Why there can never be a universal standard

[Loss]

JvK, what do you make of my response on the first page? I ask because we seem to be having different conversations. I also ask how you reconcile what you are saying with things like the WTBBP episode you did ranking your top 100 matches. They weren't all from the same company/era/style, but by ranking them, you were making comparisons.

[El-P]

 

Oh yeah, I remember why I used to love when Gordberg was posting a lot back in the days.

 

(btw, just watched the Osaka Pro Super J Cup from 04 and it was probably the best card up and down as far as variety goes from all the J Cups, although no classico like the 94 version or even nothing as great as the best 95 stuff. Some of these Osaka Pro guys I had never seen before were really fun to watch, thinking about MAGMA, Tigers Mask, Murahama, of course the comedy duo.)

 

Looking forward to your review of the Osaka J-Cup!

 

I think anyone who deliberately watched the Dying Years of WCW and Early TNA and found stuff to love even there... such a person has definitively proven their love for pro wrestling. Perhaps, he has gone too far in doing so.

 

The Osaka J-Cup is going on there : http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/35353-back-to-the-super-j-cups/?p=5768236

 

Well, I went too far. Or I'm just dumb as fuck. Either way.

[El-P]

 

Parv seems a bit distrustful of people with eclectic tastes.

You've been reading my music list so far, is that true?

 

For fuck's sake. No jazz apart from a few vocal jazz and old swing stuff, no metal, no experimental. No *women* almost. And hell, out of the 75 first entries, NOTHING that is not anglo-saxon. Really open-minded stuff, yeah.

 

I can listen to Selda Bağcan, Darkthrone, Jacques Brel and Steve Reich the same day without having to put myself in any specific kind of mind and enjoy the fuck out of their respective brillance.

[JerryvonKramer]

I did list Scott Walker so Brel got some due as a songwriter.

[El-P]

C'est trop, vraiment.

[gordi]

...taste by its nature, as I've stressed, depends on writing off certain things. You cannot say something is good without also suggesting a certain other thing is bad.

 

That is simply false. Taste is absolutely not a zero sum game.

 

The idea of an all-accepting universal palette is completely and fundamentally at odds with the process of making value judgements. You cannot do both. We might be able to like foods of all five tastes, but very few of us would like all foods.

 

Nobody - - NOBODY - - in this thread has suggested that the answer is to simply like or even accept everything.

 

What's being argued, and what it seems to me you have yet to address, is that it is absolutely possible to enjoy a wide variety of different things: Music, food pro wrestling, and so on.

 

To decide I like one type of pro wrestling in no way necessitates that I dislike other types of pro wrestling, even if those other types of pro wrestling are wildly different from the type I have decided I like. That's a frankly ridiculous idea.

 

And, to clarify: To like various types of pro wrestling in no way means that I therefore have to accept everything. That's also frankly ridiculous. There's good lucha and bad lucha, good southern style and bad southern style, good indy and bad indy, good shoot style and bad shoot style. Surely everyone understands this.

 

So, why not choose to seek out "good wrestling" whatever form it may take. Surely that's better than pre-determining what is good and then judging based on how well those pre-determinations are met.

 

Taste is defined by discernment, literally speaking "the ability to judge well".

 

I think that "applying a limited standard and judging based on how well that standard is adhered to" is absolutely not "judging well." Paula Kael had a wonderful essay where she took to task those critics who analyzed and judged every film - regardless of its intent and regardless of other virtues or failings - on how well it addressed issues of social justice. Those critics were relentlessly applying a limited standard. They were not judging well.

 

Things need to be judged on their own merits. A broad perspective is most helpful in trying to do so. Here is what is not helpful in doing so: Artificial guidelines of what should be considered good, with the idea that all else must be considered bad.

 

And so, in the end, I agree that there cannot be a universal standard... or at least, there should not be.

[overbooked]

"Artificial guidelines" are a pretty handy tool to wield when arguing on the internet. They don't make for great criticism.

[gordi]

"Artificial guidelines" are a pretty handy tool to wield when arguing on the internet. They don't make for great criticism.

 

I agree.

[JerryvonKramer]

I think gordi and I ultimately think some very similar things here insomuch as what he said is very similar to something I said here:

 

What I will say though is that I'm broadly consistent in insisting that to understand blues you need to do so within the traditions of the blues, to understand hip-hop you have to come at it from within the genre not try comparing it to Bob Dylan or whoever.

Judge blues from within blues traditions, lucha from within lucha traditions, cheeseburgers from within burger traditions. We agree on this.

 

We also agree that there can be no universal set of guidelines with which to approach all music, all wrestling or all food. So we agree on that.

 

I owe Loss a reply, so I will work on that and in the process also speak to gordi's other key point.

[gordi]

I think gordi and I ultimately think some very similar things here

 

 

Yep. I have a habit of throwing out ideas that connect to my reply in such a way that it seems like I'm arguing against whomever I'm replying to... but in fact we do largely agree. My disagreement with you is on one or two kind of specific points, I think. Looking forward to reading your reply.

[JerryvonKramer]

My answer to Loss (and to gordi's one point of objection) is as follows:

 

1. It is possible to like and appreciate many different styles of a thing.

 

2a. However, I am extremely sceptical of anyone's capacity to like and appreciate ALL styles of a thing.

 

and

 

2b. In practice it is almost never the case that anyone likes or appreciates ALL stlyes of a thing.

 

3. As a corollary, some styles are actually antithetical, that is ideologically or aesthetically opposed. It is possible to like both sides of a given extreme, but it naturally (though not necessarily) follows that fans of extreme A tend not to be fans of extreme B and vice versa.

 

To make this a bit more tangible, let's zoom to the early 1990s and consider Lou Thesz's vision of pro wrestling, Paul Heyman's vision and Vince McMahon's vision. Thesz was helping to promote UWFi, meanwhile Heyman was introducing barbed wire and flaming tables to wrestling, and all that while Vince was pushing clowns, garbage men, tax men, evil dentists, undead phenoms and whatever Adam Bomb was meant to be on his show. While liking one thing does not preclude you from liking the others, the reality on the ground tended to be that fans of any one of them had cause to disparage the others.

 

-------------

 

So I guess, in the abstract, it is theoretically possible for someone to like and appreciate all styles, but in practice it is almost always the case that people have a preference for certain styles over other styles.

 

And also:

 

It tends to be the case in art that movements produce counter-movements and counter-counter movements which define themselves AGAINST each other. That is, they depend on, for their very existence, some sort of rejection of what has gone before.

 

We're all very post-modern and eclectic now so we listen to bubble-gum pop alongside punk alongside new wave etc. as if there were no aethetic, political or ideological contradictions in so doing -- there are less stakes, I suppose, consumers gonna consume. But one of those movements has at is core a visceral rejection of mainstream values and art, so how much of a TRUE fan of the thing can one be if you don't share in that?

 

I see my beloved 80s-and-early-90s WWF put down ALL the time, all of the time, on an almost daily basis as one of the go-to bases-of-comparison to put over some different style. People have always defined their identities not ONLY in terms of what they like but ALSO in terms of what they don't like. Championing one thing need not entail a rejection of another thing, but in practice it very very often does. See also, the entirety of history to this point.

[El-P]

To make this a bit more tangible, let's zoom to the early 1990s and consider Lou Thesz's vision of pro wrestling, Paul Heyman's vision and Vince McMahon's vision. Thesz was helping to promote UWFi, meanwhile Heyman was introducing barbed wire and flaming tables to wrestling, and all that while Vince was pushing clowns, garbage men, tax men, evil dentists, undead phenoms and whatever Adam Bomb was meant to be on his show. While liking one thing does not preclude you from liking the others, the reality on the ground tended to be that fans of any one of them had cause to disparage the others.

 

I've said it again and again, I'm an ECW fan. FMW is also one of the dearest promotion in my heart. I love Onita. And I'm a huge shoot-style fan. My favourite pro-wrestling match ever is Tamura vs Khosaka 30 mn draw from 98. And likewise, I think the nWo era Nitros are the apex of US pro-wrestling TV. I don't think I'm schizophrenic at all.

[JerryvonKramer]

 

To make this a bit more tangible, let's zoom to the early 1990s and consider Lou Thesz's vision of pro wrestling, Paul Heyman's vision and Vince McMahon's vision. Thesz was helping to promote UWFi, meanwhile Heyman was introducing barbed wire and flaming tables to wrestling, and all that while Vince was pushing clowns, garbage men, tax men, evil dentists, undead phenoms and whatever Adam Bomb was meant to be on his show. While liking one thing does not preclude you from liking the others, the reality on the ground tended to be that fans of any one of them had cause to disparage the others.

 

I've said it again and again, I'm an ECW fan. FMW is also one of the dearest promotion in my heart. I love Onita. And I'm a huge shoot-style fan. My favourite pro-wrestling match ever is Tamura vs Khosaka 30 mn draw from 98. And likewise, I think the nWo era Nitros are the apex of US pro-wrestling TV. I don't think I'm schizophrenic at all.

Now talk about some stuff you don't like.

[El-P]

As far as style goes ? Never got into straight lucha, but never quite made the effort to. And yeah, I admit I may don't get the style entirely, but then again, I would never say lucha libre is a bad pro-wrestling style. It would be ridiculous. Maybe it's just not for me. I dunno. I loved numbers of luchadors working elsewhere. I loved some lucha matches I checked for the GWE poll in 2006.

 

As far as what I don't like. Well, I don't like shitty pro-wrestling. But there's shitty pro-wrestling all over. Hell, most pro-wrestling is shitty.

[Loss]

I'm not a huge fan of the modern WWE working style, but I still think it's capable of producing the occasional MOTYC. Of course there are styles I prefer over others, just like anyone else, but my mentality is that there is good and bad within each style. Yes, all styles are not created equally, but I don't really think about it that way. The type of wrestling I like is wrestling that's good. The type I don't is wrestling that's bad. That's my ultimate bias. Triangulation is possible.

[El-P]

The type of wrestling I like is wrestling that's good. The type I don't is wrestling that's bad.

 

That's the Lemmy theorem about music And Lemmy is God, ya know.

[ohtani's jacket]

 

Parv seems a bit distrustful of people with eclectic tastes.

You've been reading my music list so far, is that true?

 

I wouldn't say your list is that eclectic. It covers a wide variety of eras but it's mostly artists from the same genres. Reading the list, a person gets a clear idea of what you value in music. Judging by what you've written in this thread, it seems you'd be suspicious of a list that is wildly eclectic.

 

 

What I will say though is that I'm broadly consistent in insisting that to understand blues you need to do so within the traditions of the blues, to understand hip-hop you have to come at it from within the genre not try comparing it to Bob Dylan or whoever.

 

I don't recall you doing this w/ wrestling. It's easy to say that you have to come at something from within the genre or the tradition when you already like that thing. When you were faced with new things in wrestling you threw your standards at them.

 

 

 

Ultimate question though: how can we really make that call across genres? Can we? Can we compare the rap artist to the bluesman to the jazz cat to the folk singer/songwriter to the punk band?

 

Why not? They're musicians. They make music and write songs. It's just a question of whose music you like better.

 

 

 

There is still no universality here. Even though there might be a lot of styles, you are still saying "I'm a puro fan, and within puro this is what I like", same with lucha, same with shoot style, same with territory guys, etc. And there surely comes a point where certain styles just aren't making the list.

 

I don't think anyone is arguing with you over the universality point. You seem to be pushing the wagon that if someone's a shoot style fan they can't like garbage brawling because they're diametrically opposed when the reality is that people quite often do like things that are diametrically opposed.

[GOTNW]

I think I can simplify what I appreciate in pro wrestling pretty concisely. I like violence. That's what I want out of wrestling. If you throw a kick I want it to look like a real kick and sound like a real kick. If you flip I want it to look dangerous and nutty, not like an exhibition of someone's leg strength. If you're gonna hit someone over the head with a chair I want it to feel like you are actually hitting someond in the head with a steel chair. You only make exceptions for self-parody (i.e.comedy matches). Whenever the tricks wrestlers use to convince the audience they're hurting their opponent are exposed (thigh slapping), they stop treating the violence as important (modern puro strike exchanges, bad selling), they get too lazy to structure their matches in a way that feels like a struggle (most often end up trapped in formulaic BS like many WWE/New Japan workers, but there are formulas that work too) and so on it results in bad wrestling.

[overbooked]

It tends to be the case in art that movements produce counter-movements and counter-counter movements which define themselves AGAINST each other. That is, they depend on, for their very existence, some sort of rejection of what has gone before.

 

We're all very post-modern and eclectic now so we listen to bubble-gum pop alongside punk alongside new wave etc. as if there were no aethetic, political or ideological contradictions in so doing -- there are less stakes, I suppose, consumers gonna consume. But one of those movements has at is core a visceral rejection of mainstream values and art, so how much of a TRUE fan of the thing can one be if you don't share in that?

 

I think there is something important in this. In wrestling, or anything else, what you liked was a badge of honour, or a way of defining yourself, as much as just what you found enjoyable and worthwhile. I'm not sure if that ideological base to taste is so strong now. In the past there was a scarcity to everything - you could only buy so many records, videos, whatever. And so it was harder to be "eclectic" and easier to follow a particular path and spend a lot of time with one genre. I think there was also a closer ideological element in the production too - bands were more politicised, wrestlers held particular philosophies more.

 

Now we have so much choice and so much access the terms of engagement have changed. And often there is less of an ideological or political charge to what is being produced. So it is far easier on a practical and philosophical level to enjoy a wider variety of anything without worrying about "selling out" or misdefining yourself.

 

I suspect we're also less likely to define ourselves by what we don't like. There is so much to discover that is good we spend less time consuming the bad stuff. In the past there was much more of a common culture. When the pop charts mattered that was something to rebel against. The story arc of the smart fan in the nineties was reacting against the ubiquitous WWF by discovering all this great stuff hidden elsewhere.

 

There is less of a need to rebel against the mainstream when the mainstream is less all-consuming. There are fewer opportunities for inverted snobbery (a key element in all this, and I don't see it as a negative term) when everyone can consume everything. Circumstances have changed how we define and engage with taste.

 

Or maybe Taste=Personality is much more of a teenage trait and we've all grown out of it.

[JerryvonKramer]

I'd be hesitant to use PWO as a synecdoche for "everyone". When I survey the wrestling scene, I still see WWE fanboys, guys into indie stuff, guys into shooty stuff, guys into puro, guys like Jim Cornette and so on. How many people try to be into "everything"? Less than one percent?

 

Which is to say, I still think people define themselves by what they do and don't like. And if anything increased accessibility, YouTube and social media has exacerbated that. Just take a little surf around Facebook and Twitter profiles. Are fans *really* not defining themselves by their tastes? Genuine question. In a world of endless choice in which you are encouraged to go your own way, people don't define themselves by their taste? I wonder about that.

 

Not being argumentative, I just think that overbooked may have overstated the point. It doesn't quite tally with my experience of the 2010s so far.

[overbooked]

Are fans *really* not defining themselves by their tastes? Genuine question. In a world of endless choice in which you are encouraged to go your own way, people don't define themselves by their taste? I wonder about that.

 

Not being argumentative, I just think that overbooked may have overstated the point. It doesn't quite tally with my experience of the 2010s so far.

 

You may be right. However, I don't think subcultures in wrestling/music/whatever are as clearly defined or widespread as badges of identity as they were in 1986 or 1996. I think defining oneself as Someone With Broad Tastes is more of a thing now than 10 or 20 years ago.

 

More choice can, perversely, lead us into an even narrow worldwide, I concede that. But I don't think that is a universal thing.

[JerryvonKramer]

In general I do agree that everyone is a bit more eclectic and partly because they can afford to be. Watching a YouTube clip only costs time. And there may be something interesting to be written on how money restraints may have played a role in badge-of-pride sub-cultures. But it still goes on to some extent.

 

I was writing to a 76-year old professor the other day. We were going back and forth on something I'd written and he seemed to think at one point that I had a (political) anti-Western (as in anti-capitalist) agenda, which is completely untrue. I think I said something in my reply which could be of some relevance here:

 

 

I could never be a cultural materialist precisely because my motivations are not political. I am not a Marxist, or a Christian, or indeed an "anything", I'm a guy who likes pop records, films, nice resaturants, pursuing my own interests using the internet, etc. etc. I grew up in the 1980s and 90s on a steady diet of home videos and television, not going to church or attending socialist meetings. I don't think my particular generation were ever marked as much by our political activism as we were by our post-modern pop-literacy. Ironically, I think the internet has curbed this tendency in later generations by actually narrowing / fragmenting the range of the cultural cache. To put it very crudely, they aren't going to get all the jokes in Seinfeld because they didn't really grow up watching TV -- there is less passive osmosis in an "on demand" culture; there aren't many 18 year olds who are going to go out of their way to watch some 1960s show, but not so long ago millions of them probably caught a re-run of said 60s show randomly on a cold Sunday afternoon "just because it was on". On the flipside, I think post-9/11, post-2008, post-Brexit / Trump, they are a lot more inclined to join political movements and become vocal activists. I digress ...

I'll just leave that in there. I think some people might get something out of it. I've made iterations of that same argument for a long time because I believe it to be true.

 

 

 

Parv seems a bit distrustful of people with eclectic tastes.

 

You've been reading my music list so far, is that true?

I wouldn't say your list is that eclectic. It covers a wide variety of eras but it's mostly artists from the same genres. Reading the list, a person gets a clear idea of what you value in music. Judging by what you've written in this thread, it seems you'd be suspicious of a list that is wildly eclectic.

Well in fairness I did say it was a favourites list and so there was zero demand to pay any lip service. And I suppose it doesn't reflect the many hours, days, weeks, months even I've spent on entire styles and genres that just didn't make it. I spent months listening to nothing but power pop, before figuring out it probably wasn't for me. I assume any serious music fan has gone down similar exploratory roads. Some lead you somewhere, other times you figure that once the expedition ends there won't be a lot making you go back. I wanted to make something entirely honest with zero posing. I genuinely don't find myself reaching for Slint or Suicide albums very much, so I'm not going to list or even mention them to look cool or whatever. I also don't feel a single iota of pressure not to be "Anglo-centric", it would just be a lie. I predominantly listen to British and American records. It's pretty much entirely unreasonable to expect my favourite artists to be Indian or Chinese or whatever else. When Anglo-American music is as vast as it is, so that one will never have explored everything in a lifetime, I'm not sure that there is world enough and time to get to the point where I really *get* let's say Middle Eastern music. I probably draw the line at learning Arabic to appreciate an album. Breadth is a noble aim, but never at the expense of depth. And depth takes a lot of time and effort.

 

Incidentally before anyone makes the point, Pro-wrestling is indefinitely smaller than music, and so its limits are more within reach. Puro and lucha have also made big inroads into the fandom than various world musics have into Anglo-American music culture, partly precisely because the limits of pro wrestling are so small.

[overbooked]

Interesting quote. I think it makes a strong case for there being less of a common culture than ever before, which in turn means there is less obvious "mainstream" to rebel against, and also makes "universal standards" even trickier to define and work from.

 

Perhaps the odd (maybe unique?) thing with wrestling for the general population is that over the last 35 years, wrestling has gone from being a subculture with many genres to (for many people) being just the WWE - at least in North America. Even if there wasn't universal access to different promotions, they did exist, and so everyone's experience of wrestling depended on where they lived, so there was less of a common culture than there is now.

 

However, in terms of wrestling criticism and those who practice it, wrestling has become a far, far broader subject as there is so much more footage, and such a diversity within it. There are far more schools of thought amongst a certain type of Internet Wrestling Fan than there was 15 years ago, when in some circles saying you liked 80s territorial wrestling was a controversial, ideological stance.

[El-P]

I also don't feel a single iota of pressure not to be "Anglo-centric", it would just be a lie. I predominantly listen to British and American records. It's pretty much entirely unreasonable to expect my favourite artists to be Indian or Chinese or whatever else. When Anglo-American music is as vast as it is, so that one will never have explored everything in a lifetime, I'm not sure that there is world enough and time to get to the point where I really *get* let's say Middle Eastern music. I probably draw the line at learning Arabic to appreciate an album. Breadth is a noble aim, but never at the expense of depth. And depth takes a lot of time and effort.

 

I don't understand that way of thinking *at all*. I find it pretty self-centered around a culturally dominating culture and quite lazy to be honest, coming from someone who's not exactly the type to be satisfied with just whatever comes off the radio. Doesn't show a lot of curiosity.

 

Plus, there's so much music "without words", to begin with. And then again, with not understanding the words, surely something is lost in translation (although not always, really, it's much better to not understand words with tons of english speaking stuff too, really, depth my ass), but there's so much more than just the meaning of said words. Listening to Turkish folk, I can get shivers just because of the expressivity, not to mention the amazing baglama music. A lot of the french singers I like the most are the ones who are a bit cryptic and not too litteral. The sound of the words meaning more than the words themselves. And like I said, the amazing amount of actual instrumental music makes it easy to listen to something other than the good ol' US & UK rock & pop stuff.

 

As Björk would have put out "There's more to life than this."

 

(do you also not read anything that's not English or American because of the translations issues ? I mean, whenever there's a translation, you can't get the pure poetry of the actual words)

[El-P]

In other words, learn to love it, Bob Dylan ain't shit compared to the mighty Aşık Mahzuni Şerif :