School of Rock (Not Jack Black related)
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Read this in todays Guardian(b/w this will up my post count):As professor of anthropology at UCLA, Wendy Fonarow knows a lot about human behaviour. And, er, indie. Tim Jonze swots up on why gig goers behave just like Papua New Guinea tribes Saturday April 26, 2008The Guardian Remember that time you were crowd surfing at an Arctic Monkeys gig and thought you were just having a drunken laugh? Rubbish! You were, in fact, being "collaborative in a unique social space, expressing super-intimacy with strangers and rejecting the self-aggrandising that comes with stage-diving". Oh yes you were. And that time you were standing at the bar and thought you were just, well, thirsty? Not at all: you were probably just "proving your credentials as an industry professional" or "communicating to others a disinterest in the act".These are the theories of professor Wendy Fonarow, anthropologist at UCLA in California and the author of Empire Of Dirt: The Aesthetics And Rituals Of British Indie Music. Now available in the UK, it peers into indie culture from a strictly anthropological perspective and is packed with ideas about religious narratives (indie is the new Puritanism, apparently), guest list behaviour (which relate to sociologist Erving Goffman's theories about saving face) and the sexual politics of where to stick your AAA pass. So next time you're moshing, drinking or puking at a gig be warned: professor Wendy may up on the balcony viewing you like you're a lab rat."If something interesting happens at a gig I do turn on that anthropologist perception," she laughs. "People often think I'm on to some amazing scam to be able to do this, a real rock'n'roll swindle, but I've put the hours in stood by the door, collecting data about gender ratios!" So, here's Wendy's anthropological take on the history of rock'n'roll...
Comments
"People think the guitar is a phallic symbol but it's patently not. The head and the shaft are phallic, but the body is the hourglass shape that we use to symbolise femininity. So the guitar is actually a symbol of copulation, combining the two symbols in front of an open whole where you use your fingers. The guitar can be arousing to women but also men as well."
Rock'n'roll is born[/b]
"There are interesting theories as to why rock'n'roll happened when it did. There's evidence to suggest Christianity, which exists as a missionising religion, had run out of 'exotic others' to missionise after the fall of colonialism. Therefore it was in their interests to get adolescents to act like heathens, so they had a supply of unconverted people to convert. So what we did was produce a heathen in our own midst to act out all the same things we'd accused other societies of doing. And have a period of time where eventually they reject what they're doing."
Elvis gyrates[/b]
"Elvis was taboo because he had both masculine and feminine components and he was combining another major western divide, between the European music traditions and those that came from descendents from the west African slaves. So that's black and white, male and female, brought together. The music also shows you an idea you'd find in west Africa - that the mind and body aren't separated and that the body can be a means to knowledge and expression. European culture often separates the two, which is a false dichotomy."
Screaming fans[/b]
"In anthropology, you're always suspicious of the narratives. So I was less interested in why a lot of female fans were screaming - which did happen - and more interested in why people wanted to tell that story. There were so many men who loved the Beatles, too, and if you look at the actual documentation they'll do close-ups of the women and only show men in the long-shots. The cameraman has made a conscious choice of what to shoot; it's the same as at festivals today, when two thirds are usually male but you see more girls. Why? Because rock audiences are usually shown to be 'out of control' and by individualising females it implies they're sexually out of control and therefore sexually available."
Groupies[/b]
"Most shows involve guys squashed in with other guys watching different guys onstage. Someone needs to take the brunt for all that sexual desire, which is basically what the groupie is. I call them 'sin eaters', which is a western European tradition where someone in a village would be paid to take the sin off dead people, hence ensuring they go to heaven. I think the groupie is used to take the sin of all that sexual desire off the men."
Mods Vs Rockers[/b]
"One of my ex-students once said 'music is my ethnicity'. People want to find other people who are like-minded so instead of finding their ethnic identity through birth they find it through aesthetic preferences and that becomes their identity. For each one of those music movements, there are modes of display. Desmond Morris talked about how different earrings can signify where you are in the age grade of certain tribes in central Africa. To outsiders these displays are subtle or hard to notice at all."
Woodstock[/b]
"Again it's hard to know what really happened among the narratives of free love. I can't imagine what people say is what actually transpired, I think a lot of that has to do with the narcissism of the postwar 60s generation and them wanting to think they went through this utopian moment. I guess youth are portrayed as those who've lost their way and are under sway of pusher men in the music industry. And the idea is that, when you eventually cut your ties with that community, you realise those ideals are worthless and go back to worshipping the true deity, which in a capitalist society is money. It's another religious narrative."
Punk anarchy[/b]
"One of the things going on in music performance compared to theatre is you want people to play themselves. The reason surrounds authenticity. This is a really weird thing because if music is art, then music is artifice - it's made up. But people are always looking for truth in performance and they want this because if the performer is experiencing something true then so is what you're experiencing. There's a long past of people hurting themselves on stage - Sid Vicious, Iggy Pop. It's seen as being more 'real' but, if you read the performers' accounts, the reason they often do these things is because they think the show's going badly and feel frustrated."
Indie culture[/b]
"Religious narratives show up in all expressive forms, from politics to music. I see a lot of the religious narrative of Puritanism in the indie music scene; the idea that, to have the pure divine experience, it has to be direct and unmediated. So the smaller and more intimate a show is, the 'truer' fans believe their experience was, compared to someone who saw them later on in a bigger venue. That's why so many people claim to have seen the Sex Pistols at the 100 Club. You can also find the aesthetic of Puritanism in the way indie people present themselves, such as childlike clothing, this idea of returning to the golden age of childhood or the musical past."
Madonna shakes up girl pop[/b]
"Male performers tend to be more feminised, whereas with females, although some are masculinised, most tend to be hyper-feminised. Madonna is one example, but Kylie and Gwen Stefani support this as well. It's interesting because if you look at Mardi Gras or European traditions of masquerade, you find this overall feminisation there as well. It presents femininity as masquerade and that idea of 'gender performance'. It gives off the idea that being female is a sham, all make-up and props."
Hip-hop MC battles[/b]
"This is similar to the way certain Inuit tribes deal with conflict, which is through song duels. So, say your wife left you for another man: you might feel wronged and you would sing about this, then the other man will make his argument through traditional song. It's a little bit like a competition for the mic as you'd see in hip-hop. And when the crowd get behind one of the singers, that's the way the dispute is resolved. You might still be mad afterwards but it's been decided and the point is that the conflict has been resolved."
Glastonbury mudbath[/b]
"There's an emotional sensation from shared suffering, a feeling of togetherness. It's ritualised in societies all over the world. In Papua New Guinea, coming of age rituals in the highland involve getting hit with stinging nettles. In the Venezuelan rainforest there's a ritual where, to be a man, you have to put your hand in a glove with bullet ants for 10 minutes. You experience pain with a cohort of men you will work with as warriors. So the highs and lows of a muddy Glasto can in fact be the best ones."
Myspace[/b]
"People who film gigs on their phone aren't just doing it for the memories - they're doing it to present an image of themselves in cyberspace, where your personality is basically an enumeration of your tastes. You didn't just go to Glastonbury, you're 'the type of person who goes to Glastonbury'. To have a great cyber identity you have to record events and put them on your page. So your life in the real world is a way of gathering material for your online persona. In a way you're not really present at all."
?? Empire Of Dirt: The Aesthetics And Rituals Of British Indie Music is out now
http://music.guardian.co.uk/rock/story/0,,2275871,00.html
dont do that! how am i supposed to go back through the archives?
low post count + registered since '03 = access to forgotten Soulstrut gold!!!
(just kiddin', post all ya want!)
I'm having the most trouble with the groupies[/b] bit. Were is all this pent-up sexual tension? In who does it reside, and towards whom is it directed? How/why does some groupies, trying to sneak backstage for casual sex, relieve collectively in the way that the sin eaters[/b] did?