"Reward stickers" for understanding the difference between "most people agree that this is a dumb argument, like another famous dumb argument" and "LIKING POP MUSIC IS EXACTLY THE SAME AS BEATING KUNTE KINTE WITH STICKS"
― Dom Passantino, Thursday, 6 September 2007 14:08 (sixteen years ago) link
"Engaging activities"
i'm serious as cancer when i say -isms are a dancercancer
wouldn't it be "hobbling kunte kinte"?
― strongohulkington, Thursday, 6 September 2007 14:09 (sixteen years ago) link
matt that's what i meant upthread, sorry. that 'poptimism' was at first a corrective and much later a handy catchphrase, but never an ideology.
this debate in a nutshell: on one side we have someone cheaply invoking the slave trade in an effort to grok public support for a war that nobody but he is fighting; on the other is someone who is so can't-see-the-forest-from-the-trees about pop music that he deems a dubious parallel between his 14-year old insights about vietnam and his 53-year old insights about paris hilton as valuable of his readers' time.
xposts
― ^@^, Thursday, 6 September 2007 14:09 (sixteen years ago) link
"i have my feet up on a slave as a type this"
― strongohulkington, Thursday, 6 September 2007 14:10 (sixteen years ago) link
The slave is doing the typing, surely.
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 6 September 2007 14:10 (sixteen years ago) link
i wouldn't let my slave touch my computer
― strongohulkington, Thursday, 6 September 2007 14:11 (sixteen years ago) link
I can't be alone in seeing parallels between Rihanna's Umbrella being toppled from its marathon stint atop the UK charts and the British army's decision to pull out of Basra.
― Matt DC, Thursday, 6 September 2007 14:11 (sixteen years ago) link
we should put kogan and k-punk in the same house and make a reality tv show out of it
― strongohulkington, Thursday, 6 September 2007 14:12 (sixteen years ago) link
http://quizfarm.com/images/1109109207slave.jpg
― Dom Passantino, Thursday, 6 September 2007 14:12 (sixteen years ago) link
http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/15988.jpg
― Dom Passantino, Thursday, 6 September 2007 14:13 (sixteen years ago) link
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000001FU6.01.LZZZZZZZ.gif
http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/b/bc/Slavetothewagecover.jpg
― Dom Passantino, Thursday, 6 September 2007 14:14 (sixteen years ago) link
http://www.derjonas.com/Niederknien.jpg
that's very astute, dom. all those pictures reference slaves in some way. good stuff.
― ^@^, Thursday, 6 September 2007 14:15 (sixteen years ago) link
stylus' death was not in vain
― strongohulkington, Thursday, 6 September 2007 14:16 (sixteen years ago) link
Very, very good.
― Rockist Scientist, Thursday, 6 September 2007 14:16 (sixteen years ago) link
Matt DC otm, really anybody who disagrees with Matt DC is big-upping the Soviet gulag system
Dom there's a li'l somethin' about Prince and Grace Jones that you may not have noticed
― J0hn D., Thursday, 6 September 2007 14:16 (sixteen years ago) link
Yeah, the 80s was a mad time.
― Dom Passantino, Thursday, 6 September 2007 14:17 (sixteen years ago) link
Look, I'm pretty sure that Kogan's happy someone's having a go at him without accusing him of cradle-robbing, let's just leave it at that.
― Dom Passantino, Thursday, 6 September 2007 14:18 (sixteen years ago) link
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/060503/060503_predator_hmed_4p%20.hmedium.jpg
― strongohulkington, Thursday, 6 September 2007 14:18 (sixteen years ago) link
Paris Is Our Hansen?
― Dom Passantino, Thursday, 6 September 2007 14:21 (sixteen years ago) link
No, Alan is
― Tom D., Thursday, 6 September 2007 14:23 (sixteen years ago) link
I'm distressed that this thread still bears my name.
― Tim F, Thursday, 6 September 2007 14:32 (sixteen years ago) link
is that paul reiser?? he looks like shit!
― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 6 September 2007 14:41 (sixteen years ago) link
Alex T as usual said everything that needed to be said much earlier on:
"Back to the original poster: as ever I agree with the dissensus position insofar as it takes the claims of 'art' seriously, but I dispute their ability to identify art (grime?) as opposed to non-art (pop?). The idea of an ethics of decision in regard to what they listen to is an interesting one. I'd want to pose a Kogan-esque question and ask whether the ideal exponents of this position are teenagers, where musical taste may primarily be tribal and their are exceedingly strict and painful decisions involved in liking one thing or another. If you want a more autonomous version of this, Mark Sinker's account of punk ethics also reads punk as Kantian in this sense: what matters is setting the law for oneself, not taking it from somewhere else."
Alex's description of the "Kogan-esque question" strikes me as precisely what Kogan *is* trying to do in pieces like the one Mark K-Punk is talking about, and as such it has already moved beyond the conflict of pleasure vs the decision to see how the two things actually create eachother.
This was basically the point of my quote which starts the thread, which gets elaborated in the linked dissensus thread: that it's not a choice between censorship and pleasure - censorship is a component of the pleasure, and the pleasure is produced by censorship. The notion of Mark, say, rejecting a pop song he would otherwise like in an act of censorship in the name of a higher cause is precisely *not* how his brand of political pop critique works, because the kind of pop he likes will always have already somehow magically landed on the "right" side of the line - hence Rihanna's "Umbrella" is somehow justified and justifable. Likewise when Simon R linked to Mark's piece on Timbaland or Timberlake he described it as "refreshing the parts that 1001 pop(tim)ists can't reach", but in fact the article was precisely pop(tim)ist (although more auteurist than a post on poptimism would be probably). It made me wonder what Simon thought a pop(tim)ist take on timberlake/timbaland would look like such that mark's take was necessarily superior.
The differences only really emerge w/r/t what is hated - and perhaps when all is said and done nu-rockism is simply about asserting the freedom to despise Paris Hilton and M.I.A. I can almost appreciate why this is felt to be necessary, or at least w/r/t Paris and contra Frank - if only because (as always) he asks questions which are difficult to answer and (in the case of Paris) in an unusally hyperbolic (dare I say lexian) manner.
― Tim F, Thursday, 6 September 2007 15:21 (sixteen years ago) link
"Those Paris-shirt -wearin' DisLexians"
― Alex in Baltimore, Thursday, 6 September 2007 15:24 (sixteen years ago) link
not quite what kant had in mind...
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Thursday, 6 September 2007 15:25 (sixteen years ago) link
I think the bigger problem is the lack of engagement though: in all the big dissensus threads on these topics mark and simon (if not always the echo chamber posters) would ultimately come around to a much more reasonable position. It's only when they're left to stew to themselves that their tendential distrust of e.g. pro-paris criticism hardens and sclerotizes. Of course the reverse is also true - Tom made a good point on Poptimism that a lot of the posters there would be all "lol emo" if there weren't actual emo fans around to school them on it.
― Tim F, Thursday, 6 September 2007 15:26 (sixteen years ago) link
I started this thread? WTF?
― Raw Patrick, Thursday, 6 September 2007 17:38 (sixteen years ago) link