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tocharian wrote:...
I do, and I think this is rock at its best--when all the campy elements are in place. Rock gets BOR-RING when you try to suppress them.

What if there's nothing to suppress? No image, no icon, and the music stands for itself, or do you think every band has personas and theatrics they convey to an audience?

If there is a lack of the things you mentioned, i.e. persona, theatrics, "extreme sentiment", is it still "Kitsch"?

Skronk wrote:If there is a lack of the things you mentioned, i.e. persona, theatrics, "extreme sentiment", is it still "Kitsch"?

Yes, and worse. Kitsch that can't be redeemed as camp.

tocharian wrote:What do you think of, say, Fugazi? How do you feel about Ian MacKaye as a performer? Do you find the delivery a tad theatrical?

No, not the slightest bit. The plain-spoken anti-theatrical presentation of Ian's bands (not just the lack of stagecraft, but the avoidance of mystique) embodied in the entire presentation are principle charms.

Do you find the sentiment conveyed in the music a bit extreme?

No, quite reasonable. Essentially devoid of hyperbole or affect.

Do you think that the performers' personas are almost as important to the experience of the music as the music itself?

Aw hell no. If I find myself thinking about a persona, I become suspicious of the performer and everything about the performance.

I do..

Are you sure you weren't thinking of Jane's Addiction?

tocharian wrote:

Ranxerox wrote:Where does seriousness begin and fucking off end?

Who decides what seriousness is? Is the same act kitsch one day and then the next day not based on audience participation? Is kitsch an event that happens between each individual or the collective audience?

Yes!

I would answer these questions by deciding whether you think the rock aesthetic is, to use Sontag's expression, "too much". What do you think of, say, Fugazi? How do you feel about Ian MacKaye as a performer? Do you find the delivery a tad theatrical? Do you find the sentiment conveyed in the music a bit extreme? Do you think that the performers' personas are almost as important to the experience of the music as the music itself?

I do, and I think this is rock at it's best--when all the campy elements are in place. Rock gets BOR-RING when you try to suppress them.

'Too much' is hard for me to really get a grip on. I don't generally think in those terms. I find it especially unlikely that I would enjoy something that I found to be 'too much.'

I like Fugazi as music/sounds, I am not really moved by their performances and don't pretend to know enough about them as people or states of mind and soul to try and guess if what they do is theatrical or 'too much.' I appreciate their apparent earnestness but it is not a core issue. I don't think of it as being extreme so much as energetic and sonically interesting. Sometimes the crowd seems like 'too much,' I suppose, but not the band. I have never thought of or experienced Fugazi as camp nor kitsch (if I understand you definitions). They are a band that makes music I like, music that is, roughly speaking, part of the panoply of approaches known widely as rock. They do what they do, but I am really only engaged by a very limited part of the whole that goes into their band. I am primarily engaged by the sounds, then the artwork, then the lyrics, then the history of the scene or cultures they have been intimately involved with, then the response of their fans (when I am at shows), then their physical displays on stage. I listen to them as background music as often as I listen to them with attention to detail. I always appreciate the way they go about 'business' even if I almost never take it into consideration when choosing to listen to them. I don't have a single word that I would use to describe them or my experience of them. This is true for most things I like.

tocharian wrote:

Sontag wrote:Camp is a certain mode of aestheticism. It is one way of seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon. That way, the way of Camp, is not in terms of beauty, but in terms of the degree of artifice, of stylization.

Sontag wrote:Camp is a vision of the world in terms of style -- but a particular kind of style. It is the love of the exaggerated, the "off," of things-being-what-they-are-not.

Sontag wrote:As a taste in persons, Camp responds particularly to the markedly attenuated and to the strongly exaggerated.

Sontag wrote:In naïve, or pure, Camp, the essential element is seriousness, a seriousness that fails. Of course, not all seriousness that fails can be redeemed as Camp. Only that which has the proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naïve.

Sontag wrote:Camp is art that can propose itself seriously, but cannot be taken altogether seriously because it is "too much."... visual reward - the glamour, the theatricality - that marks off certain extravagances as Camp... And third among the great creative sensibilities is Camp: the sensibility of failed seriousness, of the theatricalization of experience.

Sontag wrote: Camp involves a new, more complex relation to "the serious." One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious... The traditional means for going beyond straight seriousness - irony, satire - seem feeble today, inadequate to the culturally oversaturated medium in which contemporary sensibility is schooled. Camp introduces a new standard: artifice as an ideal, theatricality

Sontag wrote:Camp is the glorification of "character." The statement is of no importance - except, of course, to the person (Loie Fuller, Gaudí, Cecil B. De Mille, Crivelli, de Gaulle, etc.) who makes it. What the Camp eye appreciates is the unity, the force of the person

Does that help?

In no way does this apply to the whole of rock music, any other genre, nor does it apply to Fugazi. You're certainly mixed up.

steve wrote:

tocharian wrote:What do you think of, say, Fugazi? How do you feel about Ian MacKaye as a performer? Do you find the delivery a tad theatrical?

No, not the slightest bit. The plain-spoken anti-theatrical presentation of Ian's bands (not just the lack of stagecraft, but the avoidance of mystique) embodied in the entire presentation are principle charms.

Do you find the sentiment conveyed in the music a bit extreme?

No, quite reasonable. Essentially devoid of hyperbole or affect.

Do you think that the performers' personas are almost as important to the experience of the music as the music itself?

Aw hell no. If I find myself thinking about a persona, I become suspicious of the performer and everything about the performance.

I do..

Steve. I grew up in DC. I've seen Fugazi countless times. This is bullshit.

And hell yea, their personas are important. YOUR persona is important. Just cuz you're not vamping it up a la Kevin Barnes does not mean you don't have a very distinct, very essential persona. And your stage banter is legend.

tocharian wrote:

Skronk wrote:If there is a lack of the things you mentioned, i.e. persona, theatrics, "extreme sentiment", is it still "Kitsch"?

Yes, and worse. Kitsch that can't be redeemed as camp.

You're under your own definition of kitsch now. You've bypassed even Sontag's ramblings.

tocharian wrote:Steve. I grew up in DC. I've seen Fugazi countless times. This is bullshit.

And hell yea, their personas are important. YOUR persona is important. Just cuz you're not vamping it up a la Kevin Barnes does not mean you don't have a very distinct, very essential persona. And your stage banter is legend.

So like, banter = music? I didn't know this was a Frank Zappa discussion.

You're making the assumption that stage personas are inherently artificial. The members of Fugazi have personalities. Steve has a personality. The difference between Fugazi and say, Genesis is that there is a distinct lack of pretense and artifice in the former. You might associate their personalities with their music, but that does not impart some quality to the music itself. Ian MacKaye screams when he feels like screaming. Guy Picciotto's spasmodics are unpretentious self-expression. You seem to be suggesting that this is somehow "just for show," and that bands must not have these personas "in real life". Well, when else can Fugazi have a gut reaction to their music except when they are playing it? Seems pretty real and unpretentious to me, and I doubt there's any knowing exaggeration in their self-expression.

So, yes bands have personalities that are often likable. Exactly HOW are they essential to the music?

EDIT: You know, I'm awfully exhausted tonight. Did I make the point I thought I was making, or am I totally incomprehensible here?

Ekkssvvppllott wrote:

that damned fly wrote:sontag's a hack.

FYP

i don't claim to have knowledge.

i do however claim to have taste.

Skronk wrote:

tocharian wrote:

Skronk wrote:If there is a lack of the things you mentioned, i.e. persona, theatrics, "extreme sentiment", is it still "Kitsch"?

Yes, and worse. Kitsch that can't be redeemed as camp.

You're under your own definition of kitsch now. You've bypassed even Sontag's ramblings.

As Rick Reuben often tells me, READ LOSER.

Sontag wrote:In naïve, or pure, Camp, the essential element is seriousness, a seriousness that fails. Of course, not all seriousness that fails can be redeemed as Camp. Only that which has the proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naïve.