Five Brief Notes on Rockism, Poptimism, and Authenticity (With Reference to Malcolm McLaren and the Sex Pistols)

Cover by Jamie Reid for the Sex Pistols' single 'Silly Thing' 

released from the album The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle 

 (Virgin Records, 1979) [1]

 

 

I. 

 

Those elderly punks who maintain that Never Mind the Bollocks is the only true Sex Pistols album are clinging desperately to an ideal of authenticity that is central to what has become known as rockism.

 

 

II.

 

This neologism, coined in 1981 by the musician Pete Wyley, soon became a pejorative used enthusiastically by music journalists such as Paul Morley [2], who were sick and tired of the idealistic fantasy that rock music matters - and matters more than other genres of popular music - because the performers really mean it man and just 'one great rock show can change the world.' [3]

 

Perhaps my favourite definition of rockism was provided by the critic Kelefa Sanneh, in 2004: 

 

"Rockism means idolizing the authentic old legend (or underground hero) while mocking the latest pop star; lionizing punk while barely tolerating disco; loving the live show and hating the music video; extolling the growling performer while hating the lip-syncher." [4]

 

 

III.

 

In contrast to the above, there are those think pop music - even at its most commercial and ephemeral - is just as worthy of serious consideration as hard and heavy rock. 

 

Now, whilst I wouldn't describe myself as a poptimist - and don't particularly worry about progressive values of inclusivity, etc. - my sympathies increasingly lie with those who prefer music that makes happy - makes you want to dance and singalong - to music that is overly earnest and makes miserable.

 

 

IV.

 

Funny enough, one of the reasons that Malcolm McLaren disliked Julien Temple's The Filth and the Fury (2000) was because in its downbeat revisionism it made the Sex Pistols' story seem a very sombre affair: 

 

"'I don't remember punk rock being like that. [...] I always remember it as a ticket to the carnival for a better life.'" [5]             

 

No wonder that The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle takes us to Rio de Janeiro and explores many different musical styles; from disco and punk pop to bawdy drinking songs. Whatever people like to think about McLaren, he was never one to take things too seriously.

 

 

V.

 

And yet, paradoxically perhaps, McLaren always retained a notion of authenticity; as something to be found beneath the ruins of culture in a similar manner that the beach is to be found beneath the paving stones. 

 

It's a non-ideal model of authenticity, however, invested with chaos and which, in his words, is dirty, horrible, and disgusting [6]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The single version, released on 30 March 1979, features Steve Jones on vocals; the album version, however, recorded in the spring of 1978, has Paul Cook on vocals. Click here to play the former, which reached number 6 in the UK Singles Chart. Or click here to see the unique interpretation given to the song by Legs & Co. on Top of the Pops (BBC1 12 April 1979).  

 

[2] See Paul Morley's article 'Rockism - it's the new rockism', in The Guardian (25 May 2006): click here. Interestingly, Morley warns here that when poptimism simply becomes another form of proscriptive ideology, it's little different from rockism. 

      See also Michael Hann's article 'Is Poptimism Now As Blinkered As the Rockism It Replaced?' for The Quietus (11 May 2017): click here.

 

[3] I'm quoting a line by the character Dewey Finn, played by Jack Black, in School of Rock (dir. Ricard Linklater, 2003).   

 

[4] Kelefa Sanneh, 'The Rap Against Rockism', in The New York Times (31 Oct 2004): click here. Unfortunately, it's difficult to argue with Sanneh's claim that rockism is ultimately "related to older, more familiar prejudices" of racism, sexism, and homophobia.

[5] Malcolm McLaren speaking with Geoffrey McNab, 'Malcolm McLaren: Master and Servant', Independent (31 May 2002): click here. Cited by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable 2020), p. 718.  

 

[6] See the 1999 interview with Malcolm McLaren by Jefferson Hack; 'Another Malcolm McLaren Moment', in Another Magazine (7 May 2013): click here. 

Notes on Malcolm McLaren's Paris

I.

We are, of course, far removed in time from the Paris that enchanted so many writers and artists in that period between 1871 and 1914 known as the Belle Époque; the Paris that continued to haunt the cultural imagination as a culmination of luxury and corruption [1] - as well as radical thinking - for many years afterwards.  

Indeed, for Malcolm McLaren, Paris always remained the capital of the 21st century. Or, at any rate, the place in which he felt most at home and often sought refuge: Paris loves anyone the English hate.


II.

In 1994, McLaren released a unique musical tribute to the city. Part easy-listening soundscape, part love letter, the album - entitled, somewhat unimaginatively, Paris - was loosely inspired by the work of Erik Satie, Saint-Saëns, and Serge Gainsbourg. As well as expressing his great passion for the city itself, it revealed his fondness for the grandes dames of French film and music.

McLaren's biographer, Paul Gorman, describes Paris as the most mature work of his career: "Paris presents bewitching melodies, rhythms and lyrics with warmth, reflection and humour ..." [2] Interestingly, Gorman also reminds us of Malcolm's own concept of the album:

"'It was a way of acknowledging a debt that the English try hard not to make. I don't honestly believe that any of the bands that made up the British invasion of rock 'n' roll would ever have happened without the Parisian tinge, that extreme angst, that very dark, vengeful, bored attitude. I don't even believe that Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison would have existed without having some kinship spirit to what was one of the most influential, nihilistic and valid forms of rock 'n' roll philosophy which the French invented.'" [3]

To seek the origins of rock 'n' roll in existentialism, rather than rhythm and blues, is, I think, a daring and original move and almost as amusing as his claim that it was Oscar Wilde who first discovered rock 'n' roll in America in 1882. [4]


III.

Towards the very end of his life, McLaren gave us another work - this time a film installation - in which his Francophilia is again made evident; one that took its title from a famous text by Walter Bejamin which he mistakenly misread as Paris, Capital of the XXIst Century. Although he later realised his error - Benjamin had, of course, written nineteenth not twenty-first - McLaren wisely decided to stick with his more contemporary title.     

Whereas Benjamin sought in all seriousness to uncover (and critique) a dreamlike history of modernity understood in terms of urban architecture and commodity fetishism in 19th century Paris, McLaren was more interested in taking a delirious and playful stroll through the city via a collection of old 35mm films consisting mostly of cinematic commercials.

I'm not quite sure what the German Marxist philosopher would have made of the English punk anarchist and his work; for if McLaren sometimes expresses a desire to rebel against consumerism and what he terms karaoke culture, at other times he seems to delight in bad taste and banality and secretly acknowledge - contrary to his own statements on the subject - that art ultimately draws its inspiration not from authenticity, but insincerity. [5]      
        

Notes

[1] I think the French original reads une apothéose de luxe magnifique et corrompu and is a line found in Maupassant's short story Une aventure pariesienne (1881).

[2] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, (Constable, 2020), p. 664.

[3] Malcolm McLaren, speaking on Australian TV, quoted by Paul Gorman, ibid., pp. 669-70. 

[4] See Paul Gorman, ibid., pp. 572-74.

[5] Paul Gorman is right to point out that while McLaren often appears to oppose karaoke with authentic cultural expression, he recognised that they needn't always be mutually exclusive:

"'Karaoke and authenticity can sit well together, but it takes artisry to make that happen. When it does, the results can be explosive. Like when punk rock reclaimed rock 'n' roll, blowing the doors of the recording industry in the process. Or when hip hop transformed turntables and records into the instruments of a revolution.'" - Malcolm McLaren, '8-Bit Punk', Wired, (November 2003), quoted by Paul Gorman, ibid., p. 693.

Musical bonus: Malcolm McLaren and Catherine Deneuve, 'Paris, Paris', from the album Paris (1994): click here. Video directed by David Bailey. Anyone who can listen to this song and watch this film without tears in their eyes has a heart of stone. 

Reflections on Jenny from the Block

Jennifer Lopez: screenshot from the video (dir. Francis Lawrence) 

for the single Jenny from the Block ft. Jadakiss and Styles, (Epic, 2002)

I.

This morning, I heard for the first time in years a song regarded by some as a pop classic from the early part of this century; a statement of intent by Jennifer Lopez to stay real and remain true to her humble (Hispanic) origins in The Bronx, despite the phenomenal levels of fame and fortune earned as an actress, singer, dancer, designer, etc.

As Miss Lopez puts it herself:

Don't be fooled by the rocks that I got 
I'm still, I'm still Jenny from the block
Used to have a little, now I have a lot 
No matter where I go, I know where I came from

This question of not selling out or being changed by success - of staying grounded and not becoming a fraud or phoney - is always an interesting one; both as a political question of class and as a moral question concerned with authenticity and integrity.  

II.

One of the (many) advantages of coming from a liberal, middle class background is that one is encouraged to grow and develop as an individual (if within certain parameters).

It's a culture, above all else, of ambition and aspiration; one hopes to succeed and expects to do well and there's no stigma attached to this. You're free to get ahead and you can become who you are without forever having to express love and loyalty to your past, your neighbourhood, or to people one no longer has anything in common with. In fact, you can learn to hate your friends in all good conscience (Nietzsche was mistaken to think this noble, it's very much a bourgeois characteristic).

This might make you a complete cunt in the eyes of those who do value loyalty and understand their own identity in fixed and permanent relation to others of their kind, but that probably won't be something you'll lose too much sleep over.

For only those who don't come from a middle-class background are obliged to apologise for being successful or endlessly justify a new or alternative lifestyle; only they are peer-pressured into keeping it real and never allowed to change, even when they look, think, and feel very differently and move in radically wider circles than those into which they were born.

I understand why J. Lo recorded this track. But Jenny from the block is, actually, a deeply depressing song that reinforces the pernicious saying: You can take the X out of the Y but you can't take the Y out of the X.    

Notes

'Jenny from the Block' was released as a single in September 2002, from the studio album This is Me ... Then (Epic, 2002). The song was written by Jennifer Lopez, Troy Oliver, Mr. Deyo, Samuel Barnes, Jean-Claude Olivier and Cory Rooney. Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Universal Music Publishing Group. 

On D. H. Lawrence's Objection to Pirated Books and Counterfeit Emotions

I. 

As Michael Squires reminds us, A Propos of "Lady Chatterley's Lover" originally consisted of a brief expository essay in which Lawrence takes on the pirates who had moved quickly to produce various counterfeit editions of his controversial novel, which had been published privately, in July 1928.   

Later, Lawrence radically expanded the essay in order to defend the work from critics and censors - whom he despised more than the pirates - and offer a "final, eloquent statement of his belief" [1] in an authentic model of sexuality and the importance of what he termed phallic marriage.

I'll comment on these ideas shortly, but I'd like to begin by discussing Lawrence's skirmish with Jolly Roger ... 

II. 

Towards the end of 1928, Lawrence became aware that Lady C. had been pirated, as unauthorised versions of the work began appearing in New York, London, and Paris, much to his irritation. 

He decided the best thing to do as a countermeasure would be to bring out a new, inexpensive paperbound edition of his own. This French edition, which came with the original short introduction mentioned above ('My Skirmish with Jolly Roger') - appeared in May 1929 and quickly sold out. 

But what, we might ask - apart from the loss of royalties (and Lawrence wasn't indifferent to this issue) - was his problem with the pirate books? 

 

In A Propos, he objects at first purely on aesthetic grounds; they are either cheap and inferior or gloomy and depressing looking. But that's rather unconvincing coming from someone who, just five years earlier, had written of his contempt for the "actual corpus and substance" of the book as an actual object; i.e., as a published volume that is marketed and put on sale:

"Books to me are incorporate things [...] What do I care for first or last editions? I have never read one of my own published works. To me, no book has a date, no book has a binding.

      What do I care if 'e' is somewhere upside down, or 'g' comes from the wrong fount? I really don't." [2]  

So there's obviously something else going on ... And that something else is to do with the question of authenticity: In brief, Lawrence hates the pirate books because they're forgeries and facsimiles. In other words, they're not the real deal as authorised (and signed) by him; they're counterfeit copies, or replicas as he calls them. 

And that's what troubles him: just as, later in A Propos, it becomes clear what troubles him most of all about modern expressions of sexuality and human emotion is that they are, in his view, fake and fraudulent. Lawrence contrasts emotions as (false) mental representations with real feelings that belong to the body: 

"Today, many people live and die without having had any real feelings - though they have had a 'rich emotional life' apparently, having showed strong mental feeling. But it is all counterfeit." [3]

Above all else, it's love that is a counterfeit feeling today and reduced to a stereotyped set of behaviours. Which means, says Lawrence, that there is no real sex - it's been killed, or, at the very least, perverted into a thing that is cold and bloodless. And that's a catastrophe because, for Lawrence, sex is an impersonal, cosmic principle that not only keeps men and women in balance, but holds the very heavens in place.    

III.

What, as readers in 2019, are we to make of this?

Personally, I can only echo Michel Foucault who ends the first volume of his History of Sexuality with a quotation from Lawrence's A Propos calling for the "full conscious realisation of sex" (i.e. sex thought completely, honestly and cleanly). [3]

Foucault responds to this passage, in which Lawrence would have us believe our ontological future is at stake, with amused irony:

"Perhaps one day people will wonder at this. They will not be able to understand how a civilization [...] found the time and the infinite patience to inquire so anxiously concerning the actual state of sex; people will smile perhaps when they recall that here were men - meaning ourselves - who believed that therein resided a truth every bit as precious as the one they had already demanded from the earth, the stars, and the pure forms of their thought ..." [4]

Notes

[1] Michael Squires, Introduction to A Propos of "Lady Chatterley's Lover", in Lady Chatterley's Lover and A Propos of 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press,1993), p. lv.

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Bad Side of Books', Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 75-6.

[3] D. H. Lawrence, A Propos of "Lady Chatterley's Lover", in Lady Chatterley's Lover and A Propos of 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 311 and 308.

[4] Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 1: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley, (Pantheon Books, 1978), pp. 157-58. 

Readers interested in this topic might like to read an earlier post on Lady Chatterley's postmodern lover: click here.

See also: Chris Forster, 'Skirmishing with Jolly Roger: D. H. Lawrence, Obscenity, and Book Piracy', Ch. 3 of Filthy Material: Modernism and the Media of Obscenity, (Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 61-88. Forster cleverly - and, in my view, rightly - argues that Lawrence "frames his critique of piracy as one more expression of the corrupt state of [inauthentic] modernity" [71]

Musical bonus: Adam and the Ants, 'Jolly Roger', from the album Kings of the Wild Frontier (CBS, 1980): click here.  

The Wisdom of Solomon 1: On Sincerity, Authenticity, Black Sheep and Scapegoats

Simon Solomon (aka Dr Simon Thomas)

simonsolomon.ink 

Dublin-based poet, critic and translator, Simon Solomon, has been kind enough to leave several lengthy comments on recent posts and I would like here to respond to some of his points, hopefully demonstrating the same intelligence, humour, and breadth of reading as this rather shadowy figure ...

I: Sincerity and Authenticity [See: Comes Over One an Absolute Necessity to Move ...]

I think, Simon, we might trace Lawrence's insistence on honesty to a rather old-fashioned form of moral sincerity, born of his nonconformist Protestant background, rather than the more modern, post-Romantic "cult of authenticity" to which you ascribe it.

In other words, he wants to say what he means and mean what he says, more than he cares about being true to some kind of ideal model of self. However, let's not get all Lionel Trilling about this and drive ourselves crazy trying to precisely define and differentiate each term.

Besides, either way, you're absolutely right that Wilde ironically mocks both ideals and exposes the ambiguities and contradictions to which they inevitably give rise. Sincerity or authenticity, authenticity or sincerity - let's call the whole thing off and pull up a couple of deckchairs in Eastbourne.

PS: As for honesty always being described in terms of brutality, this is probably just a cliché - unless, of course, we imagine the truth as something terrible (as, arguably, Lawrence himself imagines it; thus his insistence that when one speaks sincerely, one does so with the voice of a demon).

II: Baa, Baa, Black Sheep etc. [See: Separating the Black Sheep from the Scapegoats]

Despite the language drawn from analytic psychology, which, as you know, is anathema to me, I liked your reading of the black sheep as one who exists "in a state of ambivalent internal exile within the family constellation".

That's kind of how I feel: and, I suspect, kind of how you feel too. Indeed, this is probably a common feeling amongst all those who envy orphans and know that the most beautiful words in the world are those spoken by Meursault: Aujourd'hui, maman est morte.        

You're absolutely right to remind us of the scapegoat as a pharmakon (or, more accurately, a pharmakós); i.e., the unfortunate individual (often a slave, a cripple, or a criminal) either driven into exile, or ritualistically sacrificed in order to redeem the community and save it from disaster (be it plague, famine, or invasion).

I was interested, also, to read your take on René Girard's work on mimetic desire and his development of the so-called scapegoat mechanism. Your brilliant description of him "dragging the ancient Jewish scapegoat bleating and whimpering out of Leviticus into a libidinally saturated post-psychological age", made me smile and wish that I could write sentences like that.

And yes, as you rightly conclude, whether its Jews, queers, witches, or communists, history demonstrates that the scapegoat mechanism "is gloomily indispensable and only the targets change".

PS: I'm not entirely sure I understood the part about Christ and the redemption of desire, but, I suppose the story of Jesus is the ne plus ultra when it comes to scapegoat mythology. His attempt to universalise the idea and redeem all of humanity via his sacrifice could only ever fail. And his resurrection surely defeats the whole point, exposing the fraudulence not only of the scapegoat mechanism, but also lying at the heart of Christianity. If he died for our sins, then the Nazarene should at least have had the decency to stay dead.


Note: readers interested in part two of this post - On the Grain of the Voice and Further Remarks on Lunacy - should click here.

Mono No Aware (Japanese Aesthetics Contra Teutonic Angst)

Birds and Flowers of Spring and Summer

One of a pair of six-fold screens by Kano Eino, 

Suntory Museum of Art, Tokyo

The Japanese have a very lovely term for the poignancy of passing time and the mixture of joy and sadness experienced when one reflects upon the transient nature of existence: mono no aware. 

Often translated as the pathos of things, it's more, I think, than simply an awareness of impermanence or a sensitivity to ephemera. It's also an aestheticized form of the ontological anxiety that for Heidegger characterized Dasein - i.e., the certain knowledge that everything dies and that all being is therefore a being-towards-death. 

But it would be precisely this aestheticization of onto-anxiety that would be problematic for the German philosopher. For according to Heidegger, our essential task as human beings is to accept the inevitability of death, affirm its necessity, and strive to retain the authenticity of our own passing and we don't do this by transforming Angst into a kind of genteel reflection on things in the shadow of their future absence.      

And so, whilst for the eighteenth century scholar and poet Motoori Norinaga mono no aware heightens our appreciation of beauty and enables us to comprehend the singing of the birds and the silence of the snake, this, for Heidegger, is not merely sentimental and besides the point, but risks inauthenticity. 

That is to say, mono no aware fails to profoundly disturb or discomfort; it lacks the weight of almost unbearable fatality that the Germans are so insistent upon. Thus, whilst it makes us smile wistfully and go 'Ah ...' with a knowing sigh, it doesn't fill us with a sense dread at the monstrous and inhuman nature of existence; it doesn't make us want to scream when confronted by the truth of extinction and non-being.

In the end, I suppose, one has to make a choice here: does one want to picnic beneath the cherry blossom, or brood amongst the pine needles; does one want to develop a practice of joy before death, or a custom of fear and trembling?

I know which I'd rather do ...