PLEASE CONSIDER: MUSIC Vs. FILM Vs. LITERATURE

I don't even bother myself with most non-music mainstream cultural products. I find most movies, TV shows, and bestsellers that pass in front of my eyes suspicously corrupt. But I don't quite feel the same way about pop music. The difference is that compared to other forms of mass media, popular music INARGUABLY fosters a LOT more mutual feedback loopage between its mainstreams and its margins. (Naturally, this is now much more true of hip-hop and post-disco musics than it is for anything remotely "rock.") Fuck, the number one album in the country is by a guy who came from dancehall reggae!

I'd also argue there is -- in spite of the industry's obvious corruption -- still a lot of more autonomy available to artists in pop music than there is for motion pictures or television. I'd chalk up that to money. How much did it cost to make the Backstreet Boys' album? How about Britney's? Probably a couple million, maybe, not counting advertising and touring. Could you make a mainstream film with the same money? Not bloody likely.

I'm not thrilled to the core about Teen Pop (a total misnomer considering those artists' popularity on the Adult Contemporary stations)...it's...eh, it's generally pleasant, rarely relevatory. But I'd rather be forced to listen to Brit's latest (with remixes! please!) than be forced to watch whatever movie or TV show that's in the #1 slot this week.

I actually think that some experience with auteur style film crit aids in appreciating pop music, as the Producer in pop moves more to the role of Director in film, and coherent bodies of production styles and narratives emerge.

It also takes less effort for me to listen intesely to "difficult" music like avant-classical or free jazz than to think carefully about experimental film -- I think that I can approach music from an anti- narrative stance better than I can film, and so am able to do away with preconceptions earlier on.

On the other hand, novels and short stories, where the most artistic freedom seems to be possible, are the medium where I'm most selective. I like few authors, and even then am very choosy among their works. I think that this is because there are few textual equivs. to production tricks -- I read for texture, not plot (much as I listen, or watch film) -- but because only a single author produces that texture, that author must be good, and 99.9% of authors are not, especially "pop" authors.

On the other hand, I used to be a huge sci-fi fan, devouring whatever I could get my hands on. If I had the time, I think this still might be true. Which is to say that I could read even the most poorly written sci-fi as long as it delivered the thrills (which are for me, in the form of twists and head-games, not "will he die or won't he" page-turner stuff).

Funny how that works -- good text is about style (god knows what "good" text is supposed to be about, though), "good" film is supposed to be plot-driven, and "good" music is supposed to be about "development" and "complexity".

Oh yes, I also will watch all sorts of TV. MTV's TRL being the obvious one to name, but also all sorts. Also note that "highbrow" TV barely seems to exist in the US, especially for those with only basic cable. Thus TV shows are judged against their peers, not "art" standards -- and so The Simpsons and Law and Order are high water marks, and other shows mainly try to emulate already critically acclaimed hitmakers. Networks may produce trash, but the public and critical consensus on good and poor shows in each season seem to be reasonably similar.

Cinema is a tough one for me, not only because it's my career we're talking about, but because the two extremes are so similar. Big Hollywood never did anything for me -- to see a movie once costs too much in terms of time and money to waste on something without content; Michael Bay (The Rock, Pearl Harbor, Armageddon) is what happens when you have a digital editing suite and no plot: Noise and explosions and no soul. Experimental films (and videos) are empty because they're all content and no style; shallow, petty, grand in their masturbatory antics. I'll dance on Sadie Benning's grave before I like her shorts. And so you have the the middle ground:

Modern Indie (Hartley, Jaramusch)

Foreign (Fellini, Bergman, Goddard)

The Cannon (which is made up of individual movies and some directors like Hitchcock, Ford, Chaplin, Coppola et al)

In all, my taste in films is scattershot and primarily based on the ideal of story and style. I like Star Wars. ALL OF THEM.

Books? Yow. I'm farrrrrrr too academic in terms of my literary tastes. Columbia's core is a good list of what I read. Lately I finished making my way through all of Stienbeck, Dickens, the Keith Moon bio, Hemmingway, Lester Bangs. Tech manuals are fun. Children's books are better (really!). I'm a firm believer in the magazine and the newspaper -- Mother Jones, Utne Reader, Comic Relief (which you must get if you're at ALL interested in politics), New Yorker, NY Times, SF Chronicle, Voice etc. I get Rolling Stone because my brother was selling subscriptions for his High School. I get Maxim because it's sophomoric. I can poke around Salon.com all day long and enjoy myself immensely, especially when I should be at work.

Now arguably there's high-culture writers who offer the same sort of thrills AND an intelligent, resonant depiction of social ills or *something*, but those first objectives are unlikely to be the main objectives of the writing so that area is probably not the best place to look, right?

Of course Danielle Steele always struck me as a sort of blockbuster-at-all-costs sort of character, giving the writing the same sort of epic-but-colourless limpidity as a Celine Dion song. I'd say that a better analogy for popular music would be the various low-culture genres - thrillers, science-fiction/fantasy, Bridget Jones derivatives - that occupy a similar position as musical genres like R&B, hip hop, mainstream dance and of course teen pop, which constitute the "mainstream pop" world without being absolutely synonymous with it.

There is a relativisation of values implied in this but it consists in refusing to distinguish between the 'mainstream' and the 'alternative' on grounds of value, or artistic merit, or enjoyment -- while there may be perfectly valid economic grounds on which to do so. For example, I consider literary fiction to be one genre, alongside detective novels, or science-fiction. I will tend to like good examples of any of these three types of books, dislike bad ones, and avoid whole other genres (romance for example). I think the same probably goes for music. Which would be why there is such a debate on the site about music in general: the debate is over the quality of the work (and usually the subjective dimension), not over some kind of abstract 'worth.'

Just like music, I have strange tastes in movies. I don't like most mainstream pop and I don't like most mainstream Hollywood. I don't like much indie and I don't like much indie. Well, I would say I hate everything in music and film but at Freaky Trigger that would be stealing another's concept.

Oh, and if Mr. Widespread W.O. Rediffusion is reading this - how about mainstream television (soap opera and sitcoms?) for you, eh?

Say hello to all the foxy Barnard ladies for me.

A point nobodys mentioned: why is mainstream anything appealing to the mainstream? I'd argue - very simplified - it appeals through novelty on the one hand and comfort on the other. Mainstream fiction - romantic novels, thrillers etc. - seems to me all comfort. I'm more interested in novelty. Pop can be purely comfort but also chases after novelty, especially in the instrumental rather than the lyrical/vocal aspect. Films go for a similar balance, sometimes. TV too.

So which do I prefer? I'd like to say novelty, not sure though. (It also doesn't help that I haven't defined these terms!). I think I listen to pop/hip-hop/dance for formal novelty and indie pop and rock for comforting content (the cosiness of indie is at the root of my love/hate relationship with it). In other mediums - I read very little fiction and watch very little TV. I think TV is probably an interesting and vibrant mainstream medium in the same way pop is. I like a lot of mainstream cinema, arthouse stuff when I (rarely) see it, middlebrow stuff quite often too. I liked Charlie's Angels a lot because it felt like pop.

Music is also of course not a narrative medium, whereas mainstream film, TV and literature all are. That makes a difference I think. Somehow predictability in character pisses me off more than a predictable lyric or chord: possibly because you have to consider the question of realism (is it desirable? is it achievable? is it achieved?) more where narrative is concerned.

of course, i'm writing this from the viewpoint that the most exciting music is what is considered 'black' music, so your appreciation of it may vary. i'm also talking about the most utterly mainstream and typical of music fans, as i am well aware that many white suburbanites identify very strongly with motown and stax soul from the 60s (hence it's inclusion in a million horrible nostalgia films) and that many white critics identify very emotionally strongly with jazz. mainly i'm talking in the face of CURRENT music that one identifies with, and sadly for the mainstream white indie listener, there's not much in rap or pop or dance to identify with. i think that identification peaked as a trend in the early 90s, with de la soul and pharcyde telling tales of high school and lost love and breakfast cereal, which certainly goes a long way towards explaining their revered status as leaders in 'the golden age of rap'.

i've gone far off topic of the question, so i should probably try to make some attempt to relate to the discussion at hand. a final thought: which films thrill you the most, the ones of bizarre and grand concepts that are totally alien and filmed in extraordinary bombast, or quiet pathetically masturbatory accounts of a guy (or girl) just like you hanging out with his (or her) boring slacker friends? yeah, i thought so. now leave that belle and sebastion alone.

With television...well. I really don't watch it, I honestly haven't had it turned on in 3 days now. I do watch Sex in the City, which is very mainstream and I enjoy it. It's funny and smart and witty. There's really no such thing as "indie tv", unless you mean PBS or something, and PBS is rubbish 99.9% of the times, showing things like "Sarah Brightman sings the songs of Celine Dion while floating suspended by wire over the Kennedy Center".

I am proud to say I read virtually anything that's given to me, be it a historical research piece on Nazi Germany or the Fucking Bridget Jones Diary. I have no snobbery when it comes to books, with the exception of one genre, and it's the same genre I near universally dislike in music and cinema too: love. I hate romance novels and those awful Danielle Steele things, I hate love songs, I hate chick flick romances. I only can stomach romance if it's dark: I secretly love it that Rhett leaves Scarlett, I love it when Britney Spears begs for her not-very-nice boyfriend to come back to her. If the guy gets the girl in the end, it makes me want to puke. So I wouldn't be caught dead with a romance novel, no...

In short, I believe in viewing/reading/listening to everything, be it the most mainstream of art of the most obscure. I am a voracious consumer of all forms, and I believe that you can't accurately form a critical opinion about ANYTHING until you not only listen to what you're criticising but also things that can be compared to it. I wear Shania Twain like a badge because she's fantastic, but I also wear Gladiator and Wally Lamb, because they're fantastic too. I also wear a lot of non-mainstream. You really have to, it's just the way to be informed and knowledgable. I don't trust people who don't go to see mainstream films or who haven't watched a few episodes of Friends, not because these are necessarily worthwhile things but how do you know what you DO enjoy is good if you don't compare it to something different?

This is all a bit muddled, sorry, I'm very hopped up on coffee at the moment.

MASS PRODUCED + ASSEMBLY LINE and Merzbox isn't ?

I once worked in a CD pressing plant churning out copies of Indie Compilations - it was Taylorist mass production at its grimest.

Its a very good question -I also like the idea of texture as I have synaesthesia - but the word mainstream reminds me of the worst prattlings of indiekids in the '80s -despising me for watching 'Moonlighting' and loving 'Ride On Time'

Disagree with Ethan's racial generalisations -I identify with Lil Wayne's 'F**k Tha World' much more than entire oeuvres of indie material and it's not about being comfortable.

I like hybrids and mistakes - some of my favourite riffs,sounds,etc occured by mistake - faulty delay pedals, MIDI confusion, wiping the wrong track that I used to favour Indie/Undie Rap but now the hybrids are not happening there anymore - check out the best chart pop thread - we love 'Try Again' - I know it's of more interest to me than Badly Drawn Boy ( or is he mainstream now, is Roni Size ? ).

When darkwaveglitchcorestrobewank produces anything as awesome as Whitney's 'It's not Right' I'll cheer them on - but until then-don't give up the day jobs.

Define yourself by your tastes if you will but turgid ideas about counter-culture belong to the last century.

Shit, I've missed 'Football Focus' - aargh

So I guess film and music give me more thrills, even though the populist stuff is much the same as the novels I describe above--but you get more scenery, sexy people, etc. Or a good beat maybe. Those media are more sensationalistic, so I tolerate them more.

Peckinpah, above, is an interesting example. At his best he's really an artist, there are very disturbing and not easily reducible overtones in "Wild Bunch" or "Ride the High Country." At his worst he still has a subject and he's still fun to watch, as in "The Getaway" or "Straw Dogs." Inbetween you have films like "Cable Hogue" and "Killer Elite," both of which are kind of classic, actually. I guess I'm groping toward the hoary old concept of a popular work having more levels than the mass audience might see--"Wild Bunch" has great slo-mo shoot-'em-ups but is a profoundly philosophical work that doesn't really give you the nice liberal answer you think it does...so again, if it were a novel I might get the same thing but I'd have to work harder at it, and since he's using the big sensational moments (and the humor) to make his point that you might be fooling yourself when you identify with the Bunch, the whole thing just seems more suited for the film medium.

I love movies and music (literature I enjoy but its so often not an "art" thing for me that I'm not gonna deal with it on that level right now), but I rarely feel the need to see a movie twice (unless it's funny), where I want to hear songs over and over and over. Plus my appreciation of a movie dwindles usually with each passing viewing (unless I saw it at an age where I didn't "get it") while a song is more likely to grow in appreciation.

In other words, I think movies and music are very different trips.

I say the less discriminating we are between "high" art and "low" art the better. I listen to what I like and I like what I, etc. etc. I'm still a student so I mostly get to read canonical literature. As far as movies go, I don't have a lot of time for them. I mostly watch what friends watch or music-related films. (Recently, Queen of the Damned & The Country Bears, which you ALL NEED TO SEE)

I despise movie theaters and the theatergoing experience, even though it's nice to see things on "the big screen."

Now I'm listening to the Cure's Faith and finishing some writing and consequently feel much better.

Back when the Palace cinema was around ($2.50CDN second-run movies all the time) there was nothing I loved more than going to see some loud crazy movie (best example: "Blade") there on a Friday or Saturday night, when the theatre would be packed with crazy teenagers.

Yeah, try to find Scarface in one of those video stores. Fuckers try to keep me from watching Scarface? I think so, eh? Pisses me off.

As for movies, well, I frankly don't like movies much anymore, as almost everything I see is awful, and even the best stuff doesn't move me like music and literature can. Most of my favorites have been by mainstream guys like Kurosawa and Kubrick though.

I can't remember any movie ever giving me goosebumps, unlike lots of music and literature has.

this is actually a very good question, and one i've thought about many times given the poptimist bias of ilm

also, waaaaay early appearance by mr. estiebuttez
*Evil Laugh* - I'm only here to infilrate those pop el bastardos!
Just like music, I have strange tastes in movies. I don't like most mainstream pop and I don't like most mainstream Hollywood. I don't like much indie and I don't like much indie. Well, I would say I hate everything in music and film but at Freaky Trigger that would be stealing another's concept.

Oh, and if Mr. Widespread W.O. Rediffusion is reading this - how about mainstream television (soap opera and sitcoms?) for you, eh?

-- Phil Paterson, Saturday, February 17, 2001 5:00 PM

VS. VIDEO GAMES.

Mario wins.

i am down with mainstream and underground art in music, film, and literature. but my willingness to actually consume something more "mainstream" decreases in the amount of time required to take it in. a pop song takes just a few minutes to take in, really you can capture the essence of most of it in 60 seconds or less, making taking a chance on it relatively cost free. movies are a little less so, 2 hours or so of my life is a much steeper price to pay, and its also less easy to access movies for free like you can music. and literature takes even longer to take in, which makes it the least likely for me to consume. even the most simple nonsense (like the davinci code) took about 4 hours to read (not worth it) vs the 2 hours it took for the movie (much more worth it!).

Classic early ILM thread if I do say so myself.

i think pipecock has a point but there's a difference between hearing a pop song -- which you can do while doing other things, and you don't even mean to much of the time -- and investing in it as a thing. the two hours spent watching a movie aren't that much in comparison to the time i've spent with certain songs. with people who d/l thousands of songs -- i have no idea how they process 'em, if it's kind of listen to everything once and make rapid decisions re. which you'll hear again, or what.

because there's only a pretty small number of movies released (in the US and UK -- really london and a couple of cities in the US) each week, it's technically easier to stay on top of things. (i guess there's DTV stuff too but you get the idea.) you don't get the same kind of genre specialization you have with music. at the same time, the only people i know who actually watch every movie are professional film critics.

pretty much all films are amazingly expensive to produce and release, so there's less grounds for being indie about it.

*Evil Laugh* - I'm only here to infilrate those pop el bastardos!

pop el shoting bastardos in the air?

i think tom was most otm, 6 years ago:

A point nobodys mentioned: why is mainstream anything appealing to the mainstream? I'd argue - very simplified - it appeals through novelty on the one hand and comfort on the other. Mainstream fiction - romantic novels, thrillers etc. - seems to me all comfort. I'm more interested in novelty. Pop can be purely comfort but also chases after novelty, especially in the instrumental rather than the lyrical/vocal aspect. Films go for a similar balance, sometimes. TV too.

although of course in all the "mainstreams" you have both of those impulses, comfort and novelty, and they tend to break down somewhat demographically, and also by means and cost of production. pop music skews the most heavily of the three toward a younger audience, which tends to be the novelty-seeking demo; the pop music that skews older (celine dion, norah jones, seal on ice) tends to be the object of either indifference or derision, even from the pop-centric critics. movies are by far the most expensive of the three to produce, and so the film mainstream tends to be conservative in all demographics -- sitting back, waiting for something to work, then pouncing on it and quickly franchising and replicating it until it runs out of life. books skew the oldest of the three, which also produces a certain amount of formal conservatism. (also skews the most female, which i think has a conservative effect although it would take some figuring to make sense of why.)

so there are both production and audience reasons why pop music is more consistently innovative -- and from a critical perspective, interesting -- than pop movies or pop books. but of course there's good stuff in all the pop marketplaces.

Pop movies are very innovative though - they tend to employ cutting edge cameras, lighting, editing, animation, special effects, etc. (I'm really out of my element trying to talk about that stuff in any depth, but it seems to be true). The problem mainly being that I'm just not that interested in that kind of cutting edge-ness. I can't put my finger on why though.