Archive for July 8th, 2009
Giving Up on Indie Rock
Posted by Nav in Cultural Theory, Pop Culture, Rambles on July 8, 2009
At the end of subculture, does the world become more or less like the culture of indie rock?
[Update]: Please see the comments, where Tim makes the excellent point that Carraway’s article makes a lot more sense as a eulogy for a certain kind of indie rock culture.
If you were searching for a symbol for the death of mass culture, you could do worse than looking to the passing of Michael Jackson. It seems hard to imagine so many people from around the globe ever coming together over a pop cultural figure again, at least in the kind of numbers and uniformity witnessed today.
But as the world of Pop fragments and fractures, the world of indie rock – a genre and subculture defined by its opposition to both a now-disappearing mainstream and its aesthetic – seems to exist still. Its influence may be waning, the possibility of a definition more murky, and the web itself may ultimately render the notion of subculture an impossibility, but the game and cult-ure of indie rock – its one-upmanship, its insistence on performing cultural capital, its saturation in ironic resignation – has yet to entirely diminish. What, after all, is Pitchfork but the manifestation of indie’s obsession with measuring social capital by any means possible – other than, of course, sales and success? In fact, you could make the same argument about a great deal of 2.0 culture, perhaps most obviously in the entire idea of ‘commenter culture’ and the spread of snark. You might say that the subculture of indie rock is ‘gone’, but that it has has also gone mainstream by becoming the culture of the (western, North American) web.
Though I have never called myself an ‘indie rock’ kid – perhaps because there’s just too much melanin in my skin to say it with a straight face – I know what it’s like to spend one’s time ‘trying to stay on top on things’. And as such, I can also relate to the idea that, once you reach a certain age – or, perhaps more accurately, stage - the incessant need to keep up that lies at the core of much of indie rock culture starts to seem less desirable and more ridiculous. And I think that assertion is that the core of Kate Carraway’s piece in Eye this week, titled “Slanted and Disenchanted“, in which Carraway signals her departure from the culture of indie rock, partly, she suggests, because of the “the social eventuality of indie rock, which is that it fucking sucks”.
Note, though, that she said social eventuality. It isn’t a knock against the music. No, the target here is the overlap of hipsterism and elitism, the exhausting process of being too cool to care, but also cool enough to make fun of those who do.
I’ve frequently argued that on some level the dismissiveness and irony of modern hipsterism stems from a well-founded distrust of sincerity, of being witness to the effects of unsubstantiated belief that destroyed so much in the 20th century and, in things like homophobia and post-9/11 eurocentrism, continue to destroy still. Yet at the same time, the constant stream of ironic detachment can sap one, and Carraway argues that this knowingness is “reinforced by over-educated snottery and inflated hipster egos. Where the music [and subculture] is conceptually dense and artistically provocative, indie rock diminishes and makes precious the grandeur of sex, love, friendship and identity, and the socio-cultural spirit around it has all of the same bloodlessness and hesitation.” To wit, when all that’s left is ironic detachment, culture becomes the performance of interpretation rather than the acts of living themselves, a discussion about sex rather than the mute, inarticulable nature of what it’s actually like to fuck or make love.
And so the question is whether or not the destruction of subculture will give us a freer, pastiche vision of pop-culture identities – a world in which, at the end of indie one-upmanship, a pluralist, value-neutral approach to aesthetic engagement becomes the norm – or, instead, that the entire world will become like indie rock: all of us attempting to outdo each other in our performance of the things we know, the things we consume and things we do (and this is where I feel a bit weirded out by Mediaite’s Power Grid). If the web is any indication, things are on the edge right now and could go either way. The Buzzfeed-, Tumblr-driven world seems bent on the latter option, silently aligning itself with two-coasts (or, in Canadian terms, Toronto-Montreal-Vancouver) lefty hipster-elitism. And yet, in other corners of the web, the sort that I am increasingly drawn to now, there is a far more open approach where elitist condescension is as verboten as racism, hipster snarkist as unwelcome as /b/tards (hey, speaking of irony…).
This is also loosely thought out and typed out quickly. It’s quite possible that the entire notion of performing identity will have to be rethought when the arenas for doing so have multiplied exponentially in the virtual, rendering notions like pop, subculture and irony obsolete. Still, for the time being check out Carraway’s thoughts and lemme’ know what you think.
Note: The image used here is from this post on Crawdaddy.
The Virtual Catwalk: Snark and The Fashion of the Web
Posted by Nav in Culture of Technology, Theorizing the Web on July 8, 2009
You there: you seem like a pretty hip person. Why don’t you give me your best Boxxy impression? No? Okay, how about you tell me the latest the ‘Yo Dawg’ joke making the rounds? You don’t know that one, huh? Well, did you at least see the latest post on “This is Why You’re Fat”? Oh. You didn’t. Oh dear.
As much as it pains me to say, in the world of web geeks, you would be profoundly uncool. And while, as insults go, that may not be much of one, it does mean that as the web begins to develop a culture, it is also cultivating its own fashion. Much like the world of fashion itself, those who can follow the latest trends do, while those who cannot, languish by the wayside. And the catch is, as online culture leaks into the mainstream, it seems we’re all on the hook for staying current with it.
In order to be ‘a savvy web surfer’, one has to show off his or her command of the latest bits of buzz that float across the online horizon. And how does one find the latest fashion of the web? Here’s a tip: head to the geekiest, snarkiest corner of the internet you can find.
Whether it’s an obscure videogame forum or a popular site like Gizmodo or Jezebel, these concentrated bits of web culture will quickly teach you that staying current is of the utmost importance. Witness, for instance, the frighteningly fast rise and fall of ‘Boxxy’, a widely-mocked, hyperactive teenager prone to making babbling, semi-coherent videos. Like so many web fads before her, Boxxy was chewed up and spit out in a matter of weeks, and much of the discussion around her was simply about making fun of both her eagerness and obliviousness.
Or, take the captioned pictures of rapper Xzibit that begin with the phrase ‘Yo Dawg’ and go on to make absurd assertions of excess. Regardless of who they affect or offend – even Xzibit himself recently Twittered that those using the meme should “jump on something sharp” – web surfers who wish to remain in the loop must stay abreast of a torrent of trends.
Fashion has always been about the display of social and economic privilege. While the barriers to entry are lower for web fashion, its tone is disturbingly similar: not only does one require the time and savvy to stay on top of it all, you must also learn to express it with the condescending irony of the web-hipster. Find a discussion of blog “This is Why You’re Fat” – a catalogue of obscenely indulgent meals like ‘chicken-fried bacon’ – and you will also find a distinct tone of urban, classist disdain for the poor saps whom might actually eat such things.
If this all sounds like the dog-eat-dog world of high school, you’re probably right. If the web has become a virtual catwalk, then it’s not only where we display our knowledge, but also a place where we prove how much better than others we are. Like fashion itself, the internet has become an arena for showing off and, bit by bit, the egalitarian dreams with which the internet began give way to a culture of performance, derision and snark.
But lest we think this is limited to the nerdiness of the internet, just turn on the TV. If NBC’s 30 Rock has become the hipster sitcom of choice, then its success stems from the way it has so cleverly co-opted the rapid-fire pace of internet conversation, its droll irony and self-deprecation. Similarly, it seems no coincidence that Family Guy has usurped The Simpsons’ position in the zeitgeist, its love-them-or-hate-them segues and cuts, as the Associated Press’ Frazier Moore once described them, more like hyperlinks than traditional narrative. By linking themselves to the culture of the ‘net, these shows scream ‘contemporary’.
Indeed, having a working knowledge of web culture has become part of an increasingly popular geek chic, and web fashion is beginning to take its place alongside the MacBooks, lattes and lumber jackets of the urbane modern repertoire. In some ways, this can be great: Christian Lander’s blog “Stuff White People Like” generated a fruitful discussion on race that may not have happened otherwise.
But in other ways, it is more disturbing. If web fashion is spilling over into popular culture, then it also brings with it its inherent flaws. Perhaps the last thing North American culture needs is a further sense that we must constantly attempt to outdo each other. There is also the question of access: internet connections and time cost money; ironic wit often stems from being well-read. These things are not available to everyone, but only to those with the capacity to get them. Sadly, web fashion, like fashion itself, may work to heighten the parallel divisions between cool and uncool, haves and have-nots.
If the devil may have once worn wear Prada, sneering at your shoes from last year, he or she is now more likely sniping behind a keyboard, like a vulture searching for weakness, waiting to spread its wings so that others might see.
commenter culture, cultural vandalism, fashion, Hipsters, one upmanship, snark
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