nietzche contra generalism
on the dangers of historical consciousness /creeping impartialism / liking everything
"Anything which compels a person no longer to love unconditionally cuts away the roots of his power. He must wither up, that is, become dishonest.... only when history takes it upon itself to turn itself into an art work and thus to become a purely artistic picture can it perhaps maintain the instincts or even arouse them"
on the dangers of eclecticism /excessive cultural intake
"Constantly losing more of this feeling of surprise and dislike, becoming excessively astonished no longer, or finally allowing oneself to enjoy everything—people really call that the historical sense, historical education."
of course Nietzche is just preaching basic good-sense "home economics of the libido" here: you spread the love around, you spread yourself too thin, nothing has the same depth of impact... a sort of weakly attached generalised cathexis to "pop" or "music" replaces the obsessive fixation on a particular instance or area of pop or music...
There's a theory called advanced genius theory, where the crux is that ahead-of-their-time artists who subsequently lost it (Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Paul McCartney) never lost it, but rather stayed ahead of their time, and the time hasn't caught up with them yet. Anyway, one aspect of this theory is that saying you dislike something aesthetically is limiting, and to be advanced is to like everything artistic, from abstract expressionism to Britney; the real difference is just how much you like it.
ReplyDeleteSuch a positive mindset seems prima facie attractive, but how can a rational person subscribe to the idea of the advanced genius? Death of the author, duh!
You'll have to run this by me again, I don't quite get it (nor indeed see the connection to the Nietzche quotes)
ReplyDeletefor a start, none of those artists (with the possible exception of Reed) really seem ahead of their time; on the contrary, they seem exactly bang on time, which is why they had so much impact - they synched up perfectly with popular desire, supplying what the public was ready for... what they wanted without necessarily knowing it yet
Bowie in particular actually defined what he did in terms of not being ahead of his time - he said something like, "what matters isn't who's the first to do something - it's who did it *second*". so he wasn't originating stuff, he was the one to bring it to the larger audience by making into an attractive composite that worked as pop.
And then if anyone's career defines scrambling desperately to stay abreast of trends, it's Bowie from about 1984 onwards.... Tin Machine, and then the Little Wonder/ Earthling phase (where he did quite a good job with drum and bass). Either that or he's revisiting his own golden moments of synchronising with both the cutting edge and popular desire (hooking up again with Nile Rodgers... hooking up again with Eno).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Genius_Theory Here's the Wikipedia entry for the book the theory's progenitor wrote to propound the theory. The theory began with the observation that Lou Reed seemed to have lost the plot throughout the 80s, despite such a illustrious, visionary back catalogue. Rather than assuming that Lou Reed's compass had gone awry, the theory asks you to consider that he maintained his visionary stance, and that your issues with the music he made lie with you, because Lou Reed had advanced beyond you.
ReplyDeleteThat insight led to a whole system of advancement, with numerous conclusions ranging from the sensible (e.g., a song's use in an advert should not affect your enjoyment of it at all) to the outlandish (e.g., advanced geniuses will have had a mullet at some point and are obsessed with Batman). One corollary to advanced genius theory is that disliking things isn't worth the time, and one should seek the value in everything. I was reminded of that aspect when reading the Nietzsche quote about "finally allowing oneself to enjoy everything".
https://zscalarts.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/advancement-chuck-klosterman.pdf Here's a PDF of Chuck Klosterman's article on advanced genius theory. I should say that I don't subscribe to advanced genius theory; an artist-centric evaluation has a misplaced locus, in my view. But I should say that I rather enjoy the tortuous logic the theory employs, and also that, despite having read the book, I have no idea how seriously to take the theory.
It seems a bit shaky to me as an idea... but it's related to the auteur theory, isn't it? The idea of auteur theory, which was critiqued by Pauline Kael and others, is that a Great Director will always have traces of that greatness, either in their early unformed work, or hack things they did on their way to carving out freedom for themselves, or later on in their declining years, you'll still see glimmers of that Genius.
ReplyDeleteI can't remember the nitty gritty of the counter-critique but part of it is just a gut-level distaste for the pious over-veneration of Auteurs-Geniuses. Also a feeling that it's a bit of a slog to trudge through the entire urrrv, looking for glints of genius-to-be in the jejune early efforts and twilight dribblings. Why be such a fanboy?
Also vaguely remember there is some kind of critique of the over-emphasis on the director, cinema as a collective art... behind a Great Film that Matters there is a lot more going on in terms of teamed talent and contingency and ripeness of the times than just the vision of the director.
As an idea, it's not so much "shaky" as "situated on the San Andreas fault". But there are explicit parallels with auteurism, yes (Kubrick, Woody Allen and especially Orson Welles are all classed as advanced). And like auteurism, advanced genius theory is essentially bullshit crafted to excuse deficiencies in feted artists' lesser works, with one or two occasional insights worth noting.
ReplyDelete