What Is Rockism ?

there's a weird thing sometimes on ILX when a lot of us are into the same new album e.g. the last Kendrick and you kinda feel "this thread is just a bunch of unnecessary gushing now" but I still think unnecessary gushing is less of a grind than "let me blow your mind by telling you I don't like this thing that a load of people like. at length. repeatedly."

xp yeah LG I know what you mean about the shoving it in your faceness of Twitter, Facebook etc

kind of feel like almost every version of "this thing that you like is shit and here's why" is less instructive/interesting/entertaining than some form of praise, maybe because the former comes from a place of less engagement, maybe cos it feels easier, maybe cos fuck a hater idk

(it can't be denied, I think, that buried in poptimism's central assumptions, is the idea of the marketplace as a filthy playground for inventiveness, free of the constraints of artistic aspirations).

I might have a go at denying that! Or at least refining it - I'd be more inclined to say that poptimism* places greater emphasis on artistic affect than artistic aspirations, and tends to interrogate the assumption that artistic affect is more likely to be found in those places where the artists are expected to be more self-consciously serious.

Artistic aspirations can be found all over the place, and a playground for inventiveness is a really good place to look for them.

*usual "it's not one thing" caveats apply here; it's not one thing, any more than pop or rock or art is one thing, and (as you say, Plaxico) one of the main failings of the article is a failure to tease out the different strains of poptimism.

xpost NV otm as usual. Also: if you've gotta dorklist I wanna be on it.

They argued that the single was as worthwhile as the album

^^^this was specifically an argument punk brought to the picnic

"being forced to read" is the (not-unjustified) whine of the professional editor -- you have to keep up with stuff, check the competition, you also have to proof the garbage you're handed by your contributors (needn't be garbage but if you're bad at choosing yr contributors it will, and others keep pitching things), plus, if yr a down-tier editor, as music-section editors on papers like the guardian always will be, yr probably being pressured a lot to cover stuff you really don't want to personally (which can be corroding over the years)

but I still think unnecessary gushing is less of a grind than "let me blow your mind by telling you I don't like this thing that a load of people like. at length. repeatedly."

agree 100 per cent.

i guess i sort of feel... it's easy for people to imagine a bunch of critics are all saying the same thing, all bludgeoning you to death by hyping an artist that you've already heard hyped a thousand times, in the same way. it's probably an illusion or an assumption. but that is generally how we all felt about your mojo/q etc whenever this place first got going. it's not bad to acknowledge where the power might lie, or to undermine that or run away from it.

kind of feel like almost every version of "this thing that you like is shit and here's why" is less instructive/interesting/entertaining than some form of praise

this is exactly my critical philosophy. many negative reviews are just someone misunderstanding something, you can compare the language used even.

(ps when i was an editor i did none of these things, and spent most of my time rewriting my contributors' copy so that it was actually more or less publishably ok)

For me Rockism manifests itself most egregiously in the open contempt for the musical tastes of young women and complete lack of interest in the musical tastes of POC, and that's still everywhere. Imagining that it's all in the past now because it's fashionable to like Lemonade is just utter head in the sand nonsense.

xp Tim

I wonder if the problem for poptimism is that it took the existence of the marketplace too much for granted. Contextually this made sense, particularly as a way of dismantling the self-valorising semantics of rock criticism. But Poptimism can seem a realist perspective that sortof closes the loop. In becoming so entirely pragmatic about markets, it makes it impossible to think about, as an example, folk traditions and cultural production that emerges from a more communitarian or even utilitarian context.

Hm - I took your post above to be saying that poptimists were not entirely pragmatic about the market, in so far as they, as a tendency, don't tend to be terribly interested in Sheeran and Adele...?

Poptimism, in whatever form, has not made it impossible to think about anything. Which isn't to say that all poptimists think well about everything.

No, sorry, I'm doing what I was criticising the article of doing in an effort to be brisk.

I think poptimism introduces a certain pragmatism wrt to the marketplace. It introduces and foreground the idea of the marketplace as a contextual marker which is part of the meaning-making of certain types of pop music. So rock music tries to present itself as free from the exigencies of marketing, sales, etc. but becomes boring, stable and hegemonic. Whereas there's a certain stream of wicked pop inventiveness that navigates the precariousness of marketplace and has to become incredibly inventive in this context. These are the "cheap tacky souvenirs" that poptimism gets very excited about.

There is definitely an abundance of "Beyonce's new album is Black Lives Matter," type of thing all over the internet now. Stuff which defined by an unquestioning pragmatism regarding the market, rockism's "prestige" rhetorics, and some poptimism-derived social justice concerns. (recast as entirely aesthetic questions of "representation" or "cultural appropriation," set free from any concern for the material bases of these ideas and in particular their relationship to said markets)

So what's hard is that poptimism, does have a sortof legacy, in that it's been cannibalised by this other content-industry which preserves certain of its features if not their intents.

Poptimism, in whatever form, has not made it impossible to think about anything. Which isn't to say that all poptimists think well about everything.

this is more or less the beginning and end of the argument, or at least the "waaah Poptimism is the new orthodoxy stop making me listen to music I don't like" bit of the argument

I'd be more inclined to say that poptimism* places greater emphasis on artistic affect than artistic aspirations, and tends to interrogate the assumption that artistic affect is more likely to be found in those places where the artists are expected to be more self-consciously serious.

^^ excellent. Perhaps "greater emphasis on artistic effect" too!

there's definitely an element of poptimism - which I wouldn't necessarily use to describe all "rockism is silly" discourse but here we are - that ties in with my own aesthetic feelings about the whole notion of the aesthetic belonging to the perceiving subject rather than innately within the object of perception

xp to Plaxico: If the effect of Poptimism is to say that the politics in Beyoncé's work is treated with the same seriousness* as (say) the politics in The Clash's work, EVEN WITH the acceptance that the art is being made inside and with a full knowledge and acceptance of the entertainment arm of capital, then I'm all for it.

*NB: I don't think it is, yet, although I hardly have an extensive overview of pop coverage these days.

thinking about what plax said I feel like that kind of PR gush has always been with us, there's always been that branch of semi-advertorial unquestioning promotion of the popular because it's popular, it's just a question of the internet bringing us too much of everything

For me Rockism manifests itself most egregiously in the open contempt for the musical tastes of young women and complete lack of interest in the musical tastes of POC, and that's still everywhere.
― Camaraderie at Arms Length, Friday, May 12, 2017 5:31 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Again, who are these people and where do they hang out? Not anywhere I go. Are you talking about my sexagenarian twice-divorced uncle who chain smokes Camels and longs for the halcyon days of seeing Blue Oyster Cult for only four dollars and getting three cartoons and a few shorts before the movie even started, maaaan? Because he's more relic than rockist and wouldn't know Adele from Enya

wish I lived in a utopian commune of freethinkers

it's not as if on one side we have pop music and on the other everything else. pop is hardly some free open world that promotes us living as we choose.

who are these people and where do they hang out?

i think both sides should answer this question, to be honest: actually *name* some active poptimists who behave as charged? and ditto rockists, among ppl who have critical heft among us -- this vaguely handwaving of "those ppl over there do a bad thing which makes them reactionaries" is the fkn epitome of bad critical thinking politics

(rockists is always easier bcz bob lefsetz, but let's agree he doesn't really count)

there's a distinction between working journalists and my mates down the pub who think I'm taking the piss when I tell them I like Sean Paul I guess

Wimmels's uncle sounds OTM.

i think both sides should answer this question, to be honest: actually *name* some active poptimists who behave as charged? and ditto rockists, among ppl who have critical heft among us -- this vaguely handwaving of "those ppl over there do a bad thing which makes them reactionaries" is the fkn epitome of bad critical thinking politics

agreed.

hard to name names as i don't keep tabs on critics i don't like, and this is more of an aggregative phenomenon than the fault of any specific group of writers

an imagined fear, in other words

poptimism's central assumptions, is the idea of the marketplace as a filthy playground for inventiveness, free of the constraints of artistic aspirations

this is beautifully put. the freedom of pop's cynicism-nihilism-relativism is a huge point of attraction, for this poptimist, at least

the halcyon days of seeing Blue Oyster Cult for only four dollars

never experienced these days directly but i long for them too

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/oct/22/crush-week-why-i-love-beyonce

you can see Blue Oyster Cult for $5 beers when I karaoke "Burnin' For You" next Saturday

The most notable rockist critical arguments I can think of now are happening actually in rap, and frequently on YouTube not in writing - guys like Lord Jamar, Ebro, Joe Budden etc and the debate over mumble rap, Lil Yachty not respecting Biggie, trying to make these kids freestyle over the Gangstarr Mass Appeal beat...I think rock - or at least any rock music that's worth listening to - has gone so underground for so long it's really not pop music, it's an adjacent and related, but largely separate, world... Like jazz has been for a long time

Perhaps it's time to stop calling it 'rockism' then. This debate is terminologically muddled.

an imagined fear, in other words

while I understand the defensiveness on the part of professional critics and editors, is it really so controversial to say, rather than overturning rockism once and for all, poptimism won the battle but lost the war? it would be very unlikely for us to win, ever! the power of rockist prestige to elevate, that the market leverages to sell artists to a different segment of listeners, rests on the existence and distinction between the beyond-the-pale lcd pop that poptimism tells us to reconsider

is it really so controversial to ask for people making these two very similar arguments to point out concrete examples of them in action?

I don't have any names to list off, to tell the truth I only know the names of a handful of music critics, and couldn't tell you that much about any of them. I might be alone in here in never having done any professional music writing, though I do read quite a bit of it.

The point I was trying to make, perhaps clumsily, is that there is a huge spectrum of commentary between respected critics at one end at NV's mates down the pub at the other, and for most of this spectrum the attitude I'm describing is absolutely present. Poptimism, on the other hand - basically I only ever encounter it on here and a couple of other places. Celebrity journalism is everywhere of course, but that's hardly the same thing.

Do I need to give an example of the patronizing way so many writers talk about the music tastes of teenage girls? Not on here, sure, but ILM is in this respect not at all representative.

I might be alone in here in never having done any professional music writing

new board desc obv

Do I need to give an example of the patronizing way so many writers talk about the music tastes of teenage girls?

I think mark's point is yes?

i would seriously like to see a list of the two schools drawn up, preferably w.attention paid to the best writers on each side (hence not lefsetz)

i think it might move the conversation on a bit: 17 years is a ridiculously long time to be pawing at the same bald spot

i continue to think it's a deeply stupid way to frame the discussion -- maura's arguments are to me far more germane, abt the practical pressures from newspapers and magazines and websites making decisions about content, and how these imagined economics affects the writers that can adapt and (even more) the writers not really prepared to

celebrity culture has been with us for decades; bad writing has been with us a LOT longer -- speaking as an editor (more aggressive here than defensive) repurposing the latter as a squabble abt the genres covered is the worst way to tackle a decline in quality; some actual concrete examples would be a lot more useful

adding: most of the worst writing i've had to deal professionally has been writing about the avant garde, which continues to be still far more badly served than rock (whatever it now is) or rap or pop

Afraid I don't have the resources, time or bookmarks required to search out the best examples, sorry.

Would any of these count?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockism_and_poptimism#References

phony poptimism has bitten the daaaaahst

http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a55035/harry-styles-is-the-next-frank-sinatra/

possibly, pomenitul, but you've got to make a bit more effort than that if you want to persuade me this is in any sense a worthwhile avenue

I suppose I'm confused as to the degree of 'extremism' these putative pieces are meant to exhibit. Are we looking for perfect, Platonic exemplars of each position (which would probably flirt would Poe's law anyhow), or does, say, Michael Hann's Quietus article already fit bill? Or Kelefa Sanneh's, for that matter?

oh man I glanced at that Saul Austerlitz article from 2014.

my rule of thumb is that no high-profile article yet written about the face-off between the two schools can have been much good, as we're still stuck at the same place

what i'm asking for is examples from each of the two schools, preferably ones which are well written -- ideally with some analysis of why their strengths are actually undermined, either by their rockism or their poptimism

I'll bite.

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/7423962/taylor-swift-feminism-impact

ok, in defense of using this as an example, part of the point is the sheer glut of this stuff and the attendant lack of quality. This is content. But the bizarre connections it makes between pop music and denuded social justice concepts, completely decontextualised, is a defining feature of a lot of this stuff that gets tossed in front of my eyeballs. I'm precisely not saying this is poptimism, or even really journalism, but there's a lot of it and it's everywhere (theguardian.com sidebar I feel is always pushing this kind of pop criticism) and I definitely think that some of its assumptions are the corrupted legacy of poptimism. By the way, I've been working in a school with autistic children and I've heard shake it off by taylor swift at least once a day, every day, since september, and part of my antipathy towards this kind of stuff comes from that.

How about this one? I've brought it up repeatedly, but no one ever deigns to touch it:

http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/what-if-you-dont-like-beyonces-album/

wait, that is not in response to mark s, my line itt is pretty unrelated to what you are saying in your last post.

it is, i'm not arguing with everyone in the thread (yet)