Does it make sense to love a work of art or a genre thereof not because of its consistent quality but rather because, against a backdrop of repetitive mediocrity, it occasionally shines forth with some unexpected burst of transcendence? I think, at the risk of sounding arrogant, that this is one reason why I enjoy both hip-hop and superhero comics. In the past hour, reading through Lionel Trilling's Sincerity and Authenticity, which I pretty much love, I've been unable to stop thinking about a weird line from a stealth-favorite song of mine: "No Other" by Lil Wayne and Juelz Santa, from the 2006 DJ Drama/Lil Wayne mixtape Dedication 2. Wayne's from New Orleans, so he riffs desultorily (here and throughout) about how shitty that whole hurricane thing was, and how shitty life in general is. It's pretty good stuff. But I prefer Santana's verse, especially a bit into his opening: "Wayne, I feel your pain and I see your stress / How they think your people s'posed to get through Katrina off a FEMA check?" (Answer: selling drugs.) But I don't want that jokey parenthetical to undermine the achievement here. I honestly get that whole spine-tingly thing every time the words pass through my speakers. Santana means it, goddammit, and while he's only a few seconds away from converting the whole thing into a paean to the gangster lifestyle, up to and including torturing enemy drug dealers, he's genuinely sad for that fleeting moment. "I feel your pain"? What a weird thing for a rapper to say. What a brave thing for a rapper to say, if you want to be a little ridiculous about it. See also a far superior song: Clipse, "I'm Not You," Lord Willin', at 3:48: "I see them pay for they fix when they kids couldn’t eat / And with this in mind, I still didn’t quit / And that’s how I know that I ain’t shit." Would any of this have an impact if it weren't so atypical? Or maybe I'm the only idiot who thinks it has an impact at all.
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Why are you picking on superhero comics and hip-hop? It appears to me that they share a similar sublimity/mediocrity ratio with almost everything else produced in the world (if that is possible; more in 2 paras.).
Measured in terms of pleasurable effect, judging by the contents of your blog and our infrequent face-to-face meetings, I'd even say that comics and hip-hop appear to excite your aesthetic sensibilities more than other stuff such as, I don't know, indie rock. If not, why are they worth loving to such a great degree?
(Parenthetically, can anything really be consistently sublime? Doesn't sublimity in some sense imply irregularity or supremacy? If every line in hip-hop or superhero comics were to achieve sublimity, how would we tell?)
I guess my main question is: with what are you contrasting two of your favorite art forms? Paintings? Mozart? Are legitimated things you don't really like more packed with transcendence or are they just hyped as such (cf. Bourdieu)?
At any rate, I'd say you're not to worry about being the only idiot who finds transcendence in rap and comix, judging by the number of people who buy the shit. Unless they're just into it for hipster sarcasm/laffs (that is not a dig at you me or any of our mutual friends).
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