The Resistance: Ten Years of Pop Culture That Shook the World

by Armond White

Used library book great condition ships within 24 hours.

Genres: Music, Film, History, Nonfiction, African American

480 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1995

Reviews

[Oliver Bateman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of the topics have been lost to history--much of the 80s hip-hop White examined in minute detail has vanished from cultural memory--but his razor-sharp evaluations of Brian De Palma, Spike Lee, Marky Mark, Michael Jackson, Stephen Spielberg, and many other golden greats have stood the test of time. White, who must surely be the only man to ever work as a columnist for the Catholic-Conservative National Review and The Advocate at the same time, is an iconoclast who is all too frequently dismissed as an irritant. Why, I wonder? Because he actually takes positions on movies, unlike Grantland's Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Wesley Morris (Morris is a gifted prose stylist, but you can never, ever tell where he's coming from), or because the takes unpopular positions, unlike A.O. Scott and all the other hacks who play it safe and ape the Rotten Tomatoes consensus? The point of a review isn't to get a bunch of bozos to shake their heads in thoughtless agreement with your unchallenging points--certainly James Agee wouldn't say it was thus--but to stake out shocking new positions and argue in favor of them, in the process shaking readers out of their complacency. White's weakness, if you can call it such, is that he doesn't summarize the content he's analyzing; he's no Roger Ebert, who wrote the best film summaries of all time and for the most part had decent opinions about film (at least about my man Welles and Troyas' Dark City, and that's what really matters), in that regard. But you should already know this shit--after all, who among the pop culturally semi-literate hasn't heard Michael Jackson's Bad or watched Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing? There was only one Ebert, and he was all you needed, and there's only one White, and it'll be a pity when he calls it quits, too. The rest of you will never know what you lost.

Also, when is White going to get off his duff and publish a few more collections of his post-1995 criticism? "The Resistance" (truly a fantastic byline idea, as explained by White in the introduction) must live on! We should all aspire to be as ballsy and unapologetic as this dude. He's an American original, and, along with Tom Wolfe and Flannery O'Connor, one of my few actual literary heroes.

[Carlos Valladares · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s very easy to judge someone when you’ve read literally none of their work. Such is the case with Armond White, one of the Internet’s favorite punching bags — seen as such, instead of the thoughtful, insightful, witty, daft, no-bullshit critic he is. This is the collection to show your friends that the Rotten Tomatoes scores of TOY STORY 3 and GET OUT shouldn’t even fucking near a serious conversation of the White gaze. For decades in the alternate press and Black dailies, he ran circles around his New York competition, who parroted the same, basic, racist and non-curious cultural insights and whom were forgotten in a few weeks. Never Armond. To read this essential book of criticism is to understand why he turned the tide and went into his crackpot right-wing period—and he STILL runs circles around the competition. Tarantino had Kael as his go-to critic when making motion pictures (oy vey); I’ll have Armond, please and thank you (and Farber and Haskell and Kam Collins and Rosenbaum and Sarris and Kehr, etc etc etc). Those who profess an interest in how we got to our current fascist moment (as well as an interest in pop, film, music, music videos) would do well to study their Armond. Do I agree with everything he writes, of course fucking not. He has no idea what to do with Julie Dash, for one. That’s his right. That’s not the point with a good critic. Makes you want to clarify your position yourself, makes you want to think. Bless the dude, may he live long and prosper—and I say this seriously knowing everything he professes to officially stand for today is morally and politically repugnant to me. But if he taught me anything it’s to mistrust the official narrative. And also to embrace the word “chockablock.”

[Fred R · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm an enormous fan of Armond White, but I found this book difficult to get into. I read in it White trying to extend and radicalize, if possible, a 60's racial critique increasingly inappropriate for this 90's landscape. But White's concise and elliptical style (rightly) makes a lot of demands on the reader, so I'm not going to dismiss the possibility that the fault lies in my comprehension. And in any event, there are still a few great reviews in here.