Review by Carrie McLaren
Co-Editor Tom Frank sets the theme of this issue with a 20-page essay/rant, "Alternative To What?" What starts off as a predictable assault on Rolling Stone, Time, Pearl Jam, etc. flowers into a savvy critique of marketing powers that be and the academic institutions Frank and his contributors are presumably immersed in. Though a lengthy assault on academia's Madonna worshippers slows him down, Frank gets to the point eventually:
The real disappointment lies in (scholars') abject inability to recognize 'popular culture' anywhere but in the officially-sanctioned showplaces of corporate America; their utter dependence on television to provide them with an imagery of rebellion.Like the editors of Time, whose cover story on alternative rock neglected to mention an indie-label band or zine, the academics' concern with popular culture only stretches as far as the mass market takes them. Rachel Felder's recent scholarly treatment on alternative music, Manic Pop Thrill (reviewed in SF!), is a prime example, ruminating over major label craps like the Wonderstuff.
But does Frank really mean to trash "that whole flatulent corpus of 'culture studies?'" And if so, what is The Baffler doing dissecting alternative music, Details, Beatniks and mainstream advertising? Surely in the land of lit crit that is U. of Chicago, the editors are aware that cultural studies is as varied a discipline as, for example, English.
Frank's tendency to generalize makes him come off somewhat overwrought: "'Pop Culture' is the enemy; rock 'n' roll is the health of the state." Maybe I'd be more inclined to accept his world view if I didn't have a nagging suspicion his definition of rock 'n' roll came out of Joe Carducci's tough-guy bible Rock and the Pop Narcotic (1990). Like a lot of zines (and the Baffler is basically a zine in journal form... maybe journals sell better), the Baffler practices a subtle form of sexism; a sexism implied by details that in and of themselves may not say much but, taken together, mar an otherwise progressive agenda. Since I question whether it's nit-picking to point out that only two of the Baffler's 28 contributors are women; that pronouns are used in the masculine sense; that only one of twelve record reviews is of a band that prominently features a woman; that examples of real rock 'n' roll are guy bands like New Bomb Turks or Big Black while "'Lois'" is set off in quotation marks (kinda like "Popular Culture"); I'll just raise the point that sometimes sexism is as simple as equating good taste with the masculine; and that this kind of sexism is no less troubling than, say, that of Andrew Dice Clay (at least with Clay, I know where I stand). How anyone could spend six pages assaulting Sassy and not relate the magazine's fashion-consciousness to gender issues is beside me; maybe if Frank looked outside his tiny punk rock window, he'd know that this issue has already been played to death in girl zines.
Sure, the Baffler is an in-depth, challenging read, essay after essay (not to mention some short fiction and poetry). In fact, if the editors didn't make a point of reserving copyrights (draw your own conclusions), I might be inclined to reprint Stephen Duncombe's excellent piece, "We're Marketed, Therefore We Are?" in full. So if I sound particularly critical, it's only because this is the best zine I've read in years. Go figure.
Samples issues of the Baffler are $6 from The Baffler, P.O. Box 378293, Chicago, IL 60637. Subscriptions are $20 for four issues.