#Rockism

[didim-dol]

There is something to be said for developing a critical sensibility, in which passion and detachment can coexist and enforce each other, in which things are serious (sometimes deadly serious) without being about you. Politicians aren’t your friends or your teammates; neither are movies, books, or Taylor Swift. In a critical approach, in which the stakes are preserved but depersonalized, it is possible to use strong language without having to lapse into wondering how all of this makes you look, and without invoking an imagined, generally future, audience that will validate you. It means politics is about what politicians offer you, not the hazy world of electoral commentary in which politics is about an inscrutable mixture of personality, “electability,” and narrative.

In the arts, what this means is that passionate engagement and appreciation and hatred can all exist because the things you’re discussing don’t exist for you. They may be commodities, but they aren’t consumable products, like a tube of lipstick or a hamburger. They are rather objects that exist independently from you and with which you can build your own relationship. It means love without identification and hatred without rejection. It is impossible to imagine a critical sensibility that does not exist socially. But it is possible to imagine one in which social paranoia is not foundational, and in which social reception — of work, of ourselves — does not have to determine our reaction to each other.

[juanathefunkyfish]

Ice cold take: Trolls: World Tour is a pro-corporative pop, anti-rock, pro-colonialist propaganda and I'm actually mind-boggled with how close the film seemed to have an anti-colonialist message cooking somewhere and then just... went the opposite direction.

Trying to frame the rock villains as evil because... just because they say that modern pop is shallow and lazy will never not amaze me.

[mokeymokey]

Listening to like western rock that was influenced by indian music during that period of cross-pollination in the 60s is like fascinating bc these bitches do not get it at all lol. What they got from it is like 1. drones are cool and 2. tablas and sitars sound cool. Which are both true but come on. Open your mind. Write a rock song in pancham savari tala

[allenkleinofficial]

Finally watching the eras tour on Hulu and just. GAHHH

[gothicprep]

my little pop culture hypothesis is that so much of modern “let people enjoy things” discourse can be traced back to that 2004 rap against rockism essay

[the-bluebird-you-need]

The parallels he drew between them were really insightful. And he made connections I hadn't thought of before. The rest of the video great too.

Watching the new Taylor Swift video Alexander Avila made and just got to the part where he brings up the Beatles.

[alsopurp]

’m joined on this episode by hosts of the Queer Cinema Catch Up Podcast Allison and Joe!

We get into 2001’s Josie and the Pussycats, directed by Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan and starring Rachel Leigh Cook, Tara Reid, Rosario Dawson, Alan Cumming, Missy Pyle and Parker Posey.

The film was a commercial and critical failure that turned into a cult classic in the years since its release. We sit down to reappraise the biting satire and think about what it was trying to do in the context of today!

+ Find out how we fit the following in the conversation

Nostalgia

Predicting pop-punk

The mainstreaming of punk music

Rockism vs Poptimism

Dicks the Musical

Authenticity in the age of

Pop’s teen queens and sexuality 

Innuendo bops

Parker Posey as Elon Musk

An ode to Missi Pyle

Find Joe and Allison on instagram @Queer_Cinema_Catchup and on their YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/@QueerCinemaCatchup 

And make sure to check out their podcast!

Keep up to date with Dr. Khaliden Nas by checking out www.alsopurple.com and following @AlsoPurp on all socials.

Hosted and produced by Dr. Khaliden Nas.

Music by PamperedFists & Anzahlung.

All videos edited by Victor Alexander.

Podcast Artwork by Valentine M. Smith. 

Find out more about REFERENTIAL’s upcoming episodes on www.alsopurple.com/citations

*'Tangent' are REFERENTIAL's shorter bonus episodes. Slightly different from the main monthly episodes. Expect quick reviews, edited bonus out content, collabs, mailbags, live audio, and whatever else I might think of + They take less time to make so I can update the feed frequently!*

If you liked this episode, help other people find the podcasts! Share, tell a friend, and remember to leave a rating and review!

Thank you for listening!

[mitjalovse]

I would dare to claim that the number of tribute albums can also define a musician. For instance, I'm not shocked Elton John had many of them, where you can find some gems. For instance, Revamp contains this cover by Queens Of The Stone Age, which might cause you to pause – how could they even tackle Elton John? However, listen to their version to notice how all these genre purisms, such as rockism, are nothing more than pretentious posturing. Good music is good music and I'm sure Josh Homme would've agreed with that. He noticed how Elton John's pieces function to find the overlap with his group's modus operandi. Actually, they share one thing with Elton, i.e. they're both classicists of their styles who are willing to go beyond that.

[exalteranima]

One of the many, many, many tragedies of growing up Filipino is living in a country where genuinely evil people are playing 5d chess while everyone else is still figuring out the rules of rock paper scissors.

I wish I had a better explanation for how the hell Here Lies Love flew under the radar of people's outrage for so long. The Marcos propaganda machine was gonna keep chugging along, with or without the musical existing. But there's no denying that what David Byrne and Fatboy Slim did was highly irresponsible - which I guess is what you'd expect of white British guys who see Southeast Asian geopolitics as some quaint historical trivia no different than the existence of that Nazi-fighting bear.

At the time Here Lies Love came out, it was probably easier to brush it off as harmless because nobody could even fathom the possibility of the Marcoses coming back. There was no Duterte, no Trump, no Brexit, no creeping shadow of fascism and regressive right-wing populist movements. The only people who were making noise about it were probably just brushed aside as alarmist "the sky is falling!" kooks. (And knowing my country there was probably a lot of post-McCarthyist "you're just saying that 'cause you're a filthy commie" red tagging too.)

I also can't help but wonder if maybe the rock/pop critical divide may have shielded Here Lies Love from criticism. I have a lot of long, meandering thoughts about rockism and poptimism (I am a Muse fan, after all), and I think people underestimate the power of cultural bubbles that insulate you from everything else going on in the world. Which is just my fancy long-winded way of saying 96% of Filipinos probably didn't even know Here Lies Love existed unless they were rock music nerds like me. (I'm not gonna go into the glowing critical reception of the stage adaptation since I know nothing about theater fandom.)

I'm not sure exactly what the point of this rant is. Maybe it's just that it's so easy to dismiss something as "not a big deal, not my problem" until you're actually old enough to see the snowballing effect of when it does become your problem. You might think Here Lies Love is just fun, harmless entertainment divorced from its history ... until that history starts bashing at your door with an axe.

(also I know some people - especially on Twitter - want to wait and see first in case the Broadway staging takes a more overt anti-Marcos slant. but IMO it's still not very reassuring to spend an entire musical humanizing a criminal only to sheepishly go "oh, but what they did still wasn't cool" every few minutes. go ask the families of the people Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy murdered how they feel about that sort of thing.)

[icteridcorvid]

I'm watching the new alexander avila video about taylor swift and the "popism/rockism" thing is so fucking stupid it's making me irritated. such a nothing burger dichotomy. like is this something people actually cared about?

[misterjt]

Welp

[feotakahari]

I looked up what “scarruficore” is, and I found something quite interesting:

“there’s always an underlying criteria behind Scaruffi’s critiques which informs his view point. He favours artists who are experimental and who create albums with a cohesive sound – because The Beatles had multiple songwriters with their different styles, and generally write succinct songs, they’re not valued by his criteria . . . Effectively Scaruffism is an extreme form of rockism, and I find that it’s often trying to twist rock music into something it isn’t.”

[grandhotelabyss]

Would you consider the re-emergence of unique auteur directors like Yorgos Lanthimos, Robert Eggers, and Peter Vack, as evidence of New Hollywood making a comeback?

Probably! We have to consider the question on two levels: a cultural shift in how the director is regarded and an economic shift in how films are produced. I think the first is definitely underway as part of the backlash to poptimism, Marvel, etc.—to an extent the backlash to "woke" itself—with even Hollywood and mainstream filmmakers (Nolan, Villeneuve) and old war-horses who date back to the initial New Hollywood era (Scorsese, Coppola) being celebrated as auteurs, alongside the new generation of more indie figures, which includes up-and-coming filmmakers who lack the masculinist identification. Auteurism never went away entirely, but tended to be stigmatized along with "rockism" and the "lit bro" etc. in the 2010s and demoted below the collective house style of popular cinema. That era appears to be ending, and we seem more willing to champion the god-like director again. But whether this cultural change equates to the same general change in production as was experienced during the demise of the old studio system—well, you'd have to ask someone more attuned to the details of how movies are made than I am.

[didim-dol]

Drinking leftover fancy Cabernet Sauvignon and listening to the Arena Album.

Live albums can be a crapshoot, but anyone who thought Duran Duran didn’t play their own instruments should take a listen. I hate rockism and poptimism on principle but it definitely applies with this band.

[aurevoirmonty]

Le wokisme : un insidieux poison inquisiteur et doctrinaire ; une idéologie sectaire, puritaine, réactionnaire et fascisante, nonobstant sa prétention à l’éveil des consciences aussi bien qu’à sa libération des individus, venue aujourd’hui tout droit de quelques-unes des universités les plus cotées des États-Unis d’Amérique.

Serait-il une outrancière lecture du déconstructivisme en vogue à Paris entre les années1960 et 1980, la « French Theory » ?

D’où,en guise d’efficace et puissant antidote à cette funeste idéologie, mortifère pour notre culture, sinon notre civilisation, cette mise en avant, sous forme d’éloge, du « rockisme » : néologisme né sur la base – le rock, plus encore que le pop – de ce qui représente,pour les générations passées, présentes et futures, une des grandes,belles et authentiques libertés d’expression, de pensée aussi bien que de parole, à la confluence des XXe et XXIe siècles. Une immense et riche création artistique, mâtinée d’un non moins fabuleux élan libertaire, sinon révolutionnaire, pour le progrès des mentalités comme des moeurs !

Ce livre s’avère, sur le plan philosophique, une critique en bonne et due forme,rationnelle, objective et argumentée, du wokisme.

[coolblackmetal666]

i'm so glad that there's somewhat of a backlash against poptimism now. i think the correct take to have is that rockism was shit, but poptimism is worse.