Why there can never be a universal standard

[overbooked]

Breadth is a noble aim, but never at the expense of depth. And depth takes a lot of time and effort.

 

I think there could be a whole thread just covering this.

 

I'm not sure I'm completely sold on the current trend for "deep dives". I can see how it serves a purpose with a GWE-type project, and satisfies the itch for the obscure in an age where very little is obscure. However, when it leads to a narrow worldview, then there is a lack of understanding of the wider context that "deep dive" falls within.

 

Plus, it makes music/wrestling whatever sound like hard work, rather than something that makes life better.

[JerryvonKramer]

 

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.

 

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), 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."

This isn't an argument I'm going to expand on beyond this. I like lyrics, there are very few intrstrumental-only artists on my list; I also want to understand things inside out and not "dabble". Rather than attack my list -- which most readers have said has led them to explore artists they've never heard of before -- it would be better to make your own somewhere. I'm not at all comfortable trying to make assessments on Turkish music, or even the Iranian music my dad listens to, and I can speak Farsi and grew up hearing it. Not comfortable at all, and I don't see that changing over this exchange. I repeat that it's an unreasonable demand.

 

World cinema is a different kettle of fish cos of the subtitles and it being a visual medium. I feel I can get into Iranian cinema far more readily than I can into Iranian music. World cinema is also a lot more part of "the fandom" so it's easier to get good recommendations and guides. Some things travel easier than others.

 

I will not engage you more on this topic.

[JerryvonKramer]

 

Breadth is a noble aim, but never at the expense of depth. And depth takes a lot of time and effort.

 

I think there could be a whole thread just covering this.

 

I'm not sure I'm completely sold on the current trend for "deep dives". I can see how it serves a purpose with a GWE-type project, and satisfies the itch for the obscure in an age where very little is obscure. However, when it leads to a narrow worldview, then there is a lack of understanding of the wider context that "deep dive" falls within.

 

Plus, it makes music/wrestling whatever sound like hard work, rather than something that makes life better.

It also goes back to the OP of this thread though, which is that in order to get anything you need some context. There's no universal standard remember, so in order to really appreciate something you can't hopscotch until you've understood the style on its own terms. People have talked about having different "heads" for different things, you actually actually have to acquire the head first.

 

OR

 

I can see an argument for a much more care-free "whatever" attitude where you're watching random YouTube vids or MTV vids or whatever not quite knowing what you are watching and getting kicks from it even though you have little to no idea what's going on.

 

There's that too.

[overbooked]

There is definitely room for both, in terms of consuming and in terms of criticism. I enjoy both approaches, and have reservations about both. It is why there can't be a universal standard, and I think that is a good thing as by reading different approaches to the same thing I learn more, and learn more about my own response to whatever we're talking about.

 

I guess it is useful to understand a critic's frame of reference and/or terms of engagement, but is unreasonable to expect everyone else to follow that too.

[El-P]

This isn't an argument I'm going to expand on beyond this. I like lyrics, there are very few intrstrumental-only artists on my list; I also want to understand things inside out and not "dabble". Rather than attack my list -- which most readers have said has led them to explore artists they've never heard of before -- it would be better to make your own somewhere. I'm not at all comfortable trying to make assessments on Turkish music, or even the Iranian music my dad listens to, and I can speak Farsi and grew up hearing it. Not comfortable at all, and I don't see that changing over this exchange. I repeat that it's an unreasonable demand.

 

Well, to each his own I guess. Damn, if I grew up speaking two languages, which is an amazing start in life, I would totally be exploring the two cultures. That's such a great thing to have.

 

A friend of mine is actually an Iranian music lover despite not speaking Farsi. He learned to play the sêtar and I believe is working on a book about Iranian music. So there.

 

As far as "making a list", well, I've been writing about music for years now. But it's in French only, so…. There you have it.

 

World cinema is a different kettle of fish cos of the subtitles and it being a visual medium. I feel I can get into Iranian cinema far more readily than I can into Iranian music. World cinema is also a lot more part of "the fandom" so it's easier to get good recommendations and guides. Some things travel easier than others.

 

Taxi Teheran by Jafar Panahi is a great movie. Golshifteh Farahani, well, I'm in love with, and she's a terrific actress to boot.

[ohtani's jacket]

I do think there's a difference between people who seek out new wrestling and those people who are into a scene. But that's true of all forms of entertainment. When I was a kid, I was into the latest comics off the racks while older dudes were into collecting. Later on, I got tired of the latest comics off the rack and got hipped to collecting. PWO posters, for the most part, are like collectors.

Regarding the white Angelo stuff, I think if you enjoy a particular genre, such as New Wave, it's silly to ignore Kino or Maanam. And even if you need to understand the lyrics how about Australia, New Zealand, or other English speaking countries?

[JerryvonKramer]

El-P, saw you added more, might as well address this and not leave it dangle:

 

(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)

I'll read it, sure, but when it comes to writing about it I leave it to the experts, especially once we are beyond European / Russian / Middle-Eastern / post-colonial Indian literature when the historical, cultural and philosophical points of crossover start being further and further removed.

 

Thomas Aquinas read Avicenna, but he didn't read Lao Tze. So I feel it's pretty much a different ball game once you get to China, which has its own separate, rich and deep history and philosophies.

 

Eurasian thinking is broadly all connected, they read Plato and Aristotle in the Middle East and in India, and thinking came back down the Silk Road the other way. The Byzantines and Ottomans were both powerful in different periods of history.

 

You could read Petrarch and Hafez side by side and they'd speak to each other in interesting ways, they are kinda connected. I wouldn't really know where to start looking in 14th century China.

 

Just as an aside, I feel like I learned a huge amount about Chinese history from this book. If anything really really needs to be understood from within its own history, philosophy and mantras, it's China.

 

I always say don't try to run before you can walk, and even just in terms of understanding Western culture I'm barely crawling. So I have real hesitancy about diving in two-footed and making assessments on things from other cultures. I kinda want to understand where I come from first, and it will likely take a lifetime to do so.

[El-P]

I don't get where you come from. It's like you think everything has to be some kind of big study and having to make assessments about everything. Doesn't work like that. You don't need to understand everything about everything. You won't be able to.

 

But you can discover you have affinities for some things. I would rather read Turkish novelist Saif Faik and Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa than good old Zola or any other french writer who are "my" historical culture but with whom I don't have affinities with. Sait Faik, yes, there's something that resonnate, despte the translation, despite the fact he's talking about a world I'm not really familiar with. And it's not a matter of "exotism" (which is an awful thing). It's a matter of having affinities with ideas, musics, words. You only pick what works for you.

[JerryvonKramer]

There's an anthropologist called Clifford Geertz who used to go and visit remote tribes who hadn't had a lot of contact with the west.

 

He makes an analogy of what he saw his task as being. Imagine an alien, he said, who saw a cheeky schoolboy winking. What would it take for that alien to understand that it's not just an eye twitch or a muscle spasm but an indication that the boy is about to get up to mischief? He thought that the only real way to understand a culture is if you can get to the point of understanding the wink as a wink.

 

Although I disagree with many aspects of his theory and practice, on that broad point, I think he's right. If you don't understand the wink as a wink, I'm not sure you have a hope of understanding the other culture. Without it, all you are seeing is your own values read into that culture and reflected back at you. So in a sense you must start as the alien trying to understand the wink. I'll hold to that.

[El-P]

Honestly, I have no fucking idea how that's relevant to what I just said. Remote tribes ? Wink ? Really ? Whatever.

[JerryvonKramer]

Since you seem so shocked, you'd also probably be surprised to learn how influential that idea has been in reading literature over the past 35 years. We're not talking about Turkish writers here, either, but Shakespeare and even more recent writers. I guess it depends on whether you want something really to speak across history and culture from the specifics of its time and place, or if you just want to see your own values reflected back at you in mediated form.

[El-P]

I'm not shocked. It's simply not relevant to anything I said.

 

And don't talk to me like I'm the guy running the ferris wheel at the county fair, thank you very much. I could drop some Gille Deleuze's take on Spinoza in the debate too, relative to "affinities", although I wouldn't be able to express myself with clarity enough in a foreign language (yeah, I'm good enough to talk about wrestling, but I do have my limitations in English)

 

The fact is, you don't even try to understand what *I* am saying, while I totally understand what *you* say. Because much like you always do, you simply refuse to even listen and just like to pontify. How the fuck do you know what I see in Sait Faik, Pessoa, Beckett (who wrote in French a lot, so I guess he's allright) or Thomas Bernhard and why it resonnates with me ? You have no idea.

[JerryvonKramer]

It's entirely relevant to this whole discussion, entirely. I'll leave you to connect the dots.

[El-P]

I connected the dots the first time I read your post. Stop patronizing. No one here is a student of yours. You're truly unbearable.

[JerryvonKramer]

I'm not shocked. It's simply not relevant to anything I said.

 

And don't talk to me like I'm the guy running the ferris wheel at the county fair, thank you very much. I could drop some Gille Deleuze's take on Spinoza in the debate too, relative to "affinities", although I wouldn't be able to express myself with clarity enough in a foreign language (yeah, I'm good enough to talk about wrestling, but I do have my limitations in English)

 

The fact is, you don't even try to understand what *I* am saying, while I totally understand what *you* say. Because much like you always do, you simply refuse to even listen and just like to pontify. How the fuck do you know what I see in Sait Faik, Pessoa, Beckett (who wrote in French a lot, so I guess he's allright) or Thomas Bernhard and why it resonnates with me ? You have no idea.

 

I don't recall saying a single thing about any of those things. You said what you hold to and why, I said without even any even explicit reference to your post, what I hold to and why.

 

I never said anything or cast any aspersions about your reading, experiences or anything else, that appears to have come entirely from you. If you saw me making the point about needing to understand the wink (or else you're just seeing your own values reflected back at you) and saw that as some sort of challenge to you personally, it's on you. I never said anyone has or hasn't read Geertz, or anyone else, I just thought he was super relevant. If you feel patronized by me mentioning it and telling you to connect the dots after you express that you don't see why it's relevant (or that you did connect the dots straight away, which is it?), that's again on you.

 

I maintain that the post I made was entirely relevant to this thread and made in a way that was clear and informative rather than patronizing. I'm not the one jumping up and down to write off Bob Dylan, or prove that I've read Spinoza. Just saying.

[El-P]

You're the one namedropping all the time. You're well red, we know that. We got it.

And yes, you *assume* that I didn't get the wink thing. The whole "it's on you/connect the dot" shit, that's patronizing. Again, stop doing that. You may think it's relevant. I don't. I get your point. I don't see it as relevant. Sorry.

 

As far as "writing off Bob Dylan", it's pretty funny you'd take my post *literally*. I posted the video in hopes anyone who would listen to it would maybe enjoy (or hell, love) it while doing a stupid little jab at Bob Dylan like I would Flair, just to tease your sense of über seriousness. Well, I overreached I guess. That being said Aşık Mahzuni Şerif is a fucking giant that I'm glad I discovered.

 

Anyway, wanna talk about the fact there are barely any women on your music list now ?

[JerryvonKramer]

Dude, you made this post:

Honestly, I have no fucking idea how that's relevant to what I just said. Remote tribes ? Wink ? Really ? Whatever.

All I've got to go on is what you write, as you've pointed out I can't mind read. That post suggested to me that you didn't connect the dots and it also strongly suggested that you weren't entirely aware how influential that idea of the aliens and the winks has been. If you were aware of it, fine, you made it seem like you were not. I still think it is super relevant to the thread.

Also, the fact that you see me bringing up thinkers and concepts as "name dropping" suggests to me that you aren't taking these posts in good faith. The names are less important than the ideas. I include the names in case people want to look them up. I imagine some might want to, just as you imagine some might want to look up Serif.

Also, I'm not uber-serious as anyone that even knows me a tiny bit knows. Just not in any way.

As for women on the list, I can reveal the top 25 contains three solo women and at least two bands with prominent female members. I see that fact as being neither here nor there.

[El-P]

Dude, you made this post:

 

Honestly, I have no fucking idea how that's relevant to what I just said. Remote tribes ? Wink ? Really ? Whatever.

All I've got to go on is what you write, as you've pointed out I can't mind read. That post suggested to me that you didn't connect the dots and it also strongly suggested that you weren't entirely aware how influential that idea of the aliens and the winks has been. If you were aware of it, fine, you made it seem like you were not. I still think it is super relevant to the thread.

 

I think my post was pretty clear : "I have no fucking idea how that's relevant to what I just said". If I didn't understand the thing or disagreed with this idea (which would be bold of me), I would have expressed it in a different way. I always bet on the intelligence of whom I speak to. Doesn't change the fact that you use a patronizing tone.

 

 

Also, the fact that you see me bringing up thinkers and concepts as "name dropping" suggests to me that you aren't taking these posts in good faith. The names are less important than the ideas. I include the names in case people want to look them up. I imagine some might want to, just as you imagine some might want to look up Serif.

 

Fair enough. Point taken.

 

As for women on the list, I can reveal the top 25 contains three solo women and at least two bands with prominent female members. I see that fact as being neither here nor there.

 

That makes about less than ten women in your top 100 musical acts. Ok. Wonder whom they are (although I can see at least one coming, I would guess Patti Smith).

 

Well, I think it's another pretty telling fact that your list really isn't eclectic, which was where this whole debacle started from. Oh, well.

[JerryvonKramer]

It comes to something when a list that contains Leo Reisman, The Mississippi Sheiks, George Formby, Sparks and The Lilac Time -- probably the only top 100 list ever to include all five of those names in the same place -- is derided for "not being eclectic enough". As Cole Porter might say, "timmmmmmes have changed".

[W2BTD]

This is something we've discussed over a number of years now. I've gone back and forth on it over that time, and I think I have now made up my mind (see title).

 

Around a year ago, some might recall that I drew up these:

 

 

These are all things that I still value incredibly highly, but I also recognise that they cannot and indeed should not apply to every scenario or context.

 

There can't be a universal standard because different times and places have different demands. An audience for an indie show in 2011 expect to see high spots, a certain amount of high impact offense and innovation in the moves; if the match is being billed as a kind of "dream match", then they are going to have expectations of a certain type of epic complete with exciting nearfalls, false finishes down an increasingly hot finishing stretch.

 

In a different promotion, let's say one from around 2001, they might want to see more weapons, blood, violence and spectacle. Maybe a flaming table or two.

 

The workers, if they care about their crowds, can only really work towards what they want. So if they want blood, they'll get blood, if they want somersaults, they'll get somersaults.

 

If the GWE taught me anything it was that it is virtually impossible for fans to value every single style without being a complete relativist. As soon as you put your flag down (as per the image there), and say "these are the things I value", you start to block off what is and is not acceptable to you, and invariably you cannot be neutral on the question of different styles.

 

In some ways this post is directed at Loss, because I think he has a certain vision of having a truly universal, hollistic view of wrestling that can appreciate any match, any style on its own terms. I question the extent to which that is possible without effectively having no values. How can one be high on things that appear to be diametrically opposed without making significant alterations in what you are looking for? I think of something like Dragon Gate, where flippy-dos are at a premium. I'd argue it is not possible to look at a match from there and something like an old NWA title match with the same head on and like both. You'd effectively need a "Dragon Gate head" and an "NWA head" to get anything out of either. In both cases you need to relativise your values in order to give the thing a high rating. Ricky Steamboat never did somersaults, so if you went into one of his matches with a Dragon Gate head on, you'd probably find them extremely wanting. Some might say, "yes, well, I value psychology and storytelling no mater the promotion". But it seems to me that psychology is not valued at a premium in certain promotions (if you don't want Dragon Gate as the example, pick another), so how can it be fair to attack them for it? And if that IS fair, then it would also be fair to take marks off Steamer for his lack of flips. As soon as you take the step of saying "well, psychology is important and flips aren't", you are making a mark in the sand and a value statement, and all of a sudden you can't really give a "fair" assessment to the flippy-non-pyschology promotion. You're effectively writing off the style.

 

I don't see any way around this. There can be no universal criteria because every style comes with its own built-in rules and expectations and there can be no truly holistic view because as soon as you define any value you effectively "block off" a style.

 

This post is directed towards Loss because he and I have discussed this for hours in the past, but anyone welcome to chime in.

 

I've been trying to say this for years. Particularly the bold.

 

Time changes context. Standards are always changing.

[El-P]

-- probably the only top 100 list ever to include all five of those names in the same place --

 

 

Pat yourself on the back, man, Horowitz' style.

[MoS]

Just chill out and listen to some Indian music, people.

[overbooked]

Anyway. Back to the pro wrestling.

 

And back to winking at aliens.

 

Following this theory, does this mean we can't fully appreciate/critique pro wrestling if we don't understand the context and culture it takes place in? And then, we only can if we understand the intentions of the wrestlers involved?

 

If so, that rules me out of appreciating or critiquing virtually any wrestling.

[El-P]

Anoushka Shankar. Sitar. Raaaah lovely !

 

Following this theory, does this mean we can't fully appreciate/critique pro wrestling if we don't understand the context and culture it takes place in?

 

It's fucking pro-wrestling. It's pretty self-explanatory. The most "alien" style (alien compared to what BTW ?) doesn't take much to be understood and appreciated for what it is. After a bunch of matches, you quickly get a feel of what's happening and the indiosyncrasies of the style.

[JerryvonKramer]

Anyway. Back to the pro wrestling.

 

And back to winking at aliens.

 

Following this theory, does this mean we can't fully appreciate/critique pro wrestling if we don't understand the context and culture it takes place in? And then, we only can if we understand the intentions of the wrestlers involved?

 

If so, that rules me out of appreciating or critiquing virtually any wrestling.

I think there are different levels of understanding. Some of OJ's posts about Japanese culture in the past have been really interesting and in some of the tropes that we might understanding totally differently. A lot of people love peak AJPW stuff, but there are quite a few little things in there that I'm sure we're missing just through the cultural gap.

 

Doesn't mean we can't get *some* of it. Japan isn't some weird alien world, it's a civilised country with many crossover points in history with a lot of parallel values, etc. etc., and AJPW wrestling in particular owes a lot to the NWA style, the influence of the Funks and so on. There are enough cross-over points of commonality for it not to be too much of a struggle. We get there's a clash of values between Jumbo and Tenryu, we get that Jumbo is establishment and Tenryu is rebel. We get that Misawa is the golden boy, Kawada the unchosen one, and Kobashi the fiery young underdog who doesn't know when to quit, etc. etc. We get a lot of it, but there are also "winks" we are surely missing.

 

Sometimes those old AJ crowds start laughing. And surely everyone has had the experience at some point of wondering "what the fuck are they laughing at here?" I have loads of times. Maybe it might be completely obvious to a Japanese person, I dunno.

 

I think the experience of a British person watching World of Sport stuff is going to be a bit different from the American experience of it. Just so many things in there that only a person who grew up here would recognise or even pick up on.

 

Chad and I were watching Clash 22 the other day and talking about that pretty amazing 2 Cold Scorpio vid from early 1993. Well, y'know first it helps to have been around in 1993 to recognise some of the stuff that vid is drawing on. But Chad picked up on some local Georgia stuff that I wouldn't have known about.

 

More and more context starts to enrich the experience. You can watch anything cold, and you can get *something* from that but the addition of knowing some contexts surely deepens understanding.

 

I mean this sometimes happens in surprising ways. I went through a spell of listening to a huge amount of jazz standards, Tin Pan Alley stuff ... I kept coming across Gorilla Monsoon-isms, loads of his lines were lifted straight out of old songs, which older fans might have known. Now that additional bit of information doesn't add a whole lot, but it does make me understand Gorilla-isms in a slightly new way.

 

A lot of this stuff would also apply if we were just talking strictly in-ring too. First at the most basic level. Fan of promotion X expects to see bombs while fan of promotion Y expects to see flips and fan of promotion Z expects to see grapplefuck.

 

Even within areas that seem like they wouldn't have much variance like mainstream 80s wrestling, you start finding weird things in different places: uber-long shines in AWA for example, truncated heel sequences in late-80s WWF, "heel in peril" in WWF tags, double heat in AWA tags, the piledriver just being a transitional move in some places while being a wipeout KO type move in others, etc. etc.

 

I think we saw some of it with Last Battle of Atlanta. An easier match to appreciate if you get some of the norms of early 80s territorial wrestling. And probably easier to get still if you happen to be from Georgia. Aliens and winks.