morrissey = the new david byrne

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

ok usually when i do this kind of thing i frame the question fast and badly (or i wd never frame it at all) and koganbot becomes testy towards my fuzziness

but here is MY "explanation" of morrissey = he brought something to the boywing of britrock = called CAMP -- as in polari, as in an angry bitchy code against the UNSTYLISH USELESSNESS of the STRAIGHTS -- except that, since he wz militantly coy abt his sexuality (korrektly, as "coming out" would have stripped a powerful ambiguity out of what he wz doin), his camp was developed as a kind of MALE HET camp...

ANYWAY -- i have always bin ambivalent abt camp as an attitude (it's quickwitted and funny but it's also a compensatory attitude adopted by those who take themselves to be victims and are sniping secretly back...)

and given the shifts since the mid-80s in fashions in sexuality and within sexuality blah blah, i think morrissey's STYLE (sex! yes! but not for me...) reveals itself as a lot more reactionary a-and larkinesque than it did at the time

(again i feel i have not got at the nubbin of what i'm on about but have at it anyway)

Comments

Re: So How Is It That The Pet Shop Boys Are Supposed To Be Better Than The Smiths

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

PSB are not as self-pitying to my ears! They can deal with some pretty miserable subjects but they never wallow in them: Neil's voice is always slightly outside the situation even when he is the main protagonist in the lyrics: there's this self-awareness of the miserabilism, the dual knowledge that a) these emotions are sad and all-consuming but also b) it's not the end of the world and I should buck up a bit, and I will soon, after this song.