B
Benton
Guest
So tell me, what was that all about?
By Caitlin Moran
The Times 29th March
THE video to the Smiths’ 1987 single I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish shows hundreds of faux-Morrisseys descending on the streets of Manchester — cardigans frayed, quiffs rampant, back pockets full of daffodils, and hearing aids turned all the way up to 11. Although I’m sure Why Pamper Life’s Complexities?, the three-day seminar of Smiths studies at Manchester Metropolitan University, will have a broader academic base than simply letting a load of ageing Smiths fans dress up like Morrissey and sad on about their favourite lyrics, one fears the worst.
While few under the age of 90 would argue that the Smiths’ impact on British mores makes them just as worthy of academic analysis as Harold Pinter or James Joyce — and, indeed, much better to dance to — the whole business of academic dissection of popular culture is, at best, flawed.
Despite universities being completely right to teach both how to split the atom and why the Beatles split up, the elements of popular culture they choose to examine are usually much of a muchness. Madonna, Elvis, the Beatles, Pink Floyd, the Smiths — in a nutshell, it’s invariably stuff academics like.
It’s always the cool stuff. You’d never have a three-day symposium entitled You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet: Hall & Oates, Bachman Turner Overdrive and ELO – The Soft Rock Giants; or I Like Small Speakers, I Like Tall Speakers: Was Rik Mayall In ‘The Young Ones’ The Last Graduate To Like Cliff Richard? It does seem a slightly emotional, non-academic trait. It’s a bit like molecular biologists only holding seminars on Betweenanene, Welshite or Bastadin-5 — the fun molecules with amusing names.
Of course, it’s not just fandom that wins an artist a three-day seminar in Manchester. Symposium- worthy songwriters must have a subtext to them. They must have attempted to subvert their era’s morality by broadcasting to their fans in code — think of the Beatles’ and Pink Floyd’s smuggled drug references, the sex slang in early blues and rock’n’roll records, or simply the way Elvis moved. This gives the academics the chance to quote some lyrics, and then go “Ah-ha!” in a knowing manner.
This consideration is indeed why the Smiths make an ideal academic study. Morrissey’s lyrical preoccupations are loaded references to “illness”, loneliness, awkwardness, shame, guilt, and unrequited love. At the time naive Smiths fans took this simply to be the writings of a dandy nerd who was singularly unlucky with germs and birds, and who was choosing to protest about this, albeit in a slightly obscure way, by thrashing himself with a bunch of gladioli.
From a more knowing 21st-century vantage point, however, the songs could be seen as codified anguish of a gay man raised by strict Irish Catholics in Manchester, and who came of age in the Eighties, when the Conservative Government was busy implementing Clause 28.
Still, as Morrissey prefers to remain regally mysterious about his sexuality, it’s just as well the academic mystery machine is cranking up to answer the question Wearing an Elastoplast on his Nipple — What was that all about?
By Caitlin Moran
The Times 29th March
THE video to the Smiths’ 1987 single I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish shows hundreds of faux-Morrisseys descending on the streets of Manchester — cardigans frayed, quiffs rampant, back pockets full of daffodils, and hearing aids turned all the way up to 11. Although I’m sure Why Pamper Life’s Complexities?, the three-day seminar of Smiths studies at Manchester Metropolitan University, will have a broader academic base than simply letting a load of ageing Smiths fans dress up like Morrissey and sad on about their favourite lyrics, one fears the worst.
While few under the age of 90 would argue that the Smiths’ impact on British mores makes them just as worthy of academic analysis as Harold Pinter or James Joyce — and, indeed, much better to dance to — the whole business of academic dissection of popular culture is, at best, flawed.
Despite universities being completely right to teach both how to split the atom and why the Beatles split up, the elements of popular culture they choose to examine are usually much of a muchness. Madonna, Elvis, the Beatles, Pink Floyd, the Smiths — in a nutshell, it’s invariably stuff academics like.
It’s always the cool stuff. You’d never have a three-day symposium entitled You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet: Hall & Oates, Bachman Turner Overdrive and ELO – The Soft Rock Giants; or I Like Small Speakers, I Like Tall Speakers: Was Rik Mayall In ‘The Young Ones’ The Last Graduate To Like Cliff Richard? It does seem a slightly emotional, non-academic trait. It’s a bit like molecular biologists only holding seminars on Betweenanene, Welshite or Bastadin-5 — the fun molecules with amusing names.
Of course, it’s not just fandom that wins an artist a three-day seminar in Manchester. Symposium- worthy songwriters must have a subtext to them. They must have attempted to subvert their era’s morality by broadcasting to their fans in code — think of the Beatles’ and Pink Floyd’s smuggled drug references, the sex slang in early blues and rock’n’roll records, or simply the way Elvis moved. This gives the academics the chance to quote some lyrics, and then go “Ah-ha!” in a knowing manner.
This consideration is indeed why the Smiths make an ideal academic study. Morrissey’s lyrical preoccupations are loaded references to “illness”, loneliness, awkwardness, shame, guilt, and unrequited love. At the time naive Smiths fans took this simply to be the writings of a dandy nerd who was singularly unlucky with germs and birds, and who was choosing to protest about this, albeit in a slightly obscure way, by thrashing himself with a bunch of gladioli.
From a more knowing 21st-century vantage point, however, the songs could be seen as codified anguish of a gay man raised by strict Irish Catholics in Manchester, and who came of age in the Eighties, when the Conservative Government was busy implementing Clause 28.
Still, as Morrissey prefers to remain regally mysterious about his sexuality, it’s just as well the academic mystery machine is cranking up to answer the question Wearing an Elastoplast on his Nipple — What was that all about?
