The world turned upside down

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yesterday on the sex discussion the Lex said some interesting stuff about how acts like Lil Kim were "important and subversive" for reversing real-world expectations of predatory/dominant men and weak females.

This specific example got a bit of comment but what interested me was the old buzzword "subversive" - do you think that pop can still (if it ever did!) act as a subersive space in which social norms can be reversed or otherwise played with? And if not pop, how about more subcultural musical areas?

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

The word 'subversive' was prob the weakest part of my argument! I don't really like it at all, it gets wheeled out far too often.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yes as I said on a reply to blue_russian I think the phrase "power dynamic" was more useful because more specific. But the non-specific word can open a conversation up better sometimes.

tomayto-tomaato

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

subversion and recuperation are a double act, to pin a 'bigger picture" medal or turd on some cultural item you like or dislike

Re: tomayto-tomaato

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Which is the medal and which is the turd?

you say clear as mud, i say cleayr as muyd

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

what i mean is, [x] is some pop item you like, but you are uneasy that it is REACTIONARY NONSENSE so you say it is "subversive"; [y] is some pop item you dislike but all and sundry are cheering its radicalism (poss.also calling it "subversive") so you say it has been RECUPERATED

Re: you say clear as mud, i say cleayr as muyd

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think the cultural currency of subversion has now fallen so low that nobody even talks about recuperation any more (maybe B1b4 K0pf does) - the most useful weapon now is a kind of so-over-it dismissiveness. (I guess "bored now" was always the root emotion of recuperation anyway).

there is no such thing as [insert pet hate here]

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i am going to look at some recent wires properly b4 i have lunch with mr w!re tomorrow, for exactly this problem

---> GIANT ENORMOUS BRILLIANT ThORT:
that i propose a start-up of my "USE OTHER WORDS PLEASE" project! the entire point of w!re is bein AHEAD of this curve, not WAY behind it

Fag dancing: subversive or recuperated?

[koganbot]

Rolling Stone: What do you think of the Stones today?

John Lennon: I think it's a lot of hype. I like "Honky Tonk Women," but I think Mick's a joke with all that fag dancing; I always did. I enjoy it; I'll probably go and see his films and all like everybody else, but really, I think it's a joke.

Re: Fag dancing: subversive or recuperated?

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

"camp" is very much the issue there -- as in discussion of theatre, my if... book, "will and grace" most popular US TV show a few years back -- does it undermine the body politic or is it quietist and complicit?

plz santa not to give give me plague for pressweek :\

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

oh s0d he just cancelled! he is ill also!! (tho actually this is handy as regards prep-time for LOADS OF THINGS)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Also "power dynamic" goes to one of the nubs of the problem - if you want to overturn power dynamics how do you choose which power dynamics need overturning? Overturning power dynamics tends to be an enormously selfish business, so phrasing it like that points up the ridiculousness of 'subversion' as an inherent good.

Re: Fag dancing: subversive or recuperated?

[koganbot]

In real time in the '60s the Stones did not register as camp at all (even if they do a bit in retrospect, though I don't really think they do, even if it's now become apparent even to some stupid people that Jagger's styles were self-consciously (and unselfconsciously) at odds with one another). Iirc Tina Turner noted (think it was in the Gimme Shelter doc) that Jagger was pulling dance moves from black women backup singers. But you had to be black or Lennon to notice. Of course, Jagger was flirting with glitter at around the time of "Dancing With Mr. D."

But the huge convulsion was when the Beatles hit with (what was then) long hair, which did register as "feminine" at the time no matter how much macho a performer tried to associate with it. So regardless of Lennon's own opinions on sex and gender, the Beatles muddied up the boy-girl, straight-gay divisions. And even being hugely embraced by "the mainstream" didn't stop this disturbance (in fact, the disturbance continues, culturally). Maybe the disturbance itself is mainstream, but that doesn't make it undisturbed. A mainstream need not necessarily be a placid stream.

(when's the quote from? 1970?)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

"I think Mick's a joke with all that fag dancing; I always did. I enjoy it; I'll probably go and see his films and all like everybody else, but really, I think it's a joke" <-- but this very remark is an instance of it registering as camp to lennon, even if he was a highly informer outrider with an in on gay culture and an awareness of the girl-pop straight-gay thing the beatles were doing


("an in on" --> next word shd be "unencumbered" obv)

Re: (when's the quote from? 1970?)

[koganbot]

Rolling Stone, 1971, probably Wenner doing the interview.

Re: (when's the quote from? 1970?)

[koganbot]

Think of Jagger in relation to If....: for all its gay subtext and text, it didn't come across as camp; at least not to me; Mick Travis/Malcolm McDowell didn't.

I think Lennon is being really defensive calling Mick's dancing a joke. (Of course, "camp" and "joke" aren't necessarily linked.)

[mcatzilut.livejournal.com]

I think the first thing to do is parse what the word 'subversion' means. I've always used to it mean 'denying or thwarting expectations.' In which sense, the question with Lil Kim is: Subverting whose expectations exactly? Most of us go to pop either understanding where the zeitgeist currently is, or at least with a willingness to be surprised. How much of Lil Kim's target audience is actually being subverted by her music? How many stodgy patriarchs are accidentally wandering into a Lil' Kim song?

(OED: To disturb (the mind, soul); to overturn, overthrow (a condition or order of things, a principle, law, etc.).)