So this weekend has been a big metal geek weekend. Went to show Friday, spent Saturday night trading music with a friend, and today helped Davis with a project about black metal that she's doing for an art history class.
During the course of helping with that I wrote out a little history/analysis thing to explain what black metal is, and to trace some of the ideas in there. It's really interesting that a genre that began as goofy novelty music has evolved into on of the most diverse and experimental subgenres in popular music. I'm particularly interested, as a listener and as a music geek, in how black metal went from being a genre that was all about adolescent blasphemy to being a genre that incorporates anti capitalist environmentalism. It's been quite a trip.
The following is an effort to trace the genre, in rough sketch form, from when it was born to when it was fully developed and to talk briefly about contemporary extrapolations. It was written for an outsider to metal, which I think was useful to keep me out of the weeds of extreme geekiness. Anyway. Thought I'd share, even though this is impossibly geeky.
Pre-History, Part I: The First Wave of Black Metal (Commercial)
So. . . there was a band in England in the late seventies and early 80s called Venom. (They still exist today, but the original line up was only around for a little while.) Venom was the first extreme metal band, and they influenced everybody, including Metallica, Slayer, etc. They played really fast, sloppy punk rock sounding metal, and they sang blasphemous, evil stuff. That was novel thing to do at the time, and they were the really notorious for being offensive and also for being not really very good. There is a really funny moment in a documentary called "A Headbanger's Journey" where Lemmy from Motohead makes fun of them for being one of the worst bands ever.
As bad as they sounded, they WERE a lot of fun, and they are a major cult band. They invented the term "black metal" to describe what their music was. They wrote a song called "Black Metal." They were not serous occultist, and their version of "Satanism" was just silly stuff they made up to shock people. However, they invented a lot of musical devices that are widely used in extreme metal, and they helped to create the imagery that black metal bands use. I saw the drummer in a band wearing a Venom t-shirt with a pentagram on it Friday night. It's like now you see punk rockers with a black flag logo tattoo. A Venom t-shirt with the pentagram logo is the metal equivalent.
Mercyful Fate and King Diamond were from Denmark. (King Diamond was the front man for Mercyful Fate, and his solo albums and his work with Mercyful Fate can kinda be thought of as being part of the same body of work, even if the music was different) Their classic period was in the early to mid 80s. They sang horror movie styled songs about monsters and demons and ghosts and Gothic horror type stuff. Kind Diamond was (and still is) a Satanist, and he wore very elaborate facepaint and did a lot of macabre theatrical stuff onstage with coffins and bones. They are often considered one of the first black metal bands, but they don't have much in common with what we now call black metal, except for the "evil" imagery. The face paint was a big influence also.
Pre-History Part II: The First Wave of Black Metal (Underground)
During the 80s there were a whole bunch of underground metal bands trying to be the most extreme band on the block. Many of these bands did not play live very often, although some were local musicians who gigged and behaved more or less like a regular rock band. Some of these bands did not really "exist" other than being two or three teenagers who practiced occasionally and said "we're a band."
There were three ways that these guys got their music out. One was tape trading. Back then in heavy metal magazines (and underground homemade"zines"), there were classified sections where bands would advertize that they had made demo recordings. They would try to get attention with a snazzy evil description or a grainy picture, and then they would write to each other and trade tapes (their own and from other bands). Sometimes they would sell them at local record stores. Another way their music might get out would be if a local entrepreneur (usually a concert promoter or record store owner, or sometimes it would just be a metal fan with some money, often from a parent) would put together a compilation album documenting the local scene. Sometimes the local "scene" did not really exist, so guys who practiced together would work up a song or two so they could get their name on a record. The third way was, of course, independent record labels, which were often a hobby rather than a profession.
Some bands went through all of these phases. Metallica, which was not a "real band" with a permanent lineup and did not gig, contributed to a compilation and made a couple of demos before they existed as a live band. Eventually became more professional and started touring and got a manager and a record deal and all the trappings of professionalism. This whole system was a parallel system to that of punk rock, and the two networks interacted sometimes. This system is still around today, although 'zines have been mostly replaced by the internet.
This whole mish mash of semi-professional music was really important because it allowed bands to experiment with really grim, ugly music. Also, many bands accidentally made really grim, grimy music because they were not very accomplished and because the technical means available were pretty primitive. All of this music was by no means black metal (Metallica was, of course, not black metal), but some of it was, and these underground bands were the bands that really defined the sound and the imagery of black metal. Because they had no money, they would dress up in scary outfits and take pictures of themselves. For many fans, these pictures were the sole visual representation of some of these bands. Since some of these bands did not play live very often if at all, this ephemera was central to their bodies of work.
Here's the hitch though. . . .black metal was not really a genre at the time, and people didn't really use that term. There were a bunch of kids who liked punk rock and Venom and making offensive racket in their parents' basements, and some of them had similar taste. The lines between black metal and death metal or thrash metal were not always very clear. These genres were not well established. It was an international scene, with bands from South America and from Eastern Europe as well as American and Western European bands. It was, in other words, a disorganized, anarchic mess.
What happened is that some of these bands were retroactively considered black metal bands because they influenced the Scandinavian bands in the early 90s who were more solidly "black metal bands." The Scandinavian bands copied the low fi, trebly "cold" sounds, the imagery and dress (corpsepaint, black leather, spikes, bullet belts, metal t-shirts), they copied the tactic of making up scary names for themselves (Angelripper, Tom Warrior), and they copied the idea of bands existing as studio projects only. The idea of a "one man band" was kinda strange for heavy metal, which has always had a culture of partying and beer drinking, but these mysterious, sometimes reclusive amateur bands were sometimes revered for being mysterious and illusive. More often that not, that mystery was a result of bands with no professional representation and no stability developing a cult audience. So, like you might really love Sarcofago, but you couldn't really find out anything about them except for looking at the spooky picture on the album cover. Sarcofago DID, incidentally, play live shows and "exist" as a "regular band," but if you didn't live in Brazil, that was incidental.
Three of the most influential first wave underground bands were the previously mentioned Sarcofago from Brazil, Hellhammer from Switzerland, and Bathory from Sweden. They all sound like unholy racket and the songs are all about blasphemous nonsense. Hellhammer and Bathory did not exist as "real" bands who played shows and did other "real band stuff" at all. All three bands were mocked by the mainstream metal press (particularly Hellhammer) but all three bands had devoted cult followings which have grown larger over the years. They all took "scary" photos of themselves dressed up in leather and spikes blowing fire or playing with armor, and those photos were the bands' visual identities. Hellhammer changed their name to Celtic Frost and became pretty successful, but the guys in the band were really embarrassed by Hellhammer for years and wouldn't talk about it. Hellhammer and Bathory are super-duper influential, and a lot of musicians or bands have taken their names from their song titles.
These are hardly the only underground bands from the 80s who played deliberately crude, blasphemous heavy metal and dressed in scary clothes, but they are representative of the kind of thing that we retrospectively call "first wave black metal." I mentioned that the lines between black metal, death metal, and thrash were not always clear. This is the case. Generally though, first wave black metal bands made crude racket that sounds like of like blurry noise, while death metal bands used a more precise and heavy mid range attack, and thrash bands played cleaner, more technically accomplished music. Black metal was single mindedly grimy and anti-aesthetic, while other extreme music was more conventionally "powerful" and aggressive.
The Invention of Scandinavian Black Metal
So far we've got people making underground racket, trying to sound spooky, presenting themselves in these sinister alter egos, and just generally being mysterious and primitive. In that mishmash of underground racket, there were two band who really stood out in terms of trying to make something more serious: Bathory and Mayhem.
Bathory began as a low-fi black metal band (see above), and they slowly branched out to incorporate more stuff about Vikings and Norse mythology.
"Band" is something of a stretch. It was one guy who worked with whoever he could get. Their first recording was for one of those underground compilations discussed above, and so many people wrote in to praise the track that they were offered the chance to make an album. They did not really "exist" as a band until then.
Bathory is widely credited with being the first metal band to really seriously talk about paganism and define hostility toward Christianity as a part of Scandinavian nationalism. The nostalgia for a more "natural" pagan world and the grandiose music that Bathroy made were a HUGE influence on Scandanavian black metal. This was not make-em-up as you go blasphemy and random offensiveness for teenaged kicks, but an effort to write serious and ambitious meditations about Scandinavian culture and to argue that Christianity was an invading power. They were super mysterious, never playing live, but sometimes doing "tours" of record stores to do interviews and sign records.
Ironically, Quarthon, the dude who was Bathory, was not really into the pagan stuff or the anti-Christian stuff in "real life," and Bathory was, while incredibly ambitious for an underground metal project in the 80s, not connected to a particularly deep interest in history or to a personal religious belief (unlike some later bands). Quarthon considered Swedish history an interesting topic for more considered, ambitious music, period. He didn't have an agenda (unlike some late bands). He was irritated and horrified by the anti-Christian terrorism that broke out in Norway during the early 90s. Also by people mailing him animal parts as tribute.
This is the one video that Bathory made (from 1990 or so). This song is about the Christianization of Norway. This is a hard core influential piece of film. You've got hostility to Christianity linked to Scandanavian culture, and you've got a lot of images of people walking around in the woods. This might be something to look at to get an idea of the "ideology" of black metal. There is even an image of a stave church. (The "anti-Christian terrorism" mentioned above consisted mostly of burning historical churches down.)
Mayhem was, during the 80s, a much more underground band from Norway. They were really one of the undergound "first wave" bands discussed above, except that they took the "philosophy" of evil and death a lot more seriously than their peers. They were also a lot more interested in spooky atmosphere than in simple aggression. They used nature imagery and death imagery and blasphemy, and their live performances were sometimes chaotic, pseudo occult affairs.
Because the guitarist owned a record store that was kind of a meeting place for the metal scene in Norway, and because he ran an indie label that distributed a lot of the early black metal records from Norway, they were kind of the unofficial "leaders" of the Norwegian black metal scene according to some. (Of course, that claim is not accepted by anybody who was there, but it is inarguable that they were at the forefront of Norwegian black metal.) During the 80s they were sporadically active, recording a bunch of demos and live tapes. Mayhem was probably THE band who really created "black metal" as a distinctive style of music with a distinctive visual approach.
They were unfortunately at the center of several of the most notorious incidents in Norwegian black metal. One of their lead singers (they have had 3) killed himself, and the guitarist/songwriter was murdered by another musician. When their first studio album was released during the early 90s, the band did not really exist anymore, although they reunited and continue to tour and make records.
Here's a bunch of pictures of them with their most well known, and probably most representative, song. It's a spooky, violent song about the atmosphere of a cold night.
Early Scandinavian Black Metal a.k.a. "The Second Wave of Black Metal" (started 1990ish and continued through maybe 1997 or so)
Mayhem made the biggest impact, by they had peers in Norway and in Sweden, who were mostly playing death metal (if they were old enough to be in a band) but liked the same underground stuff Mayhem did. Some of these guys, particularly in Norway, followed the "paganism or nihilism and nature stuff and death imagery stuff" and "low fi, spooky records" and "fantasy images and nature images and underworld images" stuff and invented "black metal" as s distinct genre of music.
What was new about this music? New in metal was the idea of playing melancholy, hypnotic music instead of heavy exciting music. There was also strong sense of the music being a part of some kind of rebellion against western imperialism and against religion. Some saw black metal as a political and spiritual "movement" in a way that was different from how people understood death metal or thrash metal. They also saw the church as being an invading force (although it happened centuries ago) that imparted an "unnatural" ideology.
Most of these guys were more interested in using these themes to create spooky outsider art or sometimes to celebrate serious interested in Norse culture, but a minority, the most famous being the infamous Varg Vikernes, were more "political," sometimes espousing nationalism and racism. That ugly side of black metal culture is real, but it's a minority position, particularly since the music has an international fanbase. There was, however, a string of church burnings that was related to the ant-Christian activism that some of the bands were involved with in the early 90s. Norwegian liberal culture is often portrayed by these bands as being hostile to individualism, and so you get a lot of songs about mythological stories celebrating powerful individuals. Prometheus and Satan are probably most popular. (There are differences between the Norwegian stuff and the Swedish stuff, but you can kinda ignore that, I think.)
So you've got a complicated mix of stuff there, where typical teenager metal stuff (hostility toward religion, fantasy themes from popular culture, obsession with death and violence) is taken seriously and related to a critique of Christianity, liberal democracy, western imperialism, and consumer culture. Very often in second wave black metal there is some idea of a "nature" that is going to rise up against an oppressive modernity.
Sometimes bands used images of hell as an expression of individuality rather than as as effort to be scary. Sometimes these themes are obliquely expressed, sometimes directly, sometimes very seriously, and sometimes there are just a means to make heavy metal music.You also get a lot of approaches to the music. The gloomy low fi racket was sometimes turned into more purposefully droning and even gloomier low fi racket while other bands took the melodic, melancholy aspects of the music to an extreme by incorporating classical music and bombastic progressive elements.
Here's a Burzum video that ties all of these themes together:
Here's Emporer sporting some armor in the snow and doing some stuff with nature and candles and the like:
Satyricon doing pagan stuff and fantasy stuff and occult stuff and nature stuff. The melodic music with all the chanting and stuff are pretty directly influenced by Bathory.This has dated a bit.
Although the "second wave" really was the explosion that happened in the early 90s, the ideas they came up with continue to be a part of black metal.
Here's Waitan focusing more on the "blasphemy, hostility and individuality" stuff and using hell imagery:
Nature and paganism stuff continues to be popular also:
Spreading out. . .
Second wave black metal, because it offered a wider range of thematic and emotional possibility than earlier metal, gradually became an international underground music with lots and lots of interesting variations. For example, in the U.S., some bands have stressed the environmental themes in the music quite strongly, and some have articulated black metal to radical environmentalism or to more meditative, less confrontational kinds of pagan themes than what the Scandinavians did. Agalloch and Wolves in the Throne Room two prominent example. They use lots and lots of nature imagery, and Wolves in the Throne Room famously likes to play shows in the woods or in other alternative spaces. They light their stage with lamps and conduct their shows like rituals rather than like rock concerts.
That's hardly all, but it's plenty for a looong blog post. I haven't even discussed the tensions surrounding the music during the late 90s and early 00s when black metal was becoming more commercial. I think what's interesting is the transformation of the music from being a novelty offshoot of heavy metal to a particular expression of adolescent underground kicks to an international genre of music that includes some of the most musically progressive and thematically interesting stuff in contemporary popular music.
I'm not sure anybody could have predicted that we'd get from Venom to Wolves in the Throne Room, and the genre continues to mutate. In fact, right now there's a big backlash against "hipster friendly" black metal like WITTR who aren't into blasphemy and ugliness and who draw influence from post rock and other non-metal music. (Liturgy, a much more non-metal postrock band who draws from black metal and is given toward hipster pretension gets more ire though. I like Liturgy, actually, but they know how to push people's buttons.)
In any event, black metal's shadow looms larger all the time, even as the original impulses that created the music have subsided. Interesting records should keep coming down the pipe.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Pondering Abigail Williams
A little foreword. . . .
I started this blog as a forum for long form geeky discussion a couple of years ago, and I sorta abandoned it, in part because my online social life got sucked into Facebook. I recently have felt the urge to engage in more geeky long form discussion and get to get the hell out of talking to people on interactive threads, and so I'm resurrecting this thing.
Looking back through this thing, you can see the stuff I was obsessed with a couple of years ago (Drive by Truckers, Mastodon, Takashi Miiike), and as I try to post again (I'll go for a couple every week), you can see, to some degree, how my tastes have evolved. I'm not a radically different guy (I still love the DBT, Mastodon, and Takashi Miike), but I've lived in the midwest for a lot longer now, and I've gotten a lot more involved in the local metal scene (as a fan).
Also my patience with Hollywood has more or less run out. The guy I was two years ago would not have responded to the upcoming Batman movie with the eye rolling and snarking that the guy I am now does. You know how they make foie gras? They stuff corn down a gooses neck. That's more or less how I think about the pervasive fanboy culture that tentpole hollywood has become, and while the movies might be okay (although the most self serious of them- Nolan Batman, The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo, etc. are so overrated that I'd rather just not see them anymore) , I'm just not able to stop being resentful at it. So that's different. I might post something defending my crotchety old man-ness or my insufferable elitism or whatever you want to call it soon.
But on with the topic. . . .
The other way my tastes as a pop culture geek have changed is that I'm way more into extreme metal, even the derivative stuff. The guy I was two years ago was into extreme metal (for sure), but mostly just the cream of the crop and the stuff that in some way "transcended" being metal, either because it was fresh and different or some way, or because it was so good that it overcame being generic: "I got two death metal albums and some Slayer, so that's enough thrashy American metal, and Emporer, Gorgoroth, and early Satyricon are the only European black metal that's worth the time . . ."
The guy I am now is a bit more insatiable and listens to generic underground black metal online pretty much every day. The guy I am now appreciates Burzum for the music itself an not just for its influence. So, you know, I'm a geek now. Some of that is that free music has become so easy to get and so ubiquitous that its really easy to spend an evening listening to, say, goregrind bands or to black metal demos from the 80s.
Where I'm going is that, and I am going somewhere, is to say that the guy I was two years ago would not have understood, much less written a blog post about, "the Abigail Williams problem." What is the "Abigail Williams problem"? It is the "authenticity question" as it applies to extreme metal.
Abigail Williams is an American extreme metal band who has serious credibility problems. They are a musically adept band who has made three good records, and they deliver onstage. I saw them open for Mayhem recently, and they sounded really good. I met one of them dudes outside the venue (I think I got a light from him), and he was a perfectly sincere little metal geek. The idea that they should be regarded as less than credible seems a little odd to anybody outside of the metal world. They work hard, tour a lot, and make good records.
Their problems are threefold:
1. They have switched styles on each record. They haven't, like, progressed through different styles in an organic way or responded to different trends by appropriated some aspects of contemporary music into what they are doing. They've just up and switched what they sound like each time.
2. They started out with a metalcore-influced mainstream style and moved toward playing underground metal. This makes them look like posers in a way that it wouldn't had the reverse been true. Their first album was the mainstream American metal sounding thing with some black metal. Their second album was symphonic black metal a la Dimmu Borgir. That was strange enough in an of itself. That choice was more eyebrow raising for some since not many American bands do that, and when they do it seems like they have to worry about the credibility thing, since it seems like they are just ripping off popular European metal from a few years back. Their new record sounds like underground American black metal, particularly the northwestern stuff like Wolves in the Throne Room and Agalloch.
(Is it my imagination, or did they actually slightly redesign their logo to look all "forestly" like Wolves in the Throne Room as well? Come on guys, don't be so obvious.)
3. They aren't scary or weird and they don't have anything occult of controversial to say. They look like ordinary dudes (although hairier and more pierced), and they seem perfectly chill.
Essentially, the problem is that they are very clearly a musically gifted young band trying to find an identity as a rock and roll band in a genre that values authenticity above craft. It's a very strange problem, as black metal is extremely theatrical and contrived. The most "authentic" black metal bands, mind you, are the ones who wear scary costumes onstage, use elaborate theatrical tricks, take inspiration from fantasy literature, and perform under creepy pseudonyms. Check out Gorgoroth, one of the most credibility-heavy bands in the genre:
This is a band whose name comes from Tokien and whose stage show comes from horror movies and KISS videos. They get an authenticity pass because 1. they are very extreme, both sonically and lyrically, 2. band members have committed actual serious crimes, and 3. they are serious occultists- at least in public.
One some level, the "Abigail Williams problem" is stupid. If Gorgorth, the band who coined the phrase "True Norwegian Black Metal," is clearly "fake" in every way that really matters (except for their participation in assaults and other unsavory bullshit), this whole issue is stupid.
But then again. . .
Their new album, which is also their best by a wide margin, sounds a whole lot like bandwagoneering. The atmospheric, folk influenced music they are making these days sounds very much like music that has been bouncing around the American underground for a few years now and is just now becoming trendy. Wolves in the Throne Room are nowhere near the mainstream, but during the past year or so they have gotten noticed by outlets like NPR, Salon, and the NYT. The new Abigail Williams also sound nothing like the music they've made up until now. This is fishy.
Underground music seems special, in part, because it represents various alternative approaches to engaging popular culture. This music is, in part, about ideas. To some degree, it's about tribal loyalty (which is why well executed death metal that is proudly derivative of music made in 1991 will always be okay with pretty much everybody who listens to metal), but it's also about staking out some slightly new space as a gesture of resistance to mainstream pop culture. Wolves in the Throne Room is awesome because it's wonderfully composed and viciously performed metal that offers similar rock and roll kicks as, say, Napalm Death, but it's also awesome because it represents (in the regular sense of the word, but in the semiotic sense) a difference from other pop music. In the case of ecologically oriented Northwestern black metal like WITTR (or Agallock, for that matter) this sense of difference is a big part of why fans cling so tightly to this music. For a band to come along and treat their accomplishment as a new "style" for musicians looking to claw their way toward the top of the bill as they tour mid-level rock clubs is a little bit unsettling.
Of course, this isn't particularly Abigail Williams fault. They are learning in public and going through different phases, dropping and adding band members and switching allegiances withing their genre, just as most young bands do. Nirvana was a Melvins knock off, then a Jesus Lizardy noise band, and then a spiffy little punk pop band before they hired a drummer that tied all those tangents together and helped them figure out how to be "Nirvana." I'm glad to see Abigail Williams evolve; or to go through punctuated equilibrium. Although I do hope they stick with this and evolve a bit more organically in their ongoing quest to figure out what they are. It's hard to advocate for a band that doesn't have much of an identity.
Their are really two ways of looking at this. One way is to take the Foucault book off the shelf and look up "author function." Foucault argued that the "author" that we as readers deal with is no the human who wrote a text, but a constructed effort at a coherent figure that we can use to organize our interpretation of a text. We look at a "body of work" by excluding some things that seem inconsistent, and we use literary biography to construct a story that helps us with our task. This is a process that is initiated by the artist (in some cases self consciously, and in some cases not) and carried further by editors, marketers, and critics.
The fact that Abigail Williams doesn't really "work" as an author doesn't mean their records aren't good. If you just changed the name of the band for each or their three records, it wouldn't matter: "There's this new atmospheric black metal band that has some of the dudes form Abigail Williams in it!" If Abigail Williams got more consistent, their music might become more interesting because you could meaningfully compare their records with each other as a way of understanding them. So, pretensions of authenticity aside, there is a real loss when a good band fails to find a strong voice, but it's nothing to get upset about.
A rock band is, in some ways, the ultimate demonstration of the "author function." The "Rolling Stones" contain a lot of stuff that was not produced by anybody who was ever a member of the band, and the members of the band have changed a lot. Chuck Leavell has been, more or less, a member of the Rolling Stones for over a decade. He doesn't write much material, but neither does Ron Wood. There is plenty of what is essentially solo material on Rolling Stones records also. It's a brand. So were the Fugs, and so is Wolves in the Throne Room. It's more than a brand though, as it provides a mechanism for comparing and categorizing their music. It's a part of their art. What's more interesting: the journey of a band through several decades of different efforts as defining themselves, or a massively inconsistent collection of rootsy rock and roll.
The other way to look at this is to argue that the specific kind of music that Abigail Williams has switched to on their new record is politicized music that has a strong spiritual dimension (eco-whathaveyou), and to simply appropriate it as a way to find new compositional material is gross because it undermines the seriousness with which their fore-bearers took the task of innovating within a form so that pop music could respond to the world. (Of course, plenty of people dislike American black metal bands because they are not pure and misanthropic and have therefore undermined the intentions of people like Varg Vikernes. I love his music, but let's all say it together: "fuck Varg Vikernes.")
I personally don't have a strong opinion about how I "should" feel about Abigail Williams, but the mild controversy that surrounds them is interesting. For me they are a promising band that I can't quite engage with that strongly because they haven't established who they are. This a band who is working to figure themselves out from within underground metal, and this is a band that is building an audience the old fashioned way- the tour bus. In my mind their are a perfectly legitimate young band that is in a weird position because they got a record deal, and presumably some measure of tour support, before they were fully formed. I don't have any sort of emotional attachment to them, but they are a perfectly good band.
If they were switching styles as a way to cash in on some underground style that had been discovered in a serious way by the mainstream, and if their music were just empty stylish gestures, I'd hate them no matter how well they played. It'd be like Bush, the worst of the Nirvanabes and an absolute disgrace. Bush was all style. Well executed, but empty, incoherent flash that was held together with production tricks and guitar hooks. (Their least terrible songs tended to be their loudest.) Dreadful. Incidentally, Stone Temple Pilots were a much better band in my mind not only because they wrote actual songs, but also because they moved away from being grunge-lite as quickly as they could. Except for their first album, which sounds like an arena rock band impersonating Alice and Chains, they had an actual sonic identity. This issue sure did come up a lot in the 90s, by the way. My point, and here it is, settle down, is that Abigail Williams isn't like Bush. Even if they don't have an identity as a band, their songs do "work" as more than just impressions of other songs, and their music is getting more sophisticated and subtle all the time. If they headlined a show in Des Moines, I'd be in the front row, even though this is not a band I'd go to the mat with somebody over. (Goatwhore, a very derivative band who are basically an Americanized version of the war-oriented black black metal- they sound like they sound like Marduk with a metalcore singer- IS coming soon and I most certainly be in the front row. I am not hung up on this authenticity stuff.)
All this is to say that the "Abigail Williams problem" is interesting not so much because of what it says about Abigail Williams, but because of the way it lays bare a lot of the contrivances that keep us attached to our various pop culture tribes. I like having pop culture tribes, but boy, do they start to seem illusory when somebody comes along who acts like they just might be in show business.
If I cared very much about indie rock this would be the "Lana Del Ray problem," but I don't.
I started this blog as a forum for long form geeky discussion a couple of years ago, and I sorta abandoned it, in part because my online social life got sucked into Facebook. I recently have felt the urge to engage in more geeky long form discussion and get to get the hell out of talking to people on interactive threads, and so I'm resurrecting this thing.
Looking back through this thing, you can see the stuff I was obsessed with a couple of years ago (Drive by Truckers, Mastodon, Takashi Miiike), and as I try to post again (I'll go for a couple every week), you can see, to some degree, how my tastes have evolved. I'm not a radically different guy (I still love the DBT, Mastodon, and Takashi Miike), but I've lived in the midwest for a lot longer now, and I've gotten a lot more involved in the local metal scene (as a fan).
Also my patience with Hollywood has more or less run out. The guy I was two years ago would not have responded to the upcoming Batman movie with the eye rolling and snarking that the guy I am now does. You know how they make foie gras? They stuff corn down a gooses neck. That's more or less how I think about the pervasive fanboy culture that tentpole hollywood has become, and while the movies might be okay (although the most self serious of them- Nolan Batman, The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo, etc. are so overrated that I'd rather just not see them anymore) , I'm just not able to stop being resentful at it. So that's different. I might post something defending my crotchety old man-ness or my insufferable elitism or whatever you want to call it soon.
But on with the topic. . . .
The other way my tastes as a pop culture geek have changed is that I'm way more into extreme metal, even the derivative stuff. The guy I was two years ago was into extreme metal (for sure), but mostly just the cream of the crop and the stuff that in some way "transcended" being metal, either because it was fresh and different or some way, or because it was so good that it overcame being generic: "I got two death metal albums and some Slayer, so that's enough thrashy American metal, and Emporer, Gorgoroth, and early Satyricon are the only European black metal that's worth the time . . ."
The guy I am now is a bit more insatiable and listens to generic underground black metal online pretty much every day. The guy I am now appreciates Burzum for the music itself an not just for its influence. So, you know, I'm a geek now. Some of that is that free music has become so easy to get and so ubiquitous that its really easy to spend an evening listening to, say, goregrind bands or to black metal demos from the 80s.
Where I'm going is that, and I am going somewhere, is to say that the guy I was two years ago would not have understood, much less written a blog post about, "the Abigail Williams problem." What is the "Abigail Williams problem"? It is the "authenticity question" as it applies to extreme metal.
Abigail Williams is an American extreme metal band who has serious credibility problems. They are a musically adept band who has made three good records, and they deliver onstage. I saw them open for Mayhem recently, and they sounded really good. I met one of them dudes outside the venue (I think I got a light from him), and he was a perfectly sincere little metal geek. The idea that they should be regarded as less than credible seems a little odd to anybody outside of the metal world. They work hard, tour a lot, and make good records.
Their problems are threefold:
1. They have switched styles on each record. They haven't, like, progressed through different styles in an organic way or responded to different trends by appropriated some aspects of contemporary music into what they are doing. They've just up and switched what they sound like each time.
2. They started out with a metalcore-influced mainstream style and moved toward playing underground metal. This makes them look like posers in a way that it wouldn't had the reverse been true. Their first album was the mainstream American metal sounding thing with some black metal. Their second album was symphonic black metal a la Dimmu Borgir. That was strange enough in an of itself. That choice was more eyebrow raising for some since not many American bands do that, and when they do it seems like they have to worry about the credibility thing, since it seems like they are just ripping off popular European metal from a few years back. Their new record sounds like underground American black metal, particularly the northwestern stuff like Wolves in the Throne Room and Agalloch.
(Is it my imagination, or did they actually slightly redesign their logo to look all "forestly" like Wolves in the Throne Room as well? Come on guys, don't be so obvious.)
3. They aren't scary or weird and they don't have anything occult of controversial to say. They look like ordinary dudes (although hairier and more pierced), and they seem perfectly chill.
Essentially, the problem is that they are very clearly a musically gifted young band trying to find an identity as a rock and roll band in a genre that values authenticity above craft. It's a very strange problem, as black metal is extremely theatrical and contrived. The most "authentic" black metal bands, mind you, are the ones who wear scary costumes onstage, use elaborate theatrical tricks, take inspiration from fantasy literature, and perform under creepy pseudonyms. Check out Gorgoroth, one of the most credibility-heavy bands in the genre:
This is a band whose name comes from Tokien and whose stage show comes from horror movies and KISS videos. They get an authenticity pass because 1. they are very extreme, both sonically and lyrically, 2. band members have committed actual serious crimes, and 3. they are serious occultists- at least in public.
One some level, the "Abigail Williams problem" is stupid. If Gorgorth, the band who coined the phrase "True Norwegian Black Metal," is clearly "fake" in every way that really matters (except for their participation in assaults and other unsavory bullshit), this whole issue is stupid.
But then again. . .
Their new album, which is also their best by a wide margin, sounds a whole lot like bandwagoneering. The atmospheric, folk influenced music they are making these days sounds very much like music that has been bouncing around the American underground for a few years now and is just now becoming trendy. Wolves in the Throne Room are nowhere near the mainstream, but during the past year or so they have gotten noticed by outlets like NPR, Salon, and the NYT. The new Abigail Williams also sound nothing like the music they've made up until now. This is fishy.
Underground music seems special, in part, because it represents various alternative approaches to engaging popular culture. This music is, in part, about ideas. To some degree, it's about tribal loyalty (which is why well executed death metal that is proudly derivative of music made in 1991 will always be okay with pretty much everybody who listens to metal), but it's also about staking out some slightly new space as a gesture of resistance to mainstream pop culture. Wolves in the Throne Room is awesome because it's wonderfully composed and viciously performed metal that offers similar rock and roll kicks as, say, Napalm Death, but it's also awesome because it represents (in the regular sense of the word, but in the semiotic sense) a difference from other pop music. In the case of ecologically oriented Northwestern black metal like WITTR (or Agallock, for that matter) this sense of difference is a big part of why fans cling so tightly to this music. For a band to come along and treat their accomplishment as a new "style" for musicians looking to claw their way toward the top of the bill as they tour mid-level rock clubs is a little bit unsettling.
Of course, this isn't particularly Abigail Williams fault. They are learning in public and going through different phases, dropping and adding band members and switching allegiances withing their genre, just as most young bands do. Nirvana was a Melvins knock off, then a Jesus Lizardy noise band, and then a spiffy little punk pop band before they hired a drummer that tied all those tangents together and helped them figure out how to be "Nirvana." I'm glad to see Abigail Williams evolve; or to go through punctuated equilibrium. Although I do hope they stick with this and evolve a bit more organically in their ongoing quest to figure out what they are. It's hard to advocate for a band that doesn't have much of an identity.
Their are really two ways of looking at this. One way is to take the Foucault book off the shelf and look up "author function." Foucault argued that the "author" that we as readers deal with is no the human who wrote a text, but a constructed effort at a coherent figure that we can use to organize our interpretation of a text. We look at a "body of work" by excluding some things that seem inconsistent, and we use literary biography to construct a story that helps us with our task. This is a process that is initiated by the artist (in some cases self consciously, and in some cases not) and carried further by editors, marketers, and critics.
The fact that Abigail Williams doesn't really "work" as an author doesn't mean their records aren't good. If you just changed the name of the band for each or their three records, it wouldn't matter: "There's this new atmospheric black metal band that has some of the dudes form Abigail Williams in it!" If Abigail Williams got more consistent, their music might become more interesting because you could meaningfully compare their records with each other as a way of understanding them. So, pretensions of authenticity aside, there is a real loss when a good band fails to find a strong voice, but it's nothing to get upset about.
A rock band is, in some ways, the ultimate demonstration of the "author function." The "Rolling Stones" contain a lot of stuff that was not produced by anybody who was ever a member of the band, and the members of the band have changed a lot. Chuck Leavell has been, more or less, a member of the Rolling Stones for over a decade. He doesn't write much material, but neither does Ron Wood. There is plenty of what is essentially solo material on Rolling Stones records also. It's a brand. So were the Fugs, and so is Wolves in the Throne Room. It's more than a brand though, as it provides a mechanism for comparing and categorizing their music. It's a part of their art. What's more interesting: the journey of a band through several decades of different efforts as defining themselves, or a massively inconsistent collection of rootsy rock and roll.
The other way to look at this is to argue that the specific kind of music that Abigail Williams has switched to on their new record is politicized music that has a strong spiritual dimension (eco-whathaveyou), and to simply appropriate it as a way to find new compositional material is gross because it undermines the seriousness with which their fore-bearers took the task of innovating within a form so that pop music could respond to the world. (Of course, plenty of people dislike American black metal bands because they are not pure and misanthropic and have therefore undermined the intentions of people like Varg Vikernes. I love his music, but let's all say it together: "fuck Varg Vikernes.")
I personally don't have a strong opinion about how I "should" feel about Abigail Williams, but the mild controversy that surrounds them is interesting. For me they are a promising band that I can't quite engage with that strongly because they haven't established who they are. This a band who is working to figure themselves out from within underground metal, and this is a band that is building an audience the old fashioned way- the tour bus. In my mind their are a perfectly legitimate young band that is in a weird position because they got a record deal, and presumably some measure of tour support, before they were fully formed. I don't have any sort of emotional attachment to them, but they are a perfectly good band.
If they were switching styles as a way to cash in on some underground style that had been discovered in a serious way by the mainstream, and if their music were just empty stylish gestures, I'd hate them no matter how well they played. It'd be like Bush, the worst of the Nirvanabes and an absolute disgrace. Bush was all style. Well executed, but empty, incoherent flash that was held together with production tricks and guitar hooks. (Their least terrible songs tended to be their loudest.) Dreadful. Incidentally, Stone Temple Pilots were a much better band in my mind not only because they wrote actual songs, but also because they moved away from being grunge-lite as quickly as they could. Except for their first album, which sounds like an arena rock band impersonating Alice and Chains, they had an actual sonic identity. This issue sure did come up a lot in the 90s, by the way. My point, and here it is, settle down, is that Abigail Williams isn't like Bush. Even if they don't have an identity as a band, their songs do "work" as more than just impressions of other songs, and their music is getting more sophisticated and subtle all the time. If they headlined a show in Des Moines, I'd be in the front row, even though this is not a band I'd go to the mat with somebody over. (Goatwhore, a very derivative band who are basically an Americanized version of the war-oriented black black metal- they sound like they sound like Marduk with a metalcore singer- IS coming soon and I most certainly be in the front row. I am not hung up on this authenticity stuff.)
All this is to say that the "Abigail Williams problem" is interesting not so much because of what it says about Abigail Williams, but because of the way it lays bare a lot of the contrivances that keep us attached to our various pop culture tribes. I like having pop culture tribes, but boy, do they start to seem illusory when somebody comes along who acts like they just might be in show business.
If I cared very much about indie rock this would be the "Lana Del Ray problem," but I don't.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Semi Annual Drive by Truckers Posting Fit
Thanks to the magic of the internet you can easily listen to bootlegged concern tapes without going to any trouble or spending any money. Not news, but pretty awesome.
I did my annual Drive By Truckers thing over spring holidays, so I've been into listening them a lot lately. I discovered a great cache of bootlegs that you can stream. I've been using that at my office radio this week.
Here's a great show from 2005:
http://www.archive.org/details/dbt2005-01-22.km184.flac16
Here's the show I saw over spring break:
http://www.archive.org/details/dbt2010-03-13.km184.flac16
Listening to these reminds me that DBT is overdue for a live album. For my money, they are probably the best band of the past decade. I'd accept the contention that Wilco might be better, but I'm voting for DBT.
(Don't hand me that Radiohead shit. Radiohead is great, but they are a not nearly as consistent as the DBT. There aren't any BAD Radiohead records, but they aren't all essential. If you like DBT, you have to get all of them. Plus Radiohead are popular and fashionable. Nothing wrong with that, but DBT is much more idiosyncratic and interesting. Alt country+the Replacements+Lynyrd Skynyrd=the Drive By Truckers. That sounds completely absurd (Lynyrd Skynyrd?), but it works.)
Anywaaaay. . . .
DBT are one of those bands that have a huge rep as a live act, and they are really a bit overdue for an ambitious live record. They've released a live DVD and a CD/DVD of an Austin City Limits appearance. Both are great, but they haven't really done a definitive live document.
Since they have accumulated so much history, the idea of a definitive live document might be a little dodgy at this point, but here's my proposal:
A boxed set. The first disc would be a complete show from the band's early days, similar to the now out of print "Alabama Ass Whuppin" record, but all from one show. Then you'd include a show or two from the "Southern Rock Opera" period, when the band was playing embryonic versions of some of their best know work along with long chunks of the album in sequence. Then you'd do a particularly good show or two (probably a 40 Watt show like the one linked in this post. . . or do a the entirety of a three night stand!) from the "Dirty South" period. Then one show from 2009 or 2010. (Or do the three night stand thing, or do a pair of shows from the Variety.)
What I'm proposing would be a massive retrospective from the bands first decade. Is there an audience for this? Yep. Would it be awesome? Yep.
Of course, you could just dowload bootlegs and construct your own version of that, but wouldn't a professionally mixed version be better?
Just a thought. Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty have made huge, career spanning retrospective live albums like what I'm describing, so it's not an unprecedented or silly idea. (Tom Petty's is much more successful, by the way. The Live Springsteen boxed set came out during his 80's peak, and so it served the purpose of consolidating the first big chunk of the Boss's career. That' make it a bigger deal in his career, but Tom Petty's live anthology really puts him in a different, more interesting light. It's a lot better sequenced too.)
Anyway. I think it'd be awesome. Somebody call Patterson.
I did my annual Drive By Truckers thing over spring holidays, so I've been into listening them a lot lately. I discovered a great cache of bootlegs that you can stream. I've been using that at my office radio this week.
Here's a great show from 2005:
http://www.archive.org/details/dbt2005-01-22.km184.flac16
Here's the show I saw over spring break:
http://www.archive.org/details/dbt2010-03-13.km184.flac16
Listening to these reminds me that DBT is overdue for a live album. For my money, they are probably the best band of the past decade. I'd accept the contention that Wilco might be better, but I'm voting for DBT.
(Don't hand me that Radiohead shit. Radiohead is great, but they are a not nearly as consistent as the DBT. There aren't any BAD Radiohead records, but they aren't all essential. If you like DBT, you have to get all of them. Plus Radiohead are popular and fashionable. Nothing wrong with that, but DBT is much more idiosyncratic and interesting. Alt country+the Replacements+Lynyrd Skynyrd=the Drive By Truckers. That sounds completely absurd (Lynyrd Skynyrd?), but it works.)
Anywaaaay. . . .
DBT are one of those bands that have a huge rep as a live act, and they are really a bit overdue for an ambitious live record. They've released a live DVD and a CD/DVD of an Austin City Limits appearance. Both are great, but they haven't really done a definitive live document.
Since they have accumulated so much history, the idea of a definitive live document might be a little dodgy at this point, but here's my proposal:
A boxed set. The first disc would be a complete show from the band's early days, similar to the now out of print "Alabama Ass Whuppin" record, but all from one show. Then you'd include a show or two from the "Southern Rock Opera" period, when the band was playing embryonic versions of some of their best know work along with long chunks of the album in sequence. Then you'd do a particularly good show or two (probably a 40 Watt show like the one linked in this post. . . or do a the entirety of a three night stand!) from the "Dirty South" period. Then one show from 2009 or 2010. (Or do the three night stand thing, or do a pair of shows from the Variety.)
What I'm proposing would be a massive retrospective from the bands first decade. Is there an audience for this? Yep. Would it be awesome? Yep.
Of course, you could just dowload bootlegs and construct your own version of that, but wouldn't a professionally mixed version be better?
Just a thought. Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty have made huge, career spanning retrospective live albums like what I'm describing, so it's not an unprecedented or silly idea. (Tom Petty's is much more successful, by the way. The Live Springsteen boxed set came out during his 80's peak, and so it served the purpose of consolidating the first big chunk of the Boss's career. That' make it a bigger deal in his career, but Tom Petty's live anthology really puts him in a different, more interesting light. It's a lot better sequenced too.)
Anyway. I think it'd be awesome. Somebody call Patterson.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Thinking About Horror Films
I've seen a few really good ones lately and I was thinking about them.
Specifically, I've seen these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHvSkTDWFfk
Two excellent films and one pretty good one (Severence). What distinguishes all of these films is that they are actual movies that use classical editing without lots of stupid ass jump cuts or gimmicks. They are all very much waaay over in the horror category (even though they are a diverse lot), but they aren't narrowly conceived "horror" films designed to satisfy the fanboys or such in teenagers who think that cinematic violence has just recently been invented, and that Saw is "like, really graphic."
Don't get me wrong. I'm a fanboy. I'll watch a really assinine film if it's assinine in a good way. And extreme violence is enough to get me interested. But god almighty, the horror genre has gotten really, well, generic lately. These three films really stand out as offering some kind hope for new directions in horror. They are all fairly traditional, conventional films that fall into fairly conventional horror film subgenres. You've got a classy exercise in gothic surrealism (The Orphanage), you've got a retro thriller (The House of the Devil. . .it's a cool movie because it's so meticulous about really staying true to the visual grammar of films from the early eighties, but the idea of making a "throwback" horror film is nothing new), and you've got a gory horror comedy (Severance). Each of these films, like most horror films, can be considered formal exercises, but they are sincere, not wanky self referential formal exercises. Each of these films is made by someone who really understands and respects the subgenre he has chosen to work in, and each of these films has themes that resonate beyond "hey, that was a cool version of this or that horror movie trope."
Horror is interesting because its SOOO generic. We go to genre films because we want a certain thing, and a genre film that doesn't deliver is, in some sense, a failure. A porn movie without anything arousing in it is not a good porn movie. A horror movie that does not pay attention to certain expectations is a failure. But so many horror movies are JUST about delivering upon those expectation. I think because horror is so consistently marketable (at least in its straight to video-DVD incarnations), and because it has a well defined cult audience, you can really just churn out product. It's kind of like generic music. "Hey! You like punk rock! Here's some more punk rock!" Nom nom nom. . . .
The generically of horror and has empowered generations of oddballs, kooks and geniuses to make films, but really, the point of having horror movies is to allow for the possibility for somebody to make a movie that really shakes you up somehow. That might include films that unsettle you because they are nihilistic and violent, that unsettle you because they are surreal and disruptive to your ordinary way of making sense of the world, etc. The best horror films often end up working as black comedy. I think that's because the best horror often serve as grostesque, funhouse mirror views of reality. "Dawn of the Dead" or "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" for example.
I've seen too many horror films lately that were just about being mean or nasty. "Deadgirl," for example. Suck suck suck. It was advertise to be a reflection on misogyny. It was basically a gross soap opera starring unpleasant and unrealistic people. Now, if it were a GOOD gross soap opera, that'd be one thing. Not everything has to be George Romero. But that shit was just tedious. If you're watching a movie about people fucking a corpse and you are bored, it's not a good movie.
Necromantic, now there's a good movie about corpse fucking.
I'm drifting away from my point.
Specifically, I've seen these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHvSkTDWFfk
Two excellent films and one pretty good one (Severence). What distinguishes all of these films is that they are actual movies that use classical editing without lots of stupid ass jump cuts or gimmicks. They are all very much waaay over in the horror category (even though they are a diverse lot), but they aren't narrowly conceived "horror" films designed to satisfy the fanboys or such in teenagers who think that cinematic violence has just recently been invented, and that Saw is "like, really graphic."
Don't get me wrong. I'm a fanboy. I'll watch a really assinine film if it's assinine in a good way. And extreme violence is enough to get me interested. But god almighty, the horror genre has gotten really, well, generic lately. These three films really stand out as offering some kind hope for new directions in horror. They are all fairly traditional, conventional films that fall into fairly conventional horror film subgenres. You've got a classy exercise in gothic surrealism (The Orphanage), you've got a retro thriller (The House of the Devil. . .it's a cool movie because it's so meticulous about really staying true to the visual grammar of films from the early eighties, but the idea of making a "throwback" horror film is nothing new), and you've got a gory horror comedy (Severance). Each of these films, like most horror films, can be considered formal exercises, but they are sincere, not wanky self referential formal exercises. Each of these films is made by someone who really understands and respects the subgenre he has chosen to work in, and each of these films has themes that resonate beyond "hey, that was a cool version of this or that horror movie trope."
Horror is interesting because its SOOO generic. We go to genre films because we want a certain thing, and a genre film that doesn't deliver is, in some sense, a failure. A porn movie without anything arousing in it is not a good porn movie. A horror movie that does not pay attention to certain expectations is a failure. But so many horror movies are JUST about delivering upon those expectation. I think because horror is so consistently marketable (at least in its straight to video-DVD incarnations), and because it has a well defined cult audience, you can really just churn out product. It's kind of like generic music. "Hey! You like punk rock! Here's some more punk rock!" Nom nom nom. . . .
The generically of horror and has empowered generations of oddballs, kooks and geniuses to make films, but really, the point of having horror movies is to allow for the possibility for somebody to make a movie that really shakes you up somehow. That might include films that unsettle you because they are nihilistic and violent, that unsettle you because they are surreal and disruptive to your ordinary way of making sense of the world, etc. The best horror films often end up working as black comedy. I think that's because the best horror often serve as grostesque, funhouse mirror views of reality. "Dawn of the Dead" or "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" for example.
I've seen too many horror films lately that were just about being mean or nasty. "Deadgirl," for example. Suck suck suck. It was advertise to be a reflection on misogyny. It was basically a gross soap opera starring unpleasant and unrealistic people. Now, if it were a GOOD gross soap opera, that'd be one thing. Not everything has to be George Romero. But that shit was just tedious. If you're watching a movie about people fucking a corpse and you are bored, it's not a good movie.
Necromantic, now there's a good movie about corpse fucking.
I'm drifting away from my point.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Are video games art?
Yes. Certainly they are.
But are they GOOD-worthy-of-being-taken-seriously art?
No. Not very often anyway.
This discussion was going on in a comment board I was reading and a video game guy defended video games from the charge of being "war porn" (because video games fetishize blowing shit up and discourage the player from criticizing violence) by arguing that the content of games wasn't the issue because, in his words, "Gaming is about gaming, not the story."
Exactly. And that is a good explanation of why the vast majority of video games are completely disqualified from being serious art. They may be clever ways to waste time. They may be great escapism. They may even help the use to develop cognitive or problem solving skills. They can be a fun hobby that allows you to interact with other people. (Like all hobbies and pop culture, games are a good ice breaker and a good way to develop casual friendships. The stereotype of the antisocial loner gamer is, in my experience, false.) But none of those things make something good art. If we do use the "art" standard to evaluate most games, they might be art, but they are dreadful art. Because the story generally doesn't stand up to much strutiny. Because that isn't why people play video games.
Most video games are indeed "about the gaming" and "not about the story." Certainly plenty of art is non representational or non narrative, so it's not that "story" needs to be an important concern of a work of art, but the idea that the plot doesn't matter kinda means you aren't dealing with art. "War Porn" is a pretty good term for what many of the most sophisticated games we've got these days are. It's fun to pretend to be a super soilder/secret agent/hitman/name your fantasy fighting dude character, but a narrative built around characters like that is going to have an awfully hard time passing the sniff test.
That doesn't make games "illegitimate." I have yet to read about a video game that has anything to say about the human condition that isn't recycled from either a really shitty sci-fi novel or a Micheal Bay movie. But so what? Everything doesn't have to be great art. I really liked the first Tranformers movie. It isn't serious art though. To borrow a metaphor from another post, I also enjoy masterbating from time to time. That isn't serious art either. Although I do tend to take it rather seriously at the time. . .
People into geek culture (I'm talking about people I know and about past versions of myself, not about some straw geek out there) have a tenancy to confuse "stuff I like" and "stuff that is cool" with "serious art." "Serious art" is evaluated by "serious art" criteria. You are free not agree with "serious art" criteria if you'd like, but don't be all insecure. The truth is that great art happens either because of the friction created by great artists or by folk traditions that allow for individuals to put their own stamp on archetypal tropes. Blockbuster big budget consumer culture DOES have elements of both of those things, but the ways that commercial pressures work in those kinds of media generally mean that seriousness is impossible. Hell, the GENRES that big budget pop culture productions like fancy video games have to work in make serious at really hard to come by. Face it, when you are doing something that involves pretending to blow up things with big ass guns, you might pick some kind of standard for us to talk other than "art." Unless you really enjoy looking silly.
Not saying video games are stupid. Not saying people shouldn't play them. Am saying you really shouldn't expect the rest of us to take them seriously. Not yet. There's no reason why a videogame couldn't be serious art. To my knowledge, it hasn't happened yet. There's lots of really fun, amazingly crafted stuff out there. But I'm not aware of a video game that has anything to say about aesthetics or about the human condition that's remotely valuable. But that's not really the point of a video game is it?
Just to clarify, when I say "serious," I don't mean "without humor" or "dramatic." I mean "worthy of critical scrutiny," "changes something about the way the viewer sees the world," and "overcomes the constraints of genre and convention." "Serious" art is worth considering no matter what. You often have to learn how to fully appreciate it. Even if your first encounter is engaging and fun and easy, you need to go back and see what's there. "Great art" is something that you engage in a life altering, serious way. You may not like some serious art, but if you grapple with it, it'll make you a better, more thoughtful person, even if you decide that it's a load of shit. There are handful of really exceptional videogames that do what they do so well that the player may be awestruck, but I know of no games that a non-gamer would have any reason to give a damn about.
Blah, blah blah. I'm done.Sunday, December 27, 2009
Vic Chesnutt, R.I.P.
I found out on Christmas Day that Vic Chenutt died. He had passed away a few hours before after lingering in the hospital for a few days after his latest suicide attempt. It was his fifth (I think) attempt at it. This one took.
Very very sad. He was a big deal to Georgia Music, and traces of him were all over a lot of music and a lot of local culture that I care about. He was one of our great poets and one of our great musicians. I just recently got around to listening to him though, which makes me feel pretty dumb for not paying more attention. I had started checking his website for tour info. I wanted to be extra sure to catch him the next time he came around, since his health hasn't been great.
His death is very sad, but also infuriating. Part of what was dragging him down during the last years of his life was the tremendous difficulty he had with the American health care system. He HAD insurance. He made a decent living. His family was over 70 grand in debt from his bills. His insurance had paid out over a hundred grand, but it wasn't enough. He needed a lot of little operations for the complications from his paralysis. The latest thing was a kidney stone operation. According to an interview I read recently, he couldn't get that operation. It meant that he might lose a kidney.
Since he tried to kill himself so many times during his life, it's hard to blame that stress for his death, but it couldn't have helped. It's overwhelming to think about.
Here's a link to where you can donate money to his family to help pay off that medical debt, and below is a link to some music.
http://kristinhersh.cashmusic.org/vic/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV_5HtxV3H4
Very very sad. He was a big deal to Georgia Music, and traces of him were all over a lot of music and a lot of local culture that I care about. He was one of our great poets and one of our great musicians. I just recently got around to listening to him though, which makes me feel pretty dumb for not paying more attention. I had started checking his website for tour info. I wanted to be extra sure to catch him the next time he came around, since his health hasn't been great.
His death is very sad, but also infuriating. Part of what was dragging him down during the last years of his life was the tremendous difficulty he had with the American health care system. He HAD insurance. He made a decent living. His family was over 70 grand in debt from his bills. His insurance had paid out over a hundred grand, but it wasn't enough. He needed a lot of little operations for the complications from his paralysis. The latest thing was a kidney stone operation. According to an interview I read recently, he couldn't get that operation. It meant that he might lose a kidney.
Since he tried to kill himself so many times during his life, it's hard to blame that stress for his death, but it couldn't have helped. It's overwhelming to think about.
Here's a link to where you can donate money to his family to help pay off that medical debt, and below is a link to some music.
http://kristinhersh.cashmusic.org/vic/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV_5HtxV3H4
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)