A couple of days ago a friend send me an email with a signature, which I can’t get out of my head.
“Taste is context, but the context has changed.”
I couldn’t figure out, if the shifting of “context” into a slanted constellation is actually producing some new meaning or if it is just a trick. Like one of this stupid puns, that produce nothing except stealing your time. That was until yesterday, when I got attacked by a discourse while attending a small concert in a pub in Camden.
A couple of bands were playing music to an artsy crowd, a friend was djing and basically everybody had fun, till a song came up with, well, very explicit lyrics. I immediately escaped into the role of an observer (to be able to do that is actually a big luxury) and watched the reaction of the crowd. Since music played out very loud always has a certain force – you can’t escape the meaning, except when you throw something at the musicians or leave – people had to react. And they did.
Sex in public is rarely comfortable
Most of the boys and girls felt visually uncomfortable, they were crossing their arms or made annoyed faces. A friend next to me (male) kept on dancing, but felt the need to point out, that he was aware of the weird situation and shouted “… it’s a bit sexist” in my ear, which another friend (female) heard and got really mad at (yes, question mark). The singer (male) had already taken off his shirt (not to my delight), which made the situation even more bodily. The drummer (female) of the band had obviously no problem at all. We experienced confusion in a pure form, nothing seemed to fit anymore. When the next song came, instrumentally by the way, most people got back into the groove after a little while.
When the concert was over, my smart angry friend and me stood next to the canal with the drummer to make everything even more complicated and discuss what happened. The friend explained to me, that the song originally was by Kool Keith. And that she liked the song, but that she already left a couple of times when the band The Devil was playing it, because of some of the reactions in the crowd. And that male humans are in a crisis and this is their way to express it. At least, she said, they express it. But that she hates it, when men mark it as sexism just to dance on. Labelling something as sexism, doesn’t make it less sexist, it is still out there (question mark answered). The drummer said, the song is so absurd, that it blots itself out. And that it is only a quote, anyway.
Hey guys, aren’t we all in a crisis?
Taking the wrong turn towards the Regents Park weekend craze instead of reaching the last tropical-moist depths of the Nothern Line, I had time to think about everything. My biggest problem wasn’t actually the reaction of the crowd, indeed I was rather delighted by the young men. Their body language made it very clear, that these lyrics had nothing to do with them any more. Or with being male. For them it was more like a haunting of the past, of past role models. Therefore you simply wait, till it’s over. So (next thought) I am not sure if there is a crisis of masculinity anymore.
Okay. You can’t gain something by inventing yourself as a deviation anymore, because the macho normativity, which was mandatory for every man, is gone. Well, taste is context, but the context has changed. But aren’t we all relieved? Even though it wasn’t replaced by one strong alternative identity, doesn’t mean that there is none. Lucky us, the offer is various.
So I would say no. There is no crisis in masculinity anymore, at least the guys I know are doing pretty fine. They don’t have more problems with dressing than I do. They are pretty well connected with their emotions, which means they are as confused as I am. They find their own ways through the flexible work environment, indeed articles about boys who can’t cope with girls in school/university and are therefore disadvantaged, are just a new way of sexism to prevent a still necessary quotation. I mean, come on, do we really believe guys can’t compete with girls? And they don’t have to go to war anymore, not more than I do. So where is the fucking crisis?
Driving female sex into a corner
I decided to change my line of thought, when I hopped on the bus. There was something else to it. Okay, Kool Keith was known for singing some kind of porncore, but give me a break, who the hell is shocked by porn nowadays. The interesting thing wasn’t describing, what he wanted to do with women, but mocking about women enjoying their sexuality during intercourse. He double-bitched women, kind of.
To follow this hint, in the morning me and my coffee tried to look up the lyrics, typing in “kool keith lyrics girls want you to suck their breasts”. But we couldn’t find anything. Okay, Beyoncés “If I were a boy” appeared as a search result on position 6, which has a sexist view on men as well, if you ask me. Reducing shit, the friend would call it. But even snatches of other rhymes were not successful. Photo Session might come a bit close, but the perspective was different – and the perspective was the interesting thing. It was interesting, because it stole a feminist achievement of the last years: to have fun with objectifying yourself as a woman.
Indeed, a while ago feminism and emancipation were a lot about not being a female object and the confusion of the KK-song not by KK somehow revealed, that this changed. Nowadays girls don’t mind being looked at as an object. In fact a lot of women like to turn themselves actively into one – and if you are not convinced that this is a good strategy, just get into Bruno Latours actor network theory and learn that objects might control a situation as well as subjects. Or watch Objectified to understand that this is work. And beautiful. And that exactly was taken away by the lyrics making fun of girls changing themselves into objects – leaving no room to escape to, but to reflect.
Do you have taste?
Which we all did. Hopping off the bus finally I understood, that the signature in the emaiI I got a couple of days ago is much more, than just a pun. It describes exactly what is going on: Taste is context, but the context has changed. It did. The outcome is that everything is much more complicated now. In fact sometimes you get the impression, complication is the new normativity. But still. Aren’t we lucky?
Thx to the Sickgirls & the canal of Camden.
