Sinister: I'm writing you now just to see if you're better

[D]

Hey, I go out drinking, come home and you're having one of my favourite drunken discussions.

Jan:
> The thing about ignoring mass-media-pop-culture is that it makes life
> better; at least for me.

I'm glad you added that qualifier. Lots of people obviously feel very differently. To take one
random example: me. But ...

> I didn't consciously choose to step out of it, it
> just happened, and it was good. It's strange how people have this idea that
> pop culture is something unescapable that's got some *meaning* unto its own.
> In fact, you just have to do a tiny little step to the side, and it all
> vanishes, you can let this this multi-billion-$$-life-invading industry rush
> you by like a high-speed train: *whoooosh*.

... I don't think it's like that, really. Just as there aren't simple GLOBAL PHENOMENA, there isn't
a single monolithic "mass-media-pop-culture" that one step will allow you to avoid. Its presence is
no more or less meaningful in itself than that of any other cultural product, and they're frequently
implicated in each other. It wouldn't take a great deal of analysis to uncover the links between the
massmediamachine and whatever culture it is that you like, be it newspapers, literature, "other"
music, etc: you follow the $$, the producers, the consumers, the influences and so on. I suspect
that in fact you do "embrace and filter", you just filter differently to, say, Julie - but so does
everybody else. Even the prepubescent girls who are continually being blamed, bizarrely, for "bad"
music (etc) tend to have quite strong opinions about what they filter out.

Conversely, of course, the great thing about comparing Destiny's Child, Sugababes, New Order and Ms
du Pre is that you don't actually have to choose.

>  Ok, it's very easy to appear arrogant when you have a different taste. But
> I don't think i'm *better* just because i don't do or like what most people
> do. I don't *hate* bad music, i just don't listen to it.

Well, you see, that's just it - if you snuck a closer look at the masses out there you'd probably
find that everyone's complex set of tastes is different. You might not believe the people I spotted
on Oxford St the other day queuing up to have their Donny Osmond cds signed.

I do hate bad music, I'm just not sure I can always identify it. That's one of the other great
things about pop: you don't have to care about it to appreciate it. Sometimes it just works anyway.
I'm too drunk to think about whether this applies to other cultural products. Anyway, this should be
an embarrassing story, but I spent weeks vaguely ignoring that boring Samantha Mumba tune that was
in the charts recently. Then yesterday I was in the pub, a tune came on, I liked it - it made me
feel happy, I smiled and thought that everything was good, just for a moment. Then I wondered what
the music was that was playing, and seconds later I recognised it as, of course, that "boring" S
Mumba tune. I felt silly but I still enjoyed it. I'm not going to buy the record because I'll
probably hate it again if I play it at home, but that doesn't mean it can't have been good at that
moment I heard it. I suppose this is why I don't *entirely* buy the argument about economics of
enjoyment. While I wouldn't suggest watching daytime TV every day instead of, say, reading poetry,
sometimes spontaneity is fun.

PF, your editor sounds like one of those mysterious "companion"s with garrulous opinions that
restaurant reviewers seem to have.
I suspect that Rushdie's dallying with U2 resulted in more sales gained to their fans than lost to
dismayed admirers, which was probably (along with the midlifecrisis of Never Having Been In A Rock
Band) the point of the excercise.

PF:
> Julie is the Milly Bloom of ice cream studies.
So who is the Molly Bloom of ice cream studies, or am I being thick?

Forgive me for I know not what I witter on about.

Maybe I should do an introduction: I used to be on Sinister years ago, back in the dark ages before
the terrible arguments, and didn't write very much. It's embarrassing to look back at my old little
replies & daft poem in the archive, which of course I did when I rediscovered Sinister. I possibly
wrote in once some time in 1999 as well.
So I resubscribed a while ago and read intermittently. Anyway, recently I seem to be reading all
your messages so I thought I should break my silence, and like I said I've been drinking, which
helps the nerves.

cheers
D




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