less edgy — less rock.
The problem with making a distinction between a short film and someone selling you a car is that any Hollywood film is mostly an advertisement for itself. Certainly that’s the case for Spielberg.
Since you set it up so perfectly, here’s my relevant defense of Tarsem’s The Fall.
And maybe it’s true that I find Madonna a whole lot more interesting than Ke$ha because the former managed to produce some really good songs.
I just noticed that, unfortunately, the Resnais videos I link to are no longer available.
I like Ke$ha better than Madonna, and I don’t think it’s true that Madonna ever produced any really good songs. I’d agree with some good songs, though.
I know everyone has left, but I will announce to the empty room that the fact that we are discussing ’80s pop via Madonna instead of Prince or Michael Jackson is a pity, even if not as many feminists have written doctoral theses about them.
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Charles Reece says:
Noah, sometimes a guy who doesn’t much care about the table he’s making might make a really good one. But, most of the time, the chances aren’t as good that the table will be as well made as a guy who’s really invested in making tables. The effects of an authentic commitment to art aren’t an on/off switch, but probabilistic. Statistically speaking, it will have positive effects on music if the people making the music care about the music more than getting on TV or attention at media events.
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Mmmmyes, but there are factors complicating the situation.
Someone can be highly dedicated to making tables/music, work hard at improving their craft, and produce merely competent, passable work. The “talent” factor can mean that somebody who is not so devoted to “working at it” may still produce finer work.
But this last doesn’t necessarily mean, as James Kochalka argued and Jim Woodring rebutted in that famous “Comics Journal” debate, that “craft is the enemy”; merely that more roughly-created work with a striking or original approach can trump what is simply smoothly skilled.
By voice-alone standards, Madonna is considered a mediocre singer; yet by very hard work from the get-go, savvy tastes in style, collaborative personnel, marketing herself, she deservedly achieved superstar status.
And when we have the combination of talent and dedication, professionalism, an artist can climb the heights.
As a commercial artist for over 30 years, I can certainly testify that concern with, if not getting on TV or attention at media events, but what the client wishes, certainly routinely lowers the aesthetic quality of the final piece of design work. Thus, commercial considerations routinely can hamper even a creator who doesn’t have to please a client…
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Of course, this “authenticity” is an interpretation…
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And it can be a marketing tool; such as a creator being advertised as an Outsider Artist having his mental health, education, and financial middle-class status hushed up/downplayed, because “authentic” Outsider Artists are all supposed to be half crazy, poor, lacking art education; black is another plus…
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Outsider art has emerged as a successful art marketing category (an annual Outsider Art Fair has taken place in New York since 1993). The term is sometimes misapplied as a catch-all marketing label for art created by people outside the mainstream “art world,” regardless of their circumstances or the content of their work.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsider_art
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Noah Berlatsky says:
No, the table analogy doesn’t work. Tables have utilitarian functions; someone without the skill to make a working table won’t make one.
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Uh, people without the skill to do something with even minimal competence, still do it, all the time. And now we have “deskilling”; “craft is the enemy” enshrined:
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You know there’s been this radical deskilling in much low and high art, right? It’s one of the most important art movements of the last couple hundred years — and it has certainly had a massive effect on pop. Punk music? Yes? Perhaps you’ve heard of it?
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You know there’s been this radical deskilling in the world of politics, right? It’s one of the most important political movements of the last couple hundred years — and it has certainly had a massive effect on society. “Washington insiders” who know how the rules work? Everybody hates them! Perhaps you’ve heard of George W. Bush?
Hooray for the “everybody gets a gold star” approach! Is this “deskilling” like Ebonics for would-be artists?
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[to Charles] Your nervousness about the vicissitudes of interpretation seems telling. So does you’re edging around anxiety about credentials.
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(Sarcasm alert) Why yes, you can practically feel the flying sweat-drops, the shuddering nervousness, when faced by a steely-eyed purveyor of Truth!
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Art doesn’t give you anything solid to hold onto; it’s not about credentials. There aren’t objective standards. That’s a big part of what’s maddening/fascinating/beautiful about it.
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The problem with that “There aren’t objective standards” — an absurd oversimplification, needless to say — is that then it goes into, “therefore anything can be great art, and who are you to say otherwise? It’s all a matter of opinion!”
Rather than the values which constitute “high art” being subjective, it’s more that the greater weight given certain aesthetic qualities is subjective.
As I’d written earlier:
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It’s nonsense to say…that art criticism is utterly subjective. That “Citizen Kane” being better than “Mansquito” is only a matter of personal opinion. There are qualities which, if a work of art possesses them, surely help add to its aesthetic worth:
– Originality
– Creative mastery
– Psychological/intellectual depth and complexity
– Imagination
– The effectiveness with which its creator’s intentions are communicated
…And so forth.
When perceptive, knowledgeable critics disagree, it’s not that art criticism is wholly subjective; but that, instead, one may particularly value an original approach, though the result is rough around the corners. Another may reject the powerful emotions expressed via Expressionistic art because they believe rendering should be Academically refined and masterful.
And yet another might – getting into comics here – dismiss the power, inventiveness, historic importance, narrative effectiveness of Jack Kirby’s oeuvre because the stories themselves were aimed at “children”; not “serious art” like the insipidly stodgy work of Adrian Tomine.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
The rage for authenticity seems like a way to pretend that you can get around those things; that if you could just peel back the heart of each and every artist and jam your scalpel in there, you’d be able to extract the real bit — the guarantor of value.
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Rather than a “rage for authenticity” — why not call it an “obsession,” too? — and giving “authenticity” such primary importance, Charles is actually making a more nuanced argument. With hardly-outrageous, indeed thoroughly mainstream, premises.
Along this “deskilling” vein…
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Oh, and there’s lots of great literature by people who can’t write. Oral traditions have been hugely important in the development of the western canon. Homer was quite possibly illiterate, for example.
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Homer came from a culture where oral narrative was exceedingly important, where storytellers — adept at shaping narrative, themes, characterization, deftly — were exceedingly aware of past precursors, the competition, etc.
But, does the fact he possibly couldn’t write thus translate into his belonging to the camps of the proudly ignorant “deskilled”?
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lit·er·ate
adj.
1.a. Able to read and write.
b. Knowledgeable or educated in a particular field or fields.
2. Familiar with literature; literary.
Usage Note: For most of its long history in English, literate has meant only “familiar with literature,” or more generally, “well-educated, learned.” Only since the late 19th century has it also come to refer to the basic ability to read and write.
[An interesting term I’d not run across before…]
…An aliterate person…is one who is capable of reading and writing but who has little interest in doing so, whether out of indifference to learning in general or from a preference for seeking information and entertainment by other means. ·
More recently, the meanings of the words literacy and illiteracy have been extended from their original connection with reading and literature to any body of knowledge. For example, “geographic illiterates” cannot identify the countries on a map, and “computer illiterates” are unable to use a word-processing system. All of these uses of literacy and illiteracy are acceptable.
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Emphasis added; from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/literate
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In broad terms, literacy is the ability to make and communicate meaning from and by the use of a variety of socially contextual symbols. Within various levels of developmental ability, a literate person can derive and convey meaning, and use their knowledge to achieve a desired purpose or goal that requires the use of language skills, be they spoken or written. A literate person can mediate their world by deliberately and flexibly orchestrating meaning from one linguistic knowledge base and apply or connect it to another knowledge base. For example, knowing that letters symbolize sounds, and that those sounds form words to which the reader can attach meaning, is an example of the cognitive orchestration of knowledge, a literate person conducts.
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http://www.bridgew.edu/library/cags_projects/ldubin/Definition%20of%20Literacy.htm
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Charles Reece says:
…Spielberg isn’t simply about making money. There’s a difference there, even if both are entertainers. If we were arguing film, you’d be finding Hitchcock comes up short on authenticity compared to Bay’s genuine commitment to being nothing but product placement.
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Yes, there’s a lot of “heart” to Spielberg, there are themes in his work that recur. If he was “simply about making money,” why didn’t he simply make “AI: Artificial Intelligence” a brainlessly feel-good movie? Why let his inner agony over Amy Irving’s divorcing him spill over into making “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” such a dark, gruesome thing, with living hearts getting ripped out (the symbolism is not exactly subtle) right and left?
He may be more Norman Rockwell than Rembrandt, but there’s much more than simple technique, a cynical pursuit of the almighty buck, there.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
…claiming that Spielberg is somehow not a creature of the market seems to pretty thoroughly deconstruct your entire argument…
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Spielberg is not, and it doesn’t. For a “creature of the market,” I’d suggest those manufactured girl or “boy bands,” a producer putting together a group of “types,” the component units replaced if they misbehave or grow too old.
And, that a creative person considers their audience, and modifies their work accordingly (even if it goes against the ideal of the Artist starving in a garret, listening only to his idiosyncratic Muse), hardly makes them a “a creature of the market”; merely a working artist.
Consider Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” a superb work (and check out Bloch’s well-made, but hardly Art, novel for comparison). Everyone agrees that the psychiatrist’s speech explaining it all close to the end is the aesthetic low point of the movie. Yet without it (and the final scene, with the ill-fated Marion’s car being hauled from the swamp), a substantial portion of the audience would’ve been confused, irritated, wondering “…did they ever discover that money”?
In the real world, working artists routinely make compromises like that. Why, the most famous scene in “Hamlet,” the graveyard bit where the melancholy Dane pondered over the skull of Yorick — which iconic image has inspired countless theatrical posters and book covers — was added on at the last minute, that one of the regulars in his stock company would get some lines, as the gravedigger. (Indeed, one purist removed the scene from his production of “Hamlet.”)
And what about the low comedy and puns the Bard tossed in (“All I know is awl,” sez the shoemaker in “Julius Caesar”) to amuse the hoi polloi? Does this make him a “”creature of the market”?
Sorry, it’s not “Mr. A”-land out there, where you’re either utterly pure or utterly corrupt. Imagine the path being straddled as labeled “Pure Art” and “Cynical Commercialism”:
http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/Mr%20A%204.gif