Rock journalism, football discourse and British mistrust of "technique"

Thread to consolidate a few ideas I've been batting about for a while, largely related to British cultural nationalism and unwarranted superiority complexes. Specifically thinking about how the (arguably) necessary democratisation of rock music brought about by punk, the notion that ideas and communication are more important than musicianship alone, had by the mid-90s ossified into a stance that was actively hostile to technique. Or at least led to a vague "musicianship doesn't matter" line. What we've had for the last 18 years or so has been *a lot* of music that had neither the musicianship nor the ideas, the awful state of post-Oasis Britrock, some of which has even been critically acclaimed - kick-and-rush crap like the Klaxons or the Cribs or whoever.

In parallel to this, I've been paying close attention to the reaction to the really-quite-modest initial success of Tim Sherwood at Tottenham, cretins like Jamie Redknapp and Andy Townsend trotting out tired old lines about how You Can Talk About Tactics All Day Long But It's A Simple Game Really, get players forward, get it in the box. Given the wildly differing reaction to his predecessor, the technical, thoughtful and unconsidered Andre Villas Boas, and against the wider backdrop of the overinflated reputations and technical ineptitude of the vast majority of British players and managers and this dumb focus on "passion" above all else.

I suppose what I'm getting at is the idea that bad, complacent discourse breeds bad, complacent culture, but in Britain it's all tied up with this bellicose cultural nationalism. Does this happen in other countries? Why is Britain's image of itself so out of step with its recent achievements?

Putting this on ILE because I don't want it to be just a football or music thread, I'm interested in other areas in which this phenomenon exists.

From a recent football thread:

Clive Tyldesley and Andy Townsend discuss Tottenham’s management on ITV4.

“I think you’d like Tim to still be there next season,” suggests Clive. “I know I would.”

“Yeah, I think Tim’s got the right character, I think he’s got the belief of those around him, that he can make a decent fist of this job. And I think he will, given the opportunity,” says Andy.

These people should simply not be allowed to talk about British people, because they are unable to judge them in any rational way. I just don’t believe they would talk about, say, a highly-promising young Portuguese coach in the same way, no matter how many gilets he threw around.

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/mar/20/benfica-v-tottenham-live-europa-league-report

― nakhchivan, Thursday, 20 March 2014 17:58 (Yesterday) Permalink

I dreamt I was arguing about football last night and said that, for pundits, Sherwood is a "Stones Roses reunion of a football manager" - it's gonnae take me a while to dissect that but I'm standing by it.

― two bunny rabbits on mushrooms singing Proclaimers songs (onimo), Thursday, 20 March 2014 18:08 (Yesterday) Permalink

I have been three-quarter-baking a theory for quite some time regarding English football discourse, post-punk rockwrite and British mistrust of technique and technical know-how. Mostly centred around how damaging it is for both. In the course of this theory Sherwood isn't even a Stone Roses reunion, he's the fucking Courteeners or something.

― Matt DC, Thursday, 20 March 2014 23:34 (Yesterday) Permalink

that mistrust of technique isn't nearly as pervasive as mistrust of the idea

technical parsimony as a virtue in english football more closely parallels the immiserated ambitions of landfill indie (no technique since no need for technique) rather than the ideological, wilfullly shambolic and unvirtuosic anti-rockist lineage of green gartside and postpunk rockcrit

― nakhchivan, Thursday, 20 March 2014 23:50 (Yesterday) Permalink

tim sherwood's appointment and tenure is slightly fascinating, although as well as the reactionary elements there is a transcendent aspect of passion and belief and determination, and it appeals to people (see the barney ronay column that compares his tottenham to an early 90s EPL team like that was a good thing)

it might be nonsense but amidst sherwood's abundant cynicism and perfidy it's nonetheless something he believes in, it's apparent in all of those 110%isms, outdesiring to use sherwood's own term, the idea that desire can be a multiplier as much as tactics

english football culture retains a capacity for distinctiveness that doesn't work so well when extrapolated -- english people tend to overstate their separateness from other european nations (and that might include even something as acute as p anderson's 'element of the national culture' as much as yr usual tabloid remedials)

― nakhchivan, Friday, 21 March 2014 00:14 (13 hours ago) Permalink

i think the 'technique' thing is over-egged and that the problems lies with the attitudes towards coaching and the jobs for the boys mentality.

― Chris, Friday, 21 March 2014 00:19 (13 hours ago) Permalink

fair. early this evening i was pondering what "desire" might look like filtered thru technical competency - it isn't a redundant quality and it's hard to imagine a world-level successful team that hasn't demonstatred it - the ubiquitousness of "wanting it" shd offer an easy dismissal to proponents of tactics tho

― fhingerbhangra (Noodle Vague), Friday, 21 March 2014 00:23 (13 hours ago) Permalink

sorry, xp

"technique" is only over-egged in the sense that default pundit mentality in the UK wants to downplay it despite decades of evidence to the contrary

― fhingerbhangra (Noodle Vague), Friday, March 21, 2014 12:24 AM (13 hours ago

neither the musicianship nor the ideas

Well, there's yr real problem.

the problem is situated in that imagined dichotomy between ideas and technique - or rather, ideas and praxis i think, to take away some of the connotations of technique

Also I'm pretty sure football and music aren't comparable - one is a competition where the whole point is to beat another team.

Not getting this analogy with football: Sherwood's appointment was a screw-up, everyone knows he's got about 10 games left and Wenger is the one with 1000 games in charge.

Appointed in '96 right? height of Britpop and all that..

Also I'm pretty sure football and music aren't comparable - one is a competition where the whole point is to beat another team.

That's true, but it's about the attitudes that pervade in both. And a lot of the strands of music I'm talking about DO have a competitive or adversarial element to them, even if it's trumped up.

I'd also argue that, in music at least, not being able to write is worse than not being able to play and writing music, even if it's broadly intuitive, DOES require a substantial degree of technique. Listening to a lot of Britrock bands you get the sense that, even when they have the tunes, they lack the basic language to really make the most out of them.

for a start, when a coach/pundit/player starts testifying about belief and spirit, it always carries the implication that the more tactically evolved opposition lack those things (to a large-ish extent). which is to say that the mark of belief is an inability to think, an emotional honesty that can only express itself thru physicality without strategy. whereas of course getting it forwards quickly and getting bodies in the box is very explicitly a strategy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egil_Olsen#Football_philosophy

good old fashioned songwriting also seeks to express pure emotions without the unwelcome constraints of musicianship, natch. ironically this is really about privileging the brain as seat of the emotions over the fingers as seat of shredding

See, I'm probably quite a vocal anti-technique person on this board (and elsewhere), but what I'm really saying is that I prioritise it lowly. I think it's perfectly possible to come up with something from unskilled hands, and out-of-tune, out-of-time playing can sound amazing, etc etc. But it depends on what your idea actually is - there are ideas that are better with a lack of technique, ideas carried out badly that become something better than they would have been, and ideas that genuinely require skill to carry out. All of these require the 'idea' to be placed first, though.

I'm not really sure where this fits into the argument, but I'm posting it anyway.

oddly enough i agree with everything emil.y posted from the opposite direction, as a pro-technique person

i wonder where the idea of "likeability" that every british cultural figure needs to have fits into this - often it seems as if possessing supreme, virtuoso technique is perceived to be inherently unlikeable or unapproachable

I'm not really sure where this fits into the argument

it creates an interesting problem when we compare it to football because that privileging of the idea - which is a common approach to all sorts of culture i think, maybe even a linguistically inevitable approach? - the privileging of the idea that Matt's talking about in music/crit is supposed to map onto the privileging of "no ideas" in football. maybe idea shd be thought of as equivalent to "emotion" or some kind of "authentic truth" here

xp yeah lex, technique is totally Patrician

Britain is the Spurs of the world.

and when a working-class person (especially woman) (especially black woman) displays obvious mastery of technique that turns into "ideas above her station, arrogant, get back where you belong"

xp

i wonder if the idea that it's bad manners to excel at something is peculiarly British, it feels wider than that

obv i know nothing about the football side of things but it seems completely bizarre not to consider technique massively important in any professional sport. i mean in tennis you can talk about competitive spirit or desire or power or any number of things that can compensate for flawed or unconventional technique but i've never, ever heard anyone write technique out of the analysis like that, it can't be done

Ha, lex, we do have our moments of convergence. I think the likability thing is real, too, particularly wrt British class structures.

the privileging of the idea that Matt's talking about in music/crit is supposed to map onto the privileging of "no ideas" in football. maybe idea shd be thought of as equivalent to "emotion" or some kind of "authentic truth" here

But then I think that elides over some of the other bands Matt's talking about, where there is authenticity and sometimes even emotion but neither idea nor technique. Or at least, derivative ideas and poor technique.

Probably in the middle: some ideas need technique (or the ability to evolve new techniques) to become possibilites, and then there is a requirement for some form of naivety and openness so they can be tried out in the first place. But then that becomes technique, dismissed as not technical, and that was a lot of punk.

it seems completely bizarre not to consider technique massively important in any professional sport

it's to do with team games, i think. solo sport inescapably focuses on technique in a way that can be played down in team games in favour of values about contribution, effort can be contributed in ways that maybe skill isn't, because skill is showing off, it individuates you

FWIW I reckon Britrock discourse has pretty pretty much stopped privileging "the idea" now - cf the endless yearning for a back-to-basics approach any time things are in danger of getting a bit complicated or unusual.

(I'm fully aware that ALL British rock isn't like this, any more than all British football is like this, but it's certainly its most vocal constituency).

yeah, there's a whole post-euro 96/post-britpop cultural malaise where we're kicking around the secondhand memories of 1966 both in music and football when we just used to be able to do it man... if only we could recapture the spirit. i think there's a failure to recognise that if you keep boiling up the same old bones all the time, eventually it stops being soup and just becomes dirty water

I think 'craft' is a term that could usefully complicate this: it has its own domain, but can also act as a reframing of technique to make it seem more 'honest' – they are making something, they have worked a long apprenticeship to do this. I think that does appeal to Britain's self-image or self-fictional self or w/e. Empirical John Bull.

You know that photo of Gareth looking at a payphone in Brooklyn, with a completely lost and quizzical expression like this might be a familiar object but transformed by lack of context so that it might as well be an artefact from Mars?

That's kind of how I feel looking at this thread.

I never noticed any distrust of technique in Scottish football when I was growing up. Given that so many of the players were about 5 ft 4 and weighed 7 stone.

So, I object to the use of the word Britain... in this context... and just about every other context too

i wonder if the idea that it's bad manners to excel at something is peculiarly British, it feels wider than that

No-one seemed to mind it back in August 2012 so imo something like this could never be particular to any one nation and to believe otherwise just seems like wilful parochial nonsense (just as British arrogance re its importance and power in some areas based on obvious history can be).

With both there's also this sense that "we" invented it (subtext, therefore we know how it's done better than you guys do). In football it manifests itself in all this Best League In The World guff, as a way of conveniently overlooking the irrefutable proof that England is not the best in the world at football.

Britain didn't invent pop music obviously, or even rock, but it acts as if it did. Although you could argue that the initial 60s wave were initially underdogs, prior to that Britain had no real musical heritage worth talking about, unless you mean Purcell and Britten. Whereas now the 60s is this shadow over British music that just won't go away.

In Scotland people sneered at the England team that won the World Cup, how it was all hard working plodders like Alan Ball

Britain didn't invent pop music obviously, or even rock, but it acts as if it did.

Ha, the opening line to the BBC Seven Ages Of Rock series: "IN 1967, BRITAIN INVENTED ROCK" accompanied by footage of Cream playing "Spoonful."

OK, got it, thanks.

I think Britain's sense of ownership re pop or certain aspects of it is down to how well the marketplace for it developed here (albeit largely through its unique advantage in being able to appropriate ideas and influences as an arbiter between US, Europe and with obvious colonial ties).

I feel that there are a few things under discussion which overlap without 100% mapping onto each other, but I think one common thing is an illusion of transparency - that it's perfectly obvious what's happening when Tim Sherwood gets his lads running around trying to score or when four lads get together and bash out some quality anthems, that we're in a default domain that everybody understands perfectly. And that quickly falls apart with the slightest consideration of a not-immediately-visible functionality behind that which seems obvious and immediate, e.g. Olsen's well-considered group of game lads or I dunno listening to anything that isn't Oasis. It's a tendency to have things be as nice and uncomplicated as possible, but what it leaves you with is that people view some actually quite complicated but embedded and conservative things as the uncomplicated default. (The idea of "likeability" fits in here too, since the British popular culture model of being likeable is being safe and easily understandable, more or less resembling the archetype of the illusory mass that is the Great British Public.)

The comparison suffers from the subjectivity of music. A technically weak performance of 'patrician' Bach will almost always disappoint. A technically weak jug band is perfectly fine.

Despite being successfully invaded by various continentals over the last several thousand years, the British fancy themselves a plucky island race (if there's anything the Brits aren't, it's a race) who eschew the dainty affectations of their neighbors and, upper lip properly stiffened, keep calm and carry on and whatnot. Football being the most succesful cultural export in Britain's history (due to her international reach at the height of empire), Britain feels like it owns football despite not being terribly good at it for some while (the irony being that when they were superior they wouldn't condescend to play foreign teams much until after WWII). If an American points out that we play a similar style to the Home Nations, the difference is that soccer is relatively new to widespread American sports culture and the opportunity to develop technique and tactics has been lacking. Why England, where football is essentially the popular religion, continues to play such plodding football both individually and tactically perplexes me. What's even more disconcerting is if England lack the dash to actually play 'Spurs' style football, they also lack the discipline/intelligence to play Italian style football. lacking any decisive national style at this point often makes them look tentative and unsure. Hopefully a new generation will outgrow this but I don't foresee any big improvements soon.

Britain ripped off American musical traditions and then sold them back to America at the height of American pre-dominance - thus that generation's smug self-regard wrt pop music but their identity was also very much informed by the democratic societal changes going on. There's more than a whiff of a gruff, Northern, no-nonsense affectation to the English character which is funny 'cause it's as much an affectation as others they despise for being 'un-authentic'.

Largely unlikeable/unpleasant Brits have THRIVED overseas or at least in the US (Cowell, Morgan, countless journalists and entertainers) so this doesn't seem particularly problematic either way. There's probably a link between how the UK press/media (perceived even now as the envy of much of the world) operates and polices 'star' behaviour for its own gains.

the British fancy themselves a plucky island race (if there's anything the Brits aren't, it's a race) who eschew the dainty affectations of their neighbors and, upper lip properly stiffened, keep calm and carry on and whatnot

oi we get to talk shit about these aspects of our terrible country but the only proper response to this coming from a yank is "no we fucking don't"

piers morgan didn't thrive in the US, at least according to the latest ratings. i refuse to believe anyone anywhere could ever consider him a significant cultural figure

Largely unlikeable/unpleasant Brits have THRIVED overseas or at least in the US (Cowell, Morgan, countless journalists and entertainers)

Evil Brits are a fairly standard trope in American popular culture though, not surprised those guys play up the pantomime villain thing when they go over there.

people scared of learning a new thing because they know it all already and dont want to put the time in its just easier that way

ditto not listening too busy speaking

Morgan was largely reviled when he wasn't simply being ignored

Even Gary Oldman, who can play an American as well as the next Yank, hasn't had too many scruples about cashing in on the evil Brit stereotype when needed. America has a very schizo relationshsip with Britain, both reviling it and adoring it, both with just about as much circumspection.

It's very much mutual of course.

hmm i think the most common prejudices are anti-american resentment on brits' part versus benign ignorance on americans' part? i've never noticed the "evil british villain" hollywood cliché to have much trickledown into irl

Oh, I totally get that. As someone who once had a marked Anglophile outlook, British lovers of America or Americana always made me raise a quizzical eyebrow.

xpost

Benign? LOL.

i've never noticed the "evil british villain" hollywood cliché to have much trickledown into irl

What's funny was how often Hollywood resorted to British accents for any foreigners...

Britain is not anti-technique; witness the universal assimilation of the 'tekkers' neologism among the #banter commonweal of UK 'footy' fans. Technique is adored, celebrated...but usually it is on an individual basis - moments of isolated flair as opposed to more abstract qualities like consistency, teamplay, intelligence &c. It's less an absence of technique than a misunderstanding of technique-as-macrosystem, and I think this ultimately stems from a semi-conscious ideation of Conservative and individualistic apotheosis; a single footballer 'scores the winner' rather than a team; there is an ingrained distrust of socialism in any form. Witness the Charlton fans' apocalyptic visions upon being acquired by a Belgian who wishes to pool 'our' resources with those of a number of European clubs - possibly if anything increasing the club's security.

Britain's, or England's (if we are to get to the nub of it) Conservatism or celebration of individuality can be applied to music as with much of its cultural output. It is not so much a loathing of technique as a suspicion of interplay, the notion that sublimity can be found in complex combinations. Individuality connotes simplicity - one songwriter, one idea, one vision - a simulacrum of which can be found in landfill indie, even if in reality the whole cunting shebang was boardroomed into life by a committee of management goons at Universal.

There is an antidote to this Conservatism, but one has to go deeper into England, to discover whence it stems, and that would seem to me to be a love of being able to declare justice, being able to be right. It is a sort of celebration of pedantry, a putting-to-rights that at its crudest is manifested in a prioritising of an individual's agency and a corresponding respect for power - he or she who has wielded agency - the leader as unassailable totem. Do our prime ministers really get savaged in the press?

This pedantry, repurposed & reconstructed, can serve as a weapon against the same reductive systems it currently supports - and does, in the little Leftist or Anarchistic rhetoric our nation produces - its urgent, hectoring tone, its merciless zing. If such passion could be harnessed to paradoxically militate for ambiguities, tectonics, complexities, perhaps England can change its discourse while retaining its soul.

Why England, where football is essentially the popular religion, continues to play such plodding football both individually and tactically perplexes me.
is this really the case individually, though? i maintain that england is producing technically sound players. again, i'll go back to the coaching - when was the last time england employed a coach, at any level, that focussed on what the team did with the ball as opposed to a coach that concentrated on controlling the space and team shape. when did england last have someone like, i don't know, brendan rodgers coaching them, at any level? hodgson, pearce, southgate, blake - if you employ dour, boring coaches (not saying it can't be successful), then you get dour, boring football. i really do think there's too much emphasis on a lack of technique wrt english players. a team of hart, clyne, cahill, terry, shaw, gerrard, wilshere, lallana, sturridge, sterling and oxlade-chamberlain coached by brendan rodgers would be fucking lethal and fun to watch.

agree to a point but watch the average Anglo PL player try and trap the ball during any given game. but okay the fatally flawed element relates more to decision making than ball control, sure

not saying it's perfect right now, but if you look at the young players coming through at the moment i think there's plenty of reason to be optimistic about the future. also, when were the current academies introduced? 1998? we're only just coming up to the stage where we're getting players through who have spent their whole lives being coached and brought up in the academy system. we're still yet to see the full of benefits of it, and we're already producing good players.

As far as I can tell.

it's nice when ppl engage with what you say

sorry, hate going on about football when there's people reading who probably can't stand it! i think this is a really fascinating thread by the way. anything that combines music and football is fine with me ;)

tbf this one says football in the title

dunno why the obsession with punk imago, come the '80s anti-authoritarian musical culture became much more of a dance music thing pretty quick in ways that america never really caught up with. britpop kinda broke that tho, obvs.

The Pistols were Malcolm Maclaren's little boyband moneyspinner, a commercial pop group in punk's fashionable-for-a-minute robes. How many people have bought an Exploited or an Astronauts album?

yes there were also rans as well, there were also other popular bands like the damned, the buzzcocks, the clash.

anyway, back to football. to the delight of some and the chagrin of others. technique, as in individual virtuosity, in football is celebrated in britain as much as anywhere. the workings of the skilled footballer's brain are heightened, but in a way very different to what we would typically label cerebral. essentially they can make the quick decisions and send messages throughout the body in less time than it would be possible for volition to have any meaningful role. wazza as advanced genetically engineered automaton.

football tactics on the other hand are completely divorced from the actual action and are completely abstract and cerebral.

in football journalism you will see on the continent or in south america extremely airy fairy encomiums of a player, or manager, or team, written completely grandiloquently and without the least sense of irony - complete earnestness. in britain if anyone is going to go think-piecey about football they make sure to pack in some defensive jokey-matey crap or at least some humour to deflect from the fact that they are being lyrical about a sport, something that seems beyond the pale to the brit-psyche.

or does it?

sometimes i feel it's a little easy to harp on the "british" nature of certain strains of anti-intellectualism and without a frame of reference - i.e. having lived the great majority of my life on that island - it's hard to say whether it's really so different elsewhere. or to imply causation between general feeling for plain-speaking and the tyranny of the ideology of "common sense" with crap football management.

I'm not saying that Britain doesn't or didn't have plenty of anti-authoritarian sentiment, but a force that genuinely believed in Utopia, in revolution? I get more of a 'complain about the bastards' vibe from most British anti-authoritarian music, a sense, as outlined above, of being righteous & correct, but applied to one's bark rather than one's bite. America is scary and amorphous and deeply prone to enacting change - my sincere belief is that Britain appeals to power, likes or at least tolerates or at the very least complains impotently about its established elite, and doesn't trust change in any sense. This has its positives as well as its negatives - as a nature-lover and birdwatcher I am all for the conservation of the environment - but it is, IMO, in need of some more deconstructive modification. Obviously, there are many exceptions to this 'British psyche', including me, and including most other ILXors - it doesn't mean that Britain isn't, at its soul, deeply concerned with Rightness in its various iterations.

...and, hence, afraid to be wrong, which explains the reluctance of its football teams to play with any sort of attempted symbiosis whatsoever

...and by 'at its soul' I intend an averaging, a modal approximation - Britain or England has many souls besides.

i really do think there's too much emphasis on a lack of technique wrt english players. a team of hart, clyne, cahill, terry, shaw, gerrard, wilshere, lallana, sturridge, sterling and oxlade-chamberlain coached by brendan rodgers would be fucking lethal and fun to watch.

later

not saying it's perfect right now, but if you look at the young players coming through at the moment i think there's plenty of reason to be optimistic about the future

substitute the names but when did ppl ever not think this re english football. never in my memory has the revolution not already started, awaiting only bloom.

merdey's posts are booming! also hi jim not in glasgow. agree that the commentary on this type of thing may focus overmuch on one perceived negative above the actual fair picture of events.

Britain is, incidentally, world-famous for producing extremely technically accomplished classical musicians.

Would agree w/ jim that there is, if we're getting into this, a fundamental empiricism to the british character, a materialism that extends to a lack of heroism. there are no british heroes, really, the idea is embarrassing. we can admire skillful people when they are self-effacing, & then it's largely for their modesty. there is also a love of chancers, cheeky chaps, raconteurs, dandies & people who pretend to be the same, anyone who climbs to the top but still gives you a wink to let you know it's all a bit of a laugh. I don't think these things are bad per se but they lay the ground somewhat for this modern lumpen chest-beating nonsense

there are no british heroes, really, the idea is embarrassing.

This, if true, is recent. England (and I think Tom was quite right to call us on use of 'British' here) has a national mythology that draws heavily on eg Nelson. & I say 'if true' because there are things like the cult of the stoic, posh explorer/outdoorsman (I'm thinking of Ranulph Fiennes) still very visible. I think that exists dialectically with the chancer & dandy admiration you mention - ie dampening it here, amplifying it there – but I think it's around, and real (there are quite a lot of telegraph readers! & you could smell it in the streets during the Jubilee/Royal Wedding summer of shit.)

There are too many English heroes. Every member of our brave armed forces. Everyone who volunteered at the olympics. We have an annual ITV awards ceremony for our everyman heroes.

On motd recently top pundit Chappers and some ex-pro were discussing Rosicky's goal vs Sunderland - a nice bit of attacking team play. The ex-pro mentioned 'in passing' (haha!) that the team would have worked on that move in training. Chappers was absolutely astounded at the idea that you'd put some wireframe dummies out and practice exactly how you'd pass and move through a defence. He genuinely thought these things just came together through some kind of magic. He looked pretty disappointed - technique as something which is worked at for many dull hours rather than a spontaneous outpouring.

Ha, I've seen a lot of people take umbrage w/ this valourization of the armed forces etc. & I think the fact it seems gauche to us is indicative of what I'm saying. When heroism is esteemed it's a sort of general collective (mb even ~twee~) feel-goodery that fills the same purpose as a richard curtis film. even the most highly regarded figures like churchill or nelson or whoever are primarily held up as paragons of reserve, good humour &c. rather than for their actual accomplishments. the highest goal is doing yr duty, and doing it in the right way

my mangled "serves the same purpose"/"fills the same role" gives you double the content w/ none of the clarity

Britain is, incidentally, world-famous for producing extremely technically accomplished classical musicians.

And for perpetuating the idea that classical music is not 'of the people'? There's a certain strain of class prejudice in a lot of the theories that surround this issue. "Of course you and I both appreciate Sibelius / the false nine / pesto but you can't expect your average British lump to do so let's just keep it between ourselves". So much anti-intellectualism seems top-down to me - a patronising lack of faith in the purpose of education and the building of walls around anything seen as new / challenging, either through fear of being seen as elitist or through underestimating the potential for intellectual curiosity. Not aimed at anyone ITT, of course.

Are we talking about an English (working class? white? hetero? male?) version of Janteloven? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante

maybe not just working class, but certainly the kind of conformity you'd associate with a "bloke"

You can keep your pesto, btw

I don't really know how british class snobbery compares to other nations. culture definitely seems strongly divided along class lines in yr bourdieu sense (extending to football journalism esp ubiquitous talk of 'football hipsters' &c.), but it's very easy to 'pass' as someone w/ a Good Background or w/e in that dandyish sense by adopting a few signifiers, which are all pretty accessible

incidentally there was a line in the BBC4 show i was just watching about a small "adventurous" audience for modern classical/compositional/Art/call it what you want music and i just inwardly sighed at the idea of having to belong to some cliquey vanguard if you want to enjoy Stockhausen

I don't mind Anglo distaste for abstraction all that much though the dislike of "intellectual" is particularly galling.

I kind of agree about the possibilities of the modern English player to break through the horrible expectations imposed by the media and just have fun. I'm truly curious how race comes into play there since I can easily imagine an English team that's close to majority of color.

Punk in America is more subversive, possibly, because we're not quite as conformist at the margins. I remember getting a little socialogical talk about all the youth subcultures in Britain, casuals and punks and chavs and ravers and God knows what else, and thinking, I don't think anybody but the most slavish imitators in America would really ever be as good at this. Most people don't police their tribes THAT closely. But I could be wrong and it is funny how sclerotic, if nonetheless adorable, punk became in the US.

Steve McQueen when he was famous as a conceptual artist once described Britain as a "place for happy amateurs" before he buggered off to Belgium or wherever. I remember in an interview a couple of years ago he used that same phrase to describe himself as a director and I was thinking maybe in the passing years he had assessed himself honestly as a Brit artist/director and realised he was voicing his own fears back then. Apart from Gilbert and George british art is a wasteland in the 20th century onwards, amateur futurists, amateur pop artists, creepy Stanley Spencer, tedious Henry Moore, lots of horrid post impressionists still going strong in the 20's, Francis Bacon and those YBA's.

Lydon's evil cackle at the beginning of 'Holidays In The Sun' reveals him as an innocent who has decided to incarnate a malevolent view of human nature in the classic manner of the Dickensian pantomime villain. In The Sex Pistols, Lydon incarnates the British contempt for human nature. He becomes a parody of the malady, and is an immediate success in Britain. When, later, he and his nemesis McLaren try to embody the remedy to the Brutish disease, making records like 'Metal Box' and 'Duck Rock', the Brutish stay away in droves, fail to buy, and use bargepoles when parlaying. Bow Wow Wow with their sexy Eiffel towers and their odes to Louis Quattorze and home taping stiff too. The Brutish do not want the remedy. They want the malady. The remedy is always foreign, it involves a loss of identity. The malady, however horrible, is forever Brutish.

'Don't know what I want but I know how to get it / I wanna destroy the passerby'. Have you ever wanted to destroy the passerby, dear reader? I have frequently wanted to fuck the passerby, but never to destroy him or her. But dilute that sentiment a bit, until you simply wish to be unkind, unencouraging and unpleasant to the passerby, and you have in a nutshell the feeling of British life.
- An ilxor, 1999

Momus? It's very good.

Bravo.

I didn't actually read that properly when I posted it, jsut scanned it. What a load of cobblers. I think I prefer the malady to the remedy, if the remedy is sitting in a coffee shop with some sexually confused hipsters.
― Sam, Sunday, November 11, 2001 5:00 PM (12 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

From an old, old thread.
Are the British Evil Bastards?

As intimated above, I'm a fair sight more optimistic of British potentiality than Momus, but he phrases the problematic part of the national discourse with aplomb. He should come back and post in this thread or something

A couple of observations from Charlton - Burnley today:

- The old man next to me and middle-aged man behind him began a political debate during the match. The old man was a proponent of Thatcherite capitalism; the middle-aged man claimed that 'Dennis Skinner is the only politician left in the House of Commons'. The old man claimed that socialism is the blight of humanity; the middle-aged man said that capitalism had failed. Back and forth they bandied about dead British spies, Leninism and other age-old canards of that wonderful false binary. But it became very soon clear that the two men knew each other - sat, in fact, with each other for virtually every game, and were engaging in a spot of competitive camaraderie - each, of course, knowing he was Right, but each content to bark-but-not-bite, to hold forth on his hobbyhorse until content he had won the exchange. They bid one another a genuinely well-meant farewell at the end. In this amiable righteousness I can already see a path to mutual understanding and cooperation; it would merely require the deconstruction of each respective totem. Easier said than done, but the attitude of camaraderie is present, no matter how entrenched the ideology. On the negative side, this demonstrates why the English are often slow to embrace innovation - they do not need to challenge their ideals, because their ideals are notional and opportunistic, given a thorough airing when encountering their Other, but functionally subordinate to quotidian exigency (such as football support).

- The younger pair sat behind me to my other side, reduced to haplessly screeching 'cunt' and 'fuck off' literally every single time a Charlton player failed to dribble past the entire Burnley team and score, grew dismayed at the team's hapless efforts deeper into the second half and began to advocate that the players should just "fucking do 'im, might as well, coz we're shit". Still twenty minutes for a two-goal comeback and the threat of lengthy suspension for a red card - these were immaterial for our gallant pair, who had conceded Charlton's abjection and were now concerned only with seeing the claret of Burnley spilt across home turf. This equation of Rightness with violence - brute wit, the exclamation mark of pent frustration - bark-as-well-as-bite - is the dark face of the British soul - a regressive trait, yet dimly held in the national subconscious, largely manifested in threat or idle fantasy, but with a not ignorable potential for truly, defiantly senseless carnage.

Really it's a mistrust of technique and technical know-how - the most celebrated English footballers of the past 15-or-so years, maybe even further back, have been those who can pull out one moment of brilliance but lack discipline and ability to play as part of a team, but those moments of brilliance last in the memory so well that things like teamwork and proper organisation are diminished in importance by idiot pundits. The shining example of this is Steven Gerrard, who is having his best season in years under a smart, technical manager, but people will always remember those Roy of the Rovers moments when he would bomb all over the place and occasionally do something brilliant.

In British music discourse the equivalent is "as long as you've got the tunes then who cares about the rest?", when a great tune can be squandered by clumsy players or shitty arrangements or weak phrasing or not caring about any rhythmic interest beyond playing four square quarter note chords per bar. It's less about being a virtuoso and more about having some basic sense of musicality.

it's a mistrust of discipline, not technique

doing the right thing at the right time is boring simple stuff 80% of the time, and every english player of note wants to be a rockstar.

first brexit thread imo

The abject inability to separate Englishness from Britishness and vice versa. For one.

... also lj completely getting punk wrong. That's nothing to do with Brexit, just an observation.

... also this idea of the crappy Britrock/ indie landfill bands of the 90s being suspicious of technique and musicianship seems mistaken. On the contrary, a lot of those bands thought of themselves as being proper musicians, in proper rock bands, as opposed to the indie scrabblers and shamblers of the 80s - their heroes were people like McCartney and Weller, guys who can play, guys with a bit of class and not Stephen Pastel (lol).

It's not about what the bands themselves think though is it, it's about the discourse around them that enabled some types to do well while others were viewed with suspicion?

This is all very dated now given that there isn't much journalism about British rock music any more and what does exist is either perfunctory or (more likely) historically focused, or in the Kerrrang world which is kind of a different thing. The remaining bands that do well seem to exist in an endless post-Oasis lull without anyone really bothering to write about them or attach any wider cultural significance to them.

English football is markedly different to how it was five years ago, post-Klopp, Pochettino and in a different way Southgate. Technique is more important but there's also an intensity that appeals to English fans but this stuff just lurks below the surface. Mistrust of 'technique' is now more about mistrust of 'systems' full stop. Sarri vs Lampard the most recent example.

Since this is really a conversation about national popular self-image it is predominantly an English thing (and a white English thing at that). I'd be interested to hear why Scotland is different but I'm sceptical whether they're as different as all that (less bellicose yeah).

Obviously no one has embodied or exploited this more over the last couple of years than Boris Johnson, just fucking get on with it, who cares about the boring difficult detailed stuff, the absence of a plan is a virtue because of British achievements and British pluck etc. He really means England there but I see aspects of that handwaveyness in Scottish nationalism as well.

just fucking get on with it, who cares about the boring difficult detailed stuff, the absence of a plan is a virtue because of British achievements and British pluck etc.

This is only part of it. And sometimes there's merit to getting on with something and not drawing up endless neat bullet journals and excuses not to do anything. Everyone has experience of pointless paperwork and things designed to stop us from getting things done (even if there's a good reason for it somewhere maybe)

This isn't really anything to do with Britain per se, its King vs Administrator.

Friend Infected With Right Wing Brain Worms - What to Do? goes into quite a bit of this

King v Administrator makes sense, or Politician v Engineer. We're going to build a bridge to Northern Ireland. What do you mean we can't do it? Stop talking Britain down.

Whether there's a plan or not doesn't really matter. Whether it's deliverable or not doesn't matter until the point at which it goes wrong. What matters is that the absence of a plan is seen as a virtue.

It's not about what the bands themselves think though is it, it's about the discourse around them that enabled some types to do well while others were viewed with suspicion?

I don't really know who was viewed with suspicion though? On the caveat that I wasn't reading music journalism by that stage so I've no idea the rubbish that was being written about the rubbish that was being played.

As for football, Scotland traditionally relied on players with technique because, it always seemed like we physically could not compete with English players - who seemed bigger and stronger - and this was before England actually won a World Cup with Bobby Charlton and some hod carriers. Tactically we were garbage because we assumed we could get by on pure skill - so, yes, a disregard for organization and discipline. Now we don't have any good players so we take whatever we can get.

I think thats only one manifestation though. I think you have to look at it through a lens of 'too many cooks spoil the broth (and they are all in on the take)". That meetings, committees, papers, studies are obfuscations designed for the purpose of delay, by people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. That increasing bureaucracy isn't adding any real benefit, what is it all for? What do all these people do?

And sometimes this response is the right response! If I'm to do the washing up and I start devising a plan about how and when to do it, my committment to the washing up would rightly be called into question. People's lives are filled with bureaucracy from tedious managers at work, family members that procastinate tasks

In many ways we were better off under King Henry VIII, he just got on with it and killed those wives. If we'd been in the EU they'd probably still be under house arrest fighting their cases. Thats hardly going to put the dinner on the table is it?

Isn't Ferguson what you're looking for here?

Its not necessarily that there's no plan, its trust in one man (who may or may not reveal his plan, thats his business)

One big man can deliver more than 6 mediocre men sitting around a table all frightened to take responsibility, waiting for approval from some other men in the other office.

first post in this thread, as has been noted, is baffling to the point of being nonsensical, but anyway.

the "just get on with it" impulse is something which says a lot more about the speaker's anxieties than the addressee, this is the attitude which has succeeded for them in the past, on their terms, and they are unwilling to question it as doing so would undermine their entire approach to life.

something here about cantonas observation on english player's idea of working hard- 90 mins of madcap aggression on the pitch- vs his concept of yknow practicing technique and tactics

just a marker to remind me that i have PROFESSIONAL AND BOOK-RELATED OPINIONS* about some of this and will surely** drop by when i am no longer on punishing double-deadline and have also filed my stupid taxes and secured adequate routine employment maybe

*that everyone in the thread is probably WRONG (note to self: read thread) and that at some point the margin will no longer be too small to encompass the PROOF of my THEORIES (which are mine)***
**narrator's voice etc
***in the meantime here are two longish not entirely chaotic related pieces i wrote for freaky trigger, the year matt started this thread: the first is abt OASIS and matters arising and the second expands on the first except it's is about wallace stevens lol

One Big Man is all fine as a mythology but in reality Fergie had an army of coaches and assistants that he had to marshal, he was a highly technical manager (with highly technical players, *especially* some of the English ones) who was exceptional at projecting the image that he wasn't.

A more accurate illustration of the sort of thing I'm talking about was the undisguised glee that the likes of Alan Shearer displayed in Duncan Ferguson's first performance as Everton caretaker.

One Big Man is all fine as a mythology but in reality Fergie had an army of coaches and assistants that he had to marshal, he was a highly technical manager (with highly technical players, *especially* some of the English ones) who was exceptional at projecting the image that he wasn't.

We're talking about reality, we're talking about mythology though. So he fits perfectly? As you say, this isn't about Ferguson or Ferguson. Its about Shearer.

Fergusons army were all subordinate to him. Hierarchy not committee