Kitsch and the Danger of Guilty Pleasures – Pt 3

Please click here for part 1 and part 2 of the blog.

The song Independent Women vs. Dreadlock Holiday, when played at The University of Leeds Guilty Pleasures clubnight, was an alternative version to that on the album by 2 many djs as heard on radio soulwax pt.2. On the album the song begins with the classic Dreadlock Holiday intro but contains no vocals to the actual song Dreadlock Holiday. After a few bars of the Dreadlock Holiday intro Independent Women cuts in. The reggae accompaniment of Dreadlock Holiday continues through the song but the song is predominantly Independent Women; there are no vocals from the 10cc song on it. There are intervals when the Dreadlock Holiday melody appears, but there are no parts that are exclusively Dreadlock Holiday after the initial few bars. This song would be recognised by the contemporary popular music listener as a particular mix of the Destiny's Child song, although if anyone who knew the 10cc song heard the opening bars of this song, they would be expecting Dreadlock Holiday.

At the Guilty Pleasures clubnight Sean Rowley played either another mix or his own mix of Independent Women vs. Dreadlock Holiday. This was a much more equal balance of the two songs and included large exclusive parts of Dreadlock Holiday where whole verses were played interspersed with verses from Independent Women. This made it much more appropriable in terms of the signification of Guilty Pleasures. When becoming a relatively equal hybrid of the two songs the power of the myth is increased through its generic attraction. It is not quite one song or the other; its appeal is spread over a greater possible reception to it. Many individuals will connect to it due to its interpellative calling: like I did myself to Dreadlock Holiday, like the other students did to Independent Women. But, not only was I in a different 'headspace' to my fellow clubbers (it is possible I was the only person interpellated by the Dreadlock Holiday aspect of the song on that particular night), but they were all in different spaces to each other because of their mapping of their own personal histories onto the song. Yet they (we) all felt connected (actually I was alerted to the more obvious differences because of my age and because I had a sudden realisation at the time that they were dancing to a different song to the one I was dancing to). But, what I want to make specific reference to here, is the specifically individualised face of the myth in that it appears to speak to 'me' in a special way. This is what Roland Barthes means when he says that the myth acts like “a magical object springing up in my present life without a trace of the history which has caused it.” (2000: 125).

Like Theodor Adorno, Barthes spells out the danger of this 'calling' and how it has a specific relationship to history. However, Barthes explains particularly well how we are effected as individuals when caught, in the moment, by the ideology of the myth. Guilty Pleasures both affects us. We have a sensation of something - of a past life, of someone we once were, of a 'happier' time, perhaps. We are caught up in the myth of Guilty Pleasures, we do not recognise that “this interpellant speech is at the same time a frozen speech: at the moment of reaching me, it suspends itself, turns away and assumes the look of a generality: it stiffens, it makes itself look neutral and innocent.” (Barthes 2000: 125). The language of the myth becomes selective and partial because of what we choose to connect to in the history presented to us; at the same time it presents itself in such a way that what it is saying is taken 'as read', it is how things are, it is 'natural'.

The myth disguises itself through this innocence. Because “the truth of kitsch is its falseness” (Adorno 2002: 362), something is presented to the myth reader that appears to be non-threatening and inviting. For Guilty Pleasures this could be thought of as a past version of the individual being interpellated: how could a former 'me' be a threat? However, whereas in the past warnings were given to individuals not to buy kitsch because it was 'bad taste' and mass produced, nowadays individuals generally understand the concept of kitsch, it is much more recognisable. Nevertheless, I believe this knowledge does not make the individual impervious to its calling. Because the individual is aware that something is kitsch (in the sense of falsity) they enter into a relationship with it on the assumption they have total agency in this exchange, but kitsch operates on another level. I would describe this relationship with kitsch to be rather like that of the simulacra: a reflective mirroring which continually circulates and has no resting place. The present looks back at the past which is what creates the calling; the calling emanates from the individual but they have projected it onto the song and believe it to be outside them; the song, in its very personal way, hooks the psyche (the unconscious) of the individual; and yet the individual feels they are controlling this process because they 'know' this thing to be kitsch. The knowledge that something is kitsch does not prevent one being interpellated by it: the chosen object has already interpellated you before you consciously realised it was kitsch!

Finally, I would like to return to the history aspect of this blog (although we have never left it) and see what might be recuperated in Guilty Pleasures. Much more can be said about how history operates through ideology, especially by Adorno and Barthes, however I have been selective in my references to history in order to include the other aspects of the kitsch object that relate directly to Guilty Pleasures. But it is the history that is available in the object that the individual chooses not to see that is what might actually save it. Adorno cynically describes the positive aspect of kitsch as being the possibility that in the moment you may “realiz[e] that you have wasted your life” (1998: 50). And, Barthes explains that the concept in the second semiological level is “open to the whole of History” (2000: 121). Just because the interpellated dancer at the Guilty Pleasures clubnight chooses to see her own past in the nostalgic song does not mean other histories are not available. The histories available are endless, but they need to be sought out, as Adorno says we need to participate in history by engaging in an active way.

It has been my intention here to help Guilty Pleasures reveal its own secret. I did not have a particular end result in mind when I set out, and, as a fan of Guilty Pleasures, I was cognisant of not putting too positive a slant on it (although I hope because of that that I have not done the opposite). Critiquing a cultural object you actually enjoy, and in which you participate, makes for an interesting and self-reflective experience. Not that the enjoyment and the attempts to understand that process are separate.

As I stated in the opening to my blog: Guilty Pleasures is overdetermined in terms of areas available for critique. But it has been my intention here to look for something within Guilty Pleasures that is consistent: irrelevant of gender, time or class. I have attempted to find a common thread which would be relevant to all individuals who have participated in Guilty Pleasures, or will do so in the future. And if that moment represents a history to the individual - and if, as Adorno says, history takes place in language (2000 p.248) – then the Guilty Pleasures dancer/listener, in their communion (communication), is also participating in a present and (and future) history that is unfolding around them. As Adorno says: “The comprehension of an artwork as a complexion of truth brings the work into relation with its untruth, for there is no artwork that does not participate in the untruth external to it, that of the historical moment.” (1997: 347). Whilst the listener/dancer engages with a past self that is projected onto the song, they are simultaneously engaging with Guilty Pleasures and in everything it represents, which can only ever exist in the moment of its own production, in the now of the listening or the dance.

Click here for more Roland Barthes related work: The Semiotics of Space and the Culture of Design

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Books and Articles
Adorno, Theodor W. 1997. Aesthetic Theory, trans. by Gretel Adorno and Tiedmann (London: The Athlone Press).
----- 1998. 'Motifs', Quasi una Fantasia: Essays on Modern Music, trans. by Rodney Livingstone (London and New York: Verso) pp. 9-36.
----- 2000. ‘Extracts from Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life’, The Continental Aesthetics Reader, ed. by Clive Cazeaux (London and New York: Routledge) pp. 234-256.
----- 2001. 'The Schema of Mass Culture', The Culture Industry, ed. by J. M. Bernstein (London and New York: Routledge) pp. 61-97.
----- 2002a. 'On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening', Essays on Music, trans. by Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press) pp. 288-317.
----- 2002b. 'Kitsch', Essays on Music, trans. by Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press) pp. 501-505.
Barthes, Roland. 2000. 'Myth Today', Mythologies, trans. by Annette Lavers (London: Vintage) pp. 109-159.
Broch, Hermann. 1973. ‘Notes on the Problem of Kitsch’, Kitsch: An Anthology of Bad Taste, ed. by Gillo Dorfles (London: Studio Vista) pp. 49-76.
Jenkins, Jennifer, ‘The Kitsch Collections and “The Spirit in the Furniture”: Cultural Reform and National Culture in Germany’, Social History, 21, 2 (1996), 123-141.
Leppert, Richard. 2002. ‘Commentary’, Essays on Music, trans. by Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press) pp. 327-372.
Witkin, Robert W. 2003. Adorno on Popular Culture (London and New York: Routledge).

Music
10cc, The Very Best of 10cc (Mercury Records Ltd, 534 612-2, 1997).
2 many djs, as heard on radio soulwax pt.2 (PIAS Recordings, plasb 065 cd, 2002).
Brian Protheroe, Pinball and Other Stories (EMI Records Ltd, 0946 3 60718 2 4, 2006).

Online Resources
Sean Rowley, ‘The Gospel According to Guilty Pleasures’, Guilty Pleasures, (2007),  (para. 2 of 6).

Kitsch and the Danger of Guilty Pleasures – Pt 1

Guilty Pleasures was instigated by the BBC radio DJ Sean Rowley. Whilst beginning as a radio show, and then producing compilation CDs, it became a popular clubnight throughout the UK in the noughties. As a music style it was concerned with music that the listener likes but is not approved of, music that might be considered ‘uncool’ ('bad taste' would be a kitsch description). Whilst in its initial carnation Guilty Pleasures reflected the singer-songwriter music of the 1970s and early 1980s, it has now evolved into practically any type of music from that period up to today, very often music that would be described as ‘cheese’. According to the Guilty Pleasures website:

Sean Rowley began the night in the 150 capacity Hammersmith Working Men’s Club in 2004 and, discovering he was not alone in his love for ELO and Hall & Oates, moved the night to the Islington Academy where it resided for 2005 culminating in a Christmas party which saw Charlotte Church and Terry Hall take to the stage to sing. (Rowley 2007).

I would also like to consider it under the light of 'kitsch’ the discussion of which Theodor Adorno sets out in his essay of the same name written in 1932; it concerns itself with bringing the past into the present in an effort to ameliorate the here and now. In particular I would like to explore what Adorno means when he talks of a “forgotten secret” (2002b: 501), how this relates to history and what this might mean for Guilty Pleasures and its listener. I shall also provide an analysis of kitsch music as an ideological formulae, in that it can be considered to be the construction of a myth. I will be doing this with the help of Roland Barthes and his essay 'Myth Today' (1957). Whilst Adorno has much of value to say about history, and how music works in an ideological sense, Barthes describes the interpellant moment when the listener is hooked by the myth in a specifically individualised way. It will become clear as this blog progresses why this personal aspect is particularly important for an analysis of Guilty Pleasures.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) describes ‘kitsch’ as: “Art or objets d'art characterized by worthless pretentiousness; the qualities associated with such art or artefacts.” This definition implies that the artwork is pretending to be something that it is not, whereas the common usage of ‘kitsch’ today is often aligned with the art not pretending to be something it is not and, in a sense, setting itself up clearly as an object to be seen for what it is, in all its mocking superficiality. There are entries in the OED which are likely to be more in line with Adorno’s thinking on kitsch, for example “Kitsch is mechanical and operates by formulas. [...] is vicarious experiences and faked sensations. [...] The more romantic a work of art, or a landscape, the quicker its repetitions are perceived as kitsch or ‘slush’.” Also, there is an alternative meaning offered by the OED: “to render worthless, to affect with sentimentality and vulgarity”. In Adorno’s introduction to his essay 'Kitsch' he states that the etymology of the word ‘kitsch’ is in the english word ‘sketch’ and he explains this as “the quality of becoming unrealized, merely hinted at.” (2002b: 501), although this connection to 'sketch' is not noted in the OED. It seems that 'kistch' is a slippery term, the use of which has changed over time.

So as to be as clear as possible on the meaning and usage of ‘kitsch’ here I will begin with the following definition from 'Kitsch' so as to explicate Adorno’s own use of the word in its application to Guilty Pleasures:

In music, at any rate, all real kitsch has the character of a model. It offers the outline and draft of objectively compelling, pre-established forms that have lost their content in history, and for which the unfettered artist, cast adrift, is not able to fashion the content on his own. (ibid).

This notion of the refashioning of history is particularly important here because it is what provides the ideological aspect of what culture, or a cultural object, can represent. And, what is most pertinent to Guilty Pleasures is what and whose history is being represented. I believe that in its entirety Guilty Pleasures represents history (the past): different social histories contained in the individual songs from yesteryear, and alternative subjective histories for the individual listeners of those songs. The songs do contain something of the concrete realities of their moment of production; they will represent the socio-political period from which they emanate, and will say something about the artist and the industry of that time (even if this may not be apparent in a superficial listening). They will also have the personal history of the listener wrapped up in the song: what that song meant to them at that time, what it represents to them as an individual, today and yesterday.

In its original incarnation Guilty Pleasures was oriented around the 'seventies'. This is apparent in the content of the first album, released in 2004 (appendix 1: 22). The track listing contains, for example, Carole Bayer Sayer’s You’re Moving Out, David Essex's Gonna Make You a Star and Pilot’s January. In terms of subjective memory these songs will have meaning to those who lived in Britain in the 1970s. Whilst the 50-something person of today (the popular music enthusiast of the seventies) is likely to be the purchaser of this compilation, they are unlikely to be the club-goer of the Guilty Pleasures clubnight. The Guilty Pleasures machinery is wise to this, having evolved the brand so that it includes contemporary guilty pleasures in order to appease today’s young audience of clubbers. In the autumn of 2008 the University of Leeds had their first Guilty Pleasures clubnight, which did not play one song contained on the first album, but included such contemporary guilty pleasures as Take That’s 2007 hit Shine along with a number of eighties ‘classics’, including Prince and Michael Jackson, which may appear in the collective memory of the university student of today. Guilty Pleasures means different things to different people, what is common to the listener/dancer is that Guilty Pleasures is always about ‘the past’ and the bringing of that past into the present. A ripping of the past from its original roots and re-presenting it to the music listener of today: “Things that were part of the art of a former time [...]” (Adorno 2002b: 501). So as to further demonstrate how context and history are important to the concept of 'kistch' for Adorno, I shall provide a contemporary example from the Guilty Pleasures clubnight at the University of Leeds on November 1st 2008.

During the evening Sean Rowley played a dance mix known as destiny's child . independent women part 1 (a capella) 10cc . dreadlock holiday by 2 many djs (2002) (for brevity I shall be referring to it hereon in as Independent Women vs. Dreadlock Holiday, which it is often known as). As the title implies this is, in the main, a hybrid of Destiny Child's Independent Woman (2001) and 10cc's Dreadlock Holiday (1978). Whilst Destiny Child are a recent group (in the history of popular music, anyway), 10cc are a seventies band and could be considered to be securely rooted in the past. It would be surprising to find any of the club-goers on that night not being familiar with the original hit Independant Woman, it not being in the too distant past for them. But, it is quite likely that for most clubbers that this could be the only context in which they have heard the 10cc mock-reggae tune. Having been present at this clubnight, I was well aware that the primarily student clubber recognised the song we were dancing to. I had not heard this particular version of Dreadlock Holiday before and only knew the original. This made me very aware that my experience of it would be different from most others attending the club.

Whilst all of us as individuals have our own memories attached to particular songs – songs are very powerful in the way that you get transported back to your past upon listening to a recognisable tune – the songs themselves also have a concrete cultural and social history attached to them. Dreadlock Holiday reminds me of high school and the period when I was taking my A'Levels, but in Britain 1978 was also the year when the British Carribean colony Dominica was given independence and when the first man in cricketing history, Ian Botham, scored a 'century'. I am not suggesting that 10cc were making these political connections in their lyrics when they refer to 'cricket' and 'reggae', rather more I am stating that songs have a cultural-social-political significance and even, perhaps, unintentionally represent something of the historical period of which they emanate. In a sense, all old song hold a kind of historical memory within them, a trace of the past; although it is likely that it can become distorted. It is this memory that I will turn to in the next part of the blog, in relation to what Adorno means when he says that kitsch hangs onto a disformed and illusory memory of the past (ibid.).

Please click here for part 2.

Related links:
The Cult of Guilty Pleasures – A Freudian Analysis of the Music Genre


BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Books and Articles
Adorno, Theodor W. 1997. Aesthetic Theory, trans. by Gretel Adorno and Tiedmann (London: The Athlone Press).
----- 1998. 'Motifs', Quasi una Fantasia: Essays on Modern Music, trans. by Rodney Livingstone (London and New York: Verso) pp. 9-36.
----- 2000. ‘Extracts from Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life’, The Continental Aesthetics Reader, ed. by Clive Cazeaux (London and New York: Routledge) pp. 234-256.
----- 2001. 'The Schema of Mass Culture', The Culture Industry, ed. by J. M. Bernstein (London and New York: Routledge) pp. 61-97.
----- 2002a. 'On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening', Essays on Music, trans. by Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press) pp. 288-317.
----- 2002b. 'Kitsch', Essays on Music, trans. by Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press) pp. 501-505.
Barthes, Roland. 2000. 'Myth Today', Mythologies, trans. by Annette Lavers (London: Vintage) pp. 109-159.
Broch, Hermann. 1973. ‘Notes on the Problem of Kitsch’, Kitsch: An Anthology of Bad Taste, ed. by Gillo Dorfles (London: Studio Vista) pp. 49-76.
Jenkins, Jennifer, ‘The Kitsch Collections and “The Spirit in the Furniture”: Cultural Reform and National Culture in Germany’, Social History, 21, 2 (1996), 123-141.
Leppert, Richard. 2002. ‘Commentary’, Essays on Music, trans. by Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press) pp. 327-372.
Witkin, Robert W. 2003. Adorno on Popular Culture (London and New York: Routledge).

Music
10cc, The Very Best of 10cc (Mercury Records Ltd, 534 612-2, 1997).
2 many djs, as heard on radio soulwax pt.2 (PIAS Recordings, plasb 065 cd, 2002).
Brian Protheroe, Pinball and Other Stories (EMI Records Ltd, 0946 3 60718 2 4, 2006).

Online Resources
Sean Rowley, ‘The Gospel According to Guilty Pleasures’, Guilty Pleasures, (2007),  (para. 2 of 6).