Tina on Trump: Truth, Reality, Language & Myth

Below are the posts I have written on Donald Trump, all in one place, for easy access. I started writing these in 2016. They are academic critiques based on some of my own observations and underpinned with, mostly, poststructural philosophical cultural theory. I hope you find them interesting:

Nov 2016: #PresidentTrump - A Simulated Hold-Up

May 2016: Myth Today: Truth and Trumph in a Trump World

May 2020: #Post-Truth - Trump, Truth and Treachery in the Post Post-Modern

The Routledge Handbook of Pink Floyd

Hello Folks,

I have contributed a chapter in this new book on Pink Floyd. I have included a book overview below, beneath that are a few paragraphs introducing my own chapter. You can find full details of the book here.

Thanks, Tina

The Routledge Handbook of Pink Floyd, edited by Chris Hart and Simon Morrison, is intended for scholars and researchers of popular music, as well as music industry professionals and fans of the band. It brings together international researchers to assess, evaluate and reformulate approaches to the critical study and interpretation of one of the world’s most important and successful bands. For the first time, this Handbook will ‘tear down the wall,’ examining the band’s collective artistic creations and the influence of social, technological, commercial and political environments over several decades on their work. Divided into five parts, the book provides a thoroughly contextualised overview of the musical works of Pink Floyd, including coverage of performance and sound; media, reception and fandom; genre; periods of Pink Floyd’s work; and aesthetics and subjectivity. Drawing on art, design, performance, culture and counterculture, emergent theoretical resources and analytical frames are evaluated and discussed from across the social sciences, humanities and creative arts. The Handbook is intended for scholars and researchers of popular music, as well as music industry professionals. It will appeal across a range of related subjects from music production to cultural studies and media/communication studies.

Chapter 20: Hey You! Subjectivity and the Ideological Repressive State Apparatuses in Pink Floyd’s The Wall by Tina Richardson

Pink Floyd’s long musical history (spanning two decades at its peak) had always reflected the cultural zeitgeist, even at a time when it was at odds with other musical movements of the day, as was the case in the late 1970s with the advent of punk rock. While it is often reported that punk heralded the demise of progressive (or psychedelic) rock – “Never trust a fuckin’ hippie” Johnny Rotten if often wrongly claimed to have said – Pink Floyd’s single from The Wall, ‘Another Brick in the Wall’, was no.1 for five weeks in 1979 (UK music charts). Alan Parker’s film Pink Floyd – The Wall (1982) followed, and Pink Floyd entered film history.

Parker’s film, which responded directly to Roger Water’s lyrics, presents us with the protagonist Pink, a rock star who is at odds with his position as a revered musician: he is both a victim of the system of music production and a fascist proponent of it. Early in the film, we see him in his hotel room, barely conscious, waiting for the gig to start. Pink (played by Bob Geldof) looks both physically ill and mentally exhausted (and psychologically removed from the hotel room he occupies). His agent, and the doctor employed by him, inject him back to consciousness – ‘Just a little pinprick’ – so that he can perform for the audience. Within a short space of time, Pink is on stage in a Nazi-style rally as he sings the lyrics to ‘In the Flesh’, asking the audience “So ya… Thought ya… Might like to… Go to the show.” It is this relationship with the audience – one in which he hides from them, but also presents himself to them as if he was their leader – that creates cognitive dissonance in him.

In his book Which One’s Pink? Phil Rose (2002) acknowledges the cultural moment, as it was for rock audiences in the 1970s. He describes an early scene where we see Pink’s reaction to his fans, “As the emergency doors break open at the concert venue, crowds of frantic people are seen running down an empty corridor. In his imagination Pink superimposes on this scene the trampling feet and screaming faces of battle”. It seems, for Pink, that if he must deal with his fans, it will be from the position of someone who is at war. A war that appears externalised for Pink, is really internal and existential.

We see many images of Pink sitting in a chair, alone in his hotel room, holding a cigarette which is turning to ash. This dialectic – the ‘marauding hordes’ (of music fandom, of battle, of collective violence) versus the ‘estranged loner’ – sets up the story of Pink’s life (and along with that a multiplicity of contradictions) as it unfolds in the narrative presented to us through the album and film. At the same time, it creates for the cultural theorist another position open to interpretation, that of the structures of socio-political, cultural space and power, as they pertain to their influence on the individual (in Pink’s case, as they are imposed upon the individual). Nevertheless, we need to be careful not to set up these oppositions in too binary a way, since by using phrases like ‘social structure versus the individual’, we imply that these phenomena sit in clearly delineated camps. The very structures of society that are so prominent in The Wall – the army, the family, education, the media, the judiciary - are what creates the subject in the first place. The subject, which for Louis Althusser, is never an individual: the subject is always the subject of the ideology of societal structures.

This chapter examines the narrative of Pink’s existential anguish as it pertains to the ideological and repressive structures that surround him. By using Althusser’s theory, as defined in ‘Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatuses’, I will discuss how these structures have the simultaneous effect of forming Pink as a subject, yet overwhelming him to the extent that his psyche is fractured and all that is left for him to do is to create a wall to protect himself from the outside world. It is the closing scene ‘The Trial’ that will be analysed to explore the compromise the subject has to make regarding their own position within these structures of power. Following this, the chapter also examines Pink’s existential crisis in the context of the symbolism of the wall. But, firstly, we need to examine Althusser’s concept of the ‘subject’ in some more depth...

Where the Garment Gapes: The Slit Aesthetic and Jouissance in Fashion

This semester, Philippa Jackson - a guest lecturer for my undergraduate unit, Fashion and Society - introduced me to the term “slit aesthetic” for the first time. The term was coined by Maureen Turim in her article ‘Fashion Shapes: Film, the Fashion Industry, and the Image of Women’. Turim describes the slit aesthetic as being a gap in women’s clothing that reveals the wearer’s skin, in particular the “neck, shoulders, back and breasts” (1983). While Turim’s discussion focuses on the representation of female actors in a specific moment in Hollywood film history, I would like to take up her brief discussion on desire and how this relates to the work of Roland Barthes in his own analysis of desire, wherein he uses a similar example.

In The Pleasure of the Text [1973] Barthes alludes to the arousing nature of what is not visible when he says: “Is not the most erotic portion of the body where the garment gapes?” (1975, p.9). He provides an example of the gap between the end of a woman’s sleeve and the top of her glove, revealing a tiny glimpse of her wrist.

He describes this process as “the staging of an appearance-as-disappearance” and explains how an opening reveals something that attracts the subject by creating a kind of window (ibid.). This offers a taste and yet conceals so much more. An obvious contemporary example would be the flash of a woman’s leg appearing through the split of a dress. What is conceals alludes to a promise. This may not be ‘a promise’ in the vernacular sense of the word, but it is not totally dissimilar: what is concealed, though not visible, is suggested and it is the desire that this instils in the subject, and the subsequent response, that we can describe as jouissance.

In terms of the slit aesthetic, Turim sees the desire as being oriented in the male gaze, but she also explains that this gaze becomes fetishistic in that in these instances the film’s editing appears as a “cutting back and forth between the gazing male and the female body he looks at” (1983). This fetishisation then turns this slice of flesh into an object which, hence, stands in for the whole female. However, Barthes’ interpretation is different. Barthes explains how it is the “seam” which is erotic (1975, pp.7-8). It is the boundary, the join, the incision that disrupts normal textual flow and opens up a domain of polysemy. But this space is required to remain in abeyance in order for bliss – jouissance – to remain. In other words, and as it would be for Turim’s male audience, they will never ‘have’ the female actress.

In her article 'Beyond the Jouissance Principle' Jane Gallop says: “If jouissance is celebrated as something that unsettles assumptions, it becomes ineffective when it itself settles into an assumption.” (1984, p.112). The condition of the space of bliss relies on the lack of conjecture. Assumptions, knowledge of the outcome, and emotional investment in the conclusion avert jouissance. Bliss continues until the subject 'knows'.

In A Lover’s Discourse [1977] Barthes explains how the lover’s absence can be manipulated. He describes it as an “active practice” (1979, p.16) in which the not knowing of the whereabouts of one’s lover creates doubts and desires: “This staging of language postpones the other’s death” (ibid.). Barthes explains that “to manipulate absence is to extend this interval, to delay as long as possible the moment when the other might topple sharply from absence into death.” (ibid.).

While, Turim’s example sees the wearer of the slit aesthetic as representing the “phallic woman” (1983), Barthes sees that gap as jouissance and plays with the space in which the lover has not yet returned by extending the interval: when will the lover return or might it be that the lover never returns…


References
Barthes, Roland. 1975. The Pleasure of the Text. Trans. by Richard Miller (New York: Hill and Wang).
Barthes, Roland. 1979. A Lover’s Discourse. Trans. by Richard Howard (London: Jonathan Cape).
Gallop, Jane, ‘Beyond the Jouissance Principle’, Representations, 7, (Summer, 1984) pp. 110-115.
Turim, Maureen, ‘Fashion Shapes: Film, the Fashion Industry, and the Image of Women’, Socialist Review, 71 (13), (Radical Society Ltd, 1983) pp. 78-96.

From the Scaffolded Shoulder to the Cold-Shoulder: A Semiology of Acromion Fashion (1)

Part 1: Power Dressing

When I read in a fashion magazine that the accessory makes springtime, that this women’s suit (of which I have a photograph in front of me) has a young and slinky look, or that blue is in fashion this year, I cannot but see a semantic structure in these suggestions: in every case, and whatever the metaphorical detours taken by the wording, I see imposed upon me a link of equivalence between a concept (spring, youth, fashion this year) and a form (the accessory, this suit, the colour blue), between a signified and a signifier. Roland Barthes The Language of Fashion

In 2016 the ‘cold-shoulder’ presented itself as a popular fashion that turned the original meaning of the idiom into something else entirely. If the phrase implies ‘to ignore someone, to turn your back on them’, what does the cold-shoulder style mean? In this blog I will be working through some ideas around the semiology of the ‘cold-shoulder’ by comparing it to the ‘scaffolded shoulder’ (my term) of previous fashion moments-in-time. This post will function as a basis to a future article that I will be submitting to a fashion journal.

In Roland Barthes’ quote above, he suggests the relationship between the semantics in fashion articles and that of the sign inasmuch as it is made up of the signifier and the signified. He explains the relative ease in which one can analyse the language making up the words of an article, but how much more difficult it becomes when one is trying to analyse the images themselves when it comes to the generalised descriptions supplied by the writers. Barthes says that the description often does not point to any singular sign in the images displayed therein: what he calls “demonstrative links” (2013: 40). He describes himself as a kind of detective in this regard, someone who has to decode words like ‘smart’, ‘casual’ or ‘elegant’ by trying to analyse what it is in the actual image itself that may denote these terms (ibid.). In this post I shall be playing detective in regard to analysing shoulder embellishments, or the lack thereof, by situating the respective looks culturally and historically and using Barthes’ semiological system (in particular his second-order of semiology, the connotative) as a way to shed some light on the shoulder phenomenon in fashion.

It is likely that in postmodernity we associate exaggerated shoulder styling with the 1980s, but if we go back as far as the Tudors we can see that padded shoulders and ‘leg-of-mutton’ sleeves served to broaden the top of the body. This functioned as a way of creating a sense of presence because important people, especially aristocracy and royalty, literally took up more space in the room. On this subject of status, Barthes remarks on the historical inventories taken during the Renaissance:

these inventories are veritable lexicons, linking vestimentary systems very tightly either to anthropological states (sex, age, marital status) or to social ones (bourgeoisie, nobility, peasantry, etc.), but it is clear that this sort of lexicon of clothing was possible only in a society which was starkly hierarchical, in which fashion was part of a real social ritual (2013: 21).

We might not live in such a “starkly hierarchical” cultural epoch today, but clothes still denote many things in relation to power and social status, as was the intention of the power suit, for both men and women, in the 1980s.

The above image is of a 1980s Thierry Mugler suit for women. Not only are the shoulders padded but the blouson effect of the upper part of the suit (wide upper arms, bust and narrow waist) give the effect of width, echoing the culturally idealised male body that forms a V-shape. This masculine-looking women’s suit reflects the 1980s ‘power-dressing’ in regards to the socio-political work culture of the day, a style that we can also see in the popular culture of the time, such as in the film Working Girl (Mike Nichols 1988).

So what would Barthes say about this power-dressing phenomenon? A very significant observation he makes is the mistake of attempting to unpick the separate elements of an outfit in order to decode it. He says:

The major difficulty in the analytical deciphering of ‘everyday’ clothing is its syntactic nature: the signified is only ever expressed in this regard via signifiers ‘in operation’, meaning is an indissoluble whole that tends to evaporate as soon as one divides it up. (2013: 28).

Nevertheless, he says that once a fashion item is presented as an image in a magazine, then this initial difficulty is overcome because “signifieds are separated a priori from the signifiers” (ibid.). By this he means that the signified is given to you in an open and straightforward way through the description supplied to you in the text that supports the image, for instance: ‘a cocktail dress’ or ‘a summer blouse’. So, if we are to take Barthes’ advice, we should not just look at the shoulder embellishment but the overall impression of the power suit and what it is telling us.

Let’s take the women’s suit as our example. I have already alluded to the social hierarchy expressed in dress in regards to Tudor attire. But, today we live in a time when clothes are cheap and we can all recreate a look that, to a degree, can conceal or enhance our social status. We no longer live in feudal times and, while there is still much inequality, more people than ever are able to afford fashionable clothes. The 1980s women’s suit made a statement about equality in the workplace through the process of mimesis, imitation. Women believed that if they ‘looked like men’, they would be treated as their equals. And, the padded shoulder was key to this look which gave women a physicality of presence: they took up more space in the room, and this time the room was not the royal court but the boardroom!

In Part 2 I will be looking at shoulder embellishment in regards to technology.

Bibliography:
Barthes, Roland. 2013. The Language of Fashion. (Bloomsbury Revelations: Sydney).

Literary Commentary: 'Midnight at the Miro'

This theoretical analysis is based on the novel extract from Midnight at the Miro, which you can access by clicking here.

“Midnight at the Miro” is a single-title, conventional romance of the suspense sub-genre. Presented in a modern, urban setting and responds to the Brit Art movement of the 1990s. The target market includes women in their twenties and thirties, who might be classified as the “Sex and the City” audience. The author uses third-person limited narration to preserve the viewpoint of the heroine, who represents an independent woman with a successful career and financial autonomy. The traditional character of the heroine is subverted by defining her as someone who directly engages with the world, not someone whose identity is defined through her relationship with others.

The author’s first hermeneutic reference draws the reader in by describing the heroine’s psychological state: “Melanie was excited and had never been happier.”. We understand by this that something has happened which will soon be revealed, and we are immediately propelled forward by the narrative. Our suspense is sated in the following paragraph, when reading about her impending exhibition. This and the cultural codes that follow “Kurt Geiger…stilettos” and “calf-skin leather briefcase”, begin to explain something about the world the heroine lives in: she has a sense of style and, possibly, money. Here the author directly connects the heroine to the novel’s intended audience.

Up until the third paragraph, where the author first describes Melanie directly, she is still only seen through cultural references or as “the agent of an action” (Barthes, 1977, p104). Our greatest sense of Melanie’s character is not only derived from these proairetic and cultural codes but also from the semic ones which, when taken in isolation can appear, to some extent, contradictory. Her “ethereal look” seems at odds with the self-assured person leaving the cab and heading purposefully up the path. If the reader senses any conflict at all this is soon allayed as the author presents the themes that form the heroine’s character by offering important semes, which occur in various forms throughout the novel.

Williams’ description of ideology as “A system of belief characteristics of a particular class or group.” (1977, cited in Fiske, 1990, p165), eloquently describes the novel’s subverted ideology in relation to the heroine’s character. As a successful female Melanie is portrayed as emotionally and financially independent yet does not represent the hard-nosed - feminist reminiscent of the 1980s - but a psychologically well-rounded ‘strong’, yet feminine, woman. Whilst the author connotatively describes her physicality as “delicate” we are aware that she is a businesswoman. This binary opposition helps us understands that despite her subtle facial features, she must contain an inner strength to be competing in a male dominated world. The tension between these opposites reinforce Melanie’s strength of character in the reader’s mind. So, too, her pinstripe suit, which shows that she is ready to willingly launch herself into the Lacanian symbolic order of male power in an attempt to be taken seriously. As McCracken states: “…the heroine of popular romance is inextricably bound up with her position as woman in the modern world.” (1998, p80).

With the contrary semic references and binary opposites used to describe the heroine, the author creates a character with a less classic, less definable, female identity. This very identity is sharply brought into focus with Melanie’s rhetorical question: “Who are you?”. The reader will not immediately recognise the significance of the remark. Nevertheless, it transpires later in the novel that Melanie finds out that her father is not dead after all and upon his reintroduction she is forced to deal with issues concerning her own identity. This intertextual accent in the novel can be compared to “Great Expectations” as, unbeknownst to her, Melanie’s father had been her benefactor. At this point in the novel we see the first glimpse of the denouement of the plot in the form of the reappearance of her father and the breakdown of her relationship with James.

Included in the exposition is the setting of the flat where Melanie lives with James, which is also described binarily and can be seen as a symbolic representation of Melanie herself; the “unpretentious” yet “refined” lounge suggests a contradiction that remains unnoticed in the reading. What the author describes is an attractive, intriguing room, enabling the reader to add her own interpretation to the details that are omitted. As Radway says: “…the reader is never forced to recognise that it is indeed she who actively supplies the significance of the words she encounters.” (1991, p197).

While the author does not challenge romantic conventions, she does challenge the stereotypes of gender roles by introducing atypical, complex characters that are hard to pin down. Well-placed narrative enigmas, provided in the form of “lexies” (Barthes, 1974), seamlessly bleed into the narrative assuring a smooth transit.  The interlacing of “voices” (ibid), and overlapping of “associative fields” (1972, Hall), enables the reader to successfully engage with the text. Additionally, the interpretative space allowed by the author offers the reader a degree of subjective control over the descriptive details. As Gennette says “…the real author of the narrative is not only [s]he who tells it, but also, and at times even more, [s]he who hears it.” (1995, p262).

Bibliography

Barthes, R (1977) “Structural Analysis of Narratives” in Image Music Text. 1^st ed. London: Fontana Press.

Barthes, R (1974) S/Z: An Essay. 1^st ed. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Fiske, J (1990) An Introduction to Communication Studies. 2^nd ed. London: Routledge.

Genette, G (1995) Narrative Discourse. 6^th ed. New York: Cornell University Press.

Hall, S (1972) Working Papers in Cultural Studies. 1^st ed. London: Taylor and Francis.

McCracken, S. (1998) “Popular Romance” in Pulp: Reading Popular Fiction. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Radway, J.A. (1991) Reading the Romance – Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature. 2^nd ed. North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press.

Myth Today: Truth and Triumph in a Trump World

Figure 1: Truth/Trump

“What is a myth, today” Roland Barthes asks in the opening line to his essay ‘Myth Today’ (2000: 109). Writing in the 1950s it seems questionable that he could have foreseen a presidential election result like that of the United States of America on 9 November 2016, however his essay presents us with its possibility in regards to how language operates: neatly explained in Barthes’ own second level of connotation, the myth: “myth is a type of speech” he answers (ibid.). For those studying the speech act, Donald Trump’s win has provided much food for thought in regards to truth (and reality), and the election campaign has renewed interest in the concept of post-truth, even spawning its own hashtag: #post-truth.

As for the election win itself, not that we can separate the win from the speech acts, in ‘Dominici, or the Triumph of Literature’ Barthes discusses the problems in regards to the lack of a commonality in a shared language when it comes to hierarchy. Reporting on the murder trial of Gaston Dominic in 1952, Barthes explains the difference between those in power (in this case the Presiding Judge), and ‘the other’ (the accused), when it comes to language (2000: 43-44). He also lists some of the ad hominem terms that were used in the trial to describe the accused and explains that this is how language triumphs in a system of inequality: “this ‘universal’ language comes just at the right time to lend a new strength to the psychology of the masters: it allows it always to take other men as objects, to describe and condemn at one stroke” (2000: 45).

Trump’s language has been thoroughly analysed in the media and in academic texts, well before the few months leading up to the election. I do not plan to include a discourse analysis of what he has said, since this has been well-covered elsewhere. What I would like to do is open a discussion on the idea of truth, as it sits within Barthes concept of myth, in an attempt to understand how the denigrating language Trump used towards particular groups had little negative effect on his popularity, nor the outcome of the election. To pick just three examples, Trump is well-quoted for his pride in “grabbing women by the pussy” (Fishwick 2016), for accusing Mexican immigrants of “bringing drugs, and bringing crime, and their rapists” (Neate 2015), and for his anti-Muslim/anti-immigration sentiment: "I'm putting the people on notice that are coming here from Syria as part of this mass migration, that if I win, if I win, they're going back" (Basu 2015).

Figure 2: Roland Barthes' Semiological Structure of the Myth

Explaining how the sign on the denotative level of signification (language) becomes the signifier on the connotative level (myth) (2000: 115), Barthes states that myth “is not defined by the object of its message, but by the way in which it utter its message…Every object in the world can pass from a closed, silent, existence to an oral state, open to appropriation by society, for there is no law, whether natural or not, which forbids talking about things” (2000: 109). Trump’s speech acts have been dispersed and devoured through what Barthes calls “a type of social usage” (ibid.) and I believe that what at one time we found unacceptable, is being given currency at a time when some groups in society feel that they have been failed by the government over a protracted time. Upon repeated use these messages become normalised, they become “filled with a situation” (Barthes 2000: 119). If today we look at the title ‘President-elect Trump’ as a sign, we cannot now separate this phrase from what he said, or from his triumphant win. This is what makes up the concept of the sign, it “reconstitutes a chain of causes and effects, motives and intentions” (ibid.). Value has been attached to what Trump said by some quarters (seemingly, mostly, the disenfranchised white working class), because, despite the content of his rhetoric he still won. This means the myth has been legitimised:

Myth is a value, truth is no guarantee for it; nothing prevents it from being a perpetual alibi: it is enough that its signifier has two sides for it always to have an 'elsewhere' at its disposal. The meaning is always there to present the form; the form is always there to outdistance the meaning. And there never is any contradiction, conflict, or split between the meaning and the form: they are never at the same place (Barthes 2000: 123).

What I think many of us were amazed by was Trump’s blatant use of sexist and racist descriptors (what is known as “unapologetic racism”). He made no attempt to conceal the way he felt about his particular minority group du jour. Not only did he have a complete disregard to political correctness, but also felt no compunction in openly speaking his mind without the use of ‘filters’. He attached no importance to what is known as “preference falsification” (Timur Kuran): the act of not saying what you really think due to social pressure. This has the function of giving...

racists new heart by suggesting that many more people share their beliefs than they might hitherto have believed. Trump’s electoral success tells them that at the least racism is not a politically disqualifying problem for presidential candidates any more, and that perhaps for many voters it is a plus rather than a minus. Second, it tells them that if they themselves publicly express their racism, they are less likely to be socially punished than they previously believed (Farrell 2016).

It is in this way that the myth becomes codified: “the fundamental character of the mythical concept is to be appropriated” (Barthes 2000: 119). What Barthes means here, though, is how the first level of the sign is taken up into the second level, thus turning it into myth. However, it is also this shift that puts it into circulation and brings it to light: the myth does not conceal anything, rather “its function is to distort, not to make disappear” (2000: 121). The myth, once promulgated, becomes personalised by those who take it up and support Trump. They see themselves as the victim in a dynamic which can conveniently create a scapegoat of any number of minority groups. The supporters of Trump recognise themselves in the myth presented to them: “it is I whom it has come to seek. It is turned towards me, I am subjected to its intentional force” (Barthes 2000: 124).

Figure 3: What Did Trump Say? What Words Are Associated With Him?

Barthes explains how this works in a similar way to how Louis Althusser describes interpellation: “it comes and seeks me out in order to oblige me to acknowledge the body of intentions which have motivated it and arranged it there as the signal of an individual history, as a confidence and complicity: it is a real call” (2000: 125). The Trump supporter has recognised the call and is interpellated as subject to the cause. The message is received as a kind of obviousness, presented as the natural order of things: “A conjuring trick has taken place; it has turned reality inside out, it has emptied it of history and has filled it with nature” (2000: 142).

In regards to what most of us would see as lies from Trump, for the myth this is not quite the whole story: “Myth hides nothing and flaunts nothing: it distorts; myth is neither lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion” (Barthes 2000: 129). Barthes sees the myth as a type of “compromise” that has the ability to escape any kind of linguistic contradiction that could result from its exposure, any attempt to “liquidate the concept” will simply “naturalize it” (2000: 125). Myth “transforms history into nature” (ibid.) and we know this is how it operates as history is our evidence of this, because myth “is not read as a motive, but as a reason” (ibid.). Barthes goes on to explain that it does not even matter if later on people realise that something is a myth, because “its action is assumed to be stronger than the rational explanations which may later belie it” (2000: 130) and we saw this when female Trump supporters were interviewed about his sexist comments: most did not change their minds about supporting him. Nevertheless what is important to remember is that “We are all potential Dominicis”, even those who voted for Trump, because we can all be “deprived of language, or worse, rigged out in that of our accusers, humiliated and condemned by it. To rob a man of his language in the very name of language: this is the first step in all legal murders” (2000: 46).

Donald Trump won the election because of what he said, not despite it – this much is true. For those that voted for him, and for his other supporters and soon-to-be presidential ‘team’, the content of Trump’s speech-acts operated on them through connotation, the second-level of semiology, the myth. Trump utilised the myth to set himself up as the cult leader par excellence. His self-appointed place as saviour of the side-lined has made him a ‘perfect’ leader in a post-truth world.

Bibliography:
Barthes, Roland. 2000. Mythologies, trans. by Annette Lavers (London: Vintage).
Basu, Tanya, ‘Trump Says He’ll Send Refugees back to Syria if Elected’, Time, (30 September 2015), < http://time.com/4056951/trump-syria-refugees/> [accessed 23 November 2016]
Farrell, Henry, ‘Trump’s Election Has Undermined ‘Political Correctness’. That Might Actually Be a Problem’, The Washington Post, (19 November 2016), [accessed 23 November 2016]
Fishwick, Carmen, ‘Can You Be a Feminist and Vote for Donald Trump? Yes You Can’, The Guardian, (17 November 2016), [accessed 21 November 2016]
Neate, Rupert, ‘Donald Trump Doubles Down on Mexico ‘rapists’ Comment Despite Outrage’, The Guardian, (2 July 2015), [accessed 21 November 2016]

Image Credits:
1 Designed by the author.
2 Created by the author based on Roland Barthes own model in Myth Today.
3 Compiled and designed by the author.

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 2

Please see part 1 of the blog.

Adorno's main concern in regard to kitsch is with the social aspect of history, and more importantly with the lives people are living in the present. He explains how, when kitsch is employed, the “social moment” becomes formed through it: "by serving up past formal entities as contemporary, [kitsch] has a social function – to deceive people about their true situation, to transfigure their existence, to allow intentions that suit some powers or other to appear to them in a fairy-tale glow" (2002b: 502). When we are listening to the nostalgic kitsch of Guilty Pleasures we are not addressing the real everyday politico-social issues that matter and that could improve our lives, we are instead, according to Adorno, “tormented individuals” because we are proffered something in the music that we can never have (ibid.). In Guilty Pleasures this might be a harking back to a time when things were, supposedly, more 'innocent' and 'free': our childhood, for instance. And because Guilty Pleasures cleverly serves up music from every decade, all our childhoods are represented.

Adorno explains that “All kitsch is essentially ideology” (2002b: 502). In Guilty Pleasures this could be perceived as undisguised nostalgia (I will return to this 'undisguised' factor). This ideology appears as a momentary revisiting of the past in the form of what Adorno calls “musical small change” (2002b: 503) - fetishised elements that get circulated, in the case of Guilty Pleasures these elements are the old songs themselves. The tracks 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 the “forgotten secret” (2002b: 501) to which Adorno refers. Richard Leppert puts this particular point well in his commentary in Essays on 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).

This past/present that is forgotten Leppert describes as “selectively (mis)remembered”, and 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). The nostalgic element contained in Guilty Pleasures produces a sentimental moment, but not in a positive sense, because “Sentimentality is robbed of its implausible character, of that touching but impotent Utopian moment which for an instant might soften the hearts of those who have been hardened and take them beyond the reach of their even harder masters.” (ibid.). Thus, the momentarty and naive fleeting thought that life could be better, is just that, naive and fleeting, it has no power to do anything about concretely making life better. It does not last beyond the moment.

Whilst it may appear relatively easy to argue that Guilty Pleasures recuperates itself because it is not pretending to be something it is not (it is not pretending to be anything other than kitsch), there is a subtle but effective illusion existing in this very modelling of itself as 'innocent'. On one level it is undisguised nostalgia – everybody knows what they are getting with Guilty Pleasures – but this straight-forwardeness is itself part of the disguise. I do not believe that Adorno would see Guilty Pleasures as the worst kind of kitsch - he does grade kitsch in relation to severity, with “kitsch with 'class'” being the very worst (2002b: 504) - but I believe in its supposed openness Guilty Pleasures lulls the listener/participator into a false sense of security. As Leppert says: “Adorno is eliciting the reality of the truth in the lie, that is, that the truth of kitsch is its falseness [...]” (2002: 362). But, while Guilty Pleasures could be described as authentic kitsch, like painted chalk seaside ornaments, this just hides another type of lie. It is important to analyse what this falseness means in relation to Guilty Pleasures and what it is hiding from the individual, because in an ideological sense the songs are speaking to the individual and represent, at least on a subjective level, their own past.

Hermann Broch, in his essay 'Notes on the Problem of Kitsch' (which appears in the oft-cited edition by Gillo Dorfles Kitsch: An Anthology of Bad Taste), addresses this falseness thus:

[...] if kitsch represents falsehood (it is often so defined, and rightly so), this falsehood falls back on the person in need of it, on the person who uses this highly considerate mirror so as to be able to recognize himself in the counterfeit image it throws back of him [...] (1973: 49).

These kitsch objects, whilst they are really only generic objects, are imbued with a power that appears to speak to you. We see a reflection of ourselves in that old song. But that reflection is not a true one. The nostalgic song presented to us as a guilty pleasure “appears itself as reality, which is supposed to stand in for the reality out there” (Adorno 2001: 65). And, as Adorno explains of kitsch, it helps maintain a memory of the past which is deformed, illusory and of another time (2002: 501). The past of the guilty pleasure cannot really be reconstituted, but the image that has been set up for me is particularly compelling in its personalised nature. I believe that song is for me. It is directed at me and I engage with it instantly. As Broch emphasised, the individual actually connects with this distorted element within the object because it shows something of themselves. This personalised hook then becomes the whole of the object in its transportation of the individual to a past time. The 'real' history tied up in the song is obfuscated by the nostalgic, but ideologically engineered, past that I impose on it with the help of the Guilty Pleasures machine; whether that 'real' history is mine or socio-historic, neither are readily made available to me. I do not recognise the praxis occurring here and instead think the song is calling to me. This is the myth of Guilty Pleasures.

In his own discussion on myth in 'Myth Today' Barthes sets out his model of the myth in its semiological format whereby the sign (the meaning) at the first level of semiology becomes the signifier of the second and as such becomes its “form” (2000: 115). This “form” becomes attached to a “concept” (the second level signified) and produces another sign (ibid.). Barthes calls this “a second-order semiological system” (2000: 114). He explains that this is how myth uses “raw materials” (signs in the form of existing language and images), takes them into its own system and creates what he calls “metalanguage” (2000, pp.114-115). Barthes pays particular attention to some examples that he provides the reader with in order to demonstrate how this process works. But, rather than getting caught up with using one of his own examples to further explain how myth works for Barthes, I should like to go straight to what he says about memory in relation to the “concept” in order to remain focused on the theme of my thesis on Guilty Pleasures: how the myth speaks to the individual through a misrepresentation of the past. Where necessary, I shall work backwards through Barthes text.

Barthes states that the concept's “mode of presence is memorial” (2000: 122). His use of the word “memorial” is important on two levels in relation to Guilty Pleasures: one, the meaning of the first sign is drained of its history by the concept on the second semiological level (ibid.); and, two, the word 'memorial' signifies death. It is death that Adorno is referring to when he alludes to the danger of kitsch. It is what he demonstrates when he gives the example of the Titanic in his discussion on musical kitsch in 'Motifs'. He explains how the music played out in the background is being merrily danced to by the voyagers and underneath them, in the boiler-room, their future destiny is already being played out in a whole other and horrific way - and they have no knowledge of this impending tragic event (1998: 16).

Whilst Adorno's metaphor is for a particular type of death (the death of a history), and not the death of the individuals he is referring to in his example, this death is nevertheless real because of the partiality of ideology. Barthes demonstrates that in its historical selectivity the concept works on the meaning of the first sign such that it becomes “half-amputated” and “deprived of memory” (2000: 122). In Guilty Pleasures I would like to suggest that how the myth operates is by amputating social - and to a large extent personal - history. In its supplanting of a (partial) subjective history that pertains to the individual listener, the guilty pleasure - in its representation of a cultural past that has little relevance to the interpellated listener - distances (abstracts) history. Barthes describes how this works, thus: “Through the concept, it is a whole new history which is implanted in the myth.” (2000: 119). And for Guilty Pleasures this is 'my' history, because, as Barthes states, it is “made of yielding, shapeless associations” (ibid.), and can be subjectively appropriated because of this.

Barthes, when providing the example of the Basque architecture which is taken out of its context and placed in a street in Paris, says that “it is I whom it has come to seek.” (2000: 124). This is the power of the Guilty Pleasures myth. It is communicating to me, it forms a union with me. And its secret is that it can disguise itself such that I do not see that actually I am seeking it, I am “the person in need of it”, as Broch said. Adorno also acknowledges this function of kitsch when he says kitsch “lurks in art, awaiting ever recurring opportunities to spring forth.” (1997: 239). Guilty Pleasures appears to call the individual dancer/listener, but this is its falsity: it is pretending to call them – although in a sense it is calling them, but in a very generalised and interpellant way - by disguising their own need to be transported back to the past. It lifts that need from their psyche, repackages it and places it 'out there'.

In order to see what effect the myth has on the Guilty Pleasures participant, and how it might attach itself to them via the mythological sign, I will re-visit Independent Women vs. Dreadlock Holiday, which I introduced in part 1 of the blog, in the next part of the blog. This particular song demonstrates how generality works in relation to the myth and how this makes it appropriable. It is this that Barthes describes as its “intentional force”, how it is directed at 'me': “[...] it summons me to receive its expansive ambiguity.” (2000: 124). It is also what Witkin refers to when discussing Adorno and reification: the song becomes “the 'property' of the listener.” (2003: 59).

Please click here for part 3.

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).

Why Does She Stand on One Leg?

A Semiological Analysis of the Chambord Flamingo Advert

You can watch the advert here - Best Ads On TV - or read the description below. Please scroll down for the semiological critique itself.

Brief Description of Advert
The Chambord advert opens with the single leg of a women next to that of a flamingo. The next two frames show the face of the flamingo followed by the eyes of the woman. We then see the legs of a flamingo standing on a mirror with the flamingo lifting one leg and the voice-over saying: “Why does she stand on one leg?”. We cut to a scene of someone pouring some champagne and topping it up with Chambord. Then, back to the flamingo standing on one leg, followed by the bending knees of a young woman in a short yellow skirt: “There is no reason. She likes it. She does it. Does she care what the other eyeballs think?” We see the flamingo and young woman standing side by side - “BOF!” - and a close-up of the mouth of the young woman saying the word (and appearing in written form on the screen). We then see the woman walking away from the flamingo in a predominantly blue-coloured room (with occasional pink highlights): “Of course she does not”. The final scene is the single leg of the flamingo next to an up-ended bottle of Chambord with the voice-over also saying the words on the screen: “Because. No reason.”

Semiological Critique
While much could be said about the stylish young woman, the Louis XIV-style packaging (and the French emphasis in general) and also the colour signifiers in the advert, I am going to focus on three elements: the standing-on-one-leg trope, the term ‘bof’ and the aesthetics implied by two filmic references. The first two motifs I will discuss in a broad cultural sense, since they represent the brand directly, the other I would like to include for its connotative reference, because I think it is stylistic but at the same time means the advert could reach an audience other than its main one (female ‘twenty-thirty something’ cocktail drinker).

While it might be obvious to state that the single-leg motif could refer to ‘legless’, this does not reflect the subtle nature of what is implied by standing on one leg. In modern culture we can think of ballerinas, gymnasts and horses in dressage. So standing-on-one-leg refers to skill, beauty, dexterity and achievement. These sports, if you will, are also what could be described as middle- or even upper-class, so this drink could be seen as being ‘aspirational’, despite, and indeed because of, its reasonable price. The drink is presented as ‘classy’, not least because of the history of the drink, although there is some irony contained in this since, if you follow the lineage of Louis XIV, it ended in 1775 with the French Revolution, one of its main aims being to rid France of the aristocracy (the upper classes).

Bof! The term ‘bof’ generally has two meanings, both relevant to the advert. It is urban slang directed at people who want to be different, but it is also French for ‘I do not know’ in the sense of disinterest. The ‘I do not know’ refers to both the question of why the girl/flamingo stands on one leg, but also to a disinterest in why they do, because it is irrelevant – they just do. What is important is Chambord, not the standing-on-one-leg. Of course, this standing-on-one-leg is about being different (quirky). Being different is desirable. Who wants to be like everyone else? Being different = Chambord = being interesting/quirky, but also being desirable because of that, nevertheless.

The last point I would like to bring up are the Kubrick references. The opening music sounds like it is sampled from A Clockwork Orange (if it is not it is characteristic of the style of the track ‘The Funeral of Queen Mary’ from the film). Also, the monochrome room, which we see more of at the end of the advert, is redolent of the ‘bedroom encounter’ scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey (a Louis XIV-style bedroom). While these may just be stylistic affects included in the advert to make it fit a certain aesthetic, they do more than that (while also telling you something about the designers of the advert, too – such as, perhaps, their age, but also their interest in cinema). These Kubrick references add an edginess to the film – especially the music, which, in a way, is at odds with the visuals – they are mostly soft and pastel in colour. But, also, they open up the advert to another group of potential customers: women (and perhaps men) of an age who would be familiar with these films (1968 and 1971), and also film buffs. I appreciate that these additional references may be connotative, but since the aim of advertising is to make it personal to the potential consumer, this advert does that for me. As Roland Barthes explains, the power of the connotative is that it speaks directly to you and appears as if it has been placed there just for you!

Mindful Walking and the Postmodern Urbanscape – Part 2

Please click here for part 1

Encouraging forms of mindful walking that respond directly to individuals’ affective reaction to space encourages a more positive engagement with that space. I do not mean ‘positive’ as opposed to ‘negative’ - it is fine for someone to dislike an aspect of their town or city - but positive in regard to a wish to explore it, to understand how it came to be the way it is and to think about the feelings they have which might arise in regard to it. This type of walking can be seen as a form of enactment which “might serve to both challenge and confirm prevalent forms of spatial ordering, dependent on the possible intersections of experience, power and ways of seeing and doing that inhabit the individual at any given moment” (Hancock and Spicer 2011). Mindful walking can help to create counter-narratives to the dominant discourse on particular spaces, becoming what Edward Soja would describe as a “thirdspace”.

I do not want to be prescriptive in how mindful walking should be enacted. I also would not necessarily employ, in any wholesale kind of way, the Situationist form of psychogeography to every scenario. The strategies employed for particular groups would emerge from the groups themselves through the help of facilitation: literally from the ground up. In this way the desire of the group (the “subject-group” as it would be for Félix Guattari) would promote a “semiotic poly-centrism” that supports “equal acceptance to all desire whether it makes sense or not, by not seeking to make subjectivation fit in with the dominant significations and social laws” (Guattari 1984). It would be in this way that citizens can speak to their city. As the sentence quoted by Roland Barthes in part 1 continues: “the city speaks to its inhabitants, we speak our city, the city where we are, simply by living in it, by wandering through it, by looking at it” (1967).

I introduce this concept of mindful walking in these two blogs as a way of opening up discussion on further exploring the urban imaginary through the act of walking…

Mindful Walking and the Postmodern Urbanscape – Part 1

Physical agglomerations in the form of buildings, roads, paths, street décor and all the spaces in between, make up our urban landscape. While our towns and cities have gradually developed over time, one of the side-effects of urban planning is that of the homogenisation of the landscape such that it appears to have been that was ‘forever’. Take your regular walk to work as an example: have you noticed how you see new hoardings appear, then later the building work begins behind the hoarding, then upon completion the hoardings are removed and the new building appears in its fullness? In a very short space of time you will have forgotten what was previously in its place. The space will become ‘stable’ again.

Nevertheless, behind these structures sit power-relations in the form of authoritarian schemas: political decisions, competing agencies, organisational collaborations, policy-making and so forth. The schemas which represent the manifestation of structures that appear in urban space have a discourse which supports the ideology behind them: from the gestation of the development plan itself, through to the materialised object. The final project - be it a shopping centre, public housing complex or a new road system - is built on this discourse and becomes a representation of it. As Roland Barthes states in his text ‘Semiology and Urbanism’: “The city is a discourse and this discourse is truly a language” (1967).

However, the formations, processes and narratives that support the urbanscape often have a preference for producing a particular subjectivity in their pedestrian citizens, one of worker-consumer. Postmodern space is neoliberal in its moorings and along with this a habitus is defined which encourages specific behaviours, gestures and actions from us. As discussed by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish, power is spatially manifest: operations and procedures applied to the body-politic take place in material structures that appear in concrete form. The authority attached to procedures are oriented in space and come in the guise of statements that become naturalised upon being repeated by not only those designated to do so, but also they become legitimised by being mediated through popular narratives and discourse. Moreover, while the heterogeneity of postmodern space should, theoretically, contain the possibility of a multiplicity of potential subjectivities, subjectivities that do not conform to a neoliberal ideology are discouraged, or at least not encouraged. This means that individual desires that are outwith the project of capital tend to get co-opted by capital, rather than being allowed to run free.

For the pedestrian (for example, the worker or shopper), their individual desires tend to become either rerouted or suppressed by the urban landscape, to the extent that little internal thought arises, to any level of full consciousness, around how the urban space came to be the way it is. Nevertheless, these desires still exist because of the aesthetics of space and the affective response that results, even if it is not consciously acknowledged. This means that to be able to really ‘see’ the city individuals need to be encouraged to move about it in a new way. One could say that they need to be educated to respond to it somatically and aesthetically.

Please click here for part 2

Pas le Grand Départ Dérive (part 2)

The Pleasure of the Gerbil

This is the second part of the account of my not-the-grand-départ dérive (click here for part 1). These blogs have been written in the style of Patrick Keiller’s ‘Robinson’ films, but the protagonist is Sister Moonshine and the Robinson character myself. The blogs also use the theory of the semiologist Roland Barthes from his book Mythologies.

We crossed the Ring Road and headed for New Road Side, where the psychogeographer assured me there would be more bikeage. We spotted a cyclist on the Ring Road, although he wasn’t wearing yellow and appeared to be going in the wrong direction.

As we got to Horsforth’s other High Street, the psychogeographer approached the pet shop and, hoping it would be open in order to buy chewing paraphernalia for myself because “Chewing seems to be your raison d’etre”, she tried the door. It was shut. We both looked down the length of New Road Side. Not a yellow T-shirt, Union flag or handle-bar in sight.

She couldn’t hide her disappointment, having hoped to put up more posters of myself making, what she thought were, amusing comments in speech bubbles. I asked her what Barthes would say about the High Street. She said that despite him not being considered a psychogeographer, she could see much in his texts that referred to urban space and had just submitted a paper to a conference dedicated to Roland Barthes on this very subject.

As the psychogeographer drank a take-away coffee from one of those High Street coffee chains she criticises so much, I spotted these yellow markings on the road and asked if the council had painted them to match the yellow T-shirts. She spluttered an incoherent reply. Then I spotted this sign!

I hoped it wouldn’t start her off again, following the earlier response to the same sign we had seen nearer home. But she seemed happy to be able to reach the board this time and forgot her rant about how capital seemed to have an arrangement whereby it could bring all creative production within its sphere and successfully commodify it.

In the absence of any more signs of the Grand Départ, she started to photograph random objects, so I decided to distract her with further questions about Barthes: “What does Roly say about the aesthetics of place?” I said. She replied “In ‘From Work to Text’ he provides a beautiful example of someone walking in a dry valley and how all the available sensations – sounds, images, smells – make a plurality of meaning available to the stroller that are multi textual, displaying the heterogeneity of space that is very personal, taking into account the individual as much as it does the environment itself”. I asked her if this was anything like the assault course she makes on her bed for me. She gazed down the dual-carriageway and said in a considered way “We are all psychogeographers…”.

We set off for home past The Ringway public house and saw that it was now closed. I asked if this might also be connected to the decline of the grand narratives of Lyotard’s she had mentioned earlier. She said it quite possibly was, but rather more to do with cheap supermarket lager and how it was sold as a ‘loss leader’. I realised I had accidentally got her onto her favourite subject again – capitalism – and felt we had come full circle, not only on our walk, but also in our discussion.

The psychogeographer then began paraphrasing some guy called Lefebvre who, she said, had been a Situationist at one time. I managed to catch: “the space of capitalism is hegemonic and depends on consensus more than any space before it ever has”. I didn’t really understand this in relation to alcohol, thinking it was a bit of a leap, but I couldn’t face listening to a long explanation if I asked for clarification. Also, I was really looking forward to getting home, taking off my psychogeographer mantle, and just chillaxing in my coconut shell…