Fine, Call Me An Elitist
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When I see a headline like "Time to take Susan Boyle seriously," I tend to follow the written instructions, which in this case meant digging up Boyle's version of "Wild Horses" that inspired Ann Powers. I'm billing the LA Times for the dental work to fix my newly popped cavities, right after I put Sticky Fingers on my turntable to wipe out the memory of this travesty. Now, I don't hate everything that achieves a certain level of popularity—I'm a fan of Lily Allen and think Beyonce's a pretty good singer—but I'm still an adherent to the old-fashioned belief that popularity doesn't make up for crappiness.
This no doubt makes me a snob, an elitist, and a hater of democracy. Powers praises Boyle's saccharine, unimaginative oversell of the classic Rolling Stones by praising its lack of irony, its "mask of sincerity," and adherence to all the hallmarks of cheese so beloved by whitebread America that wants to avoid anything challenging. I flatly cannot understand why popularity should mitigate one's dislike of "art" that's so artless. The great thing about the explosion of pop music in the past century is that it collapses the distinction between the individual stamp of being an artist and having popular appeal. The Stones were great pop music, after all.
I'm not made of stone. I watched the video where Boyle overcame prejudice based on looks to prove herself an able singer on Britain's Got Talent, and found myself rooting for her. But let's face it. That she's a competent singer doesn't make her a star, and it has everything to do with her voice and nothing to do with her looks.
A critic guilt-tripping the audience for not thinking much of scrappy Susan Boyle's actual art feels very ... familiar. The pressure to indulge illusions about Boyle's talent reminds me of every time liberals get labeled "elitist" for laughing at creationists, suggesting that Ayn Rand was not a good writer, or scoffing at Sarah Palin. The right wing populism card has been routinely played since Richard Nixon waxed unpoetic about the "silent majority." At least in politics, the idea that being popular mitigates the undesirability of being all wrong has some justification, because it takes being popular and not being right to win. Of course, "popular trumps right" doesn't do much for a nation's well-being, as the Bush administration demonstrated, but you can at least see why the idea is attractive.
But why on earth should this attitude apply to aesthetics? God forbid you get caught hauling around a record by Hot Chip or Yo La Tengo instead of joining Boylemania—someone might call you a "hipster." I can't quite put my finger on when the populism of mediocrity started to overtake the desire to be considered someone of taste, but now that we have an LA Times record critic praising Susan Boyle because she's just mediocre enough to hit the big time, I have to say it's time we started a movement to reclaim the terms "snob" and "elitist."
Photograph by Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images.
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really the topic of this post. Susan Boyle was almost 10 years old when "Wild Horses" was originally released. I imagine that when she first heard it, she thought that Mick Jagger was singing directly to her sad wounded soul. So perhaps she is replying to him in the only way she can in kind. To be clear, I'm no expert on the fantasies of young Scottish girls, but when, as a little American boy, I saw the video for Joan Jett's cover of "I Love Rock 'n Roll," I wanted to become rock & roll. In these contexts, you can see why I'm saddened that Boyle will probably never mature into Liz Phair's material, like "Jealously," for example. In reality, Boyle is certain survivor of Western inhibition, if you allow me to read into her take on Madonna's "You'll See" before it's released. I mean, she is a product of Anglo-European power whose fairy godmother in her case is Simon Cowell. That said, he will make bank with her record while the best hope of health finance reform we Americans will get is if we not hold our breath. In the meantime, karaoke for my horses.
Oh for Pete's sake.
By: tinyredcar | Fri, 09/18/2009 - 11:13
Where I live Widespread Panic and Yo La Tengo are the mainstream, and if you don't have a burning desire to stay up to 1am on a Tuesday night to see them, people look at you funny. I've suffered through some Rusted Root, Yo la Tengo and Widespread Panic concerts, through excruciating 27 minute "jams," and know that they're not my thing. And that's ok. That why it's so nice that there's choice, so I don't have to dash my brains out rather than listen to "the Panic."
And by the way, I liked this version of Wild Horses, and I kinda resent the implication that people who like Susan Boyle are somehow stupid or unable to appreciate real music. The definition of what's good and what's not, or what's real music is so damn subjective that it's impossible to determine. Your good could be (and obviously is) my horrible.
Talk about familiar
By: claireific | Fri, 09/18/2009 - 10:19
Amanda, I too am an Austin girl that loves to work it out on the dance floor to some Hot Chip and loathes the American Idol/Britain's Got Talent machine. That said, the sentiment of "God forbid you get caught hauling around a record by Hot Chip or Yo La Tengo instead of joining Boylemania—someone might call you a "hipster." is SUCH a familiar (not to mention whiny and defensive) lamentation I hear from the droves of carbon-copy scene girls around here. It also isn't anything new or thoughtful. Why do you care if these people you obviously think so little of look down on your taste in music? These scene girls go to great pains to disassociate themselves from "whitebread Americans" (even though they probably grew up in Plano or El Paso) and yet they all shop for the same threadbare tees, wear the same Chucks and ballet flats, and ride the same vintage fixies. "Hipsters" and "elitists" are not immune from the need to belong to an in-group, and just because that in-group studied comp lit at Vassar and engages in lively debates of Lynch films on the way to see a Black Lips show doesn't make them better, worse, or fundamentally different from Natty Light drinking Republicans from Oklahoma that think The Secret is deep literature.
Amanda Marcotte's not a cultural critic, so let's not pretend.
By: Bo | Fri, 09/18/2009 - 10:05
"Elitism is (among other things) a refusal to recognize quality or talent solely because "undesirable" people (I believe you call them "whitebred Americans")like it or produce it."
Did you make up that definition yourself? Because it's hardly a universal truth.
Marcotte's taste in music is pretty middle-of-the-road, and I'm not very interested in her thoughts on what constitutes good singing.
She has American Idol
By: Majotaur | Fri, 09/18/2009 - 00:56
She has American Idol Syndrome--one hell of a set of pipes combined with total confusion about what "interpreting the material" actually means. It's a bit more understandable with the Idol kids, I'm afraid, because they're all 20 years old and you hope that they'll develop some ability to interpret as they get more life experience. Boyle's got that experience, but it hasn't contributed to making her music more interesting, which is too bad, because I do want to root for her. But "I Dreamed a Dream" made me cringe from the first I heard it--it's a song from the point of view of a woman whose life has totally fallen apart, and who will shortly be forced into prostitution to support her daughter and then die after being attacked by a john, and Boyle sings it like it's a fabulous moment of triumph. That...does not work.
At least she's not as addicted to the vocal tricks and runs and melismas that the Idol kids splatter indiscriminately all over their songs. I suppose that's a step up.
Yes, I've heard that narrow definition
By: Amanda Marcotte | Thu, 09/17/2009 - 16:51
It's always trotted out to defend the use of "elitism" and phony populist posing, but it always gets applied to people making legit aesthetic or political arguments to shut them up and make them feel bad. I'd like to see some examples of bona fide elitists arguing that something is bad because it's popular, and I'd like them to be prominent enough to justify all this anxiety about elitism.
Without that evidence, I'm forced to conclude that elitists are a strawman erected to make people feel better about having reactionary politics or bad taste.
Fine, I will.
By: rose555 | Thu, 09/17/2009 - 16:30
Elitism is not an insistance on quality regardless of popularity. Elitism is (among other things) a refusal to recognize quality or talent solely because "undesirable" people (I believe you call them "whitebred Americans")like it or produce it.
Yes, Republicans overuse the populist cry of elitism to rally their troops, who are often too eager to sneer at the well-educated or urban (even when they are themselves well-educated and urban -- hello George Will). There's nothing elitist about not liking Susan Boyle, especially if the reason you don't like her is that her musical interpretation is neither modern nor interesting. But it IS elitist to roll your eyes at people who do like her (many of whom are likely just inspired by her underdog story and relate to her fish-out-water existence in the entertainment biz) and assume their affinity is based on a total lack of taste.
Elitism, like populism, is just a way of devaluing the opinions of others based on stereotypical assumptions of how they think about politics or culture. Your point about Susan Boyle (and that godawful "Wild Horses" rendition) would carry a lot more weight with me if you didn't use it as a springboard to criticize "whitebred Americans" (note: I honestly have no idea what the term "whitebred" even means anymore -- it's become a catchall for rural, non-coastal, white, uneducated, conservative, and intolerant. Very few people, not even the tax-hating cowboys I grew up with, actually lives up to that assignation. It's like "welfare queens" for liberals.)