paganbabies
Justifiable Criticism
Or, Why it's OK to Revere Metal Over Mr. Timberlake.I wrote in a past article on criticism that the role of the modern popular critic is no longer defensible as a constructive agent in the discourse on mass media. The type of critic I refer to is not the academic critic (which I am training to become) but the popular critic - I mean David Manning (see also quote whoring), and not Harold Bloom or E.K. Sedgwick. Well, in characteristic fashion I'm going to disregard my own proscription and step into the role - knowing that it is a futile and fruitless role and I will change no one's opinion - of popular critic.
Like all other critics, I have a vendetta here, but unlike them I admit it up front. My goal is not to tear down or denigrate the work of Justin Timberlake. Despite the way I cringe at and mock his music and its ilk, I do "get it." I'm not the old codger dad who hates The Beatles for being different or having long hair. I would not deny the fucking billion people who like it the right to enjoy it. Instead, what I hope to do is to fight the misconception which holds that Timberlake is an artist. Justin Timberlake is not an artist. I expect that a substantial portion of his fans will accept that. Is he Kandinsky? Stravinsky? Dostoevsky? Think about it. No. He's not. If you don't accept that you're a fucking retard, stop coming to my website. And of all people Mr. Timberlake should be the happiest about not being an artist. Need proof? Quick: name an artist with as much money as him. As many adoring lady fans. Shit, just name a living artist and I'd be impressed. If Justin Timberlake were an artist his fanbase would consist of 70,000 intellectual assholes and his mom. And he would be one of the luckiest artists in history to have even that.
But all of this is moot conjecture and not to the point. To get to the point, however, I will have to confuse things a bit. Like any good critic, I get confusing here in part to mask the weakness of my argument. (Talk smart and make em think you're brilliant and incapable of being wrong.) I am going to subsume the interpretation of and encounter with all creative artifacts, from little Timmy's second-grade drawings to Picasso's Blue period, under the term art appreciation. I hope it will be granted that art appreciation, in this sense, occurs along a spectrum. If one is honest about it and not too blindly postmodern, he will hopefully be able to set one work on the spectrum closer to art and the other closer to craft (or in extreme cases crap). There is of course a great amount of fog here: does Beethoven's Ninth Symphony get placed above or below Mozart's Requiem? (Above is the right answer though many would disagree? No. Of course there is no right answer. (yes there is)(it's above!)) But there is more clarity than fog. Now it is very difficult to place anything of very recent creation near the art end of the spectrum, because one of the defining characteristics of art is its longevity and its ability to transcend topicality and its period. Why is Shakespeare great? Many reasons, but one is, as Samuel Johnson puts it, "In the writings of other poets a character is too often an individual; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species. It is from this wide extension of design that so much instruction is derived." I'll leave you to read his Preface if you need further explanation, but its essence is this: If your work is specific to things unique to its period in time or history, if the creativity therein is too reliant upon the artifacts of its surroundings, or if it is so highly specific as to apply to a limited set of ideas or schools or people, it is very unlikely to last long enough for anyone to remember. But let me contemporize this last idea a bit before I go on.
My uncle is a fan of The Beatles. In his old codger-ish way, in the act of dismissing any current music group (which with my cousins and me is most often a metal band), he is wont to ask the question "Will anyone be listening to them in 50 years?" He sets this question always in the context of The Beatles. This is at once a great and terrible question. Its honest and most likely correct answer is "No." The question importantly taps and inquires into this idea of art's transcendence of time. But at the same time, it works to prevent anything new from ever entering that higher level of reverence. My uncle is therefore left, through his own active line of logic, with a catalogue of music that necessarily ended thirty years ago. And we all do this. I happen to be one of the lucky folks who has picked up a taste for a certain portion (though by no means all, or even a tenth) of classical music. In many ways, that acts more as a signifier in our culture than anything else; it equals intellectualism and it is even more a class indicator. (All art is. Why have there been so many record auction prices for paintings of late? Supply and demand. The demand? If you're rich and you don't have a Manet, you're not rich. Ferraris are a status symbol. The right Picasso is 750 Ferraris.) But my strongest affinity and attraction is definitely to heavy metal. Hardly the genre of the refined. Nor is it of the many. But it can be placed higher up on the art spectrum than Mr. Timberlake. I use "can" very carefully here and it in no way implies that all of it must.
-bj- |