Ridicule Is Nothing To Be Scared Of (Slight Return)
Mark Fisher
Like
David Stubbs, I'm of course delighted to have been shopped to
the commissars of commonsense who compile Private Eye's Pseud's
Corner. It's always bracing to be middlebrow-beaten; a pleasure I
can expect to enjoy fairly regularly from now on, since, if the
section from the Mark Stewart feature that they selected is
considered fair game, then they might as well open up a permanent
spot for me.
It's difficult to know what the alleged problem is: the conjoining
of politics and music? Well, it's hardly stretching a point to
argue that a record such as For How Much Do We Tolerate Mass
Murder? might, y'know, have had some connection with
geopolitical developments at the end of the 70s. Would the same
objection be made to linkages between politics and other areas of
culture? But of course what is objected to is as much a question of
tone as of content. The default expectation in British media is
that writers perform a homely matiness: writing must be light,
upbeat and irreverent, never taking itself or anything else too
seriously.
The function of Pseud's Corner – to punish writing that in some way
overreaches itself, that gets ideas above its
station or gets carried away – has now been taken up
by online discussion boards and comments facilities everywhere. The
effect on any writer who internalises the critique is to be
intimidated into colourless mediocrity. But the problem with most
published writing today is not that it is 'pretentious', it is that
is unreflective PR hackwork. David Stubbs is right to invoke a
certain Orwell as the patron of bluff, plain speaking John Bull
prose - but the Orwell of "Politics
And The English Language" also attacked the mechanical
circulation of dull, dead language. If only that Orwell
were more heeded. "Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of
speech which you are used to seeing in print," he demanded,
optimistically hoping that "if one jeers loudly enough, send some
worn-out and useless phrase — some jackboot, Achilles’
heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid
test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal
refuse — into the dustbin where it belongs." Over sixty years
later, such "verbal refuse" continues to circulate with impunity,
and is supplemented by a whole inventory of PR commonplaces and
consumer-affect babble (journeys, rollercoaster
rides). Surely any amount of 'pretentiousness' is preferable
to these soporific linguistic screensavers?
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