Poseur
A poseur is someone who poses for effect, or behaves affectedly, who affects a particular attitude, character or manner to impress others, or who pretends to belong to a particular group. A poseur may be a person who pretends to be what they are not or an insincere person; they may have a flair for drama or behave as if they are onstage in daily life.
"Poseur" or "poseuse" is also used to mean a person who poses for a visual artist—a model.
Examples
The playwright Oscar Wilde has been described as a "poseur". Thomas Hardy said of him, "His early reputation as a poseur and fop – so necessary to his notoriety – recoiled upon the scholar and gentleman, and even upon the artist".Lord Alfred Douglas said of Wilde, "That he had what passed for genius nobody will, I think, nowadays dispute, though it used to be the fashion to pooh-pooh him for a mere poseur and decadent."
The painter James A. Whistler has been sometimes described as a "poseur" for his manner and personal style. It has been suggested that Whistler's genius lay partly in his ability to cultivate the role of the poseur, to "act as if he were always on stage", in order to stir interest, and cause people to wonder how such a poseur could create work that was so serious and authentic. His fame as an artist seemed to require that he present himself as a poseur.
The playwright and critic, George Bernard Shaw, has been described as a poseur; in that context Shaw is quoted as saying, "I have never pretended that G.B.S. was real... The whole point of the creature is that he is unique, fantastic, unrepresentative, inimitable, impossible, undesirable on any large scale, utterly unlike anybody that ever existed before, hopelessly unnatural, and void of real passion."
In the ancient Greek comedy The Clouds, the playwright Aristophanes portrays Socrates as a "poseur".
Etymology
The English term "poseur" is a loanword from French. The word in English use dates back to the mid 19th Century. It is from the French word poseur, and from the Old French word poser, meaning "to put, place, or set". The Online Etymology Dictionary, suggests that "poseur" is in fact the English word "poser" dressed "in French garb, and thus could itself be considered an affectation."Use within contemporary subcultures
"Poseur" is often a pejorative term, as used in the punk, heavy metal, hip hop, and goth subcultures, or the skateboarding, surfing and jazz communities, when it is used to refer to a person who copies the dress, speech, and/or mannerisms of a group or subculture, generally for attaining acceptability within the group or for popularity among various other groups, yet who is deemed not to share or understand the values or philosophy of the subculture.Punk subculture
David Marsh, in an article in Rock & Rap, speaking of "those first punk kids in London" says, "The terms in which they expressed their disdain for hangers-on and those whose post-hip credentials didn't quite make it came straight out of the authenticity movements: Poseurs was the favorite epithet". Ross Buncle argues that eventually the Australian punk scene "opened the door to a host of poseurs, who were less interested in the music than in UK-punk fancy dress and being seen to be hip". Describing a rehearsal of The Orphans, he says there "were no punk-identikit poseurs" present. A 2015 article about early punk subculture in The New Republic states that punk "...was as immersive as a motorcycle gang or membership in the Mafia; part-time participants were derided as "poseurs", while any deviation from orthodoxy was a "sellout"...; this punk militancy created "... an economic and social ghetto which was nearly impenetrable to corporate infiltration and which only adventurous or deranged souls dared enter."In a review of The Clash film Rude Boy, a critic argued that this "film was another sign of how The Clash had sold out – a messy, vain work of punk poseurs". US music journalist Lester Bangs praised punk pioneer Richard Hell for writing the "strongest, truest rock & roll I have heard in ages" without being an "arty poseur" of the "age of artifice". Another critic argues that by the late 1970s, "punk rock had already, at this early date, shown signs of devolving into pure pose, black leather jacket and short hair required". Please Kill Me includes interviews with punks in New York and Detroit who "rip their English counterparts as a bunch of sissified poseurs".
The term poseur was used in several late-1970s punk songs, including the X-Ray Spex song "I Am a Poseur", which included the lyrics "I am a poseur and I don't care/I like to make people stare/Exhibition is the name."
Another song using the term was the Television Personalities song "Part-Time Punks". The Television Personalities' song "was a reaction to the macho posturing of the English punk scene". The lyrics argue that, "while Television Personalities were not themselves punks in the orthodox sense, neither was anyone else". The song "declared that either everyone who wanted to be a punk was one or that everyone was a poseur ", and it argues that "the concept of punk rock authenticity, of Joe Strummer, was a fiction".
An article in Drowned in Sound argues that 1980s-era "hardcore is the true spirit of punk" because "fter all the poseurs and fashionistas fucked off to the next trend of skinny pink ties with New Romantic haircuts, singing wimpy lyrics". It argued that the hardcore scene consisted only of people "completely dedicated to the DIY ethics"; punk "ifers without the ambition to one day settle into the study-work-family-house-retirement-death scenario".
The Oi band Combat 84 has a song entitled "Poseur" which describes a person changing from a punk to a skinhead, and then into a Mod and a Ted. The lyrics include the lines "Poseur poseur standing there/You change your style every year."
In 1985, MTV aired a concert documentary, featuring performances by GBH and the Dickies, entitled Punks and Poseurs: A Journey Through the Los Angeles Underground.
1990s–2000s
Dave Rimmer writes that with the revival of punk ideals of stripped-down music in the early 1990s, with grunge musicians like " Cobain, and lots of kids like him, rock & roll... threw down a dare: Can you be pure enough, day after day, year after year, to prove your authenticity, to live up to the music live with being a poseur, a phony, a sellout?"Refused's Dennis Lyxzén and Bad Religion's Brett Gurewitz used the term to refer to early 2000s-era pop punk fans as "kids – more specifically the new wave of punk poseurs who came to the music via bands like Good Charlotte". They argue that these young listeners want "not to have to think and would rather use music as escapism and too many bands seem willing to comply".
One writer argued that the Los Angeles punk scene was changed by the invasion of "antagonistic suburban poseurs", which bred "rising violence and led to a general breakdown of the hardcore scene". A writer for The Gauntlet praised the US Bombs' politically oriented albums as "a boulder of truth and authenticity in a sea of slick poseur sewage", and called them "real punk rockers" at "a time where the genre is littered with dumb songs about cars, girls and bong hits".
Daniel S. Traber argues that attaining authenticity in the punk identity can be difficult; as the punk scene changed and re-invented itself, "veryone got called a poseur". One music writer argues that the punk scene produced "...true believers who spent long days fighting the man on streets of the big city always wanted to make punk rock less a cultural movement than some kind of meritocracy: "You have to prove you're good enough to listen to our music, man."
Joe Keithley, the singer for D.O.A. said in an interview that: "For every person sporting an anarchy symbol without understanding it there’s an older punk who thinks they’re a poseur." The interviewer, Liisa Ladouceur, argued that when a group or scene's "followers grow in number, the original devotees abandon it, because it is now attracting too many poseurs—people the core group does not want to be associated with".
The early 1980s hardcore punk band MDC penned a song entitled "Poseur Punk", which excoriated pretenders who copied the punk look without adopting its values. The lyrics sheet packaged with Magnus Dominus Corpus, the album on which "Poseur Punk" appears, contains a picture of the band Good Charlotte juxtaposed underneath the lyrics to "Poseur Punk". As part of MDC's 25th anniversary tour in the 2000s, frontman "Dictor's targets remain largely the same: warmongering politicians, money-grubbing punk poseurs, and of course, cops".
NOFX's album The War on Errorism includes the song "Decom-poseur", part of the album's overall "critique of punk rock's 21st century incarnation of itself". In an interview, NOFX's lead singer Mike Burkett "lashes out" at "an entire population of bands he deems guilty of bastardizing a once socially feared and critically infallible genre" of punk, asking "hen did punk rock become so safe?"
Heavy metal subculture
argues that the heavy metal subculture classifies members into two categories: "acceptance as an authentic metalhead or rejection as a fake, a poseur". In a 1993 profile of heavy metal fans' "subculture of alienation", the author notes that the scene classified some members as poseurs, that is, heavy metal performers or fans who pretended to be part of the subculture but who were deemed to lack authenticity and sincerity. In 1986, SPIN magazine referred to "poseur metal".In 2014, Stewart Taylor wrote that in the Bay Area thrash metal scene in the 1980s, in venues where bands like Exodus played, metal fans who liked "hair metal" bands such as "Ratt, Mötley Crüe and Stryper" were considered to be poseurs. A sociology book states that "rue fans separate themselves from the posers through devotion to the history of the genre as well as the history of the particular bands and artists." If a music fan came to an Exodus show at thrash clubs "...with a Motley Crue shirt or a Ratt shirt, Paul Baloff would literally tear that shirt off the person's back," and then the band would "tear up the shirts and tie them around their wrists and wear them as trophies......badges of honor." Additionally, "...Baloff would often command the audience to 'sacrifice a poseur'", a ritual that involved the audience throwing the suspected hair metal fan onto the stage.
The Swedish black metal band Marduk, which aimed to be the "...most brutal and blasphemous band ever", uses Nazi imagery, such as the Nazi Panzer tank, in their songs and album art. This use of Nazi imagery offended neo-Nazi black metal bands, who called Marduk poseurs.
In the heavy metal subculture, some critics use the term to describe bands that are seen as excessively commercial, such as MTV-friendly glam metal groups in which hair, make-up, and fancy outfits are more important than the music. During the 1980s, thrash metal fans called pop metal bands "metal poseurs" or "false metal". Another metal subgenre, nu metal is seen as controversial amongst fans of other metal genres, and the genres detractors have labeled nu metal derogatory terms such as "mallcore", "whinecore", "grunge for the zeros" and "sports-rock".
Gregory Heaney of Allmusic has described the genre as "one of metal's more unfortunate pushes into the mainstream." Jonathan Davis, the frontman of the pioneering nu metal band Korn, said in an interview:
Ron Quintana wrote that when Metallica was trying to find a place in the LA metal scene in the early 1980s, it was difficult for the band to "play their music and win over a crowd in a land where poseurs ruled and anything fast and heavy was ignored".
David Rocher described Damian Montgomery, frontman of Ritual Carnage, as "an authentic, no-frills, poseur-bashing, nun-devouring kind of gentleman, an enthusiastic metalhead truly in love with the lifestyle he preaches... and unquestionably practises". In 2002, Josh Wood argued that the "credibility of heavy metal" in North America is being destroyed by the genre's demotion to "horror movie soundtracks, wrestling events and, worst of all, the so-called 'Mall Core' groups like Slipknot and Korn", which makes the "true devotee's path to metaldom perilous and fraught with poseurs."
In an article on Axl Rose, entitled "Ex–'White-Boy Poseur'", Rose admitted that he has had "time to reflect on heavy-metal posturing" of the last few decades: "We thought we were so badass Then N.W.A came out rapping about this world where you walk out of your house and you get shot. It was just so clear what stupid little white-boy poseurs we were."
In the Alestorm song "Heavy Metal Pirates", numerous metaphors and allusions to pirates are made, including references to cutlasses, and it includes the line "No quarter for the poseurs, we'll bring 'em death and pain". The Manowar song "Metal Warriors" includes the lines: "Heavy metal or no metal at all whimps and posers leave the hall" and "...all whimps and posers go on, get out".