Mighty Collectros Deconstructed
mannybolone
Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
WARNING: this is a *gasp* academic article so people who don't like academic writing might as well just skip past this (even though it's actually not written that obtusely at all).Krin Gabbard: Hipsters and Nerds: Black Jazz Artists and Their White ShadowsMuch of this finds Gabbard (who's a film scholar) talking about record collecting, masculinity and race. Most of what he says here is drawn from post-Freudian/Lacanian psychoanalysis...most of it makes sense within that framework. It's just that there's few people who've really tried to break down record collecting as a social activity. A few favorite lines:"The man whose collection is complete has no gaps and thus no anxieties about what is not there. The serial collector seeks plentitude, the warding off of castration.""Like all homosocial activities, a serious devotion to collecting may even hinder a man from acquring the regular company of a sympathetic woman, and not just because so many record collectors end up with the unkempt look of the nerd... real life encounters never measure up to the fantasies so compellingly inscribed in his favorite records, and, of course, he cannot meet a woman with the same rarefied but crucial attitudes about m usic that he shares only with his fellow collectors, all of them male." 
Also, his arguments around white jazz collectors (which I think can certainly extend to non-Black collectors of multiple forms of Black musical genres) on pages 239-240 are provocative.
Also, his arguments around white jazz collectors (which I think can certainly extend to non-Black collectors of multiple forms of Black musical genres) on pages 239-240 are provocative.
Comments
I also have trouble finding girls that like watching martial arts as much as I do...but I wouldn't say this has hindered terribly my ability to meet women...I just deal with. football, cars, seems like theres and endless list of male-dominated hobbies that could potentially limit ones ability to meet women (if one chooses only to hang with others that share an interest in said hobby).
seems like an obvious point.
the real question is why record collecting is a male-dominated hobby, not whether it is or not.
but maybe the author deals with that elsewhere in the paper....
It's only an issue if it is vital or at least desirable to you that women share your interest, which I think is the case with an unfortunately large number of the dudes that post here...
I know what you're saying - dudes don't need to be sitting around waiting for a girl who has three sealed copies of Boscoe... but it does matter to me that my girl digs MUSIC at least in some way similar to the way i do. Not because I want someone to be the same as me, but when I get excited about finding something cool, or I play out in the city, or I find a break and make a dope beat out of it, or some other music related , she might also in some way enjoy it with me.
funny to read that shit, but still---
it`s all about that
He was talking to himself a mile a minute and appeared to be arguing with a non-existant person.
Ten minutes into digging my wife nudges me and there is the dude flipping through the records talking a mile a minute.
All nuts are record collectors?
or
All record collectors are nuts?
BTW.....what's an "Academic" article...one us common folks won't/don't understand??
An academic article is one that is targeted mostly at an academic audience (professors, students and other intellectuals), that usually appears on an academic press and is not written for a general audience in the same way a newspaper or magazine article is.
This should be rather self-obvious though, no?
And Rootless: I don't think it's a very debatable that most record collectors (not shoppers but collectors) are men. You seriously question this?
Abd the reason why most of the essays on record collecting focus on hetersexual relationships is because collecting is being framed as something that mostly men engage in and as such, it opens the question of where women fit in, both as collectors but as social players in the lives of the collectors.
And of course, a lot of collectors have romantic relationships but Gabbard is focusing on why the date-less, straight male record collector is such a recurring trope in popular film and lit. And in most thse cases, you see the same archetypes popping up. I don't think his ideas are meant to apply to collectors across the board.
uhhhh...no I don't. my question was:
I think it's an obvious point to make, as the author did (in an albeit taken-out-of-context quote) that record nerds have trouble meeting girls because record nerding is male-dominated and so if all you want to do is experience record nerding then you'll never find a girl. that's obvious and can be said about any male-dominated activity.
I'd be more interested to know why record nerding is male dominated.
That was my bad - I was in a rush and ran through the posts quickly. Obviously, my speed reading comprehension skillz are suspect.
That said, as you note, it'd be better to critique Gabbard's argument by reading the essay (it's not long) rather than trying to judge it by its pull quotes. I pulled out stuff I found interesting but they don't necessarily the central points of his essay. He knows, like we do, that most collectors are male and his essay tries to tackle the question you raise: why?
There are a few reasons he states, a few he doesn't (but others, like Will Straw do). Gabbard mentions a few of the psychoanalytical explanations, such as the idea that a "complete" collection (by artist, genre, whatever) is a way to resolve fears of castration since, if you have no holes (symbolism alert!) in your collection, then you don't need to worry about what's missing. This was noted in one of the pull quotes I cited.
Personally, I'm not a huge fan of psychoanalytical theories (and of course, being a sociologist by training has partly to do with this) but I'm open to explanations that aren't purely structural. For example, I do think Gabbard hits the nail on the head (and this is not a new observation on his part and he acknowledges this) that the impulse behind record collecting could be read through a specialized kind of masculine ideal - instead of valuing brute strength, it's valuing a specific kind of elite knowledge. More than "he with the most toys, wins," it's "he who knows the production history behind all these toys, wins." It's still a way for men to show off who's got the bigger dick...except that here, we're replacing penises with records and/or record knowledge.
Go to town with that, however you want.
This form of mastery is NOT appealing to women for a variety of reasons (presumably). Women do collect, of course, but mastery of arcane facts is not necessarily an implicit part of why or how they collect and there are theories behind this as well.
Rootless:
I concur. I think it's a chicken or egg thing. I don't think men's singular obsession with records cuts them off from other social pursuits. I think they have a tendency towards being obsessive, accumulative, hording, and it's just directed towards record collecting among some men.
For others it's knowing every baseball stat, tuning their car endlessly, playing video games for 10 hours a day until they are world renowned players of (insert video game here).
I have no idea if it's nature or nuture, but the people on the most extreme end of the collecting, hording, accumulating end of the spectrum are predominantly male.
I think it has something to do with how we define masculinity in modern society. Dominating, owning, possessing (things or extensive knowledge) are stereotypically male traits.
There are definitely strong, barely beneath the surface issues with gender, sexuality, race and record collecting.
I think non-Black nerds are definitely facinated with, and maybe hoping to aquire by proximity some of the Hyper-Masculine Sexuality exuded by Black music artists (see E. Cleaver). Which is pretty polar opposite of the record nerds (ref. NYT article on definition of nerds = opposite of Black people).
So in some twisted way, collecting is related to displaying behavior meant to attract women, even though the effect is quite the opposite.[/b]
Sorry, I didn't read the article, and I just yapped (women!) for a page.
I'd be more interested to know why record nerding is male dominated.
I think it's sort of like baseball card collecting or playing poker. Females I know can only get their foot in via sensitive loving man (who collects records).
try being japanese and shopping for records!
i am practically all of the above
Also, as a female, since I don't feel my interest in records is driven by competition or an urge to prove my "manliness", I actually like the music better than the men collectors I know.
I can't tell you how many times I've been listening to modern music with a fellow collector, and I'm like "hear that? it's a sample from yada..." And they didn't even realize it. And I feel that a lot of the time they don't even really listen to the records they collect, they just acquire them and check them off the list.
Whereas I actually listen closely and enjoy, and it really means a lot to me.
zoinks! dont say that too loud.
Can we assume Black nerds are listening to Tom Jones and David Hasselhoff??
That's the only way to be and how I got here in the first place. Though I wouldn't want to say that men in general don't like the music as much as collecting them. I guess I was trying to answer why it's male dominated but ended up posting a few too many lines in a paragraph. I recognize the competition aspect being around some record nerds and it's not my thing. I do care to listen and I can still appreciate the game as it's often quite entertaining. It's also real weird. I'll have to admit, being female also has its perks. (i.e.)It is nice to beat dudes in their intimate circle of break trivia with something simple like The Frog by Kool and the Gang and then go back to doing something totally unrelated. If a dude pinned it down, the answer wouldn't be as cool.
I don't think sexuality figures too heavily into it, I think most collectros need some sort of quest or meaning to their life, and they choose to do it through the accumulation of objects. Maybe they just need to get laid, but I'm not so sure.
This is a real question - has anyone here known someone who's gone from being a normal, well adjusted person who happens to enjoy old records and become the foul-smelling crazy eyed collectro?
I don't think collecting records fulfills a specific desire to collect anything. I think people like collecting records because they like collecting records, not because they need to collect something.
A huge part of Gabbard's argument is looking at the phenom of white music collectors of black music and that, collecting records is actually a repressed form of cross-racial desire for black masculinity, drawing from the same "White Negro" impulse that minstrelsy filled in the 1800s. More specifically, Gabbard is arguing that in JAZZ specifically, there's a specific appeal of the black jazz artist as someone who is simultaneously hip and masculine but is also an intellectual - basically, it's a nerd cloaked in the racialized cool of Blackness.
It's not sexuality in the conventional sense, i.e. that collectors are funneling unspent sexual energy into record collecting. The psychoanalytic argument would say, instead, that collecting exhibits traits of an activity designed to alleviate deep-laden sexual anxiety around inadequacy or castration. I'm more open to the idea that collecting is bound up with forms of alternative masculinity - that collecting records is a way towards "mastery" and thus, behind that, is the belief that what men are supposed to do is "master" things. That also has to do with sexuality in terms of sexual/gender identities but not sexuality as in "I'm trying to get my blap on."
This is bunk. Women collect different things, they just don't want to call it collecting because most women know there is a social stigma related to collecting things. Men are either oblivious, or don't care as much about appearances as women do. Shoes, rings, bracelets, cats, lamps, stuffed animals, dolls all count as collecting.
I dunno man, is there any studies on the people who conduct these sorts of studies?
Non:
Naw dude - that's fully acknowledged in all the lit I've seen around record collecting. Sure, women collecting things but implicit with record collecting is also the valuation of a knowledge base behind those items (this obviously doesn't apply in every case). In other words, it's not just about stacking chips, it's about knowing all the arcane minutiae that comes with those items and that ultimately, what you're being respected for (by your peers) isn't just the accumulation of the collection but the implicit assumption that you're also *smarter* than the next dude on that account.
Personally, I think this aspect of these theories tends to be underbaked - not that I don't think there's something here but I don't think it's as well fleshed out as it could be. I think the argument being made - and this is certainly open to debate so I'd like to hear what folks thought of it - is that when it comes to things that women collect, their collections are not equated with a form of POWER whereas that's part of the implicit draw/appeal of things that men collect. Think of Pokemon - that shit makes the connection totally obvious: he with the best cards holds the most power. So just apply that same principle with some shit like a Honus Wagner baseball card or serving bean dip out off a Stark Reality.
The theory goes that most women don't pull out some insanely rare Beanie Baby and show it to another woman and go, "ha, top this, bitch!"
I'm not denying that your "social stigma" idea doesn't hold merit too but I think the argument being made here is that the reasons WHY women and men collect things are different. No one is denying women collect things. But they don't collect RECORDS and that's worth thinking about.
Do you honestly think his argument is that far-fetched? I don't really think there is much argument against some of what he is saying in this article.