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: REPOSTED FROM ORIGINAL PAZZ & JOP THREAD

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The people who found them offensive and irritating weren't ESPECIALLY socially clued-in or beautiful by the way.

But in general the point is the if you buy into certain ideas of social acceptability, non-retardation, attractiveness, cool, glamour etc. you may well react negatively to people who don't fit those ideas REPEATEDLY and LOUDLY mocking or - worse! - claiming them. It's like how one deep root of slim people's dislike of fat people is the fact that the slim people have often had to work quite hard to be that way and so people flaunting their obvious lack of this body-work-ethic is in some way mocking.

"Your value system is kind of silly" is and always has/will be a devastating critique IF you can do it convincingly and from a position of strength.

i.e. only insecure people hated the Smiths!

(except much as I would have loved this analysis as a Smiths fan and wanted to believe it it wasn't entirely true. There was something genuinely quite annoying about Morrissey in particular - crystallised by the "pinched" comment above I think. The value system he proposed wasnt a glorious polysexual widening of everything but something far creepier and more limited.)

Re: REPOSTED FROM ORIGINAL PAZZ & JOP THREAD

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

And yet still MAGNETICALLY APPEALING (partly cos so many Smiths fans wanted to fuck* Morrissey!)

*erm, ok, hug**

**google image search "Morrissey Wolverhampton 1989" if you dare; I do not.

Re: REPOSTED FROM ORIGINAL PAZZ & JOP THREAD

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

to me the whole social retard thing is that most people have experienced it, and then grew out of it/stopped worrying about whatever faux pas they still made/JUST STOPPED WORRYING FULL STOP quite naturally because of that process known as GROWING UP - there is something v juvenile about the Smiths. The angsty music I tended to like - Amos, Harvey, Love et al - tended to be very self-dramatising, strong, cathartic, and they didn't wallow in it so much as try to exorcise it; whereas the Smiths' angst was a low-grade, general chronic one, they weren't possessed by demons or particularly tortured, they were just a bit narked at not getting laid.

Re: REPOSTED FROM ORIGINAL PAZZ & JOP THREAD

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there's a huge Peter Pan element to Morrissey which is very offputting.

That said there's also a big self-mocking element (or there was back then more so) and some of the stuff the Smiths sang to - shyness for instance - is not an exclusively adolescent condition.

The brand of angsty music you mention I tend to find insufferably hectoring so maybe there's a big gulf of taste too!

Re: REPOSTED FROM ORIGINAL PAZZ & JOP THREAD

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

My favourite Smiths songs as a teen were never the really bleak ones, except when I was working through a spectacularly pointless crush, instead they were the later ones - "Ask", "The Queen Is Dead", "A Rush And A Push", "Rubber Ring", and early solo Moz like "Everyday Is Like Sunday" and "Disappointed", where the perspective of the singer includes a sense of his own lameness as well as a promise of strength. These are also the 'funny' ones I guess.

Re: REPOSTED FROM ORIGINAL PAZZ & JOP THREAD

[koganbot]

Potential theoretical defense of Smith's stance contained in the unintended take-down of Cheyenne Kimball that begins here.

Re: REPOSTED FROM ORIGINAL PAZZ & JOP THREAD

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

"they weren't possessed by demons or particularly tortured"

well, there's a whole strand about murderers, paedos, perves -- actual real sexual outcasts and pathologues (is that a word): "girlfriend in a coma i know i know, it's really serious"

but what i found odd was that this strand seemed to be a kind of dogwhistle that half the fans were ENTIRELY MISSING, which i, a merely enquiring passerby, was picking up loud and clear