Thursday, November 14, 2013

On Lily Allen and How Blurred Lines Changed Criticism

Maybe this is just what cultural criticism will look like in the post-apocalyptic wasteland that is left in the wake of the music industry, but boy has the internet been angry at everything that seems to go even moderately viral. Indeed, it seems that a song can barely chart without a cultural fascination with it's political shortcomings.

I, for one, blame Robin Thicke.

Before Blurred Lines successful songs came and went without too much of a fuss made over their political implications. Pop created outrage, it has for its entire history, but rarely has the criticism of the song stemmed from a Left-wing political critique, and rarely has that criticism come to define a song and its reception. For example, Thrift Shop consisted of a white rapper bragging about how he liked to live cheaply - a potent source of criticism for those inclined to write about it - and it did not seem to have nearly the genre of criticism that every monster hit after it seems to generate.

Robin Thicke's uptemp soul revival then arrived and suddenly the internet's capacity for criticism kicked into action. The interpretation, and I stress interpretation, that the song alluded to sexual assault became the dominant discourse surrounding it, and instead of simply being an example of a morally bankrupt industry trying to sleaze its way out of a death spiral it became the cultural Left's public enemy number one.

I'm not necessarily saying that this is a bad thing; if a song is about rape (I remain agnostic on this question) and it becomes a highly influential cultural product then it completely justifies any and all criticism.

What is significant about Blurred Lines is that the way that we criticise songs changed. This song made people, including people I know very well, viscerally angry in a way that was unprecedented. The success of a song that had such a troubling message was something that people took very personally and very seriously. This took a political dimension too, with universities in the UK banning it from being played on their campuses.

After the anger at Blurred Lines had dissipated somewhat the torch was passed to Miley Cyrus, whose performance at the VMA's represents the junction of the two critical obsessions. Every half-baked thought on the implications of what she was up to made its way onto the internet, especially though the medium of the Open Letter (can we stop writing those, they are the McDoubles of op-eds: cheap, unsatisfying and ultimately bad for you), to the point where there were critiques of open letters to other open letters to Miley Cyrus like the Cultural Studies version of Inception.

After Miley, rage and criticism seems to be the default response to a hit single. Katy Perry mistreats animals. Lady Gaga appropriates from Islam. Most bizarrely, Lorde is apparently racist. These responses are now tired and familiar, and seem to follow an increasingly repetitive and cynical structure where the virality of a music video is in direct proportion to the chance that it will be criticised for political incorrectness.

Which leads me to Lily Allen. A few days ago, pop music's snarky older sister released the provocative film clip to her song 'Hard Out Here for a Bitch', a viciously satirical take on the way that the music industry treats women - with nods to both Blurred Lines and Miley Cyrus.

Almost immediately there was a (now familiar) backlash that was concerned with the way that the film clip portrays the back-up dancers, who are all women of colour and are all sexualised in the same way that women of colour are sexualised in the landscape of the current music industry.

At best, the debate that has erupted over this film clip is about the responsibilities and function of satire, and whether or not the portrayal of these women is appropriate in this context. At its worst it is the ultimate iteration of the now methodical need to criticise the intersectional aspects of every single pop song that is in any way popular or interesting.

What frustrates me about Allen's critics is not that they are critical, it is the tone of their criticism. Seemingly every post that I read made some reference to their author being enraged by the Allen video, and that that visceral anger (precisely the same sort of anger that Robin Thicke generated) is what drove them to write such criticism.

The criticism of Allen's video is an abstract interpretation of a single aspect of a video that is boldly feminist in a way that is extremely rare in pop music. If that is making you 'mad' then this ability to be enraged by minutiae is no better than that of the people who are convinced that there is a War on Christmas.

There is oppression in the world. There is injustice in the world. Being angry at Lily Allen solves nothing and actively makes your cause against oppression look and injustice look ridiculous. It is the intellectual low-hanging fruit in an endless cycle of distraction that is extraordinarily unhealthy for the Left as a movement.

For my money, I think that the film clip is an effective piece of satire. I understand if you disagree with that. But Lily Allen is not Robin Thicke, she is certainly not deserving of the level of vitriol that this debate seems to have created. And maybe we should start thinking of better ways to spend out intellectual energy than getting angry at pop songs.

I look forward to your open letters.