What Up, Dogma?: Contemporary Rock and Primitive Correctness:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
In sketching this point, it may seem that I am invoking a primitivist myth myself--that of the fall from an edenic realm of pure presence. Let me say that I am not simply calling for formalistic analyses of the musical or sonic dimensions of rock--though a little of that would be very good thing. By "music" I do not mean some privileged sphere beyond interpretation, textuality or politics; rather I'm saying that the dominant paradigm in rock criticism places off limits whole realms of interpretation, textuality and politics by fetishizing the verbal or imagistic text at the expense of the musical one. This is partly accomplished by the sleight-of-hand of the primitivist myth which, when linked to the notion of authenticity, allows its purveyors to vilify musical mastery as a betrayal of instinct; this at the same time that such critics celebrate the sophistication and artifice that constitute mastery in other realms, namely those of the word, the image and the market.
In Tropics of Discourse, Hayden White traces the evolution, in European culture, of the myth of the noble savage12. He is particularly concerned with the way the idea functioned politically during the time of Rousseau and the great bourgeois revolutions. Among other things, he notes that the myth, for all its apparent interest in non-European peoples, never did much to improve the lot of actual "savages," nor did it affect the ways in which the dark Others of colonial Europe were actually treated. The operative word in the epithet is "noble," says White. The myth of the noble savage functioned not to destabilize the idea of the savage but rather that of the noble in European culture. It was a useful way for an aspirant bourgeois class to question the power of aristocratic elites. The point was not that savages are noble, but rather: If savages can be noble, then what is nobility worth?
The myth has functioned in similar ways within rock culture. During the fifties moment, rock invokes the primitive to displace and undermine the hegemony of older, "square" pop styles associated with bourgeois values. Similarly, punk invokes the primitive as a way of destabilizing a 70s rock establishment perceived as elitist and corporate. But these revolutions have not resulted in the liberation of the people and, if White is correct, they were not meant to. Rather they helped a particular class challenge and ultimately seize the power of another. The nature of power and the range of its distribution changed little.
My argument is not that such changes are in some ultimate view worthless or wrong. The bourgeois state is a station on the way to something; but we need not fetishize its mythology and dare not be too easily satisfied with its scattered virtues. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic--or heavy metal--the same is true of the current postpunk rock establishment and the primitivist myth that supports it. These metaphors now occlude more than they reveal. Ossified into dogma, they no longer enrich our experience so much as make it easier to market a prepackaged MTV moment of virtual savagery. Let us rethink and reconsider what we talk about when we talk about rock, and be willing to discard even myths and metaphors that seem essential. What is it that goes without saying in the discourse of rock music and popular culture? It is now something other than the mythic primitive.
1Reproduced here is the text of a presentation given to the Conference on Rock'n'Theory at the University of Illinois, Urbana, in March 1994. Though some specific references are dated, the overall thrust of the piece is, I suggest, still very pertinent. To anyone who doubts that what I describe as rock's "search for the elusive, authentically primitive" is ongoing, I point, as Exhibit A, to the recent CD Innocence and Despair by the Langley Schools Music Project (released in the US on the Bar None label). I suggest that the doubter consider not the music per se (which consists of choral renditions of soft-rock songs performed in the mid-70s by schoolchildren from rural Canada), but rather the hype surrounding, and reviewer reception of, the artifact. Check out the CD's webpage (http://www.incorrectmusic.com/keyofz/langley/) and you will find a collection of promotional and critical comments steeped in the rhetoric of Romantic noble savagery. Meanwhile, CD promoter Irwin Chusid's linked manifesto on "Outsider" music (http://www.incorrectmusic.com/keyofz/after/) attempts to persuade its reader that interest in such expressions is the mark of a highly discriminating and distinguished faculty of taste.
2Dick Clement, Ian LaFrenais and Roddy Doyle, screenwriters, The Commitments (Beacon Communications, 1991).
3For a groundbreaking discussion of the Romantic ideology at the heart of rock, see Robert Pattison, The Triumph of Vulgarity: Rock Music in the Mirror of Romanticism (NY: Oxford UP, 1987). Regarding rock notions of the primitive and what might be termed "white blackness," see in particular the chapter "I Am White, But O My Soul Is Black," 30-55.
4For a critical analysis of primitivist discourse in modern art and letters, see Marianna Torgovnick, Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives (Chicago: U of Chi P, 1991).
5See Frederic Jameson, "Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism," New Left Review 146 (July-August 1984, 53-92).
6See Bangs, Lester, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, ed. Greil Marcus (NY: Knopf, 1988).
7For a sharp analysis of the dialectic of authenticity and artifice in rock, see Frith, Simon and Howard Horne, Art Into Pop (London: Methuen, 1987).
8DeRogatis, Jim, "Art Thieves' Genre Hopping Mixes It All in Good Fun." Chicago Sun-Times, 9 October 1992, Weekend Plus, p. 6.
9DeRogatis, 6.
10Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, MA; Harvard UP, 1984).
11Published a few years after this presentation was made, Fred Goodman's The Mansion on the Hill: Dylan, Young, Geffen, Springsteen and the Head-On Collision of Rock and Commerce (NY: Times Books, 1997) provides a detailed account and critique of Landau's career as rock critic, producer and manager.
12White, Hayden, "The Noble Savage Theme As Fetish," in Tropics of Discourse (Baltimore: Hopkins UP, 1978), 183-196.
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