#Rockism

[fortressofserenity]

A kind of rockism

I feel for some people in the Anglophone world tend to associate comic books with superheroes, not helped by that they even reinforce this by only reading superhero comics and not anything else. This is bad because it reduces a medium to just one genre, even though it can be and is far more diverse than that. Not just in the sense of having more people of colour and the like, but in the sense of what else people like.

Marvel even published romance comics at some point, just like how Harlequin used to publish a lot of non-romance books (and still does to some extent). I personally get the impression they don’t bother reading anything else relating to superheroes, but that involves realising comic books are more than this. Comics in general is more than superheroes, they can be children’s graphic novels like Smile and Ghost.

They can also be newspaper cartoons like Garfield, Cathy and Dilbert. In fact, these three are far more popular than any DC and Marvel comic book, especially when it comes to reaching out to far more people in ways DC and Marvel have only dreamt of. It doesn’t help that for most of the part, DC and Marvel cater a lot to diehard readers. To be fair, they do bother reaching out to new demographics every now and then.

But it’s become a self-fulfilling prophecy for comic books to be associated with superheroes, in part because of the fanbase who don’t seem to read anything else other than X-Men and Superman. Even though X-Men, despite having a blockbuster movie series, has less comics readers than what Garfield gets and that’s saying. The actual face of comics is closer to newspaper cartoon than DC serialised magazines.

It’s probably a form of rockism that ignores any other comic strip in favour of the superheroes the superhero fanatic knows best, not helped by that they decry any attempt to make DC and Marvel appeal to anybody else as SJW pandering. At times, their standards for good comic book writing is low because it involves simply not offending their politics not whether if the story’s actually well-written.

It’s like how the writer of ‘Throwing the Book at Cartoonists’ said about the low standards for comics writing, historically it’s based around whether if something’s in continuity though there’s some regard for whether if the protagonist’s written in character or not. Then comes the issue of politics where these people are willing to read a badly written story simply because it’s not SJW pandering.

Bad writing is bad writing, regardless of politics, but they won’t admit it because that involves realising how abysmal their standards for writing are. Regardless if it’s trying to fit a story into continuity or if it’s acceptable to their politics, sometimes their standard of writing is so bad that it’s laughable. Back to the rockism argument, rockism is the tendency to evaluate music by the standards of rock.

Rock music is good music, even if some of these musicians aren’t even the best musicians around. Likewise, the singer who doesn’t write their own songs and play instruments might actually be a highly and classically trained musician in their own right. To put it this way, comics aren’t always about superheroes and some of the comics that appeal a lot to normal people aren’t about superheroes at all.

These could be lighthearted humour serials like Garfield and Archie (yes a newspaper cartoon version of it exists), it could also be more serious fare like Dick Tracy. Superheroes would be regarded as rather niche in the publishing world, especially when you realise that something like Wild Cards isn’t so popular and well-known compared to something like PD James’s Adam Dagliesh.

Wild Cards isn’t a bestseller, well at least nowhere near the scale that many Harlequin books enjoy. Which goes to show you how niche superheroes actually are, not helped by that many people are tired of superhero movies at this point. If superheroes aren’t always associated with comics, just as rock music isn’t the face of music. So much so that some people will always have dubious standards for the things they supposedly enjoy.

[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

[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?

[josiebelladonna]

hm. well, let’s see…

-my fics got more autobiographical while fusing worlds of fantasy, i.e., wrote/began writing some of my best work while saturn was in aqua

-my art got a lot honest, too. part of it being i’m working mostly by hand rather than digitization: i still do digital art but i’m having to be wise about it with the rise of ai and everything

-two very sexy men named joey and alex (joey at 0° degrees aquarius, alex at 4°)

-befriended amazing people

-started vocalizing more questions

-started “seeing things as they are”, i.e., people who are all talk and no walk, “fake it til you make it” is bullshit always has been and always will be, and things that are too good to be true, but also good people coming from all walks of life and small miracles in the strangest of places like bowls of soup or the twinkle in alex’s eyes or the way a cloud looks

-started standing up for things i believe in (supporting art and artists, supporting science at its root, taking care of your body, lgbtq+ rights and all things pertaining to sexuality, supporting people from different backgrounds, supporting men as well as women because there’s way too much cartoon “feminism” that’s just an excuse for people to be dickheads to boys and men while acting like girls and women are perfect in every way)

-started becoming really bored and disenchanted with “rockism” and i began paying more attention to smaller acts, weirder shit, and different genres without being all like “why isn’t this more popular?” out the gate in junction with the basic stuff because it’s buried in the same way diamonds are buried

-realized that i’m only a small part of an even bigger thing

-animals began warming up to me more (they always have but it was especially the case then; lots of cats and dogs, but also lots of birds, reptiles, horses, fish, billy goats, deer, elk, and even a couple of foxes?)

-gained 40+ pounds as of my writing this (30 in 2021, 17 last year, and i lost a couple so far this year: 40 pounds is still 40 pounds, and i can barely see my toes anymore when i look down 😅) and figured that it’s actually been a lifelong dream of mine to be very chubby, like i’ve always felt it in hindsight, from looking at my belly in the mirror and wishing it was fat to wanting dessert in a restaurant when my parents refused it. but i also want to stay healthy, like… i like wendy’s, arby’s, dairy queen, jersey mike’s, jack in the box, dutch bros., chili’s, el pollo loco, in n’ out, and outback steakhouse as much as the next fat girl but i actually prefer eating at home, and i eat mainly whole food at that, too—i like foreign food, too, mainly your asian stuff like japanese and vietnamese food. i’ve repressed a lot of desire out of fear of being judged for my weight (pluto is going to make me extra chubby? i’m kinda down 😆😋)

-shit got really erotic with me, like… more so than when saturn was in capricorn because it was all me in aquarius

-with my weight gain, i’ve grown very strong, like i don’t think i would have been able to shovel a pathway through 2-foot snow drifts for my mom, my dog, and myself without having this big, round “mountaineer woman” belly on me. i’m also way more flexible than i was in high school, too (i do miss riding my bike from home to the cafe nearby for coffee and pie, though)

-i’ve grown very disillusioned and displeased with mainstream culture, be it on tv or the internet, and i’ve just decided to go with my heart and what i like and i don’t care if i’m alone in it, too

-my intuition got absurdly sharp during that transit, too, like things would manifest to me after i talked about it in throwaway fashion or thought about it in fleeting detail

-been traveling a lot, usually to the beach or down to l.a., or even just doing “common people” type stuff like going to the movies or to a nice restaurant

-returned to things i loved as a kid that i sort of had to give up during my teen years like meteorology and comics and cartoons i grew up watching and horror and eating whatever i feel like (i had one of those little pies you get at walmart, blueberry of course + a piece of cake the other day: 8 year old me was in bliss!)

-discovered my heritage after not really knowing my whole life (i’m two parts latin, two parts from the british isles, one part scandinavian, and a tablespoon of baltic states: i always thought i was native american and german)

-my mom’s got saturn in aquarius, too, and during her own return, she picked up more hobbies like those diamond paintings, legos, and sewing (she and i are also big on funko pops, rocks, gardening, and books)

-she and i also got into a discussion about dreams in life a couple of times during that transit, how i want to make a comic book someday and go back into ceramics and art glass and working with my hands, while she wants to write and publish a novel and get more into carpentry

-problems with the house came up, too, like my stepdad dying and ownership of the house going into limbo, the septic backing up, the place being ungodly cold in the winter and hotter than holy fuck in the summer, and recently, losing the internet for four days

-saw a lot of weather during that transit, too, like… california is pretty much known for having nice day after nice day after nice day after nice day to the point of monotony, but i saw… snowstorms, the thickest fog i’ve ever seen, the brightest rainbows i’ve ever seen, awful heat waves, monsoon flows, hail, a couple of bomb cyclones, floods, hydrological outlooks, sleet, a shitload of rain, stupidly high winds, whatever tf was happening last spring when i didn’t put my winter clothes and warm blankets away until the end of june, snow up to my hip, the place actually looking like anchorage alaska at one point, and even funnel clouds

-the big thing is “acab” (all cops are bastards)… you know what’s really weird is i actually met a lot of cool cops during that transit, guys who were really good guys, like they were actually doing justice in front of me, a heavyset woman of mixed race. social justice should never be trendy, either: you stand for something because it feels right to you, not because it’s expected of you.

-i’ve also always known the power of lurking, just observing behavior, but saturn in aquarius really made me love doing that. there’s so much power in just watching people and seeing how they behave, especially when they think you aren’t around.

i should also mention that saturn was in my 8th house and conjunct my moon at one point, and i had my saturn return last month on the 17th, too! those transits get way too of a bad wrap, imo: questioning my sexuality and gender to the point of feeling overwhelmed and completely lost aside, saturn in the 8th is actually pretty cool at some points—in some cases, fun. and the saturn return can actually be the best thing to happen to you, too. saturn on the moon was kind of tough, though, like i often felt really robotic during that.

[misterjt]

Welp

[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.

[mongolitofragola]

Boeing ; Justice ; Rockisme VS Wokisme

[arbitrarygreay]

Kishimon's new PV is out! And she is being serious as hell. "I am REAL ARTEEST."

Which brings up an interesting observation, which is that all of M-Line eschew a serious image. Not even B&S tries to peddle rockist authenticity.

The last time UF had this kind of rockism was, like, Heike Michiyo I guess? And Ayaya's boring phase. Which speaks to all of the experience UF has picked up over the years (or in a less nice way, all of the flailing around they did with Elder Club) of just what kind of music they are good at making and marketing. In turn, the girls themselves know quite well if they should leave UF to pursue a different kind of music/career priority.

UF may not have always been a white company, but it does seem like they're living up to the reputation now, even as evidenced by the people who leave them.

Honestly, it's nice seeing the diversity in this post-UF crop. Riho chasing the Taeyeon trendy dance pop, Meimei's musical theater, Duu with a variety of different gigs (per her all-rounder capability in H!P), Sayuki doing boring ballads idk, Kassa's Kpop resurrection, and now Kishimon playing guitar.

[communistconsumerist]

The "Not Like Other Girls" Virus & ratbag's exit girl

2D imaginary friends are better than normie "sack-men". ratbag, at least, seems to think so given their mingling of revitalized emo aesthetics that are ever-so-known in the subculture they clutch onto within their music video. Whether the "exit girl" is leaping away from normative society through juxtaposing 2D creatures (who, mind you, are drawn to look as eccentric as they do) with sack-bags (that all look alike and act alike, and even behave alike), or if there is some underlying feminist critique the band failed to represent (apart from some drink passing): it is as if the day-and-old “normie” critique that has been passed along punks like a gene that can not be avoided—a virus, really— is as vital for the aesthetics they are attempting to explore as it is a cliché. Of course, the rejection ratbag's frontman faces in the clip by these so-called standardized sacks for normies (what novel depiction for punks to make!), heavily contrasted with all that is oh-so lively and animated in the visual world the band carves out for itself, emphasizes this best. Their performance blends a little too well with those “not like other girls” memes that were passed around Tumblr back in 2014, a cyberspace where alt-communities continue to flourish.

Still, there is nothing punk about this notion in an age where the sort of “normie-murdering” rockism (literally, if death by 2D characters counts), which colors itself to be anti-capitalist; anti-consumerist; anti-everything-that-is-not-studded-black-and-quirky, is worn as a philogyny-weapon that fights off labels through setting up more of them. Where capital and consumerism intersect, punks have always escaped this space by actively fighting against tradition, whatever way it would manifest itself, in whatever environment it would exist. Tartan for the Brits is as counter-cultural as excessive tanning is for the Japanese, after all. ratbag reverently references this "free from all dogma" trope, but even their clip's promising "drink passing" scene weighs like a herding monster because it uses a citation method—so dated—for its quote. Frontman Sophie Brown’s spiky, characteristic punk hairdo and pro-stereotypical emo costuming (as seen on American TV) do not make this better in a day and age where her wardrobe can be found in non-Hot Topic stores. There is no clarity as to what dominant—or consumerist—culture is being fought off, other than a harmful stereotype that in its transmission has often targeted (mostly) women. How revolutionizing that the punk-monster, eclectic in its shapes, continues to target the bimbo!

At the end of the day: this normie "party culture" detested by ratbag involves women dressing to trends, unlike those "I’m-a-creep-I-don’t-belong-here" girls who resist sack-conformity (à la “all women these days look like the Kardashians" discourses) as well as abstain from drinking, and thus, do not have to face their drinks getting spiked, nor the donning pink, phallic wounds that are bound to appear underneath their dresses à la mode after. Yet, “with those clothes, she is only asking for it,” and “if only she had stayed home,” and “if only she did not have a sheep’s (sack’s) mentality, this would not have happened to her,"—right? Any kind of standardized notions of normies like these are the types of sayings that would come out of the mouths of those who have internalized the cliché juxtaposition ratbag’s exit girl is trying to leech onto. They are the type of jerk off-able notions your average pop-music hater, MAGA-believing, Joe, frees his seed to.

The clip, then, feels like a stereotype honoring stereotypes by imposing more stereotypes onto stereotypes. Tumblr otherness has become equivalent to Facebook rockism, and no rooms have an exit when their entries are shaped into geometrical forms and figures. The band, having started off on TikTok, where subcultures—or aesthetics—transact and interact with one another, fails to realize that even traditions change and “fighting norms” encompasses more than simply dragging down those that fall victim to “dominant ideology". Who, in 2023, is ratbag’s audience? What is their target, really? It all feels a bit too imaginary. 

[votava-records]

Robbing Banks (Doin Time), track 6 of The Slew's 2009 album 100%.

The Slew is a multinational rock-influenced electronic music project consisting of Canadian turntablist Kid Koala, American producer Dynomite D, and Australian rock musicians Chris Ross and Myles Heskett, formerly of the band Wolfmother.

The group first came together in 2005, when Kid Koala and Dynomite D were approached to compose music for the soundtrack to a documentary film by filmmaker Jay Rowlands. The film eventually fell through, but the group continued to collaborate on music, and released an album, 100%, in 2009, which features an "oddly fascinating blend of funky samples and vintage rockism" as well as some uncredited, possibly sampled vocals. The album includes several tracks that were first featured in different form on the 2006 Kid Koala album Your Mom's Favorite DJ.

The group went on a tour of nine cities to promote the album. The live shows were a combination of turntable work from the two DJs and high energy rock performance from the former Wolfmother members.

In 2010, the Slew performed at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival. Also in 2010, it was reported that the band was at work on a second album and had enlisted Mike Patton and Jon Spencer to contribute vocals.

[rcmndedlisten]

Recommended Album: Restraining Order - ‘Locked In Time’

If you’re going through it, then throwing on Locked In Time will help you get through to the other end -- or at the very least in all its ugly, coarse, electric hardcore punk sizzle session, match your energy as you get there. Whereas the current narrative of the scene revolves around pushing genre boundaries beyond rockism, Restraining Order aren’t as concerned with flashy impressions. That works to their favor here as the Western Mass and Connecticut scene collective follow gut checks on their sophomore effort. It’s something which vocalist Patrick Cozens, bassist Keith Freeman, drummer Will Hirst, and guitarists Dylan Tobia, Kyle Beaudreault and Jake Miller established as their primal M.O. on their 2019 debut full-length, The World Is Not Enough, but in this phase, level up in focus as well as transferring perspective on all that serves to damage you. That bastion of life threatening to stop you mid-track with brick walls? They’re met with a faster and bigger-fisted hook-bound intensity with a bit more polish on its knuckles than its predecessor, smashing through it with ease. Inner chaos? Its stews at a concentrated, near-psychedelic groove that’s intentional, allowing Cozens to mine the place of self-awareness among that which is out of one’s control, bringing to mind the progression of CEREMONY as a speed-ball early on before gradually sawing down their corners with razor-sharp edges. There’s a lot of rubble left in Restraining Order’s quake as they keep moving forward despite whatever stands in their way. Consider Locked In Time free therapy in how to let the bad times roll.

Highlights: “Misled”, “Another Better Day”, “Locked In Time”

Locked In Time by Restraining Order

Restraining Order’s Locked In Time will be released July 21st on Triple B Records. Buy | Stream