Return-Path: sendmail 5.67/UCSD-2.2-sun Thu, 5 Aug 93 17:36:53 -0700 for /usr/lib/sendmail -oc -odq -oi -fsocgrad-relay socgrad-list Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1993 19:32:06 CDT From: "Linda Andes (312) 996-1801" To: Subject: He said She said Jon sez: >The problem with the sexism in rock is this: >What is rock music actually doing vis a vis culture? Is >it a reflection of existing standards, the purveyor of new standards, >or in a postmdern free-float? The way you answer this in turn >answers the sexism charges. Am I allowed to answer that rock can be both a reflection of existing standards AND a purveyor of social change? The big debate seems to be over whether culture---->society or society-----> culture, while I think it's more likely that culture & society exist in a dialect of two-way causality.... Model that! As for a postmodern free-float: Jon, I just read your ASA paper this week and I think that I still need some study time to digest this postmodernism stuff. Anybody out there got any (reasonably understandable) references that might help me out with my solitary struggle to get a handle on this stuff? ("Postmodernism" is a REALLY dirty word in my department!) > "The point is not to write the sociology of the car, the point is to drive. > In this way you learn more about society than all academia could > ever tell you." Baudrillard. America Ha ha! This is almost EXACTLY identical to what a pal o'mine told me about my MA research! He said, "I think you could teach those stuffy old farts more about punk in ten minutes with a can of spray paint then you ever could with a hundred pages of interview transcriptions...." I replied that they wouldn't give me an MA for that! ========================================================================= Julian sez Everett True sez: >Excerpts from "WHY WOMEN CAN'T ROCK" (by Everett True) - 'Melody Maker' >..........Rock is the music of Presley, the Stones, >the Clash and Guns N'Roses; tribal, dedicated to destroying what it doesn't >understand and suppressing the viewpoint of the outsider (blacks, gays, the >disabled, even 'artists'. . .). Well, what we've got here is exactly what I've been whining to Jon about for quite a while now -- a definition of rock which is usually unstated and androcentric, and not very clear at that. Rock writers & fans WANT to define rock in aesthetic terms (perhaps a musicologist could do this), but in reality the definition winds up being social (ie. white men do it, or other people who SOUND like white men). I'm thinking about writing a paper on this, so any ideas are welcome...... >Where do women fit into all this? Quite simply, they don't.... >As soon as any strong, vital rock woman comes along, she's immediately margin- >alised, made safe by being classified in a varity of 'outsider' roles.... >Thus they are effectively castrated......... Heh heh heh, what a poor choice of language! I just don't buy a metaphor that women (or anyone, for that matter) aren't or can't be powerful because they lack a particular organ... To self-censor a lyric from an L7 song: she's "got so much cl*t, she don't need any balls!" >Rock is a firmly patriarchal form of expression, all the way down the line; the >fans, the critics, the money-holders, the musicians. It's far too gone now for >any change.... ....Women can't rock. The rules don't allow it." Well, this comes right back to what Jon said back at the beginning of this message. Is rock a reflection of culture or is it an instrument of social change? I guess Everett True would say that it's a reflection and that it can't have a thing to do with social change. (This is all rather humorous to me, since I met Everett True last spring when he was touring with rather out-spoken feminists Band of Susans! I guess he'd have to say they don't "rock" since two members are female....) Linda "life's a b*tch, now so am I" Andes u35455@uicvm.cc.uic.edu