Worm
Taste the diffidence
I want to warn everyone who has clicked on this post that what I have written below is probably going to be tedious. In fact, I'm sure it will elicit some jeers. This post is probably going to seem vicious, pedantic, and overbearing.
You know what? It might be.
But since reading Armond White's piece in Slate the other day, I've had it rattling around in my head, and as time passed, I realized that I couldn't let a number of White's blunders pass unremarked.
I responded to the general ideas already. But I was still slightly put out by it. So I took out a scalpel and went to work. And what I found was that White's essay is so poorly thought-out and so badly written that it saddens me to think that uninitiated readers who chance across his essay will most likely not give ROTT a chance.
I actually struggled with my decision to go after White's work. After all, any of my posts could be torn apart just as easily. I decided to write this because he's published on Slate-- and writing a book on Morrissey-- which makes him fair game.
Now, I don't know, maybe White was beating a deadline. He seems like a decent person. If anything, maybe his crime is that he's coming to Morrissey a little late in the game to write a review like the one he did. So I feel a little guilty getting all peevish about it.
I'd post this on Slate's message board but I don't want to propagate the myth of the bitchy Morrissey fan. Which, y'know-- obviously I am.
But enough of the preface. If you read "The Politics of Morrissey" on Slate and have the stomach to read a ranting response, I, a bitchy Morrissey fan, offer you the following...
NOTES ON "THE POLITICS OF MORRISSEY"
The Slate editor was too kind in offering only one correction to White. Here are some questions and general remarks which, I hope, might lead to some corrections. Yes, I readily concede that these are just my subjective opinions and that all interpretations are valid. (Yawn.)
[This is a line-by-line response to his essay. I don't think you need the essay in front of you, but it would help to have read it.]
1. Does anyone in 2006 believe moping is “a global condition”? Did 9/11 make anyone mope? Would you describe the world that way even loosely, figuratively? I see a world full of angry, edgy people. And if the world has become "mopey", then how much praise does Morrissey's new album deserve? He seems luckier, in that case, that the public's taste has swung around to appreciate his voice than he does artistic or thoughtful. This is the "stopped clock is right twice a day" type of critical appreciation, apparently. I suppose that when the world is happy again Morrissey's muse will have abandoned him.
2. “Mope Rock” is not a "middlebrow" swipe from the middle classes, it is a swipe at the middle classes, just as music for “students” is reviled in England.
3. The New York Times did not get Americans off to a bad start with Morrissey and The Smiths. That honor belongs to Kurt Loder, who, in the pages of Rolling Stone in 1984, labeled Morrissey as a homosexual in a review of “The Smiths”. Politics played no part.
4. Each song on “Ringleader” is about “unique emotional turmoil”, yet describes “how we live now”?
5. Similarly, how can "unique" songs Morrissey wrote about himself be “consideration(s) of the current political mood”?
6. How is Morrissey’s “commitment to rock”—a phrase Morrissey himself would revile—in any way worthy of praise, when every year the ranks (and bellies) of middle-aged rockers swell? How is Morrissey different in his commitment to rock than, say, Springsteen or Neil Young?
7. “Social isolation”: redundant.
8. White himself calls The Smiths “bed-sit miserablism”, yet chides the New York Times for calling The Smiths “Mope Rock”.
9. “Bono’s po-faced sincerity”: the same Bono who has spent the last sixteen years openly, obnoxiously at times, tearing down that image? The sincerity is still there. But "po-faced"?
10. “Candidly personal yet vividly reportorial”: reportorial of what? Is any “personal” lyric ever not “candid”?
11. Can’t “candidly personal” songs that attempt an “indulgence of complex, contradictory feelings” be seen as reflecting any and all political viewpoints-- to the point of approaching apathy or solipsism rather than commitment to one side?
12. What does “luxurious worry” mean, and can a record documenting someone's "luxurious worry" ever unsettle anyone?
13. Does the “ineffability” of his opening tracks sound like the subject matter of “Reel Around The Fountain”, “The Headmaster Ritual”, “The Queen Is Dead”, “Alsatian Cousin”, “Our Frank”, “You’re Gonna Need Someone On Your Side”, “Now My Heart Is Full”, “The Teachers Are Afraid Of The Pupils”, “Maladjusted”, or “America Is Not The World”? Pretty specific, tangible targets in those songs, no?
14. I am impressed indeed that a critic can be wowed by “powerful repetitive murmurs”.
15. “Insurrectionists and suicide bombers—of all stripes—fondly embraced” is one of the most irresponsible, reprehensible, and above all groundless interpretations of Morrissey’s songs I have ever read. Worse even than the racism charges. Are murderous thugs hiding in caves the only ones who end up mugging for cameras? Has Osama ever “pulled a face”? The point is to emphasize distance—Morrissey is watching these people from afar, on TV, showing solidarity with people who, as he is, are subject to the warlike caprices of the powerful. Has White given a second thought to what it means when he implies in his review that the use of a Muslim sound effect automatically refers to terrorists?
16. “Only pop's greatest malcontent”: I thought Morrissey insisted on rock. The meaning of “pop” and “rock” often shade together, true, but White has specifically pointed out Morrissey’s “rock” loyalty as opposed to “folk”—which, too, is often interchangeable with “pop”.
17. “Pop music that brazens predictable positions”: I thought we were talking about rock? Because there are hordes of examples of rock taking unpredictable turns. So Morrissey is pop now?
18. “Don’t push me cuz I’m close to the edge” is a line in Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message”, a song that isn't "pop"-- it's one of the first hip-hop hits, and as such it was, in fact, anything but “brazenly predictable” for its time. Indeed, hip-hop was for years deeply unsettling to the establishment. Does White, a music critic, not know this?
19. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of the history of Morrissey’s songs in The Smiths and his solo career knows that he has long had a passion for “the romance of crime”—a simple affection or fascination, not an ironic way of bringing anyone back into the fold. Indeed, as we note in songs like “Piccadilly Palare” and “Ambitious Outsiders”, there is a homoerotic texture to the crime-themed lyrics. Fusing homosexuality and criminality—not surprising from a man who is a professed admirer of Oscar Wilde. (Mark Simpson has also written of the connection to Genet, whose fiction offers more striking examples of the type.) These are not outsiders waiting to be brought into the fold. Morrissey’s position, for the most part, has been to celebrate their independence and freedom from the breeder population. Perversity-- maladjustment-- is a curse and a virtue all at once. “No Dad, I won’t be home tomorrow”.
20. “Ringleader is a vindication of the bold, discomforting social insight that Morrissey-haters have always denied”: looking for Morrissey in that slop? So am I.
21. There is absolutely no reading of “Girlfriend In A Coma” that I am aware of which could allow for the tweaking of gender in that song. At most, you can say that Morrissey is singing from a genderless point of view, so he could be a lesbian (and has considered it, no doubt), but in any case there is no blurring of gender-- er, sorry, "gender-confounding".
22. Ever seen a gender confounded, by the way? Or tried to confound one? (Okay, technically accurate-- but Christ does it sound awful.)
23. There are twenty other gender-bending songs in his work which spring to mind much faster than “Girlfriend In A Coma”, anyway. How about “Sheila Take A Bow” as a painfully easy one? “You’re a girl and I’m a boy” followed by “You’re a boy and I’m a girl”. Shall I mention the Candy Darling picture sleeve?
24. “Girlfriend In A Coma” is not a love song. The cleverness White claims to recognize in Morrissey’s lyrics is lost on him here. The song is about a man (or, okay, a woman) who is secretly pleased his (or her) lover has gone veggie in a bad way. The speaker's tender affection is a put-on for the doctor whom he addresses with his questions. I mean, brilliant song but we're not exactly puzzling out "Finnegan's Wake" here.
25. “Obstreperousness of his rhyming social critiques”. Okay. First of all, I don’t find any “obstreperous” rhymes in “Shoplifters Of The World Unite”, do you? Ways/Always, Crime/mind, War/Four. Secondly, the way the sentence reads, we are inexplicably led to see that Morrissey trafficks in...“rhyming social critiques”? I want to cry.
(continued)
You know what? It might be.
But since reading Armond White's piece in Slate the other day, I've had it rattling around in my head, and as time passed, I realized that I couldn't let a number of White's blunders pass unremarked.
I responded to the general ideas already. But I was still slightly put out by it. So I took out a scalpel and went to work. And what I found was that White's essay is so poorly thought-out and so badly written that it saddens me to think that uninitiated readers who chance across his essay will most likely not give ROTT a chance.
I actually struggled with my decision to go after White's work. After all, any of my posts could be torn apart just as easily. I decided to write this because he's published on Slate-- and writing a book on Morrissey-- which makes him fair game.
Now, I don't know, maybe White was beating a deadline. He seems like a decent person. If anything, maybe his crime is that he's coming to Morrissey a little late in the game to write a review like the one he did. So I feel a little guilty getting all peevish about it.
I'd post this on Slate's message board but I don't want to propagate the myth of the bitchy Morrissey fan. Which, y'know-- obviously I am.
But enough of the preface. If you read "The Politics of Morrissey" on Slate and have the stomach to read a ranting response, I, a bitchy Morrissey fan, offer you the following...
NOTES ON "THE POLITICS OF MORRISSEY"
The Slate editor was too kind in offering only one correction to White. Here are some questions and general remarks which, I hope, might lead to some corrections. Yes, I readily concede that these are just my subjective opinions and that all interpretations are valid. (Yawn.)
[This is a line-by-line response to his essay. I don't think you need the essay in front of you, but it would help to have read it.]
1. Does anyone in 2006 believe moping is “a global condition”? Did 9/11 make anyone mope? Would you describe the world that way even loosely, figuratively? I see a world full of angry, edgy people. And if the world has become "mopey", then how much praise does Morrissey's new album deserve? He seems luckier, in that case, that the public's taste has swung around to appreciate his voice than he does artistic or thoughtful. This is the "stopped clock is right twice a day" type of critical appreciation, apparently. I suppose that when the world is happy again Morrissey's muse will have abandoned him.
2. “Mope Rock” is not a "middlebrow" swipe from the middle classes, it is a swipe at the middle classes, just as music for “students” is reviled in England.
3. The New York Times did not get Americans off to a bad start with Morrissey and The Smiths. That honor belongs to Kurt Loder, who, in the pages of Rolling Stone in 1984, labeled Morrissey as a homosexual in a review of “The Smiths”. Politics played no part.
4. Each song on “Ringleader” is about “unique emotional turmoil”, yet describes “how we live now”?
5. Similarly, how can "unique" songs Morrissey wrote about himself be “consideration(s) of the current political mood”?
6. How is Morrissey’s “commitment to rock”—a phrase Morrissey himself would revile—in any way worthy of praise, when every year the ranks (and bellies) of middle-aged rockers swell? How is Morrissey different in his commitment to rock than, say, Springsteen or Neil Young?
7. “Social isolation”: redundant.
8. White himself calls The Smiths “bed-sit miserablism”, yet chides the New York Times for calling The Smiths “Mope Rock”.
9. “Bono’s po-faced sincerity”: the same Bono who has spent the last sixteen years openly, obnoxiously at times, tearing down that image? The sincerity is still there. But "po-faced"?
10. “Candidly personal yet vividly reportorial”: reportorial of what? Is any “personal” lyric ever not “candid”?
11. Can’t “candidly personal” songs that attempt an “indulgence of complex, contradictory feelings” be seen as reflecting any and all political viewpoints-- to the point of approaching apathy or solipsism rather than commitment to one side?
12. What does “luxurious worry” mean, and can a record documenting someone's "luxurious worry" ever unsettle anyone?
13. Does the “ineffability” of his opening tracks sound like the subject matter of “Reel Around The Fountain”, “The Headmaster Ritual”, “The Queen Is Dead”, “Alsatian Cousin”, “Our Frank”, “You’re Gonna Need Someone On Your Side”, “Now My Heart Is Full”, “The Teachers Are Afraid Of The Pupils”, “Maladjusted”, or “America Is Not The World”? Pretty specific, tangible targets in those songs, no?
14. I am impressed indeed that a critic can be wowed by “powerful repetitive murmurs”.
15. “Insurrectionists and suicide bombers—of all stripes—fondly embraced” is one of the most irresponsible, reprehensible, and above all groundless interpretations of Morrissey’s songs I have ever read. Worse even than the racism charges. Are murderous thugs hiding in caves the only ones who end up mugging for cameras? Has Osama ever “pulled a face”? The point is to emphasize distance—Morrissey is watching these people from afar, on TV, showing solidarity with people who, as he is, are subject to the warlike caprices of the powerful. Has White given a second thought to what it means when he implies in his review that the use of a Muslim sound effect automatically refers to terrorists?
16. “Only pop's greatest malcontent”: I thought Morrissey insisted on rock. The meaning of “pop” and “rock” often shade together, true, but White has specifically pointed out Morrissey’s “rock” loyalty as opposed to “folk”—which, too, is often interchangeable with “pop”.
17. “Pop music that brazens predictable positions”: I thought we were talking about rock? Because there are hordes of examples of rock taking unpredictable turns. So Morrissey is pop now?
18. “Don’t push me cuz I’m close to the edge” is a line in Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message”, a song that isn't "pop"-- it's one of the first hip-hop hits, and as such it was, in fact, anything but “brazenly predictable” for its time. Indeed, hip-hop was for years deeply unsettling to the establishment. Does White, a music critic, not know this?
19. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of the history of Morrissey’s songs in The Smiths and his solo career knows that he has long had a passion for “the romance of crime”—a simple affection or fascination, not an ironic way of bringing anyone back into the fold. Indeed, as we note in songs like “Piccadilly Palare” and “Ambitious Outsiders”, there is a homoerotic texture to the crime-themed lyrics. Fusing homosexuality and criminality—not surprising from a man who is a professed admirer of Oscar Wilde. (Mark Simpson has also written of the connection to Genet, whose fiction offers more striking examples of the type.) These are not outsiders waiting to be brought into the fold. Morrissey’s position, for the most part, has been to celebrate their independence and freedom from the breeder population. Perversity-- maladjustment-- is a curse and a virtue all at once. “No Dad, I won’t be home tomorrow”.
20. “Ringleader is a vindication of the bold, discomforting social insight that Morrissey-haters have always denied”: looking for Morrissey in that slop? So am I.
21. There is absolutely no reading of “Girlfriend In A Coma” that I am aware of which could allow for the tweaking of gender in that song. At most, you can say that Morrissey is singing from a genderless point of view, so he could be a lesbian (and has considered it, no doubt), but in any case there is no blurring of gender-- er, sorry, "gender-confounding".
22. Ever seen a gender confounded, by the way? Or tried to confound one? (Okay, technically accurate-- but Christ does it sound awful.)
23. There are twenty other gender-bending songs in his work which spring to mind much faster than “Girlfriend In A Coma”, anyway. How about “Sheila Take A Bow” as a painfully easy one? “You’re a girl and I’m a boy” followed by “You’re a boy and I’m a girl”. Shall I mention the Candy Darling picture sleeve?
24. “Girlfriend In A Coma” is not a love song. The cleverness White claims to recognize in Morrissey’s lyrics is lost on him here. The song is about a man (or, okay, a woman) who is secretly pleased his (or her) lover has gone veggie in a bad way. The speaker's tender affection is a put-on for the doctor whom he addresses with his questions. I mean, brilliant song but we're not exactly puzzling out "Finnegan's Wake" here.
25. “Obstreperousness of his rhyming social critiques”. Okay. First of all, I don’t find any “obstreperous” rhymes in “Shoplifters Of The World Unite”, do you? Ways/Always, Crime/mind, War/Four. Secondly, the way the sentence reads, we are inexplicably led to see that Morrissey trafficks in...“rhyming social critiques”? I want to cry.
(continued)
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