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I've removed the following passage because it qualifies as original research as an unsourced rebuttal: "A counter to the claim that rockism is sexist, racist, and/or homophobic is that some of the most acclaimed rock artists were female, black, or homosexual such as Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Freddie Mercury." -- Muchness 21:07, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
While I myself don't have much sympathy with the various attitudes labeled here as "rockist," I think the general tone of the article is a bit condescending.
Also, it raises two specific specific features of rockism that have no necessary connection: 1)the notion that music should have a particular sound or instrumentation, and 2) the emphasis on authenticity and contempt for commercial, or mass, art. It is not uncommon to find such an "elitist" character in electronic music, for example, and avant-garde artists generally do not limit themselves to technology of any particular era.-- WadeMcR 07:48, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
I think you'll find isolated corners in the blogosphere which proclaim themselves to be rockist ; they are few and far between but they certainly exist. Also, as hip-hop has become noticeably less African-American with time - one could make a valid argument for hip-hop and rap being no more "black genres" than rock was in 1964 or so - racial connotations of rockism seem to be rather shallow.
That the rebuttal has been removed is a sign to me that this article has a POV. So is the fact that the criticism section is, as the person below me so astutely points out about a larger context, people fighting straw men.
Also troubling is that the article acts as though loaded definitions of authenticity, and a classicism that arrests innovation are specific only to rock. I listen to quite a lot of music, and associate other folks who do, and you had best believe that this sort of thinking exists in say classical music, and hip hop to an overwhelming degree.
Hence, some friends and I will be aiming to rewrite this in a less tendentious form. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.162.30.204 ( talk) 19:16, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
I'll admit that my comparison of "rockist" to "pro-abortion" is a little over the top, but I wanted to get my point across thatto my knowledge the term is entirely a straw-man created by music critics. If someone finds info showing that the term originater from music critics who advcated it, then change what I wrote and source that information. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 130.215.230.131 ( talk • contribs) 20:58, 5 February 2007 (UTC).
is a significant amount of research into how the word has been used in its history, however brief that is. i'm confident that it was defined differently by british critics writing about punk and post-punk, than it is today. always, always historicize.
and i fail to see why the new york times quote- about the diversity of a "canon"- keeps being removed. i may re-add it with citations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.65.224.92 ( talk) 07:38, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
The term is a straw man created and used by very, very few people. It has no set meaning, it is not accepted in the industry as a critical term, and this page serves no purpose other than to perpetuate the negative stereotype/straw man that this term set out to create despite it being ridiculously not-notable and biased. Keeping this would be like giving "puppy blender" an article, as several conservative bloggers use it to describe specific liberals, or giving "double hitler" an article because, according to Google, that term has been used more than 2,000 times. I've seen significantly more notable pages deleted due to lack of notability. This article is a waste of space. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.49.4.226 ( talk) 21:06, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Check out the very popular music web site www.rateyourmusic.com where discussion threads about rockism are far from uncommon. Anyone who is a 'serious music fan' (if that doesn't sound too rockist!) is familiar with the term and the debates centred around it. Vauxhall1964 ( talk) 22:52, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
Sure enough it's a straw man, but if the term didn't exist someone would invent it anyway. Some friends of mine used to tout the
Spice Girls,
Chicks on Speed and
Rihanna as the real heroes liberating us from the Rockist Behemoth.
83.254.151.33 (
talk)
02:49, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
I don't agree that the term "rockism" is useless — although at this point it may be a little outdated. All you'd need to do is read a selection of reviews by Robert Christgau, the self-proclaimed (and highly published) "dean of American rock critics" to get a sense of how a proprietary, exceedingly narrow, highly biased view of what rock music should and shouldn't be can poison any pretensions of having a broad critical resume. My rap against him has nothing to do with the sociocultural issues that are concerning this talk page; my rap against him is entirely aesthetic: that he compares all rock to the forms that became "classic rock" and judges it according to that singular yardstick. He doesn't get progrock, jazz rock or anything qualifying as avant garde and enjoys snickering mean-spiritedly at these forms. But the first rule of good criticism is to judge a work on its own terms and not according to what you, the critic, think it should be.
I agree that being an aesthetic reactionary isn't exclusively the province of rock critics. I wouldn't know how to change the article, because the term's cited criticism seems to have more to do with identity politics than balanced music criticism.
Snardbafulator ( talk) 03:01, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
Well, the ridiculous criticism of Kelefa Sanneh, was repetiaa in the article, just did a correction. Wisehelp ( talk) 05:51, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
@ Ilovetopaint: I'm not in favor of merging poptimism into this article (as you suggested there). That would, among other things, minimize the relative importance of poptimism, giving undue weight to rockism. I think that would go against WP:NPOV. Lwarrenwiki ( talk) 13:15, 25 August 2016 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not a dictionary; there does not need to be a separate entry for every concept. For example, "flammable" and "non-flammable" can both be explained in an article on flammability.( WP:OVERLAP)
Comment after expanding the article a great deal, I'm more convinced that a dedicated Poptimism article is unnecessary. Most of the discourse on poptimism directly relates to rockism.-- Ilovetopaint ( talk) 11:48, 26 August 2016 (UTC)
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Reviewing |
Reviewer: Midnightblueowl ( talk · contribs) 16:23, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
Interesting subject matter. If there are no objections, I'll put together a review for this one.
Midnightblueowl (
talk)
16:23, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
Generally, great work. There are a few prose issues that I shall bring up, but on the whole I think that this should pass with some alterations.
I think that this meets with the GA criteria, so will pass it as such. However, I would recommend sending it to Peer Review as I think that the prose could be straightened out a little. Midnightblueowl ( talk) 16:41, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
This article is almost incomprehensible.
I understand where it's coming from because I was around in the late 60s when people were trying to make "progressive rock" etc. into something on the level of Classical music. There was at that time a certain contempt for "teenybopper music" and the like, probably because people were serious about creating a new canon away from the commercialism of pop.
But this article is all over the place. It is a compilation of inhouse quotations from a subculture that does not feel it needs to explain itself to outsiders. It features people talking to each other within a high-context culture, without any context. And where exactly does Christgau's "Yes, There Is a Rock-Critic Establishment (But Is That Bad for Rock?)" fit into all this?
The article could do with some judicious editing. Some of the quotes could be explained better or removed. The only one who could understand what it is about is someone who already knows what it is about.
13:29, 7 April 2018 (UTC) 150.129.140.239 ( talk)
I feel like the fact that poptimism is a portmanteau of pop and optimism belongs in the etymology section. However, I could only find one reliable source (Tiny Mix Tapes) that says this, and even then it doesn't mention the word optimism. I added this but feel free to do whatever. -- Somarain ( talk) 22:28, 9 March 2022 (UTC)