Cave Canem
Worth reading not only Anwyn Crawford’s blistering takedown of Nick Cave, but also a few of the online responses so far, which range from make-my-point-for-me-why-don’t-you sexist kneejerkery (lots of this) to earnest and even grateful critical engagement.
The piece was a bomb: it went off – proving again the power of negation as a critical mode.
I think there’s a mis-step taken in identifying Cave’s attitudes towards women quite so directly with those of the narrative voices in his fiction (although I’ve not read the latter), and that the reasons given for doing so – that Cave doesn’t really “do” irony, and takes himself pretty seriously – are only convincing if ironic distance and sincere identification are the only two stances available. It’s evident that Cave enjoys the Lustmord narrative, and that disavowing this enjoyment and claiming an ironic distance from it is not what he’s about (it’s truly bizarre that at least one Cave fan thinks that Crawford doesn’t understand him because she doesn’t understand postmodernism). But it’s also evident that it’s a source of discomfort to him, and that his music (and perhaps the fiction also) stimulates a certain enjoyment partly in order to probe the discomfort it causes. That operation can be boring and navel-gazing, and Cave has added a great deal of superfluous material to the already voluminous Annals of Male Sexual Solipsism, but the problem isn’t really to do with whether the enjoyment (or the discomfort) is sincere or not, but to do with whether the interplay between enjoyment and discomfort is managed creatively or has been allowed to become just another well-established masturbatory routine.
December 5th, 2009 at 11:21 am
Nick Cave is an epic bore.
December 7th, 2009 at 1:42 am
Any critique that can be rebutted within 3 comments over at bloody Defamer hardly merits the descriptor “blistering”.
Insisting that a man who describes fantasies of murdering women is a misogynist is like saying someone with black friends can’t possibly be racist. Her biggest problem, though, is (as you outlined it) limiting the realm of Cave’s work to binarily-opposed po-face-value VS hollowly ironic piss-take.
December 7th, 2009 at 11:49 am
As Seb points out, this article has been filleted in a few Defamer comments. For one, Grinderman is deliberately ironic. And this is also the man who has written some of the most beautiful love songs in history without doubt.
Though I like Cave, but for me what spoils him is the occasionally clunking lyrics and the generally pedestrian arrangements of his music. The one thing right about this article is perhaps placing him in “middlebrow” territory, not that he can’t often turn out a stormer.
December 7th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Filletted? Huh…
I like what Cave does, but it’s limited in a kind of wind-changed-and-your-face-got-stuck-that-way fashion. Saying that there’s more to sex than punch and judy theatrics is not the same as saying that punch and judy theatrics are inherently artistically invalid – just that a career in punch and judy shouldn’t be mistaken for a serious lifelong investigation of the chiaroscuro of human passion. There’s a failure of imagination involved somewhere along the way, and I found Anwyn’s article a forceful restatement of the classic riot grrrl demand for a pop imaginary that involves women as something more than props.
There are only really two places for women in Cave’s imaginary: up on a pedestal, or dead in a ditch. The love songs addressed to the women on their pedestals are pretty enough, but the separate reality of the person so addressed doesn’t really shine through. That’s less of a problem in Cave’s early stuff, where instead of a lyric self positioned in relation to a fantasy other you have these fractured narratives in which everything seems to be breaking down. But the more mainstream he gets, the more the solitary-tortured-artist imago comes to the fore – conservative, consolatory, a media-sign that acts as a concentrator of cultural capital rather than dispersing intensities in all directions.
Grinderman is pretty much The Birthday Party played for laughs – surely not a fruitful exercise…
December 7th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
I don’t have time at the moment to launch into Cave exegesis here, but I’m not sure that the binary you set up is true. There is at least two other elements, “lost and longing for”, “love isn’t actually story book and simple”. You are right that women do tend to be props for Cave.
December 7th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
RE: “the classic riot grrrl demand for a pop imaginary that involves women as something more than props.”
Absolutely! That’s something that can only help an artform ever more mired in Hallmark-card sentiment & (yes, true) Punch & Judy theatrics. But then where are the women who should be laying this path, where are their champions, and why are we complaining about men who either can’t or have no interest in it?
December 8th, 2009 at 2:01 am
I’m one of those women, at least I hope, who has always drawn upon riot-grrrl as a critical and aesthetic strategy, and who champions its use. But rather than ask “Where are the women?”, as if it is our fault for not stepping forward, I think it’s a more useful question to ask “Why don’t the women appear? What might be preventing them?” Acknowledging the fact that women who raise these questions and utilise these strategies, as artists or as critics or as both, are generally pathologised as hysterics – well, that might be one way to start answering it. The exclusion is structural; it’s not like women simply haven’t gotten around to trying.
There *is* a false binary going on here, and it lies in the notion that the responsibility for dismantling sexism lies entirely with women; while men, who are inadequate or uninterested by the very fact of their gender, are free to simply idle their time until the problem is solved. I’m not demanding that Cave’s art suddenly become Bikini Kill’s. That’s to misread me entirely. I am asking that the problems of his work not go unremarked upon. I’m also asking that men take equal responsibility for the very difficult work of struggling against sexism – it’s not that men “can’t” do this, it’s that more often than not, they won’t.
It’s fascinating but also quite depressing to me that the response to my essay has been, with few exceptions, almost entirely polarised down gender lines: the most positive feedback has been from women and the most virulent objections from men. From men, the tone takes on a remarkable level of defensiveness. Men object to the notion of Cave’s work or Cave himself being characterised as misogynist because, it seems to me, they believe that the accusation threatens to fall back upon them as listeners. To clear themselves, therefore, they have to dismiss the accusation made against the artist. This is entirely simplistic. If, as a woman, I can stand in the position of finding Cave’s work both fascinating – once very appealing – and intensely problematic, I’m unlikely to believe that men are only permitted an either/or reaction to it. To be uncomfortable with the work is an interesting and productive position to be in – that many men seem to not *want* to be uncomfortable with it is pretty disappointing.
The analogy between sexism and racism is lazy. Both are structural oppressions, but they operate differently and produce different social relations; different imaginaries. What evidence would I have to bring against Cave, or an artist like him, before an accusation of misogyny might hold? That he had real women’s bodies stashed inside his cellar? To dismiss my calling Cave misogynist on the grounds that he hasn’t killed any actual live women lately is entirely specious; a refusal to acknowledge the affect of the pop imaginary on the contours of gender relations as they are lived.
December 8th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
The problem I have with your argument is that it suggests any artist who’s expressed any degree of rage towards a woman is necessarily a misogynist. What evidence would one have to produce that they’re not a misogynist simply because they enjoy a song that details the death of a woman? To dismiss quarrels with your article with straw men like “dismiss[ing] my calling Cave misogynist on the grounds that he hasn’t killed any actual live women lately” is entirely specious; a refusal to acknowledge that Cave’s fans may simply be as (un)comfortable listening to ballads about murdering women as ballads about murdering men. As unfair as it indeed is to say the responsibility for fighting sexism is entirely on women, it’s equally unfair to say anyone who disagrees with you is doing so self-defensively and/or is calling you a “hysteric”. Perhaps we just think Cave has a rather dim view of humanity in general, given that he’s laid almost as many men in the ground in song as women. I’m also not sure which websites you’ve been reading for reaction, but I’ve actually found a fairly even gender distribution amongst people who’ve objected to your article.
I also can’t help but read the essay as foisting a theoretical frame around an artist the author just really doesn’t like (see: Mark Fisher on Sonic Youth). Lord knows there are far, FAR worse culprits in mainstreaming misogyny in song, and it’s a topic well worth taking on. But the crux of the issue reads far more easily as “I hate Nick Cave.”
PS – My wife just read your question “Why don’t the women appear? What might be preventing them?” and called it “lazy, woe-is-me bullshit that doesn’t help feminists.” Women of the world, unite!
December 8th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
I read an article years ago that stated Nick Cave was an avowed misogynist. It’s a pity I can’t find a copy of it online.
If misogyny is a hatred of attributes usually associated with women, it doesn’t preclude a misogynist from loving other attributes also usually associated with women and writing a song about it.
December 9th, 2009 at 12:50 am
“a refusal to acknowledge the affect of the pop imaginary on the contours of gender relations as they are lived.”
I was with your analysis until that point, though I am on Seb’s side in thinking you have misread Cave. It is true that male listeners of Cave are inclined to defend him due to their fear of guilt by association since one’s music taste is, regardless of what some may believe, an important element of their personality.
But part of this tells us why people may find the idea of an artist they love as misogynist disturbing – because his listeners are not themselves misogynist and do not hate women and most I know would be appalled to believe they were misogynist as a result of liking Cave. Which brings me onto my other point: given this, and given my experience of Nick Cave fans (both men and women, generally fairly cultured or as you put it “middlebrow”, not inclined to hate women) do you really think Cave is affecting gender relations as they are lived? Is Cave casually creating the hatred of females to any degree? I think not.
December 9th, 2009 at 5:49 am
[insert last f'ing word here]
December 9th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Fair enough.
December 9th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
As owner of this blog, and possessor of an irrefrangible sense of masculine entitlement, I hereby claim the last f’ing word.
January 9th, 2010 at 10:30 am
In a curious gender reversal, I (a man) can’t stand Nick Cave where as my partner (a woman) thinks he’s great. My problem with Cave is that he seems to want to have his cake & eat it. He wants to plumb the depths of human emotion AND also maintain an ironic distance from such emotions. In doing so, he forgets that great theatre depends on the suspension of disbelief and the negation of distance. He’s got worse & worse at this over the years. I just don’t believe him any more. The misogyny & transgression ceases to be genuinely provocative & is instead used to camoflage a lack of imagination. That’s Cave’s real crime: being tedious.
The other point to make is that cave himself is a mediocre musician. He’s dependent on the likes of Mick Harvey to paper over the cracks.
I quite like “kicking against the pricks”.