Rockism

Pete and Tom say I have rockist taste in men. I am not sure if I am on of the mob mentality mates but I am not at all rockist about drinking.

tom says i am rockist about "category" (in the kantian sense, sorta) (like for example, i choose to distinguish between the "kantian" sense of category and ther senses)

in my dayjob i am a required and reliable pedant (spelling, grammar, factZoR- checking): i can be completely thrown by those who are less so — i was trying to explain william morris's theories of craft to taltha last night and she jumped in "like egypt and slaves?"... the answer was actually yes, after a v.long digression — ie she got right to what's wrong with morris while i was still tring to be fair and explain what's right about him — but i am extremely unnerved when others take such shortcuts (even tho i do it all the time)

heidegger = the rockist's rockist

In what sense do *you* think you are rockist about drinking and possibly literature then, Tom?

How am I rockist about drinking? I am quite conservative - I drink lager and I like drinking it in pubs. I'm not especially purist though - I'm not a CAMRA or 'real pubs' man - but I'm not interested in the trappings of the drinking experience (the "questions") so much as the "answer" i.e. the conversations you have in a pub and the way alcohol gradually distorts and enlivens them.

The thing with drinking culture is that two fairly entrenched mindsets have developed and both are in their way 'rockist'. The CAMRA set privileges authenticity, but so to does the critical consensus around bar culture, with its fine gradations of funkiness and naffness. The difference is - and maybe this is an important difference in the way we think about music taste too - full-on pub- ism rates the objects on sale as the most important thing and bar culture rates the consumers, the crowd, as the defining factor.

I really think this whole rockist thing is as lame as going on about how much you hate indie or pop kids.

Mind you anti-rockism in wuv can be confused with 'desperation'.

DV is the most rockist person ever ever ever except about comics.

I mainly think of 'rockism' as lazy, knee-jerk reactions to art (any sort, whether contemporary, visual, music, film, whatever): calling it frivolous and somehow less 'real', calling something pretentious without knowing the meaning of the word, calling something 'girly', or FEAR OF QUEER in general.

Can you actually say you are rockist about certain areas? Surely it's something other people notice in you?

N's post here seems to sum up what youse all define as rockist; some kind of happy curmudgeonry maybe. but I met the word before I dallied in these parts and I have always took it to mean a faux appreciation for such stuff as might be deemed classic by a genuine ROCKER through a knowing, ironic filter, you know, like last years thing for diamanted metal t-shirts.

Mebbe I got it wrong.

Least rockist: Derek Jarman?

I don't think rockist means 'macho' as much as it means 'macho POSTURING'. There is a difference.

Phil - I still don't get why you're so keen to take music out of its social context, but clearly the word is not for you.

Dave Q - it's a fair cop.

I think if I'm being honest though this kind of tendency is less strong than it once was, and the overuse of the word here (mea culpa!) has meant the meaning has widened to include all sorts of other preferences and tendencies. I don't use the word very seriously or exactly, which hasn't helped.

Yes Maura there's a name-calling aspect: but it's not that we don't know how to answer a question, it's that we've answered it a million times. If someone comes along and says "The Roots are the best hip- hop act because they play real instruments" or A1 say "We are the best boy band because we write our own songs" or Moby tops polls because "he has brought humanity and warmth to a faceless electronic scene", then it is quicker - if cheaper - to say "You're a rockist" rather than keep pointing out again and again that these people are applying the successful conventions of one kind of music to other kinds which may work in different ways.

The problem is that people go "I'm a WHAT?" and we get discussions like this. So I am going to try not to use it (you read it here first!), not because it's dumb or wrong but because it avoids more interesting conversations.

I think the confusion is "rockist" being equated with "Liking rock music", to which people generally say "why shouldn't I?" or "hey, I like pop too" or "why are you calling me names?". You can like guitar music without being led around by the nose by a bunch of old, outdated rules about what makes music valid.

"Stairway To Hell: The 500 Greatest Heavy Metal Albums of All Time" by Chuck Eddy is a good example of criticism that is pro-rock, but anti-rockist.

Also 99% of the time when it's been used on ILM it's been used as a joke (comprendez?). I'm just outlining a way you could take it seriously if you wanted to.

Indeed I and my then peers at LMH regularly flung the expression at the screen during particularly earnest TOTP performances (principally, if I remember rightly, at Ultravox for some odd reason).

In summary, it was much more interesting as a joke than as an icon of discourse.

Though if you read Hosey Barynks in last Friday's Independent, it could well be making a comeback...

Well you might think that. Anyway, it's a joke too. Stop your carping!

i'm afraid that at a philosophical level i have never understood the phrase "it was just a joke" (unless possibly it means "He is boring = he is correct"?)

Mark S: For years now I've been saying variations on "If something's really great (sacred/etc.), it's not going to come to any real harm if you joke about it now and then." (Having said that, there are more than a few things that I definitely care about, but am not willing to joke about. But, they generally revolve around people, not aesthetics.)

I guess if I was going to seriously apply the word I'd use it to describe arguments or pieces of writing or approaches, rather than individuals. But yeah I misunderstood your post, sorry.

what phil just described as "pop-ists" are what dave q calls (correctly) "people who are rockist about pop", ie already straightforwardly included in the continuum

the word "rockist" bears very much the same relationship to "rock" as "sexist" does to "sex": that is to say, it suggests the existence of kneejerk assumptions that could bear examination

anti-rockist um analysis of basic kneejerk anti-rockism => "the kneejerk assumption abt kneejerk assumptions is that kneejerk is bad, maybe kneejerk is good sometimes?" (ans = maybe)

why is pop/rock a dichotomy phil? it isn't to me: they're not opposites (what's it mean to think: THESE MUSICS ARE OPPOSED TO EACH OTHER IF YOU LOVE [X] THEN YOU HATE AND DONLT UNDERSTAND [Y])

anti-sexism is not anti-sex <=> anti-rockism is not anti-rock

the continuum is [rockist <-----> anti-rockist]

OK -- I'll accept that. Touché. (Ditto for Tom.)

the word "rockist" bears very much the same relationship to "rock" as "sexist" does to "sex": that is to say, it suggests the existence of kneejerk assumptions that could bear examination

Hmmm. That seems plausible to me. The problem, though, is that it seems to again be implicitly set up in opposition to something else which is never named, but which all too often seems synonymous with not caring deeply, not engaging that part of music which can be understood in a concrete way, and not taking any kind of stand on anything...like some strange hybrid of the myth of the badass and a wildly exaggerated version of post-liberal Alle-Menschen-werden-Brüder-meets-Harrison-Bergeron ideology, where the self exists in a state of experiental narcissistic supremacy, yet imprisoned by legislated solipsism. (Phew: did that even make any sense?)

why is pop/rock a dichotomy phil? it isn't to me

Nor to me -- certainly not the music, anyway, as if I were to set either one of them up in diametric opposition to something, it'd wouldn't be the respctive other. That's why I find terms like "rockist" so uninteresting, in their application, anyway -- they aren't relevant to the way I listen to music, nor what I find valuable about it, nor to the manner in which I critically engage it.

taking sides heh: material vs concrete

Actually, just *being* on something like ILM is rockist

*disappears*

oh wait, hang on, this is ILE not ILM

*back again*

What is rather like ILM? ILE?

I don't agree with this, but then that's probably because I (very tentatively) support the idea of anti-rockism as being a materialist position, and hence rockism basically = positivism. If to be rockist is to investigate the world of music in order to affirm your own position re music - arguably located around rock only because rock has tended to set the agenda within rock criticism as bourgeoisie have tended to set the agenda within society - to be anti-rockist is to question these positions, to investigate their historical formulation, to challenge them by offering alternatives.

It's not foolproof. Anti-rockism and anti-rockists face the same pitfalls as materialism and socialists, one of which is to take an opposing stance so firmly that they lose their ability to be critical, and another of which is to be so focused on critiquing a position that they can lose sight of the benefits that position can offer (the title of Tom's article on The Strokes - perhaps more than the article itself - pretty much sums up the danger here). However to say that the position implies a lack of caring about music seems a bit off base for reasons that I hope are obvious.

Ultimately, I think that materialism is a stretch to make for the anti-rockist position, tho, as no matter how far & wide the field of discourse expands, & how deeply various assumptions are questioned, there's still no accounting for nor predicting individual taste. Nor would that necessarily be the goal -- thus, if it has no POINT, and no QUESTION can be established, it is not SCIENCE, and therefore cannot be MATERIALIST.

Howevah, anti-rockism is a dialectic position (or rather, it seems, a dialectic ACT -- the "calling out" of an unquestioned assumption, usually revolving around a notion of "authenticity", and the shattering of that assumption by introducing material previously absent from the field of discourse) and so, yes, for reasons stated in parens, a dialectic act which proceeds from the artistic object to new and potentially unlimited arenas of knowledge. This is why the best music critics are those who digress -- because they're writing about an emotional nexus and a historical nexus at once. So one is not a rockist or not, but rather has particular rockist conceptions -- and when those too are recognized, who is to say that they still won't account for taste?

I mean, the illusion of authenticity has its place & actual "authenticity" also exists & sometimes it works for me and sometimes it doesn't.

THE GREAT LUNAR ROCKISM CON

I've changed my mind: I do want to make films for Channel 4 again. Here's a pitch
George Monbiot guardian.co.uk, Thursday July 24 2008
A proposal to Hamish Mykura, head of documentaries, Channel 4

Dear Hamish,

Until I read your response to my article yesterday, I had decided not to make any more programmes for Channel 4: I did not want to work for people whose editorial standards were so lax that they were prepared to broadcast 90 minutes of total bollocks. But now that you have exonerated yourself of all charges of inaccuracy, I have changed my mind. I have a proposal that's just up your street.

The lunar conspiracy
1 x 90 minutes
Presenter: George Monbiot
Producer/director: Martin Durkin

They told you it was made of rock.
They faked a voyage to prove it.
They "lost" the samples they took.
And buried the real data.
They covered up the truth they don't want YOU to hear.
The whole thing stinks. Why? Because it is made of blue cheese.

Lunar rockism is no longer just a theory about the moon; it has become a belief system so rigid that it can no longer be challenged. Scientists say the time for debate is over, that any criticism of rockism, however rigorous, is illegitimate, even dangerous. But this film will show that the evidence does not support the theory that the moon is made of rock. The rock theory is dressed up as science. But it's not science. It's propaganda. You are being told lies, and I can redraw the graphs to prove it.

I can bring together a group of the world's leading astronomers who, through creative editing, will confirm that the moon is made of blue cheese, probably stilton or possibly gorgonzola. I have also lined up Piers Corbyn, Philip Stott, Nigel Calder and others who, though they know nothing about this subject, are prepared to talk about it. I hope they will say that lunar rockism is the result of scientific fraud cooked up by terrestrial cheese monopolists. Big Cheese has such a tight grip on science funding that astronomers who question the theory are terrified of stepping out of line, in case they have their stipends cut off.

Worst of all, the rockists are deliberately keeping people hungry. All we need to do to solve the global food crisis is to set up a number of lunar cheese mines, but Big Cheese and the astronomers it funds have been lobbying against it, and spreading lies and disinformation to create the impression that the mines would produce only rock.

I know that Channel 4 will love this idea, as it is edgy, noisy and provocative, and it will get right up the noses of the scientists trying to kill debate on a matter of vital public interest. I am sure that, like Martin and me, you have devoted a good deal of time to scrutinising Ofcom's guidelines, and have worked out that it cannot and will not rule against films like this, because it has no provision for assessing the accuracy of factual programmes. This, as you have pointed out, means that everything we say is correct, even though we have just made it up.

I look forward to hearing from you and hope that this can be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

With my best wishes, George

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/24/channel4.climatechange

[Evidence please, Hopkins, of the word "rockism" being used in any verbal or printed form prior to the NME of 17 January 1981 and Pete Wylie interview therein. Morley pissed at the Oporto does not count.]

I am rockist about magic.

Do you guys like the band Chubby Feet? They are so awesome!!

http://i.imgur.com/ktqu3.jpg

this sure reads like rockism to me:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/hit-charade/403192/

Yep. That dumb Seabrook book gives rockists ammunition. Matos' takedown review of it is much better. This has been discussed on other threads

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/john-seabrooks-pop-music-treatise-the-song-machine-is-h-1736113168