Friday, February 25, 2005
I'll post a bit more on the below shortly, but first I wanted to relay a sort of different perspective on this issue, from a mailing list post (which has been oddly fruitful lately, yes). It's, um, interesting. I am definitely not saying that TV is so good and so engrossing that if I watch it I won't be able to stop. TV is insidious like alcohol and many other addictive substances - eventually you stop looking at it qualitatively and it becomes part and parcel to your daily existence. I know people that don't have this problem and can moderate their TV watching, but those people are few and far between.
Like alcoholics most TV watchers are in denial about the amount of TV they watch. The similarities between alcoholism and TV addiction are quite stunning, actually. Not in terms of the effect of the drug but in terms of the pathology of the addiction.
I'm one of those who could waste his entire day in front of the TV without even knowing it. It goes by in an instant - and while it's happening I'd feel guilty about it, tell myself that I should be doing something else, complain that there's nothing to watch, and yet not actually turn it off.
And some would respond, "so what? It's only TV. It's not like it's a drug - there's nothing bad about it." To that I would respond, "I'm sorry you see it that way." Now, in fairness, this is coming from a David Foster Wallace mailing list, whose Infinite Jest is often misread as positing a 1:1 relation between mass media and alcohol. But it's about the universality of addiction, not the equality of all addictions. It's interesting here to note the centrality of the word "guilty." Anything we feel guilty about must be bad, right? It must not be that the guilt is misplaced, right? All guilt is true and must be acknowledged, right? Argh.
posted by Mike B. at 10:48 AM
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Thursday, February 24, 2005
As usual, I got a lot of enjoyment out of Heather's I Like To Watch column this week, but the intro and outro she's gone with this time around struck me. It's not necessarily different in tone from stuff she's done previously, but never has she been quite this explicit in presenting television as a sort of decadent distraction from our own degredation before an inevitable downfall. I used to be unsure how much of this should be taken at face value, but from posts on her blog, which tend towards the super-bleak, I think at the very least she's serious about the idea that the modern world is corrupt in some ways, but accepting of this as well, and adament in her stance that it's better to deal with it than to complain about it, while never shying away from it as a reality, as a fact. And yet the tone of her Salon columns is inevitably cheery, grinning, affable--Falstaffian, you might say. While it does take TV seriously, engaging with it on its own terms, it also holds steady in the view of television as being the repository of our most self-indulgent impulses, as exhibit A in all the ways we've all fucked up, which is, of course, the best possible way to do this. It's deeply black humor, real whistling-past-the-bomb-site stuff, and it's amazingly effective. But what I want to talk about it the way it's reflective of an odd present trend of self-deprecating genres, of people talking about their craft from essentially a defensive stance because of either their or our refusal to acknowledge the differential quality across mediums. For instance, mailing list member Dean Costello sends this anecdote: Something to consider: I took a class in college called something like "The History of Television", which was taught by Nancy Kulp, Ms. Jane Hathaway from "The Beverely Hillbillies". She said that whenever she was at a gathering of friends, party, et al, invariably people would come up to her and say, "You know, all telelvision is crap--I won't have it in the house". Which is fine from her point of view since she said the sheer amount of crap on TV is fairly huge, but she was constantly put into the position of having to defend television, which is difficult. I'm also talking about comics here, about the interminable whinges by artist/writers about how no one takes "sequential art" (thanks, guys, "graphic novels" wasn't retarded enough) seriously as art, which while I had a certain ID with at first, has now grown not only old but intensely annoying. Because it's never presented in righteous terms, i.e. "This deserves to be taken seriously as an art form!" but, as I say, as a whine, which is I suppose not surprising given the socially-anxious-middle-class-males demographic that most comic book artists reside in. It's couched in terms of sarcasm, the last refuge of the self-conscious, and it's deeply self-depricating. This seems like a particularly modern phenomenon to me, spurred by the univerality of criticism and self-reflexiveness; at the point of being creators or critics, we're all aware of what most people think about what we're doing, or at least what our peers think most people think about what we're doing, if that makes any sense. It's that weird combination of populism and elitism that defines the, for lack of a better term, indie sensibility, which is not in and of itself problematic, but which does produce some pretty questionable outcomes. Well, time to get dinner, but more on this tomorrow. Discuss amongst yourselves, as they say.
posted by Mike B. at 5:43 PM
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It took me a little while to figure out just what was going on here, so I won't spoil it for you, but suffice to say, it is a Quo Vadimus exclusive and very, very cool. Take a look.
posted by Mike B. at 5:03 PM
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So, now we get actual content, right? Uh, no, I have to do that whole "work" thing. But here's a story about a Q&A with Hunter S. Thompson from the 70s I got on a mailing list this morning that's been ringing true for reasons that I assume will be obvious. One moment when he showed us something was when he asked the audience what we were interested in changing in the world. Someone yelled"disco" to a smattering of applause. He shrugged and said, more or less, "is that all that bothers you"? He suggested that there was a solution that involved some gasoline and a getaway car, but he didn't want to be quoted as suggesting people burn the discos. His main point was he didn't think this would help. He seemed genuinely distressed that the young folks present didn't have bigger fish to fry. He said he thought the US would be a short-lived warrior nation, and that was that. (thanks to Mike J)
posted by Mike B. at 11:38 AM
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Blah, blah, blah, more MIA. Lemme get this out of the way and we'll move on to independently interesting content. First off, I think Dave has a great response, and makes a lot of great points in re: valuing one authentic representation over another, but he's wrong at the very end when he says, "When M.I.A. tells everybody to pull up the poor, it's nice, but it's not part of a dialogue." This is obviously not true, because, hey, look, we're dialoguing our retarded asses off about it. Secondly, Carl's point about a fourth level not being an unquestioning acceptance is a very good one, and should be read. Finally, as for Simon...sigh. There are many perhaps mean things I could say at this point, but let me at least save them for at least after I've made one more basic point. I don't whip out the "please pay attention to the music, please" argument very much, because, as Simon goes into abstract detail about, it's not, in and of itself, valid. So when I do, I have a very specific criteria for it: I do it only when I feel like the music itself is being ignored in favor of a masturbatory bitchfest about everything that's not the music. I did this, as longtime readers (as well as, possibly, Pitchfork writers/letterpage readers) will remember, about the last Liz Phair album (funny how this always seems to happen with female musicians!), because I felt like a fantastic piece of music was being summarily dismissed because she posed nudies and worked with the wrong producers. I don't necessarily see this dismissal happening with MIA, but that's even worse, because people aren't even addressing the music, they're spending all their ink talking about how they don't really know anything about Sri Lanka. And so I've spent four posts now bitching about this (and, to be fair, I should widen it beyond Simon's review, but that's the most egregious offense I've seen) because I love this music so much. I think it can bring you immense happiness, and joy, and excitement, and it would do that whether MIA was a Sri Lankan immigrant or a retarded circus clown from Columbus. But people do take this shit seriously, they do pay attention to some random bit of hype and use it as an excuse not to engage with a piece of music. I'm trying to stop that from happening. I'm calling out critics on this because I know as well as you do that this is essentially laziness, that you're avoiding doing the heavy lifting of assessing the aesthetic qualities of a piece of music because it's easier to bitch about people being hoodwinked, or an artist not being sufficiently leftist. Simon wants to call me "anti-authenticist" (although I'm apparently "they," which is awesome, because I've always wanted to be they! Now when you say "they say" know who you're talking about? Me.) so, fuck it, lemme own that term. The key criteria for anti-authenticists is this: the music is central. And--this is important, pay attention please--music can be good while also being wrong, or offensive, or dangerous. Music does not have to be true to be wonderful, because music isn't about truth, it's about music. (To put it in terms of Simon's weird 8th paragraph there: music is not chocolate covered fucking raisins.) And so, yes, the context matters, but, again, the music is central, and ultimately disproving everything said about MIA anywhere ever doesn't change the actual recorded music, it just distracts us from it, and that's not good. My rule is that if you can address the context in a way that enhances our appreciation of the music, great, but otherwise leave it alone. That artists misrepresent themselves shouldn't be a newsflash for anyone. And so it pisses me off that we're not actually talking about the music--that I'm not actually talking about the music--and instead we're actually edging toward some sort of grotesque precipice where we're debating whether or not she has the fucking right to include baile funk elements in her music. In what universe is the answer not "yes"? Didn't everyone over the age of 15 agree on this like a long time ago? The music is there for you to use, and if it works, it's justified. Should she only be making Sri Lankan music? Should she not be making music at all? Look, if you want to talk about politics, that's fine, go talk about politics. But the politics of music is ridiculous. It's just not worth the effort. There are far too many bad things going on in the world for me to care whether or not MIA deserves to sound grimey, because, jesus, who gives a shit? Is the music good? If so, let's talk about it and enjoy it. If it's not, let ignore it and move on with our lives. So yes, please, take it seriously, care, get worked up, I am. But do the music the favor of taking it on its own terms, which it fully deserves. If you want to talk about its authenticity, fine, but have the grace and the intelligence to discuss whether or not this actually changes your listening experience, and if so, why, and how. Please let's not place upon this thing we love, music, a lazy betrayal.
posted by Mike B. at 10:51 AM
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Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Speaking of MIA, this week's set of reviews in Flagpole do not include any by me, but do include a very good one of Arular by Gardner, as well as a as-yet uncredited Residents review by, I believe, Hillary.
posted by Mike B. at 11:35 AM
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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
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Tuesday, February 22, 2005
That sound you hear is me banging my head against the wall. Address the issue! Make a judgment of some kind! Don't just say that it was legitimate because other people were doing it too! Argh. Whatever. I'm going to go eat Indian food and watch Gilmore Girls now.
posted by Mike B. at 7:02 PM
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I sent this to a mailing list in response to Thompson's death, but eh, might as well post it here too. Hunter's made me sad for some time, and for some reason I just can't warm to that style of writing since I moved out of adolescence, although my politics-junky girlfriend (i.e. Miss Clap) did love the Nixon book, which she wasn't expecting. Anyway, it's been clear for a while now that instead of living by his wits he was being just as self-destructive as before but being propped up by his handlers, one of whom, his assistant, he eventually married. He was very smart, and very talented, and it's very sad that he was so batshit insane and unable or unwilling to get treatment for it. It's sad that he continued to represent this particular dumbass lifestyle and his public face was one that attempted to legitimize drawing it out into middle and old age, but the reality was that he was only able to do it because he was independently wealthy and had successfully surrounded himself with yes-(wo)men. Between the accounts of his drunken, embarassing book signing fiasco last year and the time Jesse spent with him for a story, this was just not a human being I could like or respect, and shame, shame, shame on the people around him for not doing something about this. I keep seeing accounts presenting his fate as inevitable, but it simply wasn't. I'm not articulating this very well, but maybe you get the point. This was preventable, and he could have matured into a great writer instead of simply becoming a self-parody whose main message, at least as the public received it, was the democratization of self-destruction, whereas, like most democratizations, it was really only within your grasp if you already had m-o-n-e-y.
posted by Mike B. at 3:59 PM
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Some random hits: - LCD Soundsystem's song titles sure are annoying when you're a review writer with an eye on your word count. Also, is it a coincidence that two of their best songs are co-writes? Apparently Tim gets credit for some of "Yeah" and "Beat Connection." Also also, given the great transitions on the Rapture album (and the third disc of DFA Comp #2) why the hell couldn't they throw a few in here? The sequencing is, if not wiggidy wack, at least the regular kind. (More on Murphy's Masterwork later, probably.) - I have moved, so if you had a snail mail address for me in Brooklyn, consider it now outdated. Just drop me a line if you want the new one. I was going to post things about my new neighborhood, but that'll have to wait. Lemme just say this, though: the discount store sells mix CDs for $4! I totally got a Soca one and a dancehall one last night. - So, uh, how does one get on the mailing list to know when to submit proposals for EMP's pop music conference? Because apparently I missed out again, which is THE SADDENATOR. (Edit: it might help one's cause to spell "conference" correctly, yes?) More things when I think of them.
posted by Mike B. at 1:11 PM
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Conversation with a 9-year-old (Ar): Ar: I know every word on the first Avril CD. MC: Can we come over sometime and dance around to it? I'll wear lots of pink! Ar: I'll wear black. Later, we tried to explain the concept of welfare mothers to her. It didn't go well. So: suggestions for a mix CD for a 9-year-old girl who loooooves Avril but thinks Britney is crap? I'm going to go with the Avril-esque Kelly Clarkson, Liz Phair, Mandy Moore, and Janet Jackson, but what else might be good? Should I then just throw in some Mu for the hell of it?
posted by Mike B. at 10:28 AM
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