The Guilty Pleasures MixCD Series: Part 2 - Animals

Get Me Out: Between the Zoo and the Research Project

For part 1 of this series of blog posts, please click here: Part 1 - Manchester.

I didn’t plan on a series of Guilty Pleasures CDs when creating the first one, but when I got to thinking about the subject for this CD – animals – I decided to keep the brand style of the Manchester one. This meant the layout would need stay the same and also the text. So, Get Me Out needed a subtitle that sounded something like ‘Between the Rollerama and the Junk Yard” and I chose “Between the Zoo and the Research Project”. This then meant that the CD was going to be animal activist in origin and the tagline at the bottom of the cover needed to incorporate ‘guilty pleasure’ somehow. Hence began the radical bent (and the ironic tone) of my Guilty Pleasures Series.

I alluded to the kitsch nature of Sean Rowley’s Guilty Pleasures series in part 1 of the blog and said I would talk more about it here. Theodor Adorno describes kitsch as being ideological. This ideology appears as a momentary revisiting of the past in the form of what Adorno calls “musical small change” (2002: 503). They are fetishised elements that get circulated (in the case of Guilty Pleasures these elements are the old songs themselves). The tracks from the past become uprooted, re-contextualised and re-circulated. They are dished up to the music fan of the day without their historical roots being made apparent. This is what Richard Leppert says about kitsch music:

Kitsch invokes a past which is nostalgically remembered; as such kitsch is a means by which to forget – but less to forget the past than the present. Kitsch offers consolation, not so as to change everything but to make the anything of the here and now slightly more tolerable. (2002: 361)

Leppert describes this past/present that is forgotten as “selectively (mis)remembered”, and he explains that kitsch, for Adorno, is problematic because its relationship to history is not direct and therefore the truth of history is not spoken (2002: 363).

My being a fan of Rowley’s Guilty Pleasures series has been complicated by my own critique of it. The research I have carried out on kitsch has been illuminated by Adorno’s critique of popular music in general - also Sigmund Freud’s theories on guilt, pleasure, and so on (more about Freud in the next blog). However, I believe my own series of CDs, in the context they are presented, probably get around many of these problems. Urban Gerbil’s Guilty Pleasures is a) re-presenting of the music in a radical format b) using the ‘guilty pleasures’ label in an sardonic and reflexive way and c) is designed to make the listener think about the subject-matter presented to them via the packaging and the specially selected tracks.

The next blog will be about work and labour.

Bibliography:
Leppert, Richard. 2002. ‘Commentary’, Essays on Music, trans. by Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press) pp. 327-372.
Adorno, Theodor W. 2002. 'Kitsch', Essays on Music, trans. by Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press) pp. 501-505.

The Guilty Pleasures MixCD Series: Part 1 - Manchester

STEPZ II: Between the Rollerama and the Junkyard

This is the new Urban Gerbil Publications mixCD series. The previous series – psy(co)motion – was a collection that was inspired by psychogeography. After five CDs I felt that psy(co)motion had reached its limit (in regards to my own music collection, but also for other reasons) and I needed to await the emergence of the next theme which would come about through something that inspired me. I’m afraid you will not be able to find out about psy(co)motion at this time, as it will be featured in an academic book on creative geographies which I will be writing a chapter for. However, I can tell you more about Guilty Pleasures.

Guilty Pleasures began with a CD that was inspired by the work Ally Standing and myself did for the 'Loitering With Intent Exhibition' at the People’s History Museum in Manchester (summer 2016). We created a zine and artwork based on the city of Manchester, psychogeography and the work of John Cooper Clarke. Entitled STEPZ II: Between the Rollerama and the Junk Yard our exhibition submission inspired a CD of the same name. As well as music by Mancunian artists, the CD also included poems read out by the authors who contributed to the zine (see tracks 03, 07 and 11 below by Steve Kettle, G N Deans and Sophie Sparham).

I became interested in the music genre Guilty Pleasures (now a global brand) a few years ago and have written a number of essays and blogs on the subject from both a Freudian and Adornian perspective. Created by the DJ Sean Rowley, the brand inspired compilation CDs and club nights in the UK and abroad (I have attended the Leeds club nights in the past and I also own some of the CDs). As a music style it is interested in music that the listener likes but that is considered to have low cultural value: music that might be considered ‘uncool’ ('bad taste' would be a kitsch description - more on kitsch in the next post). In its initial incarnation Rowley’s Guilty Pleasures reflected the singer-songwriter music of the 1970s and early 1980s. It then 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.

The sleeve covers of Rowley’s CDs usually show females in ‘seductive’ poses. So, it was really choosing the image for the STEPZ II CD that made me think of the Guilty Pleasures CDs produced by Rowley. The image on my CD cover above is actually a photo I took while doing research in Manchester with Ally Standing prior to submitting our work to the exhibition. I decided to use it because it was roughly twice the proportion of one side of a CD, which meant I could then fold it back and it would become the whole image for both sides of the CD sleeve. It was actually a large poster that fitted inside a filled-in window in Manchester city centre (see below).

Once I had chosen the cover for the CD, I then added the cheeky text at the bottom of the CD: “MANCHESTER: Your guilty pleasure!” and that was the beginning of the series. The next CD I produced was about animals, and you can read about that in the next blog along with some theory on kitsch.

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).

The Cult of Guilty Pleasures: A Freudian Analysis of the Music Genre (part 2)

Please click here for part 1 of the blog: The Cult of Guilty Pleasures (part 1)

This somewhat circuitous route has been necessary in terms of my proposal that the underlying dynamic of Guilty Pleasures is better described as a form of narcissism. I would like to propose that the subject’s temporary identification with this music is actually an identification with a past self. So, what may appear to be the subject’s superficial connection with a cultural object, located outside of her/himself, is in fact a connection with a her/himself of yesterday: a recognition of a past self in the present. Not only is the subject caught in a temporality that is not the present, but by bringing the past into the present, s/he is misidentifying the self s/he sees in her/his mind’s eye. The self in the past-cum-present is not the self as it is known today: “He is obliged to repeat the repressed material as a contemporary experience instead of […] remembering it as something belonging to the past.” (Freud 1995b, p.602). Therefore, this is a narcissistic pleasure. The nostalgic ‘guilty pleasure’ is a pleasure in the self-of-the-past, a recognition of an ‘I’ situated in the past: a misrecognition. I would also like to suggest that this act of concretising a past ‘I’ in the present, is a method of materialising a past self that is certain and ‘known’, unlike the present self which is never certain, a la Lacan, Benveniste, etc.

The act of listening to nostalgic music has a particular effect on the mind that we are all aware of: one feels temporarily transported back to that time because of the various emotional associations one has with the music. The temporal effect produced by the music has, in a sense, collapsed time: upon listening to the music one has invited the past self into the present, the past has been returned by bringing the object into oneself. This can be compared to Freud’s “fort da” game whereby the child throws away a small toy announcing “fort” (gone) and then upon retrieving it exclaims “da” (there) (1995b, p.599). Freud goes on to explain that the child then transfers this same process to his mother’s departure and return, thus it becomes a “cultural achievement” in that he allows his mother to go away without showing distress (1995b, p.600). Listening to Guilty Pleasures could have the effect of producing a “da” moment: allowing the music to be absent for a time will heighten the pleasure when it does return. Eagleton says the “fort-da” game symbolises the child’s first attempt at narrative and because narrative has a consolatory effect (as demonstrated in the return of the lost object) it provides pleasure (1983, p.185). Listening to Guilty Pleasures may also provide this particular form of pleasure in that it provides a narrative of the past which is returned to the individual.

In The Dilemma of Narcissus Louis Lavelle explains that Narcissus’ main preoccupation is with his search for himself in the world around him: “the sign of this sign, and the image of this image” (1993, p.33). He goes on to say: “On leaving himself, he hopes to find himself, and to return again within himself” (ibid.). This is similar to Freud’s “fort da” game and also demonstrates that the act of listening to Guilty Pleasures might not only be a search for a past pleasure, but also the desire for a pleasure that was located in a past self. Therefore the pleasure is not located in the cultural object, as such, but is displaced into that past self.

In his essay ‘On Narcissism: An Introduction’ Freud not only explains the origins of narcissism as being a stage within childhood development but he also provides examples of it in terms of a pathology in adulthood. In addition he offers up what he calls “narcissistic attitudes” which are not necessarily problematic but are rather “the libidinal complement to the egoism of the instinct of self-preservation” (1995a, p.546). A number of definitions of narcissism arise in his essay and refer to different aspects of his theory on this subject. In the young child, Freud sees narcissistic pleasure existing prior to the differentiation of ego (as discussed above with regards the child’s self-fascination with his/her body and the pleasures it can bring with auto-erotic excitation). This is what Freud describes as “primary narcissism”. Once the ego comes into play this narcissistic pleasure is displaced onto the world around him/her, into what Freud calls “object-cathexes”, whereby the child forms an emotional investment in people and objects around him. Freud also describes a form of narcissism which arises from a “drawing in of object-cathexes” (ibid.). This means that the ego has made some sort of choice in terms of withdrawing something it had once offered to the rest of the world: what Freud distinguishes as “secondary narcissism”. Lavelle describes an individual suffering from an extreme form of this type of narcissism: “He shuts himself up, alone with himself, to keep company with himself: but in this total self-sufficiency on which he pins his hopes, he discovers his own impotence.” (1993, p.34). This self-love described by Lavelle is an attachment to what Freud describes as an “ego ideal” (or “ideal object”) which is set up by an individual who cannot accept the loss of the narcissism experienced in childhood (1995a, p.558).

Lavelle also explains that the pathogenesis of narcissism is related to the past and death (1993, p.29). He explains how an obsession with the self prevents the individual from living in the present or future at all, he/she is always consigned to the past: “I cannot see myself in any other way than by turning around and contemplating my past, but that is to contemplate something I have already ceased to be.” (ibid.). Guilty Pleasures, because of its nostalgic focus, is a turning back to the past. But, is this necessarily the negative act that narcissism so eloquently describes? R. D. Laing says that providing fantasy is meaningful to the individual, they are not dissociated from it and it has value to them (1973, p.27). In line with Lavelle’s description of the narcissist, above, Freud describes the narcissistic adult as having withdrawn “his libido from things and people in the external world, without replacing them by others in phantasy” (1995a, p.546). If we choose to use this description by Freud, then it does throw into question the listening to Guilty Pleasures as a narcissistic act.

So, it appears, listening to Guilty Pleasures, in terms of whether it is pathological narcissism, may be a function of the individuals’ subjective experience. Lavelle does consider it to be problematic if the past is pursued at the cost of the present (1993, p.118). However, Freud, upon his analysis of the origins of instinct, believes instincts can all be traced back to “a need to restore an earlier state of things.” (1995b, p.622). So it may well be that, as individuals our need to fight the nostalgic pursuit of past experiences is an uphill struggle against a biological instinct. Roger Horrocks believes that humans are selective in their use of memory and some memories are useful in maintaining a sense of self (2001, p.60). Philip Rieff also explains that, for Freud, memory is not passive but involves “acceptances and rejections” (1979, p.38). So, if that is the case, the individual could be considered to choose to indulge in the narcissistic ‘guilty pleasure’ or not, and is not in fact a slave to it due to an instinctual drive or a neurotic pathology. However Horrocks does go on to say that Freud is not a supporter of nostalgia: “the past, for him, is condemned as impermanency, burden, neurosis.” (ibid.). So, perhaps, even with a thorough analysis of Freud’s work we will never be able to surmise his thoughts on the partaking of the music of Guilty Pleasures.

In conclusion I would like to suggest that Guilty Pleasures may be considered an attempt at closing the gap that exists at the subject’s centre because of his/her place in the Symbolic Order. Emile Benveniste explains that this problem derives from the fact that “each speaker sets himself up as a subject by referring to himself as an I in his discourse” (1971, p.225). At the point the enunciating subject utters ‘I’, and concretising him/herself in the present, he/she is also becoming the subject of the enounced, the subject of the past. Eagleton describes this as “a radical split between these two levels of being” (1983, p.169). Lavelle’s discussion on how Narcissus is constantly searching for his own image is extremely pertinent here: I cannot see myself in any other way than by turning round and contemplating my past, but that is to contemplate something that has already ceased to be. To live is to create my own being by turning my will towards a future in which I do not yet exist, and which will not become an object until I have not only reached it, but have gone beyond it. (1993, p.29). The listener of Guilty Pleasures attempts to mark out a present for her/himself that is a certainty in a world of sliding signifiers and lack, an identification with a self of the past in the present.

Bibliography:
Benveniste, Emile. 1971. Problems in General Linguistics (Miami: University of Miami Press). Billig, Michael. 1999. Freudian Repression: Conversation Creating the Unconscious (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Eagleton, Terry. 1983. Literary Theory (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).
Freud, Sigmund. 1976. ‘The Sexual Life of Human Beings’, Sigmund Freud: 1. Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (Harmondsworth: Penguin) pp. 344-361.
Freud, Sigmund. 1995a. Extracts from ‘On Narcissism: An Introduction’, The Freud Reader, ed. by Peter Gay (London: Vintage) pp. 545-562.
Freud, Sigmund. 1995b. Extracts from ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’, The Freud Reader, ed. by Peter Gay (London: Vintage) pp. 594-627.
Freud, Sigmund. 2004. Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. by David McLinktock (London: Penguin Books).
Horrocks, Roger. 2001. Freud Revisited (Basingstoke, New York: Palgrave).
Lacan, Jacques. 2004. Ecrits: A Selection, trans. by Bruce Fink (New York, London: W W Norton and Company).
Laing, R. D. 1973. The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise (Harmondsworth: Penguin).
Lavelle, Louis. 1993. The Dilemma of Narcissus, trans. by William Gairdner (New York: Larson Publications).
Oppenheimer, Paul. 1997. An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Guilt (London: Gerald Duckworth).
Rieff, Philip. 1979. Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

The Cult of Guilty Pleasures: A Freudian Analysis of the Music Genre (part 1)

The Guilty Pleasures music albums represent a nostalgic reflection of the music of the primarily male singer-songwriter of the seventies and early eighties from the retrospective position of the 21st century. The compilations of mostly British music have been compiled by the Radio 1 DJ Sean Rowley. The first album in the series was published in 2004 and was extremely popular. Reviews and articles appeared not only in the popular music press but also in the broadsheets. The music caught the attention of the public. Its promoters subsequently dedicated a website to the cult of Guilty Pleasures at www.guiltypleasures.co.uk which has also spawned a club night.

The Guilty Pleasures music genre has been described as ‘naff’ or ‘cheesy’ by some critics and by those who may not be clear of the philosophy behind it. However, it is designed to represent what may have been considered in its day to be ‘uncool’, but what people secretly enjoyed and perhaps did not openly admit to delighting in. Because many of the songs are by singer-songwriters, the musicianship is considered to be of a high quality even if, at the time, the songs themselves were considered overly romantic, sentimental or quirky, and dismissed for those reasons. It is important to state that Guilty Pleasures is a retrospective and this means that it represents the past and therefore has a high degree of nostalgia attached to it.

It is apparent on a superficial analysis how Sigmund Freud’s theories around ‘guilt’ and ‘pleasure’ would create a convenient reading of Guilty Pleasures. However, after briefly explaining how ‘guilt’ and ‘pleasure’ could fit the genre, I would like to propose ‘narcissism’ as the primary Freudian model that should be applied: “where the libido is concerned, man has here again shown himself incapable of giving up a satisfaction he had once enjoyed.” (Freud 1995a, p.558).

In his lecture ‘The Sexual Life of Human Beings’ Freud describes how the child once removed from its mother’s breast can become attached to sucking his own thumb or tongue, making himself “independent of the consent of the external world as regards gaining pleasure” (1976, p.356). According to Freud the young child moves through three stages in terms of attachment to erotogenetic zones: oral, anal and genital. But, despite the fact that stimulation of these zones results in an enjoyable sensation the child will eventually have to “exchange pleasure for social respectability” (Freud 1976, p.357). In ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’ Freud explains how, in order to regulate the pleasure principle an individual will pursue an end which will lessen an “unpleasurable tension” and either produce a degree of pleasure or a cessation of the unpleasure (1995b, p.595). He goes on to explain that the main aim of the pleasure principle is to maintain a certain level of constancy within a given period, rather than to produce major peaks of excitation (ibid.). The pleasure principle eventually works in tandem with the reality principle, delaying gratification and helping the mature individual function in a social world (ibid.).

With regards to guilt, in simple terms Freud describes it as “fear of the super-ego” (2004, p.93). Being the regulator of the id (the instinctual drives) the super-ego acts as a social conscience. As Jacques Lacan explains (although he uses a different term to Freud) the super-ego “superimposes the reign of culture over the reign of nature” (2004, p.66). When the individual fails to act upon the rules imposed by the super-ego, the individual will feel a sense of guilt which is manifest in a feeling of anxiety because certain acts derived from the libidinal drives are prohibited and considered taboo. To keep these drives in check, civilisation, via the super-ego, sublimates particular desires. Indulgence in the guilty pleasure may provide short-term gain to the individual, nevertheless society instils in us from an early age the rule of deferred gratification.

Following that brief analysis of these Freudian concepts it is apparent how the Guilty Pleasures music genre has received its name, even if it is a tongue-in-cheek label. A somewhat marginalised type of music, considered to represent a lack of taste, is, in a sense, forbidden. Any indulgence in it by an individual would, theoretically, create a sense of guilt because it is outside of what society would deem aesthetically credible (hence, not desirable). In fact Freud even goes as far as saying that the desire alone would cause a sense of guilt, regardless of the fulfilment of the act (2004, p.77). In his book An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Modern Guilt Paul Oppenheimer offers an alternative to Freud’s definition of ‘desire’ that may be more fitting to Guilty Pleasures. He does not see desires as simply being appetites but part of the human imagination (1997, p.90). Oppenheimer believes that a large part of desire is attached to abstract language and features “fantasy, dreaming, anticipating, wishing and visualizing.” (ibid.): the qualities that are considered by many to differentiate humans from ‘lower’ animals. Guilty Pleasures could be described as a method of fantasising about a past time, a wishing one was back in a time where life was more happy/carefree/romantic. And it is certainly true of music that if it has meaning to the individual it is accompanied with strong visual cues in the mind’s eye.

Michael Billig discusses how late capitalism brings about a different emotional dynamic for the postmodern individual from that existing in Freud’s time. He offers Zygmunt Bauman’s example of “seduction rather than repression” as a model for consumer society (1999, p.256). In this case we could say that the socio-economic system actually encourages the fulfilment of desire providing it furthers consumerism. Terry Eagleton explains that Freud’s definition of ‘sublimation’ means directing desires “towards a more socially valued end.” (1983, p.152), therefore this may simply be a matter of semantics rather than any threat to Freud’s theory of ‘repression’: because consumerism is socially valuable the desire to consume is not placed within the category of the forbidden, hence there is no repression in the first place.

Guilty Pleasures certainly represents a postmodern product in that it reflects the element of nostalgia associated with postmodernism (Frederic Jameson, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, 1984). It also highlights postmodernity’s appropriation of a past style into a new format, thus creating a new narrative. When looking at cultural objects as texts, language, as a theory for the constitution of the subject can be offered as an alternative to Freud’s model which is grounded in the sexual. Billig challenges Freud’s belief that desire originates in biology. He says: “Because we speak, we have desires which must be repressed.” (1999, p.71). Billig sees our desires as being evoked by language, and if desires are not repressed then “the moral order, would be threatened.” (1999, p.72). Later he explains how using a model of language to represent repression enables us not to dismiss an ideological function constituted by societal change (1999, p.258). Therefore, using the language formulae of the psyche proposed by some of the Neo-Freudians may be a more useful interpretation of a cultural object if we decided to analyse it in narrative form.

In his essay ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function’ Lacan explains how upon seeing its reflection in the mirror for the first time the small child is transformed by this identification in which he delights (2004, p.4). This transformation takes place because prior to this the child was not differentiated in terms of itself as opposed to ‘other’. The “ideal-I” that the child sees before it in the form of an image, is what constitutes the initial development of its ego. However, Lacan states, this moment will also be problematic in that is sets a future framework for the individual’s identification in regards to its place in the world which will always only allude to reality because it implies a type of permanence which does not exist (2004, pp.4-5).

Eagleton explains how the child and the image of the child in the mirror are analogous to the ‘signifier’ and ‘signified’ of Ferdinand de Sausurre (1983, p.166). This represents Lacan’s “Imaginary Order” in that “objects ceaselessly reflect themselves in a sealed circuit” (ibid.). The child when viewing his image for the first time has a sense of completeness. However, the disunity inherent in the Symbolic Order, the phase which the child later moves into when he discovers language (the equivalent stage to Freud's Oedipal Phase), has not yet taken place. The child is still embedded in the imaginary, which is the unconscious, a place that Lacan sees as being structured rather like signifiers, with no stable meanings. Eagleton says that for the child: “No gap has yet opened up between signifier and signified, subject and world.” (ibid.). How desire fits into Lacan’s model is by the virtue of the lack inscribed in language. The lack of a ‘transcendental signified’, as defined by Lacan (Ecrits, 1966) and Derrida (Writing and Difference, 1967), results in a desire for a fixed meaning and for a fulfilment which cannot be attained in the symbolic.

Please click here for part 2 of the blog.

Freud Related Posts:
Taking an Urban Walk With Freud
Space/Place, Culture and Time: Sigmund Freud

Bibliography:
Benveniste, Emile. 1971. Problems in General Linguistics (Miami: University of Miami Press). Billig, Michael. 1999. Freudian Repression: Conversation Creating the Unconscious (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
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