Those Hostile To Pop, We Salute You

I think there's no disagreement over us wanting to change things -- I think the disagreement is whether or not that's grounds for throwing the baby out with the bathwater, to see it from one point of view. Are we internal reformists or external terrorists? ;-)

Don't know the pop ref of my thread title: just a vague memory.

Nothing much to do with Scruton himself (whom I 'hate' because he's very right-wing, not because he dislikes pop: part of what I'm saying is that these are not the same thing). Or Phil, whom I don't know and who always writes long considered intelligent stuff.

Ned: I started out thinking Pop Music (culture) but then decided it should be broader than that (as I indicated in the question): TV, other media, whatever.

I am a tad surprised that this thread has only attracted points of order and strange jokers. I think this is a big issue, on which my own thinking is doubtless not altogether settled.

It's an interesting point. Even such supposed Popcult Faces as Coupland (in Girlfriend in a Coma) and Colling (in his new series Hello Culture) raise the question. The unexamined life etc etc, and it seems to me that most unexamined question of all, at least on the twin beeotches, is: is the culture "we" all "know" a good thing? Thousands of people gathered in Genoa last week to question the way the world is run, surely it can't be fruitless to question the way this world runs its culture?

Personally I am much more responsive to a, say, John Berger or David Thomson, than I am to unquestioning champions of All That The Case Is. Maybe it's more concrete to ask the question: if you have, or are considering having children, do you just let them go out of control in front of the screen with their DVD player and laptop? What other cultures do you bring in to play? What limits do you set on the freedom? What do you encourage them to experience, and what do you prevent them from experiencing? In a sense this thread so fair is an illustration of these issues.

OR: what happens when western globalising culture arrives in other parts of the world? Is protectionism justified? What is lost and what is gained if, Chinese students, receive Thomas Jefferson at the same time as they receive Eminem. Are they the same thing?

I can't even begin to answer these questions, but they're worth asking, eh?

As it's panned out, it seems that all the braniacs now hang out on ILM and all the silliness is on ILE - and both suffer as a consequence?

I still try to take pop cultural critics seriously though, to see if their arguments have anything behind them. And I try to reciprocate re the above by appreciating more high art (I like it anyway, it's not as if I'm forcing myself), taking their valuing of it seriously. So I don't just think that I'm somehow missing their points because I don't realize how much insanely greater pop culture alternatives are.

(Hmm - I get a terrible feeling there is something wrong with this argument, it feels a bit ontological).

Mark S: I don't understand your point about shrimps. I don't 'disagree' - I simply have no idea what you're talking about.

Josh: I don't much disagree with that. You (seem to) make it a presupposition - a criterion, I mean - that the good critic MUST appreciate [some aspect of] pop culture. That seems to be to be, as it were, empirically justified but theoretically a stretch. ie: yes, Tom E likes pop culture and is an eloquent and thoughtful critic; David Thomson criticizes pop culture from within a deep knowledge of it. But I don't know that I could say that every critic MUST have such knowledge. I think you acknowledge the tenuousness of that suggestion anyway.

Perhaps the possible thesis can (thanks to helpful preceding posts) be reformulated as: "The best critics of popular culture [ie. 'moralizing critics', people who worry that it can be a Bad Thing] are those who write from within a strong understanding and appreciation of it"?

DISS = disrespect originally = but now means sorta "slag off"
bitz = bits
wd = would

What don't you understand about it now?

How far do you tolerate them even though they don't like what you like? Well - maybe you tolerate a lot! After all, I have friends who love (aspects of) pop culture but think that the pop culture I love is rubbish. Should I refuse to 'tolerate' them?

Such point-missing happens within pop all the time — now belabouring the point that you, ethan and I are *within* pop — but is not considered a blanket critique of the whole: there are of course value-tussles between sectors, but that is business-as-usual.

To re-iterate:
Question (implied: and no, not yrs, pinefox, but Scruton's, say, or Adorno's): What can there possibly be of worth in pop culture?
Ethan: This! [does it]
Questioner: I missed it. I missed what? There was nothing. There is nothing.
Ethan: I respect you so much for that judgment, critic of all pop culture.

I think ILE is smarter, too: but the braneboxes *are* currently over on ILM, not necessarily all of them being as smart as they actually are, at grate length.
(Mild jab not of course directed at Josh: a branebox who is also V.SMART ;))

NME Breton-shirted school of 1990: Pop (i.e. some mid-60s cult music) is bright and Warhol-esque (pre-Solanis shooting) and therefore a part of “Modernity” (groovy Punk Wars retro model) we should celebrate and engage with (without listening to any reggae). The best artists (The Buzzcocks) create something that can be enjoyed by the record buying masses (TOTP white stiletto crowd) and the intelligentsia (Smiths Fans) simultaneously.

This still seems the miserably tired backbone of many an indie- centric pro-pop critic’s view. Maybe not as politically dodgy as Scruton, but far more boring reading.

Highbrow critics are always crap on "Pop Culture" anyway, I prefer them to be anti (easier to ignore due to clear idiocy) rather than pro (SOCIOLOGY PROF: “I prefer the Velvet Underground to the Beatles because they reflected the sociology of their times more accurately” – ME: “you heartless swine!” ).

But to take such arguments as you suggest seriously, I would first have to believe that the arguer had already taken "pop culture" (or whatever) seriously before making their claims. Josh may be right about the need to love some aspect of modern culture, but I wonder whether in some sense all the cultural forms available are 'modern' -- precisely to the extent that they are 'available.' To choose a more traditional choice (of book, music, film, etc.) is still to choose a modern cultural form. Which is also fine. It's just how the value gets added into the equation which is in question. It would be as meaningless to celebrate 'pop culture' for the sake of it's modernity -- or popularity -- as it would be to celebrate some anti- pop form.

To question something is also to affirm it; this is unavoidable. In celebrating / interrogating that which 'is' or 'exists' we affirm not simply its 'being' but the possibility of something else. At this point, we can perhaps begin to respond to that possibility, and to the 'world.'

If we believe such analysis is possible, or useful, then some kind of dialectical approach is essential it seems to me. And here I don't suppose are friends Freddy and Terry would disagre. On the one hand we have to bear in mind the necessity of 'pop culture' -- what has conditioned it, produced it, why it 'is' what it 'is' -- while on other hand we have to press the critique of 'pop culture' as far as we can. The key points are a) to factor in how the critique of 'pop culture' must also be a part of 'pop culture' or at least made possible by the same conditions and b) to continue to question the grounding methodological and conceptual underpinnings of the problematic. In this case, the notion of 'culture', the possibility of a quasi-sociological analysis, the presumed idea of history which underlines any such generalisation.

Mark S: I don't know why, but you seem to think that this thread is a shooting gallery with the pinefox as prime target. It's not very nice, and I don't get where the bile is coming from.

All other posts: no animus felt towards or directed at the pinefox whatever.

Point made re D. Thomson: but really the most you can call his worry about how the world may have been changed for the bad by cinema, is that it is a hunch, not a Critical Judgment. And yes, since he obviously adores many many many movies, and knows an awful lot em also, you may actually get something from the hunch.

Rattiness = poss.further expression of the point being made, incidentally (which was and is NOT BEING MADE AGAINST YOU PINEFOX): that the limitless patience required of those having to explain some popcult ref to this Perhaps Imaginary UberCritical Sneery Outsider (= NOT THE PINEFOX) will at some point dry up. Esp. if the reply "I don't understand that/don't see that" is supplied with added not-so-hidden content "therefore it is worthless" (WHICH I KNOW THE PINEFOX NEITHER BELIEVES NOR HAS SAID: I AM NOT CONFUSING THE PINEFOX WITH THE PEOPLE I AM LEERY OF). Because at some point the thought will kick in for the explainer: "if you are so slow to grasp [x] that I am explaining, maybe yr judgments abt worth ANYWHERE are somewhat suspect." (PLEASE NOTE: the "you" in this made-up thought is not intended to reference the pinefox...)

What about pro-pop critics? Should anyone listen to them?
NME Breton-shirted school of 1990: Pop (i.e. some mid-60s cult music) is bright and Warhol-esque (pre-Solanis shooting) and therefore a part of “Modernity” (groovy Punk Wars retro model) we should celebrate and engage with (without listening to any reggae). The best artists (The Buzzcocks) create something that can be enjoyed by the record buying masses (TOTP white stiletto crowd) and the intelligentsia (Smiths Fans) simultaneously.

This still seems the miserably tired backbone of many an indie- centric pro-pop critic’s view. Maybe not as politically dodgy as Scruton, but far more boring reading.

i kick myself for not buying it on the spot. i was short of cash and it was of course long gone soon after.

But (possibly I am misunderstandin' this, I am ignoring the theory stuff 'cos I haven't read any really) (I really like it being/having been on ilx tho! I don't get the hate) isn't the entire nature of pop that which everyone /is/ exposed to? A lot of anti-pop voices (eg. the pinefox) seem to be responding to stuff they're finding it necessary to consider because it's, like, ubiquituous by definition, so I think the whole big You Cannot Sit In A Big Glass House Made Of Sarah B-Sides is a bit unfair. [Would anti-popists argue for a shift in what is inescapable or the abolition of anything being so?]

Why does David Thomson say that cinema thing?

I don't think it's particularly true to say that pop culture is by definition inescapable. Listening to radio, watching reality tv, following the charts, going to blockbusters --> these are all things that one can quite easily avoid doing. And even if, say, you're subjected to one radio station at work, that hardly equates to a working familiarity with pop culture; I can't think of a single radio station in Melbourne which plays a representative selection of pop music (even discounting anti-popists' wistful conception of "pure pop" a la Wilco), although many stations cater to certain bands of that spectrum.

The other issue is that it's not just familiarity with the subject matter but familiarity with the process of engaging with that subject matter that counts. Many anti-popist arguments seem to contend that "listening to pop is bad for us"; but the metaphor of "consumption" generally used is one that the person using it can and invariably must stand outside of as an anti-popist themselves.

If you can't or won't engage with pop music on a level beyond the dismissive approach of "I heard it on the radio and it was crap" then you can't really critique the relationship between pop and its actual audience because you have no understanding of *how* or *why* such a relationship can work. This is why anti-popism so frequently comes back to the "mindless sheep" argument; such an argument is a precondition for dismissing the validity of the *actual experience* of engaging with pop.

This is not to say that listening to current pop is definitely *not* bad for us, but i think it means only someone who has really engaged or at least tried to engage with pop can answer the question intelligently or meaningfully.