Yes, but the racism angle fits better into Morrissey's apparent persecution complex, doesn't it?
You're right. The tracks could have lacked any reference to race and been just as effective, that's all I'm saying. Why open a can of...
Sometimes he just likes to argue.
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never breaking with his principles, even when it makes him look bad or costs him money.
You were right on both counts-- don't forget that some of his "principles" might be bull-headed stubbornness and nothing more.
That's exhausting. And why is it so? Why are pop groups expected to be the leaders in social reform?
Well, some pop groups can be. The Clash, for example. I don't think Andrew's point of view is wrong in itself. Music can give you the right perspective and the right attitude. Though the songs can often be intellectually useless, they can at least be gateways to sources of information that aren't. If your personal politics are entirely wrapped up in "Sandinista" I feel sorry for you. But if "Sandinista" put a badge on your jacket and pointed you toward history, political theory, etc, then that's a good thing, right?
The problem I have with this point of view is that very few groups can actually pull off the trick of being political in any serious way. Those that can't, or seek to change attitudes in different ways, shouldn't be tarred and feathered. The editorial in 1992 mentioned Morrissey's apparent refusal to be a part of "the liberal consensus in the more compassionate side of the media", which instantly made me think of "the smelly little orthodoxies contending for our souls" Orwell mentioned over half a century ago in his essay on Dickens. Sometimes there's tremendous disappointment when our best artists aren't willing to fight for the political causes we back in the way we'd like them to.
Someone, please, tell Bono he can stop. Only John Lennon was John Lennon. Only MLK was MLK. Bono is only Bono, and he's rapidly turning into a caricature.
Well, it's true Bono and U2 have gone completely off the deep end into sad self-parody. I had to grimace and slide lower in my seat as I was forced to watch a U2 ad for Blackberry in a movie theater over the weekend. That said, Bono has done more for poor people in Africa than anyone else. He deserves some respect. Lennon was a great figure for peace and love (and even some righteous anger) but he never campaigned tirelessly with actual heads of state as Bono has done.
We're used to irony, and I think Morrissey is actually very un-ironic. I think he put Candy Darling and the lottery winning chick and the naked guy on Hand In Glove and Pat Phoenix on his sleeves NOT because it was tongue in cheek, but because he found something genuinely fascinating or admirable about them. He meant every word and every image.
Mmmm. You're right in a limited sense. He did admire Viv Nicholson, Candy Darling, etc. The "irony" as such isn't in the images. I think the irony is buried deeper, within himself. You said he's simple and not-simple, and I think that is a very not-simple situation to be in. He's complicated. I think the irony is there, it just works on a different level than we're used to.
For example, in the case of the darling Candy image used for "Sheila Take A Bow", you can say that he genuinely liked her. It's not an ironical use of her image. But you can also say that the choice of image, from an intellectual standpoint, was "shallow". Think less a bookish Morrissey poring over an image database to find a perfect photo of a Factory personality and more him acting like (say) Marc Jacobs picking a color or a fabric for some new concoction of his. We like to supply his images with meaning but more often than not they're simply images that catch his fancy. You called those rockers 'savants' and that's exactly what Morrissey is. His artistic instincts are impeccable. And his instincts are playful and revel in striking ironies, only they're enigmatic and highly personal rather than the broader ironies we're used to seeing in the culture.
Morrissey embodies the warning in the Preface to
The Picture of Dorian Gray: "All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril". You might say the job of the critic is to navigate the murky waters between those two approaches. Had a few critics done so with greater depth and sensitivity back in 1992...