A review of this book (it might be quicker to read the book...):
I have finally got around to perusing this book of essays released in August this year (2011) entitled 'Morrissey: Fandom, Representations and Identities', and co-edited by Eoin Devereux, Aileen Dillane and Martin J. Power. As a fan, I am finding much that is new in the material, and the discussions, for the most part, are illuminating. The authors have generally gone to some trouble to research the background to songs and events for the reader and to propose rationales, patterns and criticisms. It may take a few pages or chapters to acclimatise to the academic jingo, and no harm either to keep a dictionary to hand: is it ever?! Packaged like this, socio-cultural critique rocks - even if, in reading the volume, 'is that what I was doing?' might have been the frequent refrain running through Morrissey's mind!
Perhaps the most topical chapter is the fourth one, by Canadian Colin Snowsell: 'Fanatics, Apostles and NMEs'. In it a number of morrissey-solo.com posters are quoted by username, and comments there taken quite seriously, whatever about cautiously evaluated for spoof content. Sitting ducks we are, there; fodder for the college factory, like Morrissey himself! Fan theory is cited and fan behaviour described, if to a somewhat iterative and circular degree. The 2007 interview with the NME, the subsequent allegations, and range of fanbase reactions are covered in some detail, as is the gig retort about 'subspecies'. Included, a la Godwin, is a public comment (Billet) on the controversy: "If someone like Adolf Hitler said that, you'd talk about biological racism...", and it'd make sense to talk so, from someone of Hitler's character, beliefs and behaviour. Another essayist quotes from a song, "you defer to the views of the television news, let someone do your thinking for you' and I can't help wondering if, as a self-confessed fan, Mr Snowsell, now deservedly an internationally-esteemed man of letters, protests too much and is truly disappointed that his hero's antics of kicking away from the mundane are not so needed by him anymore, considering that from the Smiths' first single, 'Hand in Glove', dramatisation of alienation and of defending oppressed love crop up again and again. In that light it's rather an endearing piece, all in all.
In contrast, on the same theme of fandom, the first essay by Erin Hazard, 'Suedehead: Paving the Pilgrimage Path to Morrissey's and Dean's Fairmount, Indiana' does what it says on the tin in a romanticised appreciation of the benefits of becoming a fan, both in Morrissey's case and in turn, in the author's case. Along the way, quite fascinating information is provided about the Suedehead video, and deliberate parallels drawn, as in allegory, between it and photographs taken of Dean years beforehand, and later with the authors' own mementos of the journey. For this contributer, "this kind of investigation [as a mobilised fan] eventually became a way to turn imitation and reverence into creativity." Lee Brooks uses the same video, along with a range of other material, in evidence of Morrissey as Arthound extraordinaire, swiping cultural gems all over the place like his collage artist friend Linder Sterling, in chapter 14: 'Talent Borrows, Genius Steals: Morrissey and the Art of Appropriation'. Like Mozipedia,research of aesthetic sources adds value. For artists Dan Jacobson and Ian Jeffrey, listening to the songs allows you to become someone else. Their chapter 13, called 'Smiths Night: A Dream World Created Through Other People’s Music', tells a strange story of a girl with a cut bare foot bleeding all over the dance floor of a Smiths tribute night DJ set in New York, and from there queries what Bigmouth Strikes Again is about. Later,There Is A Light... is scrutinised e.g. tracing the intro back to Marvin Gaye's song 'Hitch Hike. The essay is presented as a conversation to reflect Morrissey's "play of intertextuality", though in its unnatural polish, this form also conveys a place like the nightclub, "where sincerity can be insincere."
The second chapter by Lawrence Foley, '"The Seaside Town They Forgot To Bomb": Morrissey and Betjeman on Urban Regeneration and British Identity', succeeds in divulging dusty biographical knowledge of John Betjeman, such as his influential official role in national architectural surveillance, that was rarely if ever mentioned in the context of Morrissey's concerns before about sense of place, homeland, and its manifestation in his oeuvre. Likewise, in chapter ten where editors Eoin Devereux and Aileen Dillane (a music lecturer) take on 'Speedway for Beginners: Morrissey, Martyrdom and Ambiguity', new hypotheses are put forward about possible sources of the song title; its story e.g. Wildean ventriloquism, religious martyr testimony. A close dissection (with help from Boz) of the musical construction with its key ambiguity and plagal/Amen cadences is included.
John H. Baker's chapter (3) on Morrissey's attraction to the skinhead cult, 'In the Spirit of '69?...' is also fairly topical and sets out, step by step, what happened before, during and after Madstock in Finsbury Park 1992. Despite the media leaving reality well behind in their biased coverage, a couple of other song videos featuring skinheads were made and are discussed -
http://www.myspace.com/video/im-not-here/morrissey-our-frank/1271445 ,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_pfMoUVNPw . The essay is a useful clarification of this milestone and concludes pretty much that confusion abounded, and malice was not aforethought.
Chapter 5, 'The "Teenage Dad" and "Slum Mums" are Just "Certain people I Know": Counter Hegemonic Representations of the Working/Underclass in the Works of Morrissey' is louder than bombs, rumbling with relevance to our times and very validating to anyone who is not deliriously happy about the political-economic landscape and the suppression of class inequality issues. I would just recommend it to everybody. I've also noticed over the past few months in the Irish newspapers that the three editors (one of whom is Martin J. Power, who wrote ch. 5) are walking their talk - or at least talking it loud -, publicly standing up for people threatened with educational deprivation, and stigmatisation due to where they live. Respect.
In decoding the words of 'Slum Mums, it is observed, after Rogan, that "in assuming the role of the taunter, as well as her potential liberator, Morrissey forces the audience to deal with our own prejudices." The next/sixth chapter by Daniel Manco, 'In Our Different Ways We Are the Same: Morrissey and Representations of Disability', considers this method when assessing the controversial song, November Spawned a Monster (it is pointed out that the moniker, les enfants de novembre, traditionally refers to all the oppressed peoples of the world). Two theorists, Mitchell and Snyder are cited in support of a verbal ploy termed "transgressive resignification":
- As opposed to substituting more palatable terms, the ironic embrace of derogatory terminology has provided the leverage that belongs to openly transgressive displays...The embrace of denigrating terminology forces the dominant culture to face its own violence head-on because the authority of devaluation has been claimed openly and ironically...The effect shames the dominant culture into a recognition of its own dehumanising precepts...that detracts from the original power of the condescending terms. -
Most of us, I think, know that this is what was going on with the 'subspecies' remark and Morrissey explained it as such. Manco's essay delves deep into disability perspectives and weighs up the use of irony versus taking advantage of stereotypes gratuitously for effect and symbolic proxies for other socially injured persons as appear in such songs as Nobody Loves Us, Dagenham Dave, There's A Place In Hell...since disability of one kind of another touches most people in a lifetime. In a note, Because of My Poor Education is added to the list, with a dubious comment that here, "the corporeal non-normativity is metaphorical". Leaping from Morrissey's teenage impersonation as the wheelchair-bound Sheridan Whiteside, the theme roams widely such that "one might well ponder the associative chains", but very interesting stuff. Non-normative gender becomes the total focus in Elisabeth Woronzoff's chapter 15, ‘'I’m Not The Man You Think I Am’: Morrissey’s Negotiation of Dominant Gender and Sexuality Codes'. Narrating from films such as Querelle, and from books such as The British Pop Dandy, she shows how he uniquely "embraces gender fluidity and never settles at either end of the gender binary long enough to provide the normative constructions credibitily". He sings of being re-born free, forging a new paradigm of a polymorphous sexual identity by negotiating dominating discourses and institutational controls, to make it easier for others...(continued->)