Not that anyone cares, but lemme offer a slightly more substantial response to the below.

"Level 1" is what I'm accusing Simon of doing and so, presumably, he's trying to say here that he's not doing that, although, er, I'm sort of missing why. Anyway.

"Level 2" is presented here as a sort of debased/cynical form of level 1, although the way Simon primarily portrays it (i.e. "posit a real realness underneath the fake-realness") it's basically the way we watch The Osbornes--"ooh, lookit that! He's an evil heavy metal guy and he's yelling at this small dog!" Obviously I think that's a bit short-sighted and/or self-serving.

"Level 3"...well, I could be snarky and say something about how the fact that the sun continues to rise is significant, but that doesn't make it interesting, doesn't make it worth talking about. Or I could try and parse what the hell he's saying, but we're not blogosphere Straussians yet, thank the lord, so since it's only one paragraph I'll request a longer version and wait for that until I comment on whatever the hell he's trying to say, although I suspect I'd be more interested in hearing it from someone's who's not a music critic.

So instead, let me just say this: it's all well and good that you think discourses of authenticity are significant. But the review was not commenting on or dissecting or explaining the significance of the fact that people are arguing about MIA. It just perpetuated them in a quite frankly boring way. I'd be very interested to talk about why it matters to her music whether or not she went to a particular college. (Because, quite frankly, I have no idea, but that's for later.) But trying to argue whether or not you should be listening to something is, and will always be, a worthless pursuit.
posted by Mike B. at 11:13 AM 0 comments