These men only obfuscate the value judgments they bring to the "Muppet Show" with smugness and sarcasm
This exchange deserves its own post because (1) this here's a conversation I'd like to take aboveground and (2) my comment to it was WAY too long so I'm just going to make it its own post and proceed from there.
Frank Kogan sez:
This isn't a direct response to the Ashlee/Lindsay question, but bear in mind that variant 7.b of the basic Critic Hero Story is "Everyone's being snookered but me," and that this story can be applied to anything. Take, for example, my complaint back in the first Why Music Sucks that the indie-alternative world lets the symbol stand in for the effect (e.g., symbolizing rebellion rather than actually rebelling against anything): Agency wasn't a big issue for me, since I was assuming that performer and audience were both happy to maintain and support each other in their delusion. But I was saying that Indieland was snookering itself and that I saw this and that most other indie people didn't. So, my point is that though the sneering at Ashlee and Lindsay and Paris is shallow and ugly and stupid and wrong, it still draws on some impulses within the culture that you and I and probably most other people we come across share. That is, Ashlee bashers think Ashlee (or Ashlee Plus Handlers) are selling her audience a bill of goods; but then you and I think that the Ashlee bashers are selling their readers a bill of goods. Of course we're right and they're wrong, which makes a difference; but nonetheless, both they and we ride an urge to tell the basic Hero Story.
And so I want to partially reverse what counts as cause and effect here, to note that there's a self-feeding circle: What's going on isn't only that the haters make certain assumptions about Britney and Ashlee and the bizzers and the manipulators and the manipulated, and therefore tell this story of Ashlee and her audience being manipulated. Rather, the haters (also) make these assumptions so that they can tell the story. I don't want to go all French here and overstate the case by saying that the story is paramount. (It's not as if everyone must tell the story, or that the story exists for no reason.) But rather I want to keep in mind that what we're calling "assumptions" are usually ad hoc. So when the Idolators sneer at Paris for lacking previous musical experience and at her audience for buying her despite her unacceptable resumé, this isn't because (1) they believe in a basic principle that all performers must have previous demonstrable musical experience to be valid or good, or (2) they believe that pop idols in general have little musical experience unless it's been demonstrated otherwise (interesting that they assume that Paris couldn't ever, say, have had piano lessons and couldn't have learned anything at dances and clubs etc.). Rather, they're just coming up with things that momentarily support their sneer and support their stance. (Or that's the way it seems to me, not having access to their minds or discussing with them what they think they're trying to do.)
Frank Leví-Strauss
This may not be directly addressing the comment, but one problem I'm running up against is that I'm not finding the current sneering to be very much in sync with old-school Britney sneering, despite the fact that -- to use Frank's words -- this is pretty transparently about "these people as a class." So while I'd love to sort of retroactively participate in the "this is harmful to young girls" debates that seemed omnipresent c. 2000, I don't think that's the case here, and I don't think many people are explicitly making that argument (i.e., these aren't conscious "assumptions" that manifest themselves in the commentary). I think of it as a sort of internalization of these ideas, expressed as a sneer -- but it's harder to parse a cultural argument out of the sneer itself.
It's funny, I was rethinking this post [about two posts down] almost immediately after I started finally reading Performing Rites tonight (gr8 Xmas haul this year)...obviously echoing from/with/to Frank's ideas (/book): "Part of the pleasure of popular culture is talking about it; part of its meaning is this talk, talk which is run through with value judgments [I think I'm accurately fixing a typo in my text that sez "run though"]." One thing a sneer does (as I think the previous Idolator talk, on a good day, is getting at) is to attempt (again, probably unconsciously) to hide the underlying value judgment (and the processes through which such a value judgment might be made). I'm actually thinking specifically of a brief exchange I had about two years ago with a Pfork writer on my old blog (which unfortunately has been wiped out -- the comment, not the blog), based on my response to his song review of "Everytime" by Britney:
Leave it to Britney Spears to throw my spellchecker for a loop with "Everytime", her unnecessarily conjoined new single. Okay, I won't play any more nerd cards, but this chick-flick closing credits stuff has to stop. Doesn't she understand that once you go down the "accidental" nip-slip, drunken marriage path, you can't go back to Nickelodeon-approved pine songs? Spears is surrounded by all the right cinematic atmospherics: harp, piano, lovely, poignantly synthesized strings. Her vocal is delicate and pure, and she delivers lines like, "I see your face, it's haunting me/ I guess I need you, baby," and even drops the all-important question-- "Why carry on without me?"-- later on. But without a trace of the personality (or melody) inherent in her recent "Toxic", this is purely late-era Debbie Gibson fare trying to strike gold in a diva-drenched market whose heartrending ballads come a dime a dozen. Don't worry, dear, you'll always be that little schoolgirl in my mind-- that hot little schoolgirl who begged me to hit her one more time.
Too easy! (1) Britney's dum cuz she can't spell, (2) this is for chicks (chicks who watch chick flicks), (3) fallen from grace/innocuousness, (4) Ubl/Hogan syndrome (or maybe was always Leone/Spears syndrome): this song is TOO PRETTY and by all rights should be LESS PRETTY, (5) Uh, how on earth does "Everything" have less personality than "Toxic"?! (6) I called "hot little schoolgirl who begged me to hit her one more time" a misogynistic statement at the time and then chickened out when Dominique Leone actually responded. But I was right the first time. His response was something like "misogynist? more like throwing her public image back at her." At the time I said something like "well, you have a point; her harmful impact on 12 year old girls is certainly worth more discussion" or something smarmy like that.
So obviously I'm having some projection issues with this piece (who I am hates who I was, right? Nah, he was OK, I'm really just mad because I'm not any taller today than I was yesterday), but more importantly, that sort of criticism -- and my response to it -- was already out of fashion in 2004. That exchange is like Statler/Waldorf fogeyish (no Hilton yet, although she was lurking in the wings as the below reviews will show). And the above points in '07 are like pin the tail on the "contrarian popist fascist gripe." This sort of transparent (and honest in its own way) dismissal of Britney isn't a dime a dozen anymore, and maybe my earlier complaints about Idolator/Paris are more pertinent here than the "harmful/not harmful to girls" angle, even though I think the current sneer has developed from earlier and more blatant attitudes/poses/judgments. But an important thing is that those old fogey arguments are in there, they're just being buried in smug, knowing wink-wink.
Side note: Pitchfork used to have a genre for single reviews called TEENPOP -- of course they didn't bring it back when I started contributing, just "pop" -- and it's a real whirlwind of bile!
Teenpop: Best of 2003-2005
"Beautiful Soul"! One star!
I want to say "Beautiful Soul" is like a chunk of indistinguishable food that gets lost between your back teeth for a couple of days, then pops out to say "hi" in the most nauseating, stank-tasting way, but that's what folks would expect to be said about something so shamelessly eager to please and stupefy. If anything, it's like diet soda-- relatively harmless, only one calorie if that, might give you gas if you chug it too hard, but will otherwise do no more than momentarily tickle your throat on the way down and make you pee in about two hours. Please note that if listening to "Beautiful Soul" does actually make you pee, please see a doctor as soon as possible. And please note that if you need surgery but can't handle anesthesia, this track on repeat might do the trick.
"Rumors"! Half star!
"Can you please respect my privacy?" I don't know, LL-- can you please insult my intelligence? I mean, really, if you're going to put it that way, why not just put a "Kick Me I Like Swirlies" sign on the back of those jammies you wore to the last Hilton soirée? Yes, there's a fine line between being noticed and being watched, and a lot of celebrity reportage is just a few slime trails above Penthouse Pet photo captions; and of course no one's nip slips or panty peeks should find their way onto the Internet, but pointing out the injustice of it all isn't going to earn you Good Samaritan kudos or bonus Best Buy Bucks. And, please, all you folks trying to reconcile Madonna's "Material Girl" and Madonna's "American Life"-- if you're going to rediscover gravity, please do it on the Huckapoo tip, not on Britney's sloppy seconds. Unless those sloppy seconds happen to be Colin Farrell. He's hot.
[Ed. Nip slip #2, and...HUCKAPOO? You mean more anonymous? Or more innocuous? Or less popular? You know Lindsay has more Huckapooesque (more anonymous, more innocuous, less popular) singles predating this one, right?]
"Don't Tell Me"! Half star!
Avril's songwriters try hard to make her "authentic," to make you think this really is some girl in detention writing angry words on her sneakers. But the grown-ups are out of their depth on "Don't Tell Me" (officially credited to Avril and her boytoy guitarist Evan, but you be the judge). It's a cringeworthy song about how you shouldn't let boys pressure you into sex. The music is generic "strum the verse, rock the chorus" teenpop, and it starts out like a lovey-dovey ballad.
There's nothing not-fuckable about her boyfriend-- until he changes from sensitive guy to ruthless horndog. [...] But you expect more attitude than this, and even her "punk" voice has lost its spunk and taken on a worn-tire fatigue. So I don't know who this is meant to please. But you can get a big laugh out of the dopey lectures these adults cram in her mouth, when a real teen with a pushy boyfriend could just say, "You're such a fucking jerk!"
[Ed. but that was precisely Avril's problem! And it's also why she didn't hit as hard as, say, M2M -- she was saying "you're such a fucking jerk!" Or, "get down on your knees!"]
"Me Against the Music"! Half star!
Oops! Looks like it's all over for your girlfriend, and it's not just 'cause her fanbase has grown up-- Britney's been accosting all of us too fucking long with her Disney-fried, sub-Abba teen-pop, and now, like the awesomely savage barbarians we are, we want blood. Even her record label seems to want to end it here: they've tossed her "Me Against the Music", one of the greatest disasters in pop music history, as a surefire ship-sinker.
[...]"Me Against the Music" is a true feat: It not only hideously topples "Lucky" in terms of sheer patience-testing, but actually ranks, with ease, among the all-time most devastating pop chart embarrassments: Bobby Brown's "On Our Own" from Ghostbusters II; C + C Music Factory's "Things That Make You Go Hmm"; and Twisted Sister's cover of "Leader of the Pack". If there's ever a hall of fame for U.S. culture's laughable nadirs, this will have its own room.
Average star rating from 2003-2005: POINT SEVEN [HA!].
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