Sunday, October 26, 2014

Semio-coherent

You know how you can tell when I'm angry? I shut up. I'm not a particularly violent guy, but I've been in a few fights. Some serious ones, even, where the law became a concern. Every time, right before a fight, I go silent. No yelling, no more warnings- just silent. It extends out from there. See, I never really mastered conflict resolution, so, when I don't have any more arguments, I stop arguing, and start fighting.
I say this because it means you can tell a lot from what I omit. If I don't mention a band, or an LP, and it would be logical for me to mention it, it's probably because I don't like it. If I purposefully talk around some line of thinking, it's because I don't respect it- and so on.
So, I'm breaking a fundamental  "rule" for me, here: The reason why I'm not particularly fond of genres has to do with a strain of Academic Liberal Arts thought- which is to say- I've got very little respect for "post modernism" in Academic thought, and absolutely nothing for the "post structuralists". I think they have no real argument, they're just trying to reframe the debate so it looks like they have a point. I think they're a collection of petty little critics with no real experience, so they take some half understood language theories, and even less understood concepts from psychology, and add it to pseudo- sociology, and then, to shield themselves from any kind of objectivity, call it philosophy. As far as I'm concerned, they were debunked in the mid 1990's with the Sokal affair. Still, in non-academic settings, the over-reliance on jargon and torturous, rube-goldberg-esque can be mistaken for intelligence, and rock critics aren't academics. They shouldn't be, because Rocknroll is popular music. But, it leaves them vulnerable- so because good ol' Bobby Christagau and Greil ( What the hell is that?) Marcus flirted with post-structuralist terms, and theories, because what better way to prop up their deficient taste than with jargon filled bunches of claptrap that nobody in the sciences ( where the real intelligence has been for 100 years) takes even remotely serious. So, now those idiots, along with cohorts found everywhere from  the NME to Cineaste and so on have left Pop Culture probably the last area where such mental masturbation is seen as intelligence. Because I actually like pop culture enough to take it as culture, that means I'm plagued with these jackofficers. That includes having to have this monologue.
I blame them for the hairsplitting bullshit of all these microgenres, and I blame them for unlistenable crap like "Kid A" being taken more seriously than QOTSA's "Rated R"- when if you look around, worldwide, thousands more bands were influenced by Josh Homme's crew than Thom Yorke's. I blame them for the neutering of rock, and I think that every time I hear someone talking about "Post metal/Doom" they're using the language of the oppressor. That I've had to resort to similar pains me.
You might be asking why I'm bringing this up, now? Because it's to do with pop culture and it's been on my mind for the past two weeks. I know it's an esoteric-seeming thing to rant about, but if you had my background of having to deal with this bullshit since 1988, you'd see it all over the place, as well. What can I say? This blog is for me, and how I see it. If you think I'm wrong, that's fine, we disagree, but at least you can better predict how I'll react to things.
Just don't get me started on Identity politics- I'm liable to have an aneurysm and cover you in blood and cerebral fluids...

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