more pop filosophie: discuss

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

We all read fluxblog, don't we? Yes, of course, we do. Matthew really seems to have raised his game over the last year or so, don't you think? Well, I just wanted to call people's attention to a post he updated yesterday. Somehow I would expect we'll all agree with his basic idea, if not about the specific example, although there's quite a bit too tease out.

I'll excerpt the relevant bit:

I'd like to address this comment left in the box below, which more or less echoes what I was railing against the last time I wrote about CSS at length:

I'm sure Lovefoxxx is not emoting that much. She's in a dance band for crying out loud and not a very good one. - Anon

To a certain extent this (obviously quite brave!) anonymous poster is entitled to their opinion, and since it is apparent that they haven't given this a great deal of thought, it's not really worth arguing with them, at least not in the interest of trying to change their mind. But honestly, there's no way I can read this sort of comment without assuming some pretty harsh things -- mainly, that they seem to have extremely rigid and unimaginative ideas about what signifies intelligent and emotionally moving art.

I think that a lot of the problem that some people run into with CSS is that their record is very much a product of the present tense, and though I believe that accounts for a great deal of its beauty, art that is so tied into a moment that will inevitably pass tends to freak out a certain type of insecure fan who demands permanence and timelessness, often because they are terrified of ever having to admit that they enjoyed something that has since become dated. If you want to cling to the notion of having an imagined aesthetic upper hand, you will most likely become allergic to this sort of music, and find refuge in safe bets. If you've conditioned yourself to think of contemporary culture (especially internet culture) as being an endless stream of vulgar novelty -- a notion that is not entirely inaccurate, by the way -- you've most likely blinded yourself to any art that speaks to the humanity and emotional truth of experiences within that culture.

Personally, I remember quite clearly a moment at uni when my roommate and I were questioning "Will we always like this music?" although for us I think it was a given that the music was timeless, and while it was we that would become dated.

Comments

Re: Me agreeing with Matt, pretty much:

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yeah specifically liking or not liking CSS is nothing to do with it - I like Let's Make Love, but the Spank Rock rmx is feeble.

I can sympathise with Matt letting one snarky comment trigger a load of pent-up frustration though.

Re: Me agreeing with Matt, pretty much:

[pot80.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's more or less what happened. There's not a lot that one can fairly extrapolate from that comment aside from some clearly rockist tendencies and some overt douchebaggery, but the response was a result of pent-up frustration toward how I've seen a great many people react to that album in particular and dance pop music in general over the past few years. It was also partially triggered by some thoughts re: how audiences are mostly rather unwilling to think of artists beyond a very rigid script, which was a major theme in a blog post written by my friend Chris, which is linked in the same post.