I Started a Joke: “PBR&B” and What Genres Mean Now | Pitchfork

2014-01-07 ~ Mark

This is what genres do really well, for good and for ill: They make large amounts of music easier to talk about (and, by extension, sell). Most often, genres do not stand up to scrutiny, yet they’re a fundamental part not only of music discussions online and off, but of any conversations we have about culture more generally. Particularly with the infinite online options for music access and conversation, pithy and memorable genre names can make it easier (if not necessarily accurate) to classify, discuss, and compare music. Genres arise out of tastes, and are often institutionalized (I wrote about one such example here), though online there’s infinitely more space to create, market, sort and search by micro-genres. (Remember “witch house”?) People have lengthy, years-long arguments using genres as combatants. If nothing else, genres make music easier to fight about.

2013-07-222017-11-12 ~ Mark

Drift Compatible – Geek Empire. In which L. Rhodes uses Pacific Rim as a pivot to talk about kaiju films as manifestations of urban anxiety, and issues that come out of genre and fandom in general. Good reminder that I can learn from bad movies, too.

When a fanboy defends Pacific Rim to those audience members by saying, “What did you expect?” the underlying issue is genre. An astute viewer will learn to expect certain things from movies that fall into certain genres. A clever filmmaker will learn how to use those expectations to advantage. A fair-minded critic will keep those expectations in mind when judging a genre film. Things are rarely so simple. For one thing, genres carry their own history implicitly, and that often makes it difficult to understand just what’s at stake…

2011-09-122017-11-12 ~ Mark

Toward a Reading of Post-Kanye Hip-Hop: The rise of swagger and the increasing irrelevance of haters.

A genre doesn’t function as a genre unless it establishes the conditions of its own replication.