Was/Is Morrissey Racist?

Paul The Morrissey Admirer there

don't worry, I think the tool has killiefied me!

PaulTMA, classic poster

Some mod should go ahead and change this thread's title to "How Racist Is Morrissey?"

Eight years later, Morrissey did go ahead and call the Chinese a "subspecies":

While it might be easy to accuse a company of racism if it failed to employ people because of their racial origin, and while we might call someone a racist if they expressed the opinion that Chinese were 'inferior', it's difficult to say that a pop song is similar to an employment policy or a personal opinion.

A pop song usually has all the ambiguity of any work of art, and it was this ambiguity that Morrissey had every right to preserve by maintaining his silence in the face of the NME's inquisition.

Mr Morrissey employed characters. Some were Bengali. (This was already more than most songwriters did, and probably laudable). Mr Morrissey employed narrators to tell his stories. His narrators had a position within the song. They were perhaps characters, perhaps proxies for the author. As usual with art, we will never know. The songs contained voices which said things like 'Life is difficult enough when you belong here' or 'Three against one, that can't be fair'. If these were statements made in a fist fight, we would judge them according to context. In a song, we cannot. They are just hanging there: provocative, yes, racist, no.

There's an interesting parallel with an exhibition held in the early 90s by Pruitt and Early called The Black Show. They collected together artifacts of 'blackness'. They made no earnest Adrian Piper-like statements of condemnation, just presented these stereotypes and totems without comment. They were hounded out of the art world in the ensuing controversy. It took Rob Pruitt about eight years to be accepted once again as a serious artist. He now paints pandas.

― Momus, Saturday, February 2, 2002 8:00 PM (seventeen years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

He now paints pandas

But only the black parts.

Mr Morrissey employed characters. Some were Bengali...The songs contained voices which said things like 'Life is difficult enough when you belong here... If these were statements made in a fist fight, we would judge them according to context. In a song, we cannot.'

was certainly a take. As usual with art, we will never know.

yeah no he's always been racist sorry: https://www.patreon.com/posts/other-jacksons-18720007

― mark s, Thursday, May 9, 2019 5:20 AM (six days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is great writing mark

I haven’t dug it out to reread (I suspect it’s not that great), but sometime in late 87 or 88 I wrote a piece for NME called something like ‘Images of England in Rock and Roll Music’ (an unearned reference to the subtitle of Greil Marcus’s Mystery Train). In it The Smiths and Madness were compared with The Fall and found wanting (for being backward-looking: I too was a futurist). But I also remember that I was very taken by the Smiths title ‘A Rush and a Push and the Land is Ours’. There was a revolutionary vigour to it, and I guess it didn’t then occur to me who besides plutocrats Morrissey had a mind to be driving off his lawn and out of his country.

bolded sentence to emphasize me sitting here and realizing how much of a fucking dummy i am...the chorus was right there the whole time

there are just too many things to be able to blithely put it aside.

its not hard to see that when he sings

"At heart, what's left, we sadly know
That we are the last truly British people you'll ever know "

he has a very strong idea of who is "truly british" and who isn't.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/morrissey-blames-immigration-for-disappearance-of-british-identity-760825.html

I remember the NME review where they had had a supplied lyric sheet which purchasers didn't get with the album (for the first time), and the reviewer did point out that that "truly British" lyric was in quotes, which would have been lost on the casual listener..

But then...

i don't think most of us have an issue with lyrics being ambiguous/in character/ironic/provocative.... thats probably why i personally put aside this issue for a long time. but when you start working as a mouthpiece for actual real fascist parties in your interviews, you lose the right to claim your lyrics should be given the benefit of the doubt

i get the impression (being far too young to have been around at the time) that earlier on there was a lot more room for plausible deniability (though certainly enough reason to be suspicious) with him, as mark's piece outlines, but he gradually got increasing blatant and that's culminated in his statements and actions over the past few years

Lol I thought about posting that dumbshit paultma quote as well calz. Tbfttl he does seem recently to have slowly come to the conclusion he couldn’t quite reach after a mere 20 years of morrissey being an obvious racist, and in any road we have a new even worse Paul who’s shocked at the gaucherie of being rude about white supremacists

i don't think most of us have an issue with lyrics being ambiguous/in character/ironic/provocative.

I agree but words still say things and I really don't see a credible non-racist interpretation of "Bengali in Platforms". (And I was enough of a fan when I bought Viva Hate that I tried to but couldn't.) I think the character of the Bengali immigrant is p clearly being mocked, regardless of whose pov you think the speaker is expressing.

yeah as soon as i had put "most of us" i realised how white priviledgey that sounded. to some people it was probably fucking obvious and very hurtful for years, but for a lot of fans myself included it was easier to ignore.

Tbh, I think he largely got away with because most North Americans don't know what a Bengali is. I suspect that the response would have been different if Michael Stipe wrote a song called "Mexican in a Wifebeater".

wait hasn't Morrissey written that one too?

I know I didn't fully parse the phrase "Bengali In Platforms" for a ludicrously long time, largely because even though Moz is a "listen to me for my lyrics" dude I was well into honing the rough edges off of my "ignore the lyrics aside from how the fit the overall sound palette" stance when I first heard it and pretty much glossed over everything except the "Bengali" chant. When I actually sat down and read through what I had been listening to, I was horrified.

Could probably finish off his North American fanbase too if someone can alert him to some sort of animal rights violation taking place in Mexico.

Don't they still have bullfighting in Mexico?

yes, they do -- i have seen it!

plausible deniability is the absolute worst
sucks that this needs to be said but it does
if you rely on plausiable deniability, you're on extremely thin ice to start with

i am done with morrissey the person; i still enjoy the music of the smiths but only in moderation and at the time of my choosing (don't want to hear "this charming man" while shopping for example)

I still love the music probably up to Vauxhall & I but haven't listened to it in years. Isn't he basically admitting to being a racist in Speedway?

Tbh, I think he largely got away with because most North Americans don't know what a Bengali is. I suspect that the response would have been different if Michael Stipe wrote a song called "Mexican in a Wifebeater".

otm x 1000
i was 15 when i first heard "bengali in platforms", pretty smart, and had no idea what he was talking about. it went right over my tiny american head.

i can probably continue to enjoy Morrissey in the same way I can continue to enjoy James Woods in a few cool '80s and '90s roles (though Woods' politics never seeped into his art, since he wasn't the writer, which is fortunate because he's even worse than Morrissey).

DJP also otm about it sinking in -- I think once it did, unfortunately Moz-worms were already burrowed into my brain at that point via Smiths songs. idk. It doesn't help that there are Smiths songs that conjure some of my worst memories, so it's all mixed up. I def don't feel sad for the loss of Morrissey in my life.

To say his music (solo and The Smiths) meant a lot to me for so many years, I haven't really had much of a problem cutting him out my life. It's been quite easy to just stop listening to him and sell off a bunch of his records. Every time I take another one out my collection, I wonder if I'll regret it and so far I haven't.

I haven't been paying attention to his latest album campaign, but I was surprised to see a single with Billie Joe Armstrong pop up on the new release schedule. Considering how outspoken Billie has been about politics, is he really just that unaware of Morrissey's views?

I do still like and sometimes listen to the Smiths' music, and even some solo Morrissey.

yeah i'm not going to dump his catalog up through Vauxhall which i still find very worthwhile. I will not give him any money now though.

A whole of bunch of American artists are on his new album, I believe. Far be it for me to bring up the subject of American insularity but...

Moreover, one of those artists is a first-generation child of Indian immigrants.

xps to jamiesummerz and Mark G re We’ll Let You Know. Agree re ambiguity of quotes - I didn’t notice them either - but the song ends with that half-whispered

know
We are the last truly British people you will ever know
You'll never never want to know

Moreover, one of those artists is a first-generation child of Indian immigrants.

Like Morrissey, except Indian.

Yeah, Morrissey's family were immigrants!

More like “You’re The One For Me, Fashy”

Let The White One In

A Rush and a Putsch and the Land Is Ours.

... could do this all night, should warn you.

irish skull, english calipers

Like Morrissey, except Indian.

― Ned Caligari (Tom D.), Wednesday, May 15, 2019 6:00 PM (thirty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, Morrissey's family were immigrants!

― Le Baton Rose (Turrican), Wednesday, May 15, 2019 6:02 PM (thirty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I did not know this and it makes his whole deal like 10 times more stupid.

there are lots of racist british nationalists who are from irish immigrant backgrounds. stephen yaxley-lennon aka tommy robinson's parents are irish, the leader of the fash group morrissey supports, for britain, is from ... dublin

it's pretty clear that "has immigrant family" does not inoculate one against racist/xenophobe brainworms

I guess it’s that whole idea of pulling up the ladder - I’m sure it wasn’t exactly great to be second gen Irish in Britain all the time, but I doubt he had it as bad as any of the Asians he despises.

I suspect that Union Jack waving Proud-To-Be-British West Brit thing seems especially bizarre to me because I'm from Scotland.

lol I just checked and his parents immigrated to Manchester a year before he was born - which makes shite like his hankerings for an England that no longer exists - and it is always England - even funnier.

He would be a worthy winner of the worst diaspora poll.

agree
but the competition is extremely fierce!

i don't think 'irish' immigrants count as immigrants in these people's minds these days, because white.

Polish and Eastern European immigrants are white and they count as immigrants to these people.

Maybe now but this was definitely *not* the case in 70s and 80s UK - a lot of Irish people in this country were regularly assumed to be IRA sympathisers for one thing.

(White Eastern Europeans are among the most vocally reviled of immigrant groups in modern day Britain as well).

Not to mention British attitudes to the Irish going back centuries.

And still flourishing even today!

The Return of the Irish Question - this week's excellent cover essay
is by @JohnBew pic.twitter.com/WEcKg3pNpZ

— Jason Cowley (@JasonCowleyNS) May 15, 2019