February 29, 2004

CAFF WARS (REPRISE)

' that's probably the first time I’ve felt like I’ve been living outside the UK too long… must have that missed the meeting where it was decided Pret a Manger was pure evil...' Miaoww!!!

Simon compares the Undercurrent/k-punk/Stelfox position with MES/ The Fall and - yes, well below the belt, Simon - Beautiful South; Nigel Richardson invoked - even worse - the dread spectre of the Style Council and their white socks. How can the pro-caff lobby bring together such extremes? The Beautiful South - defiantly non-aspirational, conspicuously unglamorous, stick-in-the mud ultra-local - and The Style Council - upwardly mobile (nothing's too good for the stylish prole-about-town), cosmopolitan/ internationalist: I'd always have thought of these two as occupying opposite extremes on the proletarian pop continuum.

btw is inverted snobbery really worse than actual snobbery, I wonder? From its name on, Pret is self-consciously pushing a bourgeois agenda (and Simon's argument buys into the unwarranted assumption that Pret food is somehow more healthy than cheap fast food).

All of this reminds me of Lyotard in Libidnal Economy, when he speaks out/ up for the artificiality of proletarian desire. Yes, don't cry for the loss of some authentic, organic culture: we enjoy our anonymous pubs and crap sausages (I'd quote but my copy has gone AWOL. Michael?)

Posted by mark at February 29, 2004 07:34 PM | TrackBack
Comments

pp.00-00. Obscure IHG-related editorial joke, there.

There’s an apposite page reference in Flatline Constructs, you lazy bugger.

Posted by: sphaleotas at February 29, 2004 08:23 PM

Speaking of which, Flatline Constructs is now listed as part of the recent work done by Philosophy and Literature students.... http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/socialstudies/phillit/

Ha ha ha

Posted by: mark k-punk at February 29, 2004 08:57 PM

Can't find the Lyotard ref, though, Michael....

Posted by: mark k-punk at February 29, 2004 09:00 PM

The others look a bit lame-dicked, or is that too severe?

Posted by: sphaleotas at February 29, 2004 09:05 PM

Can't find the Lyotard ref, though, Michael....

Oh, alright then.

Posted by: sphaleotas at February 29, 2004 09:07 PM

sorry late in reading this but i think you're OTM.
Simon treading on thin ice with dismissals of inverse snobbery.
the actual snobbery of Pret users towards MaccyDs users concerns me far more.
of course being aware to inverse snobbery is important and combating that, but i still think the first order sniffiness is more, well, odious (though that's too strong a word but it will do).

Posted by: scott at March 2, 2004 08:39 AM

the beautiful south reference was completely off-beam. I wasn't really thinking, but wanted to get across the sort of "respectable pop" that Q magazine used to endorse. david gray would have been better, but now i'm really gonna drop a bomb (hopefully simon will still speak to me). for me caffs = dizzee but pret = FUCKING DIDO!!!

Posted by: Dave S at March 2, 2004 11:01 AM

basically true yeah innit.

i wonder what SR would think...;-)

Posted by: scott at March 2, 2004 01:47 PM

hey, lay off Dido already --- I think David Gray is a better analogue.

Posted by: mark k-punk at March 2, 2004 06:37 PM

surely you get Morgan Geist fans going in Pret to be fair?

;-)

Posted by: scott at March 2, 2004 08:23 PM

I like Morgan Geist!

Posted by: Dave S at March 3, 2004 02:26 PM