This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The underlying phenomenon driving the More than my Hometown/23 vibe (that rural-to-urban migration is now a mostly-female phenomenon except where strong patriarchy prevents this, and that one of the drivers is that women do not want to end up as farmers' wives) is global - Fred Pearce's Peoplequake is where I read about it, but is now probably out of date. But that ground truth hasn't changed over the timescale you are looking at with the change in the vibes of Country lyrics, so the vibe shift you are looking at is probably driven by something else. Someone more familiar than I am with fine-grained US economic data could probably confirm if it is the same rise in economic anxiety in rural and small-town America that drove the rise of Trump - the dates superficially match up.
That leaves Thinks my Tractor's Sexy and Pickup Man as songs that portray rural lower-middle class men as sexy. And Thinks my Tractor's Sexy is very definitely about a country boy attracting the attention of a country girl - it isn't claiming that a "lady" would find the tractor sexy.
So the Country-is-sexy vibe was about the aesthetic of Country being the sexy icing on a cake which consists of money and status. All the Pretty Girls is getting at something similar, but without the cake - the pretty girls find the country boys superficially attractive and want to have some illicit sex with them before heading off to pursue lives elsewhere, and the country boys know that illicit sex is the only kind on offer so they sneak past the cops to get it. And of course this is in the general context of a genre which disdains outlawry and has lots of songs about people and their families ruined by breaking the law and ignoring basic sexual morality - so by the rules of Country music this is an account of systemic failure, not a "we cucked the white-shoe boys" brag.
FWIW (my exposure to Country is limited to what I hear at the house of a relative whose gateway drug was Dolly Parton), I think Hlynka is right and it was the swagger that was aberrational, not the maudlin.
It's fascinating how different our interpretations of the same song lyrics are. I always thought of the male lead in Ladies Love Country Boys as a townie from around Charlottesville or Durham or Chapel Hill, who the female law student ends up dating. Many such cases. Meanwhile, Rich is attractive because he's rich, Big is attractive because...and I always kind of pictured them as Texas ranchers or something.
That's a weird perception of country music. Even the old guys of country are Outlaw Country types these days, long gone are the Louvin Brothers who were playing genuine gospel music. Country music's average morality is closer to Toby Keith for the past decade or so. I'm counting at least two dozen songs on the top 100 that are about premarital or extramarital sex. Certainly country makes room for marital love and family in a way that other popular genres don't, but it hardly frowns on premarital sex anymore.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link