On politics, the mainstream and videogames... or why I haven't posted in a while

Well... what a week. It's been one of those weeks where I've stumbled across all sorts of fun things to post here, very briefly before rushing off to do something else infuriating and stressful, and for a change, not all of those infuriating and stressful things were work related.

Those of you who have not been living under a rock will know that we in the UK have just had an election and it was all very exciting and promising but ended up very disappointing. It's the first time I've been able to vote and there was something in the back of my mind rather hoping that this would be something quite monumental, like...say...the Liberal Democrats getting into power. Instead all we got is a hung parliament, and no matter how many times the BBC bellows "it's the first time it's happened in a generation!" it's not that big a deal. It last happened in 1974 or something, but the media has been trying to suggest it's the first time since the Jurrasic era. Anyway, Mr Brown resigned today (I did feel rather sorry for him until he pulled the "I respect our military and am a wonderful husband" schtick. I hate all the pressure the army wives and mums have been putting on the government to mention them: they get more air time than most of the issues themselves) and David Cameron is in.

I don't like Cameron, not one bit, but if the Lib Dems are getting a foot in the door and actually getting some change in this country, I'll tolerate the smarmy toff for a few years. Basically the whole election has resulted in everyone in the country reluctantly agreeing to compromise in the hope that things will turn out in a way that suits them, but in the mean time we're all going to argue and sulk about it. I know I've been sulking and ranting solidly for the whole campaign period, but at least, hopefully, we'll have a bit of quiet now that the parties have come to some agreement.

Annnnnyway...

As though being glued to the news wasn't bad enough, this week I had a rather nasty brush with that ugly behemoth they call the mainstream as I made the horrendous decision to go clubbing with work colleagues. Now, my work mates are perfectly nice people and I figured, well, I like enough mainstream music to get by. There are very few musical genres I'll pass by entirely, although I might not choose to listen to them. There's only really one genre I can think of for which I have never heard anything I liked. What is it? That whiny pop stuff they call "R&B" (which I always have to put in inverted commas because I'd hate to think someone might think I'm ratting on rhythm and blues, because I'm quite fond of rhythm and blues.) It repulses me. Musically I find it insipid, boring and monotonous, it's always the same beat, the same tone, the same irritating little samples from much better songs. Lyrically, on an intellectual and moral level, it's absolutely repugnant: songs sung by men are about leching on women, songs sung by women are about being leered at. It's heternormative, misogynistic and reinforces negative racial stereotypes but because it's masked as "having a good time" and "sexy" people seem to think it's good.

Long story short, guess what sort of music these grotty little bars were playing? I found myself sitting at a table watching the lads watching the girls, and listening to the lyrics of these tracks in abject horror. I mean, there's nothing wrong with songs about sex (she says, lining up "Closer", "Sex Dwarf" and "The Sweetest Drop" on her mp3 player) but it's the way it's looked at that I find disturbing. Case in point: all pop music has a tendancy to focus on what I call "the nameless chick", those women referred to as "she" who appear everywhere and yet never get a name, but as I was sitting twiddling my rings I compared the way the nameless girl is described in alternative rock to the way she's mentioned in "R&B". Generalising terribly, but in alt rock (and goth and industrial and that sort of thing) the nameless girl is quite abstract but we have a very clear sense of her character and psychology (examples off the top of my head: "she's lost control again" Joy Division She's Lost Control, "she's in love with herself, she likes the dark" Type O Negative Black No 1, "she burns friends like a piece of wood" Curve Chinese Burn... you get the idea), she's not always a happy person, she's not always a stable person, but she's still a person. "R&B", from the music I heard in the bars at least, does that far less, the nameless girl is described as sexy, and that's about it. We might have some vague sense of her dress or her hair or the way she shakes her arse or whatever but who is she?

Thinking about it, even the songs that do focus on physical aspects, or on women treated as sex objects still give a glimpse of the woman underneath, (can you imagine an "R&B" singer creating a character like Siouxsie's sneering stripper in Peek a Boo?) something I didn't see in the "R&B" tracks, or rather, not in the songs sung by men. Songs sung by female vocalist did seem to add a bit more but then, that's to be expected, and even so, the women's songs tend to be in the first person and tend to focus more on "having a good time"/getting drunk/long term relationships than watching girls on dancefloors...funny that.

The image that emerged from that night was quite shocking to me. I had always rather thought that those people who buy the records that make the top 10 didn't actually exist, and that if they did they wouldn't really be girls in short dresses who want to have a "good time" while seedy young men oggle them from the sidelines. It seems they do exist. This bothers me.

Incidentally, while I'm ranting on the subject of the dreaded mainstream, it does strike me that people who buy these tracks and claim to like them probably don't really. It seems to me that they're really just familiar with them through constant exposure, which is probably why it all sounds so bloody alike. Anyone with an unusual voice is mocked (there was one track I heard several times where the singer's voice has an odd sort of lisp to it, a bit like Sean Connery, which was much imitated) and anyone too different is ignored (unless they're similar enough to the rest, like that Lady Gaga person, now that I finally have some idea who she is, who I admit is at least distinctive enough for me to recognise a song as hers but still sounds basically the same as most of the other pop pap.)

I suppose pop listeners might listen to my mp3 and think that all the tracks on that sound the same, but to be honest I doubt it. There are bands whose output always... has a certain tone, shall we say, but I don't think anyone could honestly listen to, say, Bauhaus, Rasputina, Creature Feature, and Skinny Puppy and say they sound the same, and that's just the gothy acts.

Before I finish rabbiting, I also want to mention the other thing that's been eating my time: Fallout 3. I know it's been out a long time, but I've been playing it on and off for over 3 months and I still haven't finished exploring. I'm finding that the more I play it, the more I'm enjoying it: early levels felt like a bit of a chore but now my character is pretty powerful and I have most of the map markers, running between them ferrying junk to whichever characters want it, I'm having great fun. I love all the little references and the retro B-movie moments (not so keen on the American history stuff... but then as a classical historian used to playing with things over two thousand years old, I find the idea of "American history" something of a contradiction in terms!). It's quite nice to escape from all the stresses of the real world into such a huge imagined one, even if that imagined world is a post-nuclear, post-apocalyptic one.

I suppose I really should shut up and sleep. More links soon, I promise.