Clampdown: Pop-Cultural Wars on Class and Gender

by Rhian E. Jones

Why have both pop and politics in Britain become the preserve of an unrepresentative elite? From chav-pop pantomimes to retro-chauvinist ‘landfill indie’, the bland, homogenous and compromised nature of the current 'alternative' sector reflects the interests of a similarly complacent and privileged political establishment. In particular, political and media policing of female social and sexual autonomy, through the neglected but significant gendered dimensions of the discourse surrounding ‘chavs’, has been accompanied by a similar restriction and regulation of the expression of working-class femininity in music. This book traces the progress of this cultural clampdown over the past twenty years.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Politics, Feminism, Gender, Cultural, Cultural Studies

113 pages, Paperback

First published March 11, 2013

About the author

Red bluestocking. Writes fiction; writes, edits and broadcasts on history, politics and pop culture. Welsh in London.

Reviews

[Tara Brabazon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is it. This is what cultural studies scholars should have been writing in the last ten years. Instead of walking away from discussions of the political economy or - even worse - becoming apologists (cheerleaders?) for the neoliberal reclamation of power after the Global Financial Crisis, cultural studies scholars should have got angry, got political and got busy to understand class, gender and race through the 2010s.

This book by Rhian Jones is inspirational. I have taken 10 pages of notes and found myself cheering out loud while reading it. Jones investigates what has happened to working class women (and men) in and through popular culture in the last two decades. This is not a book about representation. This is a book about invisibility. Working through 'chav' culture and Britpop, Jones has created a nuanced, considered and truly brilliant analysis of the casual racism, sexism, classism and xenophobia that has punctuated our century.

I feel so fortunate to have had the chance to read this book. It is an inspiration for all of us working in the humanities in higher education - a role of great privilege - and provides an opportunity to remember our political role and our social accountability. Time to get angry. Time to get busy.

[Lis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is such an important book - my worry is that, couched as it is in academic language, not enough people will read it. A thought-provoking analysis and discussion of the role gender and class play in UK pop culture, particularly over the Britpop/90s period.

[Alex Sarll]

A self-declared broadside: "Written under few illusions and with fewer solutions to offer, this book is a tentative excavation of alternative political and cultural identities, revealing both what has been lost and what may yet be recovered." Rhian Jones is justifiably peeved about the way British indie has gradually denatured itself since the mid-nineties, sacrificing oppositional potential to become a parade of posh white boys churning out inoffensive soundtracks for dinner parties which probably involve Keep Calm And Carry On paraphernalia. And as that reference may hint, it should be noted that this is a book from 2013, meaning some of the foci for Jones' animosity - like her namesake Owen, she picks up on 'chav' as a word all about demonising the working classes - now seem charmingly outdated. I can't remember the last time I saw that word in current discourse, though whether that's any consolation for the way the lot of the working class keeps going from bad to worse to worse yet is of course another question.

Still, plenty of the material is either historical/historiographical, or timeless. In the former category, there's the analysis of how summaries of nineties music fixate on the Spice Girls and Blur vs Oasis, omitting all the "music which engaged with and reflected contemporary concerns and anxieties [...] Much of this music was explicitly politicised". Alas, Clampdown here perpetuates some of those omissions, addressing the Manics in depth, and nodding to Cornershop, Stereolab and the protest movement in dance music, but making no mention whatsoever of poor bloody grebo, despite Carter and PWEI being both popular and openly political players at exactly this point. My other main caveat would be that I think even as Jones is problematising the traditional lineaments of the Blur/Oasis myth – not least by pointing out the former weren't as middle-class nor the latter as working-class as they were painted by a culture using both bands to strengthen reductive stereotypes – I do feel she's a little unfair on Pulp. Both in terms of how big they were, and in her analysis of the songs' relationship with class, which hangs heavily on one of my (and IIRC their) least-favourite of their singles, Mis-Shapes. Yes, this was Jarvis' most forceful distancing of himself from the louts around him, but as in Common People, any encounter with more exalted circles is equally sure to see Jarvis define himself against them in turn, suddenly rediscovering his working class identity. In short, he doesn't belong anywhere anymore, exemplifying one of the issues Jones is keen to point up, "the double-bind whereby political engagement and consciousness raising is seen as automatically conferring class privilege and upward mobility".

Where the book really excels, though, and the main thing which attracted me to it, is adding the girls back in to a movement now largely remembered as a boys' club. Jones is dead on about how central Elastica felt at the time, also noting how they anticipated the New Wave visual revivals and last gang in town energy for which the Strokes and Libertines* still somehow get the credit. Echobelly are here, as they too seldom are; Sleeper treated with the appropriate weariness. The centrepiece is the treatment of Shampoo and Kenickie – not only awesome bands, but ones who steered an interesting path through the swamp of class presentation in the nineties. They were surrounded by "performative doublethink", but "rather than stereotypes of exoticised others, they were opting to play the pantomime versions of themselves", even as doing so brought them too close to the folk devil of the ladette for record company comfort. There are shocking stories here, and ones which I've never heard before despite being a pretty hardcore fan, of the label getting uneasy with Kenickie's image, something which makes perfect sense given the more 'tasteful' image for the second album, but which I'd naively assumed was just their own decision to calm it down a little. The book came out before Lauren Laverne became quite the pop culture establishment mainstay she is now, but Jones quite correctly points out an heir to these too-little-remembered acts in the "gleeful menace" of Girls Aloud's cover of Kaiser Chief's I Predict A Riot, a barnstorming version far superior to the grotty sneer of the original.

The style of the book for the most part recalls the UK music press circa early Britpop, just before penny-pinching and corporate synergy eviscerated it. Jones is happy to get into the nitty-gritty, not afraid of being accused of pretentiousness by knuckleheads if she talks about Britpop "positioning mawkish, broad-brush and condescending stereotypes on a queasily ironic axis of satire and self-aggrandisement". But equally, she has more sense than to get stuck in the quagmire of theory jargon, and has a gift for catchy phrasemaking, (isn't it always the way) especially when being mean. Hence "Cool Britannia clagnut Keith Allen" or, in the more recent pop landscape, "an exoticised and largely indistinguishable female-centred quirk-quake: Little Pixie Roux and the Machine for Lashes." All of whom deserve that, but there were a couple of places where the summaries of the 21st century landscape seemed reductive, as when the noughties on screen are dismissed as comforting nostalgia courtesy of Tolkien and Rowling - which, yes, did big business, but this was also the decade when a show as demanding and political as The Wire was the broadsheet-reader's TV touchstone. In music, though, she's well aware that just because protest songs weren't charting, doesn't mean they weren't being made; it's so refreshing to read someone I don't know personally who's aware of Luxembourg or the Indelicates.

Who are still as far from the charts as ever, of course. Yes, UK hip hop and grime have gone overground in the past eight years, but the mainstream face of anything approaching indie remains Capaldi and Sheeran and dozens like them, plus endless profiles of guitar bands who are meant to be bringing indie back and somehow never quite do. The Jones of 2013 was properly sceptical of the notion that austerity encourages good art, but couldn't have imagined how much worse, assisted by streaming, the charts were going to get, such that we genuinely needed new rules to stop the entire top 10 being Sheeran. And in so many ways, the picture here has darkened since. Mumford & Sons were already a condescending faux-authentic band for tossers who treated festivals as an aspirational lifestyle opportunity, but they'd yet to be revealed in quite their full alt-right hideousness. The book's closing exhortation, about ensuring the nuance of working class identity is kept in mind and that it doesn't just become a flag for the poor, lairy white male – well, I think we all know how that's been going. And in terms of setting the record straight about the nineties... John Harris, standard-bearer for the dumbed-down and in places outright wrong version of the decade against which Jones kicks, seems not only to have retained that portfolio, but to have become the official spokesman for The Real England Outside The Westminster Bubble, a sinecure so firmly in his grasp that he somehow even got away with describing Boris Johnson as punk**.

*Jones is much more convinced by the Libertines than I ever could be, but plenty of people whose taste I otherwise respect are in the same boat, so I've learned not to get too 'I feel like I'm taking crazy pills' about that one. Hell, I liked the reference points myself, just not the gormless, derivative mess they made of them. Reminds me, I see Pete Doherty has announced a gig for July 3rd 2021, raising the interesting possibility of not only yet another gig where he doesn't turn up, but one where the audience may yet be legally forbidden to turn up either.
**To be fair, the more one hears from modern John Lydon, the less outrageous the claim seems. Even fucking so, though...

[Daisy Madder · Rating 4 out of 5]

An analysis of the way in which the working class and women were treated and presented in music and popular culture, from Britpop to the present day, including looking at the way such excellent bands as Kenickie, Shampoo and the Manics were fitted, or not, into popular narrative. Yeah, this might have been my kind of book

[Roxy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published a couple of years ago and relevant now more than ever. "Clampdown" is a fantastic assessment of class and gender representation and visibility as it has been over the past 20+ years, through the rise and fall of Britpop, the various strands and trends within it in relation to classism and sexism, as well as the "chav" stereotype, and the disappearance of positive representations of working-class people in the media in recent times. There are much-needed dissections of issues such as appropriation of working class culture, and the intersections of class politics and feminism.

The only thing that ever so slightly let it down for me is that it's a bit wordy where it doesn't necessarily need to be. If you read cultural theory, political theory, any kind of theory and are used to seeing long sentences with long words, then you won't have a problem; for me there's just an irony that such vital issues, which need to be recognised and understood by, really, as many people as possible, are not quite as accessible as they should be. I would also suggest you take the section on Britpop with a pinch of salt - personally I'm not into it at all, so it was difficult for me to be able to recognise certain elements; if you're quite into it yourself, I'm sure you can draw your own conclusions.

Either way, this was a brilliant book to read. The subject matter is quite depressing but it really is something we must acknowledge within academic/cultural discourse and in wider political discourse too. I would have rated this 4.5 stars but it wouldn't let me.

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This short, passionate book articulates one answer to how the UK is able to suffer the hardest, deepest and most damaging cuts to the public sector and welfare in generations and still see it as something necessary and even desirable. Jones argues that pop culture has gradually drifted to the right, particularly over the last ten years, cutting off one of the key avenues of self expression to all but those privileged enough to be able to be self sufficient. As a result protest against the untrammelled progress of ideological capitalism has been neutered at the same time that the constant and prolonged dismissal of working class society as 'chavs' has resulted in an all but conquered society. It is difficult to read this book without feeling a growing sense of anger. Jones does not offer any answers, since that is not her purpose. She is simply pointing out the issues. Although this book uses pop culture, and specifically music, of the last twenty years as its theme, this is merely a lens through which to examine the changes society has undergone. I would encourage anyone remotely interested in the current state of politics to read it.

[Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was first made aware of this book I got ridiculously excited. A look at music and politics, with bands like Kenickie looked at? It sounded perfect. After reading it I am still very impressed; it makes some fantastic points I hadn't thought about before, but I can't help wishing it had gone a bit more in depth or was a tiny bit longer. That can only be a good thing though, I thought what was there was very good indeed.

[acb · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting broadside on the soul of indie music under neoliberalism; charts the rise of Blairite Britpop, its (d)evolution to “landfill indie”, the New Lad culture, the increasing compartmentalisation of female participants into rigid categories (think Adele vs. Amy Winehouse) and the exclusion of lower-class perspectives and inclusion of poshos' caricatures of hideous proles in a music industry where participation is increasingly limited to those with inherited wealth.

[John Carter McKnight · Rating 4 out of 5]

This long essay/short monograph is not for the noob: if you don't have a deep knowledge of UK pop culture generally and the 1990s-2010 UK indie music scene specifically, don't bother. Jones' writing is brilliant, pyrotechnic, clever, scathing, but most of the time I had no idea what she was on about.

Reading Clampdown was like standing behind someone at a cocktail party who's clearly having a fascinating conversation that you can only hear half of - tantalizing, but not edifying.

[Stephen Naish · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was a teenager during the 90's and I look back on the era of Brit-pop with fondness, however dull it all seems today. This book is short and sweet and one of the best in defining the times.

[Guy Mankowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

The second half of this book is possibly less discussed but the first half, but the insights Jones offers into the artists and their contribution to culture are excellent and written about in a highly compelling way.

[George Bate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting and understandable account of the presentation of working class people in media and entertainment over the last 30 years, and the consequences thereof. Big recommendation

[Esmé Louise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great bit in the middle about Kenickie but I really struggled with how a lot of this is written. Curious to read some of her other music writing.

[Alan Trotter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really disappointing. It's an interesting topic—examining why pop culture has become so politically conservative, satisfied to shore up rather than critique or attack. (In particular its focus is popular music, and on representations of women and the working class.) I think Jones's position is coherent and a good account of it could be made, an account that could be interesting, could be vital. But it's so badly written.

It takes until the second part of the book, 30 pages in, for a good sentence to appear: a play on Orwell, describing the Tories under Major as seeming like "a government impossible to indict [and that] all the future held was the prospect of a grey cricket shoe stamping on a human face forever". For most of its length the writing is unbearably flat. Even less forgivably, the easy flow of jargon is allowed to dictate the sense of what is said, and the result can be confused or outright meaningless. It's writing as a submission to pre-constructed, received thought. You end up with messes like this sentence (not the worst):

Absent from, or actively refusing, many of the narratives of its time, especially the twin triumphalisms of Britpop and Blairism, The Holy Bible stubbornly retained other narratives of which its era was characterised by the shedding and suppression (the impact of the end of the cold war, the 90s confessional turn, the ‘crisis of masculinity’ and other socio-political peculiarities stemming from having grown up in Thatcher-damaged, post-industrial parts of the country) and, in its angst, anxiety, rage and self-loathing, the album vividly expressed the tensions which boiled between these two Britains.

(It doesn't help that the formatting of the Kindle version is similarly lazy, with apostrophes dislocated from their words, and footnotes that link to the wrong place or don't link anywhere at all.)

At its worst, it's the kind of writing that Orwell himself complained about: "The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not."

[Paula Maguire · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this a challenging read and have to admit that I didn't' get everything. I probably need to re read it as a 'dippy' book and not from start to finish because you need to savour the arguments. However I largely agree with the premise of the book ; that music has become increasingly mainstream and middle class (cold play and mumfords, or anodyne (xfactor) and it working class voices increasingly marginalised, or ridiculed.
'One need not be a victim of rose coloured personal nostalgia to argue that popular culture seems currently consumed by pastiche, recycling, solipsistic navel gazing and pantomimes of authenticity, preoccupied with kitsch fripperies and politically disengaged, with previous traditions of protest and consciousness weakened, compromised, commodified confused or forgotten.'

[Jenny Shaw · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm sure this book makes some important points. Unfortunately, it's far too verbose to communicate them effectively. Disappointing.

[Charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

mostly good on the 90s, not so good on current/recent cultural trends (and particularly bad when it just repeats some ideas from retromania entirely uncritically).