Things country music has in common with fantasy

[resonant]

- There's a group of people who detest it on principle. Asked to define it, they create a definition that basically sorts everything into two categories: Things I Hate, Which Therefore Belong To the Genre I Hate, and Things I Like, Which Obviously Do Not Belong To the Genre I Hate. (Ask a classic rock fan who hates country about Crosby, Stills, & Nash. Or a classic sci-fi fan who hates fantasy about Pern.)

- Traditionally, about a third of it was worthless due to sentimentality.

- More recently, another third of it is worthless because capitalism endlessly churns it out in identical shiny plastic pieces.

- When it's bad, there's nothing worse.

- When it's good, it captures the human spirit so well that it brings tears to your eyes.

Comments

[watersword]

I want to metaquotes this, except that I don't think you're supposed to metaquote a whole entry.

[out_there]

*agrees*

[nestra]

Could you say the same thing about romance, as a literary genre?

[resonant]

Interesting question. And, weirdly -- as many thousands of pages of romance as I've read over the years -- I find I don't actually know the genre well enough to say!

I don't find bad romance nearly as annoying as bad fantasy, probably because my hopes for any given romance novel aren't that high.

On the other hand, I'm afraid that the best romances I've read outside of fandom don't lift my heart the way the best fantasy novels do.

(Often when reading romance I feel the need for a recs page; I'm just not sure I'm finding the really good stuff.)

[resonant]

:)

[muccamukk]

I don't think the capitalism thing is recent. I mean this is a genre that's been defined by LotR rip-offs since 1954.

[anoyo]

100% agreed. Both can be amazing, and both can be so contrived that you kind of want to go into hibernation in a dark, quiet place.

[jedusaur]

I've been doing the Tinder thing on OKCupid lately (where it shows you a profile and you indicate yes or no, then it tells you which of the people you like also like you) and one thing I keep seeing over and over in this mass of upper-middle-class white 28-year-olds it keeps lobbing at me is "I'll listen to anything except rap and country." Always rap and country, in that order, like a secret handshake for people who think Bernie would have won. It's sort of fascinating.

Spot ON!

[jesse_the_k]

This is remarkably true. Considering the source that doesn't surprise me.