Pulp modernism’s difficulty opposes the false ingenuousness of social realism

Evidence

Slates’ “Prole Art Threat” turned Smith’s persona, reputation and image into an enigma and a conspiracy. The song is a complex, ultimately unreadable, play on the idea of Smith as “working-class” spokesman. The “Threat” is posed as much to other representations of the proletarian pop culture (which at its best meant the Jam and at its worst meant the more thuggish Oi!) as it is against the ruling class as such. The “art” of the Fall’s pulp modernism — their intractability and difficulty — is counterposed to the misleading ingenuousness of social realism. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1152

Categorization

• DEFINE: Fisher glosses ‘pulp modernism’ as an intractable, difficult art counterposed to social realism’s ingenuousness.
• XREF: connects to: Pulp modernism fuses high-modernist technique with popular-fiction riffs — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 205

Broader Connections

• Pulp modernism fuses high-modernist technique with popular-fiction riffs #expands (0.85) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 205