A few years ago a war raged between two grous, poptimists and the "rockists." They never managed to have a proper faceoff but generally argued pleasure of reception in the mass object v. the distinction of understanding a autonomously produced work of single authorship. Or something. Anyway this is the kind of thing the French have been arguing about basically forever.
It was made plain by "one of the 10 most important public intellectuals of the 20th century" (as per back of book) Pierre Bourdieu in his fantastic tome Distinction. Mind you, the guy forgot that France was a multicultural nation and he basically didn't deal with women at all but...you know....anyway the hit of the fall in France this year is a book called Les Soniques, which satirizes the French pop world in Baroque Frenchoffers and offers recipes for the cannibalization of stars. From what I can tell (being a sort of ugly American I cannot speak French), the book's humor is not a laughing with but laughing at, a serious damnation of the world that mass made. Whenever I am reading stuff for BMW I spend a lot of time thinking about this very question - from what angle comes the humor?
It comes from authors Niccolo Ricardo and Caius Locus (Nicolas Richard and DJ Kid Loco), who also offer the 10 point Belleview Manifesto, which becomes the operational principle of a label by the same name. The label itself is a critique of the world of 360 deals and celebrity-driven music consumption that seems based on the principle that musicianship is a hobby not labor, and that listening can only be pure without knowledge of author-context. The albums are 15 or 30 miniutes long and have no author assignment, are packaged in blank colored cardboard, and have the price of cost with no profit to the label. Of course their labelless, authorless, vinyl approach is a context too – a sort of post-minimalist, post-punk luddite fetish favored by cultural elites who disdain the masses. Indie at its purest - a mass cultural object with built in self-hate for those who know better than to love pop culture but can't stop!
Well, I wish I could read it regardless of its stance. As readers of the book may have realized, I have a soft spot for the wacky angle article and tend to love criticism written by professional writers who are not professional critics. Love the pro critics, but sometimes the big picture gets lost when one only listens and does not look, touch, or taste.
