The utility of negativity

The "Phoebe Bridgers haters" thread over in ILM has me thinking about the value of negativity in criticism. It feels to me like pop-cultural criticism has living in an Age of Positivity for what feels like the bulk of my life, and I wonder whether the pendulum is beginning to swing back the other way. Obviously, it's not like people ever stopped writing negative reviews of stuff, but it's gauche to shit-talk or write a vicious takedown of an artist.

I'd like to make it clear that I think the reduction in vitriol is a good thing. Critics should not be self-important bullies. I know how hard it is to make art--even bad art--and artists should never be insulted for work they put an honest effort into. But I also enjoy a sick burn as much as anybody. And I think there might be something valuable lost when we forsake the art of sick burnage. What exactly that thing is, is what we can try to co-articulate in this thread. The cruelty is not the point, I don't think, but there's something so appealing about caring so much about art/media/whatever that you need to draw some battle lines. Or maybe that's a juvenile pursuit best left aside with other childish things. What say y'all?

“be curious not judgemental” - aaron rodgers

A Neil Tennant essay published in 1992:

If not for hatred, I wouldn’t be doing what I do now. I became a pop star because I hated football at school. I hated that whole attitude of being one of the crowd. Becoming a pop star was my revenge. Revenge for being bad at football. For not being athletic. For being mocked.

That’s the thing about negative energy, about hatred. It can be positive. It throws into relief all the things you know you like. It tells you, by elimination, what you’re about. Sometimes you can only define yourself by what you hate. Hatred becomes an inspiration; it makes you think, “What I’m doing now I totally believe in, and I don’t care what other people say.” Guided by hatred, you don’t have to follow the herd.

I hate the way people all like the same things at the same time. I’ve never understood it. When people are told about Coke – “It’s the real thing” – they should think, “No, it’s a hideous soft drink that is fantastically unhealthy to drink, full of sugar that turns into glucose that turns into fat.” They should look around America and think, “God, there are so many fat people here! Why? Because they all eat hamburgers and drink cola.” And they should hate the people who represent that. They should hate Michael Jackson for trying to foist Pepsi onto them, to make them fat victims of their own society. They should hate more. Hate Pepsi, hate Coca-Cola, hate Michael Jackson. Hate George Bush. And think about the alternatives. That’s another good thing about hatred. It makes you think about the alternatives.

Of course, these days it’s more fashionable to be positive. I hate positivity. The problem with positivity is that it’s an attitude that’s decidedly about lying back, getting screwed, and accepting it. Happily. It’s totally apolitical. It’s very, very personal and one-on-one. It’s not about changing society, it’s about caring about yourself. In fact, it’s totally about ignoring one’s economic role in society, and so it works in favor of the system. Just look at work years of personal consciousness theories have given us: those icons of the status quo, George Bush and John Major.

Positivity is fundamentally middle-class. It’s about having the time, the space and the money to sort out where your head is at. Therapy is just another side of positivity. It’s a leisure activity, a luxury for people who don’t have any real cares. It’s new age selfishness, the new way of saying that charity begins at home.

And positivity makes the world stay the same. Hatred is the force that moves society along, for better or for worse. People aren’t driven by saying, “Oh wow, I’m at peace with myself.” They’re driven by their hatred of injustice, hatred of unfairness, of how power is used.

That’s as true for pop music as it is for politics. I always feel the reason so much music comes out of Britain is because there’s so much hatred. You see or hear something and grow envious. Whereas if your positive reaction is, “Wow, that’s great,” you just sit back and think how great it is and you don’t do anything. You relax.

Luckily, I’ve never been a very relaxed person. When I look at pop music, I immediately hate things. I look at singers who say they are taking two years off to work for charity when, in fact, they’ll spend two years working on their album, and I hate them. Right now I really hate performers who make a big deal out of playing benefits and donating the proceeds from the sales of their records to charities. They could give plenty of money to charities and not tell anyone, but instead, they cash in on the fact. That’s not charity, it’s marketing. It’s about selling albums under the guise of a moral imperative. They say they’re trying to raise consciousness, as if being a celebrity gives them power and endows them with the answers to the world’s problems. But really they just want to be seen as heroes. I think it’s breathtakingly cynical and I hate it.

Another thing I hate, and another inspiration for what the Pet Shop Boys do, is the way people misunderstand pop culture. It annoys me that after more than twenty-five years, Top of the Pops, Britain’s most important pop-music TV program, changed the rules so that you have to sing live. Why? Because the people in control are the kind of conservatives who think that in the ‘60s, everything was much more talented than they are now. It’s all about Rolling Stone rock culture, which is essentially a fear of the new. Rolling Stone’s idea of a musician is Jerry Garcia, from the 60s. Look at all the ‘new’ artists – Curtis Stigers, Michael Bolton, Lenny Kravitz – all of them living in the past. I think you have to live in the future. Or at least in the present.

The Pet Shop Boys have always hated most of the prevailing attitudes and tried to do the opposite. Our hatred of what other people do has always helped us redefine our actions. To hate a lot of things is tantamount to really caring about others. If you like everything, you deal with nothing. When people hear Chris and me talking, they’re sometimes shocked by how negative we are. We’re constantly critical of everything, including ourselves. But I come from a generation that liked its artists to say what was wrong with our lives. I retain the old-fashioned belief that pop music is meant to be a challenge to society as well as an affirmation of it. And so I consider it my duty to hate things.

i regret things i wrote years ago. i definitely wrote mean stuff just to be funny. and i don't think i would do it now? i would say that is an age thing but i wasn't that young when i started writing!

it can still be cathartic to read vitriol and rants and put-downs. and funny too. but it definitely helps if the person writing it is a good writer and is funny.

there will always be a place for it. especially in comedy. its a way to let off steam.

the relevant bit is the reasons for and the targets of the hate, which tell you about the hater and their values much more than they tell you about the art

I appreciate your sharing that Neil Tennant take, Alfred. I think what he says (aside from the fatphobia bit) makes a fair bit of sense, though I disagree with his assessment of positivity as apolitical and middle-class leisure activity. If for no other reason than in my adolescence, I realized I needed to cultivate a positive attitude as a matter of survival.

I don't agree with that point either. Happiness is so rarely attained, let alone earned. I think he's writing more against the taint of self-help culture.

Mostly it just feels like there's so much to hate in our current culture, in our politics and journalism and public life, that I can't even imagine an overhyped album or annoying hit single making the grade anymore.

Whether that's about a cultural shift or just me getting Old...it's probably the latter.

You have to be invested in some Discourse to truly hate also, whether that's the charts or the UK music press or Pitchfork or whatever. Things are no longer omnipresent enough to hate unless you make an active effort to follow the spaces where they are. And I've retreated from discourse in all my media pursuits.

what would voltaire think

as a parent of a 13 year old, it's very interesting to observe how these tribal obsessions and signifiers with music are completely meaningless to people raised in the streaming age. dick hebdige is dead as doornail.

Out of curiosity, do The Kids still have tribal obsessions and signifiers around things that aren't music? The idea that gen Z just doesn't draw these lines is fascinating to me, and I almost can't believe it.

i've really come around from believing that of course negativity has value to believing the exact opposite. that doesn't mean i'm not negative a lot (though probably less than i used to be), or that i tisk people who are. i guess i think it has use value, but entirely for the person bringing it. i used to think that was captivating, now i think it's boring.

xcpost

i can only speak on the kids i come into contact with because of my daughter and my nieces/nephews, but there's something different, not that there aren't social groups but they don't seem as defined jock/nerd/punk/dirtbag/whatever. and the manner of dress, i feel like the ubiquity of hip hop style and hybridizing that with other styles crosses over with all kids.

or put more simply, it seems much hard to guess what "kind" of kid someone is based on looking at them.

(also the ubiquity of sweatpants and crocs! kids wear so much lounging/borderline pajama clothes to school now)

What my teacher friend says is groups gather much more around sexual identity than popcultural subculture these days

Trump promises this kind of shit all the time and never delivers, whatever comes out is gonna just look like a fundraising email

aka the utility of negativity