Britpop and the liberal conspiracy
jackkincaid
[snip]
> >>>
> >>>The story of pop music is the story of integration: the mixing of
> >>>musical styles from different parts of the world,
> >>
> >>Ah, I was waiting for the liberal bigot internationalist fantasy to
> >>appear. RH
Whenever the facts get in the way of your argumet you resort to the
same meaningless phrase. Awfully boring, old chap.
> >
[snip yer basic account of how pop music - and all art - works]
>
> I well aware of cultural interchange in what I believe is called popular
> music.
Yes, m'lud.
> What I was objecting to was the attempt by the poster to make it
> part of the liberal bigot internationalist fantasy.
...which exists only in your own mind.
>
> The other point
There wasn't a first point.
> is that when a cultural influence is taken into another
> country, it is soon manipulated to the cultural tone of that country. RH
Obviously. I haven't said anything else, and neither havce any of the
other people in this thread. Each culture reinterpretes an art form in
its own way, according to the dominant mores of the time, and the art
form mutates.
We see it in painting too. One of the most typically 'English' forms
of art is the landscape painting of Turner and Constable, which was a
reworking of Claude Lorraine and Canaletto (France and Italy
respectively), and which was reworked in turn by Monet and Pissarro
(back to France), and so on and so forth. All art works this way - and
by the time French Impressionism came back to England in the Edwardian
period it was reworked again by the St Ives school and Duncan Grant
etc. 'English' painting itself had changed over time, just as pop
music has, just as all art does all the time all over the world.
Incidentally, if anyone's interested, I think the genesis for this
thread was an article written a few years ago by none other than John
Redwood (no, really) for one of the Tory tabloids trying to 'claim'
Britpop for the Tories, written a couple of years after the fashion
had died out (poor John: nobody told him). Ever since, occasional
Telegraph hacks have been jumping on the bandwagon with silly essays
about paisley pop, references to Chelsea pensioners and Union Jacks
draped over drumkits, completely missing the irony and kitsch appeal
of it all. Swinging Sixties Britain is one of the most fascinating
periods in modern pop culture there has been - from John Steed and Mrs
Peel to Davey Jones joining the Monkees to Eleanor Rigby, Mary Ann
with the Shaky Hand and Miss Amelia Jones to John Drake imprisoned in
Portmerion to Do Not Adjust Your Set to Alfie and Blow-Up to the
14-hour Technicolour Dream to dropping acid on Glastonbury Tor in a
wizard's hat - it's a deeply fascinating and attractive period, and
it's true - it is British. It borrows from American and European
culture, and was endlessly imitated abroad, but it is also truly,
recognisably British. It existed on the cusp of the dying old order of
post-war austerity and rationing, grumpy old battleaxes in horn-rims
and rollers and ridiculous city gents in bowlers and pin-stripes, and
the exciting new order of peace and love, sexual liberation, mind
expansion and worldwide tolerance (or so they thought). Hence the need
for so much Brit-kitsch - the double-decker buses, red phone boxes,
Chelsea pensioner uniforms, Union Jack underpants and dancing bobbies
(see Austin Powers).
It's truly British the way the Haight-Ashbury psychedelic scene was
truly Californian: unique, and yet commonplace at the same time.
Britpop was an attempt to recapture some of the buzz by recreating
some of the musical forms, but it was only ever a brief attempt at
ironic nostalgia; it wasn't supposed tpo be taken *seriously* and
besides, it had been done a million times before (see The Smiths, The
Style Council - in fact, paul weller's entire life - Quadrophenia etc.
etc.) and will be done again.
As you'd expect, the Telegraph discovered the phenomenon a few years
after it died out, when it realised far too late Tony Blair had
exploited its popularity for his own political ends (remember that
D:ream song?). Britpop's last gasp was probably Noel Gallagher's
invite to meet Blair at No10 - which at the time, the Telegraph
condemned, just as in an earlier era the Telegraph condemned Harold
Wilson for giving MBEs to The Beatles. Never trust an Old Etonian. And
whatever you do, don't turn to the Torygraph for advice on pop music.
Not only can they not be trusted, old Etonians have no sense of
rhythm.
[snip]
> >
> >What *is* the "liberal bigot internationalist fantasy"? Is it simply the
> >commonly-acknowledged truth that there are cultural interchanges in the
> >world generally?
>
> No. It is the pretence that we are all one big happy human family and
> that nation states are evil. RH
What on earth are you talking about? If this is what your conspiracy
theory ammounts to it's pretty thin gruel.
Nation states are all we have. What is it all of us always argue about
on this newsgroup? One way or another, whether it's disguised as an
argument about race, or religion, or the Euro, or immigration, it
always comes down to the nation state, national loyalty and the future
of Britain, or England, as an independent country.
Almost all of us believe in the nation state. We are faced by two
competing powers: an increasingly beligerent and isolationist USA,
making greater demands on us to accept its primacy in all
international policy, even if it goes against our (national)
interests, and the ideology of the dispossesed, oppressed and
dirt-poor, which used to be communism and is now Islamism.
We can never accept the latter, because it's insane, and we cannot
accept the former - even though the US is our friend - because it
would destroy us as an independent nation. This goes right to the
heart of the European debate. Each European country has a specific,
unique culture: each is complicated, and ever-changing, but is
uniquely theirs and is different to America's. The change is crucial,
because the west is dying - all western countries, American as much as
European, have ageing populations which are not being replaced, which
means immigration is a necessity, but at the same time, loyalty to the
nation state, which means to the national culture, is crucial too.
America's culture is less formed, and the US is 20 years ahead of
Europe in reinventing itself as an immigrant community - something it
has done, so far, successfully; something not every European nation
may be able to do.
Britain sits in the middle of all this. We could open ourselves up,
abolish our public sector and become a US-style free market
free-for-all - in which case we should need to abolish the last of our
cultural and political shibboleths: our monarchy, our state religion,
our parliament, our messy non-constitution, and reinvent our country
as a land fit for pioneers, with a (US-style) constitution and
(US-style) political arrangements that would remove any remaining
impediments to the new entrepreneurial spirit. In other words, we
could give up being British (or more probably, English - the Scots and
Welsh would have buggered off years before we got that far) and become
the *ipso facto* 51st state of America.
Or we could do what we've cautiously been doing already, and give up
some of our sovereignty to European institutions, perhaps even give up
our currency (we've long since lost our ability to control our own
economy), in the expectation that what might be perceived as the
larger prize - British culture, British institutions (albeit with
reduced sovereignty), British way of life and British influence within
Europe - remain intact.
That's the choice. We already know that culture changes but the
argument is, I suppose, how do we exert the most control over that
change? How do we take the people with us - or how do we maintain
national loyalty? Most politicians in Britain have already made up
their mind: Britain should become part of the European Union. A tiny
handful of morons - the BNP - reject that idea but have no better
idea. A larger number - William Hague and friends - want us to join
NAFTA, leave the EU and head down Route 66 to the Promised Land. And
yet another group - the Tory leadership - don't know what to do and
have elected to keep quiet about it.
There is no conspiracy (except a conspiracy of silence, I suppose, but
all politicians are guilty of that); the 'liberal elite' is everyone
with an opinion.
One other thing: I think there's evidence now that the EU is beginning
to punch its weight in the world. We've all come across the media
campaign being waged in the US media against Europe - because
Europeans are insufficiently grateful to President Bush for allowing
al-Qaeda to escape Afghanistan; because we're insufficiently
supportive of his attempts to tell the Palestinians who to elect as
their leader; because we don't allow lobbysits for the Likud to write
our foreign policy; because Europe wants to solve the problems of
global warming, nuclear proliferation and wants an international court
of human rights, and Bush has his hands tied by oil and defence
interests in Congress - but more important than all that, the EU is
becoming the guarantor of free trade. It is the US that is going down
the protectionist road now, not Europe - or perhaps not Europe: things
could change again. But if agricultural subsidies are to finally end
in the west to allow in cheap food from the third world, thus boosting
their economies (and cutting refugee numbers and our aid budgets) and
ending the CAP, I think it will be Europe that does it first, not the
USA. That is quite a reversal, and I think Bush and others may be
getting ever so slightly worried about it. After all, changes in WTO
laws could be next.
Robin Carmody
news:eb35fbed.02070...@posting.google.com...
> Incidentally, if anyone's interested, I think the genesis for this
> thread was an article written a few years ago by none other than John
> Redwood (no, really) for one of the Tory tabloids trying to 'claim'
> Britpop for the Tories, written a couple of years after the fashion
> had died out (poor John: nobody told him).
As a matter of fact, the article concerned was published in March 1996
(Britpop was still big then) and appeared, improbably, in the Guardian!
<snip excellent analysis of the 60s>
> Britain sits in the middle of all this. We could open ourselves up,
> abolish our public sector and become a US-style free market
> free-for-all -
Been happening gradually anyway. OK, not the abolition of the public sector
(which won't happen unless the Tories get back) but the opening up to the
free market.
Post-war Britain:
1945-79: the corporatist society (doesn't matter which party was in power,
the ethos was the same)
1979 onwards: the free market society (doesn't matter which party was in
power, the ethos again was *essentially* the same)
Discuss.
in which case we should need to abolish the last of our
> cultural and political shibboleths: our monarchy, our state religion,
> our parliament, our messy non-constitution, and reinvent our country
> as a land fit for pioneers,
It psychologically feels like that to me now, anyway.
with a (US-style) constitution and
> (US-style) political arrangements that would remove any remaining
> impediments to the new entrepreneurial spirit.
Those impediments have already been removed in the British psyche IMO.
In other words, we
> could give up being British (or more probably, English - the Scots and
> Welsh would have buggered off years before we got that far) and become
> the *ipso facto* 51st state of America.
Germany seems to be rivalling us sometimes for that honour.
> Or we could do what we've cautiously been doing already, and give up
> some of our sovereignty to European institutions, perhaps even give up
> our currency (we've long since lost our ability to control our own
> economy), in the expectation that what might be perceived as the
> larger prize - British culture, British institutions (albeit with
> reduced sovereignty), British way of life and British influence within
> Europe - remain intact.
That is already happening. Much of continental Europe is Americanised
enough that I don't get this idea of a straight choice. I simply don't
understand the one-or-the-other theorists. We can be a European country and
be saturated with US influence. So is Germany.
In fact, I think Germany is the European country closest to us. Seriously.
A lot of the antipathy towards Germany in Britain comes from the fact that
they are so much like us - sharing a culture with the US and thinking of
those who regard American culture as a neanderthal influence as
backward-thinking cranks (which is the biggest difference between
Britain/Germany and France). Indeed I think a lot of Sun / Mail readers
have realised *in their minds* that we're not really significantly different
from the Germans, but they don't want to admit it, so they desperately keep
up the hatred so as to make themselves feel psychologically secure.
Privately, they know they're fooling themselves, but they can't concede it
yet.
If you don't want to admit the truth, you hate those most similar to
yourself, I think. Germany provides the greatest proof that it is possible
for a nation to be at the heart of the EU while retaining the mass
Americanisation that we have now. No wonder the Sun and the Mail hate it -
every day, they fear the public realisation that its success (despite its
current economic slowdown and high unemployment) is exploding their cultural
myth.
> One other thing: I think there's evidence now that the EU is beginning
> to punch its weight in the world. We've all come across the media
> campaign being waged in the US media against Europe - because
> Europeans are insufficiently grateful to President Bush for allowing
> al-Qaeda to escape Afghanistan; because we're insufficiently
> supportive of his attempts to tell the Palestinians who to elect as
> their leader; because we don't allow lobbysits for the Likud to write
> our foreign policy; because Europe wants to solve the problems of
> global warming, nuclear proliferation and wants an international court
> of human rights, and Bush has his hands tied by oil and defence
> interests in Congress - but more important than all that, the EU is
> becoming the guarantor of free trade. It is the US that is going down
> the protectionist road now, not Europe - or perhaps not Europe: things
> could change again. But if agricultural subsidies are to finally end
> in the west to allow in cheap food from the third world, thus boosting
> their economies (and cutting refugee numbers and our aid budgets) and
> ending the CAP, I think it will be Europe that does it first, not the
> USA. That is quite a reversal, and I think Bush and others may be
> getting ever so slightly worried about it. After all, changes in WTO
> laws could be next.
Well quite. It shows that modern Europe is a serious player, and that the
US does *not* always lead the world in terms of free trade.
--
Robin Carmody