He so wants to believe.
One of the best reasons for happiness during this holiday season is that the nation is making a slow comeback from a terrible state. I mean the spiritual, cultural and moral recession driven by decadent extremes.Well, I wouldn't mind seeing that myself. But Crouch doesn't really mean the whole nation. He means the black nation and its culture:
Just a few years ago, the black women of Spelman College of Atlanta raised audible resentment against hip hop figure Nelly about his lewd “Tip Drill” and scared him from appearing on campus.And you can see why he suffers, the new "authenticity" is quite a come down from, to pick only one sublime example, Thelonius Monk.
Little happened after that. There were a few books written about “blackness,” but they did not create real questions about the material that supposedly defined a new level of black “authenticity.” That authenticity expressed itself in low-grade terms and inspired a disturbing number of young people to look like minstrels, especially those men who walk the streets with their underwear showing as they shout ethnic slurs at each other just about anywhere that they can.
"Blackness" has become an excuse for all manner of degradation and the impetus for this comes from whites. Eager to ditch their own culture, whites and particularly young whites, have embraced the most appalling stereotypes. Young black men like Nelly, eager to get rich, have played the part expected of them. But the problem starts with white criticism of white culture. Post-imperialism, anti-capitalism, post-modernism and some forms of feminism have fed this beast by telling young blacks and other ethnics that white Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture is worthless. And that is a lie. It's a long way from perfect but it is one of if not the greatest culture in the history of humanity.
Those of us who come from outside it and find ourselves sometimes demeaned by this culture do ourselves no favours by trying to pretend otherwise.
I think you're right to say pity Crouch, because his evidence for a recovery from decadence is so thin. (1) A daytime TV show host criticized the Kardashians.(2) Evidently, some websites ("Black websites such as The Grio") have begun to criticize celebrities like Lil Wayne. Given the intentionally provocative content of rap lyrics, his criminal behavior, and general outlook on life, there's no shortage of stuff to criticize, but it's different because he's actually criticized for the meaning of his cultural production (such as it is) while the Kardashians are criticized for pure vacuousness. So the two examples aren't even the same, and even if they were... there are only two of them. Oh, plus the thing about Nelly (a guy who had maybe 2 really famous songs, and who is hardly on the extreme end of the misogyny spectrum).
ReplyDeleteI agree.
ReplyDeleteI think poor Crouch is scared to broaden his critique for two reasons.
1) He believes, with good reason, that if he wrote the truth about what others would consider the best hip hop that pop critics would dismiss him for saying so.
2) The other thing, and this must hit really close to home for him, is that the whole "authenticity"-justifies-simplistic-and-crass-music-and-behaviour meme goes all the way back to the hard bop era in the 1950s but if he wrote the truth about that intellectuals will dismiss him for saying so.
In other words, he knows, but doesn't dare say, that the current depressing state of African-American culture has very deep roots and that pointing this out would lead to his being an even more marginalized figure than he already is.
So he snipes at some obvious extremes and hopes things wil get better.
I'm not sure if I follow you all the way on the argument about authenticity. I don't disagree with the two points of your comment. But I don't think that the intellectual side of the argument is strongly connected to the broader phenomenon of popularity. What I mean is, high school students don't need theoretical justifications about black authenticity to like Lil Wayne, their appreciation of his "authenticity" is more linked to general bullshit tests having to do with boasting about sex and violence and so on, as well as the "authenticity" of his ability.
ReplyDeleteI agree entirely about high school students.
ReplyDeleteAuthenticity is a negative concept. I get to be authentic by not distorting what is genuine. All the theoretical effort—insofar as any is needed—is devoted to exposing the inauthentic rather than identifying the really authentic.
So, exactly as you say, in practice the authentic tends to be anything that isn't restricting the way anyone's own culture is going to feel when I'm young. The replacement culture tends to be a fantasy.
Here's a painfully embarrassing example from my own youth. Listening to a lot of reggae in my high school days I convinced myself that Rastafarian culture was this very authentic thing that represented the real soul of all Jamaicans. I was the obnoxious pedant on the subject of authentic Jamaica in those days even though I'd never been within a thousand miles of the place.
Then I went to Jamaica and found Rastafarians were marginal group with little cultural influence—that Bob Marley was a Rastafarian was no more significant for Jamaica than the fact that Michael Jackson was a Jehovah's Witness was here. Most Jamaicans I met thought the Rasta guys were con artists.
What made it especially painful is that my father had figured that out without leaving his armchair here in Canada. He had the huge advantage that he wasn't using Rolling Stone Magazine as his primary information source.
Stanley Crouch has always been a hack. I remember in 2006 when he wrote two articles condemning an MTV cartoon called "Where My Dogs at?" for showing Snoop Dogg walking with women wearing dog collars. He also praised Lisa Fager for attacking the show as racist and misogynist. His articles were widely quoted and the show was cancelled because of it. He forgot to mention that Snoop Dogg did walk aound with women wearing dog collars and that the cartoon had called Snoop's behavior "degrading". Crouch also "forgot" to mention that Lisa Fager's Facebook page listed her favorite TV show as "The Boondocks" and "The Boondocks" 2nd episode had shown a 14 year old black girl being urinated on and enjoying it. When he was informed about this he refused comment. How does he get away with this?
ReplyDeleteJust watched "Where My Dogs at?" with the Snoop parody. Sorry, Crouch may not get much right but he called that one right. One of the dogs, upon seeing the women on the leashes says, "I'm a dog and I find that degrading" or words to that effect but it doesn't rise to a criticism of Snoop in context. Just a moment later, one of the women is portrayed as defecating on the floor and later on we see her cheerfully curling up on the floor apparently happy in her role. Far from chastising Snoop, the show glorifies him.
ReplyDeleteAnd, by the way, "Where My Dogs at?" may be the lamest, most unfunny cartoon ever. It warms my heart to know that piece of crap has been scooped and flushed.
And you think the woman who agree to go to MTV awards with Snoop dressed in dog collars are beyond parody and deserve respect. That's a interesting take on it. I guess Boondocks should have been flushed too for showing a 14 year old enjoying being urinated on. Maybe if "Where My Dogs at?" had shown Snoop urinating on an underage girl it would have earned the respect of Crouch, Fager and yourself or maybe it all comes down to the fact that one cartoon was drawn by whites and another was drawn by blacks. Racism is a two way street and I don't see you Crouch or Fager attacking "The Boondocks" a show that used the "N Word" in every other sentence.
ReplyDeleteActually, I do think they deserve respect even if they fail to respect themselves.
ReplyDeleteI think you have inadvertently put your finger on the truth here when you say "beyond parody". To parody is to exaggerate behaviour so as to bring it into question. When behaviour is already as far over the top as theirs was, there isn't anything to exaggerate.
And what do you think goes on in the head of your average middle-class Snoop fan when he sees Snoop appear with two women like that? You yourself don't seem to believe the women deserve much respect. Is it okay to degrade other people because they participate willingly? And if you agree to that, what do you think it does to you as a party to this degradation?
I think when two black women wearing leashes and dog collars go to the 2003 MTV Video Music Award show, that is viewed by tens of millions of people and covered by every newspaper in the country, and get no criticism from anyone that it sends a message that this kind of behavior is ok. If you can find any condemning remarks from Fager, Crouch or yourself about the 2003 Award Show stunt please print it.
ReplyDeleteYour argument here seems to be that if someone criticizes vile portrayal of women in one instance that criticism is somehow undermined because there was once another case of the same thing and they didn't say anything that previous time.
ReplyDeleteYou may want to think about that one for a while. It's not much of an argument. If I were you, I'd try to come up with something better and I wish you good luck with it.
The first instance WAS a criticism of the previous time. I love the way you ignore that black leaders, newspapers, Stanley Crouch, Lisa Fager and yourself never objected to Snoop going to the MTV award show with women wearing leashes and dog collars, but when "Where My Dogs at?" called it "degrading" THEN you are all outraged. Good luck to you too. With that kind of logic you certainly are going to need it.
ReplyDelete