Adbusters is Ridiculous

On Christmas morning I found Adbusters magazine in my stocking as usual. I guess because Santa Claus thinks I'm still 16? Anyway, I hate Adbusters, but I read it because I got less reading material than any Christmas since I learned to read, and I already read the People magazine in my Mom's stocking and the Martha Stewart Living in my sister's. And I found five ridiculous things. Okay, I found, like, 100 ridiculous things, but five that I have something to say about:

1. From a letter:

I know two people who would have been called counterculture in the 60s or "hipsters" five years ago. They were in an indie band in high school and were devoted to music as a way of life and not just a hobby. One of them no longer plays music - perhaps because of modern cultural nihilism.

Emphasis mine. Because that is just so ridiculous. What on Earth does that mean? "Well, I used to be in a band, but then there was all this modern cultural nihilism so I'm not anymore." Well, I think we all owe modern cultural nihilism a big thanks. Don't rest, modern cultural nihilism! There are plenty more crappy bands to break up!

2. Another letter:

Shonagh Strachan's article on the cruelties of modern childbirth is retrograde insofar as she places blame on the "modern patriarchal institutionalized world," "capitalist patriarchy" and "misogynistic forces." Her final statement precisely identifies the cause of traumatic birthing procedures as a patriarchal fear of female empowerment. This sort of thing was demonstrably true, and relatively widespread, a generation or two ago. But today, Strachan's argument is unlikely.
The far likelier cause of traumatic birthing processes is the particular breed of capitalism that we have and the way it positions profit over people or, in this case, patients. C-sections, like any other surgery, are far more lucrative than straight vaginal births. This profit-driven dynamic shows up all over the health industry and adversely affects females and males alike. So, put blame where blame is due - the capitalist exploitation of our bodies.

"Sexism being the cause of a problem? Unlikely! My analysis reveals that it is the fault of ... capitalism! The same thing I've already decided is responsible for every problem. Conveniently, this affects men just as much as women! No such thing as multiple causes for one problem, by the way. Oh, and sexism in the past? Relatively widespread." In case you couldn't guess, this was written by a man.

3. From an essay:

About 2 years ago, a friend showed me a daily agenda she'd picked up from an anarchist collective in Edmonton. I scanned over the "tips for dropping out of the economy" list and immediately rejected most of them as too radical and hardly conducive to my student life. One of the tips, however, was extremely simple and definitely within my capabilities: to black out logos and brand names from various advertisements around campus with an indelible black marker.

"Wow, all of these ideas are just too hard. I will pick the absolute easiest one, which is also, of course, the one that doesn't cost me money or much time and does absolutely nothing to help anyone. What a great choice! I am so proud of myself that I will publish an essay about it."

4. The issue announces the "greedy pig of the year." And it's "the first-world consumer." That's quite some nerve, since that is, by definition, 99% of the people who read Adbusters. Is purchasing Adbusters, an object that is produced with physical resources like paper and ink and then sold in grocery stores for $9 not an act of consumption? Is Adbusters (again, $9) not a luxury item?

5. Okay, and Adbusters is, by definition, anti-advertisement, right? It's all about busting those ads? And it's anti-consumption? So, how exactly does Adbusters advertise itself? There's a subscription card inside (gasp! it's printed on paper! I sure hope that was recycled paper!) that says: "Join the groundswell of radical change. Subscribe online at adbusters." i.e. "Join the groundswell of radical change by buying this product." There's also an ad inside with "tools for activists" that you can purchase, including: "The Magazine. Become a core member of the movement." I'm so glad that becoming a core member of the movement is as easy as an act of consumption. Whoops, Adbusters markets itself just like everything else.

Don't worry, I told Santa that next year I want my own People Magazine instead of Adbusters.

Vague Euphemism Songs

The vague euphemism song is my name for the (very) minor genre of r&b/hip-hop influenced pop music that uses silly euphemisms that obviously are referring to something dirty but it's not entirely clear what it is. I know of five songs that fit into the genre:

1. "My Humps" by the Black Eyed Peas

This is, of course, the founding song of the genre – almost its manifesto. This song is infamous. I think it's pretty great. To be honest, the euphemism isn't that vague. Though she uses humps and lumps interchangeably and plays around with what's plural and what isn't , it's pretty obvious what she's talking about. But I couldn't just not include this foundational text of the vague euphemism canon, could I?

2. "Beep" by the Pussycat Dolls ft. Will.I.Am



Bolstered by the success of "My Humps," Black Eyed Peas producer and lead rapper Will.I.Am went off and made an imitation version for the Pussycat Dolls, complete with strings. In the chorus, Will.I.Am raps, "It's funny how a man only thinks about the [beep], you've got a real big heart but I'm looking at your [beep], you've got real big brains but I'm looking at your [beep], girl there ain't no pain in me lookin' at your [beep]." Nicole replies, "I don't give a [beep], keep looking at my [beep], cause it don't mean a thing if you're looking at my [beep], ha, I'mma do my thing while you're playing with your [beep]." Granted, this is nauseating. But I actually like the song a lot. It's pretty catchy, and the most important word of the song is actually an inhuman noise, so that has to be worth something. One thing I like about it is that the verses convey a certain amount of ambivalence of having one's [beep] objectified in this way:
1) "Every boy's the same / since I've been in seventh grade / they've been tryna get with me / tryna ha ha ha, ha ha ha. / They always got a plan / to be my one and only man / wanna hold me with their hand / wanna ha ha ha, ha ha ha. / I keep turnin' 'em down / but they always come around / asking me to go around / that's not the way it's goin' down. / 'Cause they only want, only want / my ha ha ha, ha ha ha."
(as an aside, one thing I love about the Pussycat Dolls is how often they just sing some "ha ha ha"s into their songs as fake laughter. They do it to even greater effect in "When I Grow Up").
2) "Do you know that no / don't mean yes, it means no / so just hold up, wait a minute / let me put my two cents in it / one: just be patient / don't be rushin' like you're anxious / and two: you're just too agressive / tryna get your (ah). / Do you know / that I know / and I don't / wanna go."
3) "Ooh, you've got it bad, I can tell / You want it bad, but oh well / cause what you've got for me is / something I, something I don't need."
In the end, I must admit, this, like almost every U.S. single from PCD, the Pussycat Doll's first CD, thematizes being looked at (see also: "Dontcha" and "Buttons"), which, in the context of their outfits and their individual anonymity, is pretty disheartening. It does make some sense within their whole burlesque troop thing but still, not exactly laudable. So I have historically had quite an ambivalent relationship to this song.

3. "What's That Right There" by Kelis ft. Will.I.Am

(Bonus! YouTube video for the song includes a fan dancing around in his bedroom!)



When asked to produce some of the tracks on Kelis' fourth CD, Kelis Was Here, Will.I.Am decided to turn his vague euphemism songs into a trilogy of sorts. Clearly, he was suffering from diminishing returns, as this is quite awful. Unlike "My Humps," which made #3 on the singles charts, and "Beep," which made #13 (which is respectable), "What's That Right There" was never released as a single. Thank goodness.

4. "London Bridge" by Fergie


I guess Fergie saw Will.I.Am running around creating all sorts of increasingly bad follow-ups to "My Humps" and decided to prove that "My Humps" was successful because of her, not Will.I.Am. "London Bridge," her debut solo single, cements her place as the master of the vague euphemism song. Where "Beep" and "What's That Right There" fail is that their vague euphemisms aren't catchy phrases that can easily enter into pop culture. Everyone can easily make a reference to their humps. But people can't easily reproduce the censorship beep. And "What's That Right There" would have worked better if Kelis had answered with some catchy, ridiculous euphemism like "my lovely lady lump," because otherwise it just can't catch on. So Fergie brought a catchy new phrase. And she took the genre in new directions. Suddenly it wasn't a vague euphemism for some part of her anatomy, it was a vague euphemism for an event. There's a limited number of options for what a hump could be, what [beep] Will.I.Am is looking at, and what exactly that right there could be. But Fergie's London Bridge going down? That could be anything. Of course, it's actually nothing, which is exactly why it could be anything. "London Bridge" went to number one on the charts, though it still probably won't have the lasting cultural influence of "My Humps."

5. "Bottle Pop" by the Pussycat Dolls ft. Snoop Dogg



The first four songs were all released in 2005-2006. By summer 2006 by the latest, in fact. It seemed that "London Bridge" was the final word on the topic of vague euphemisms. But in September 2008 the Pussycat Dolls put out their second CD, Doll Domination, including a brand new vague euphemism song, "Bottle Pop." My theory is that the Pussycat Dolls set out to make Doll Domination better than PCD in every way: Better producers! A wider range of available feminist interpretations! Ballads worth listening to! Though they seem to have forgotten to include the string of high-charting singles (whoops!), they didn't forget to include a new and improved vague euphemism song, even though they're out of vogue. "Bottle Pop" incorporates all the best elements of "London Bridge": a catchy two-word phrase, a euphemism for an event of some kind instead of a body part, one of my favorite producers (Polow Da Don for "London Bridge" and Sean Garrett for "Bottle Pop"), and a better rapper than Will.I.Am. (Yes, I think Fergie's a better rapper than Will.I.Am. And everyone thinks Snoop is a better rapper than Will.I.Am.) I don't expect "Bottle Pop" will ever be released as a single, because I can't imagine that very many more singles from Doll Domination will be released. I hope I'm wrong, there are some really great songs on the CD, "Bottle Pop" included. I wonder what would have happened if "Bottle Pop" had been released as the second single instead of the lackluster "Whatcha Think About That" (which I actually quite like, but I don't see it as a single really). I think "Bottle Pop" may have been better at maintaining the momentum of "When I Grow Up."

(Alright, never mind. I just learned from Wikipedia that "Bottle Pop" is going to be the next single. I cross my fingers that it will do well, though I don't really expect it. I'm afraid they're kind of over. I hope I'm wrong. If nothing else, I hope "Bottle Pop" does well because then they might release a fifth single, and it might be "Out of This Club.")

Discussion topic: Does "Crank That (Soulja Boy)" count? I mean, the vague euphemism really ought to be in the title to be a proper vague euphemism song. But on the other hand, "superman that ho" is a pretty well known lyric from the song. Thoughts?

6 (More) Reasons to Love Girls Aloud

These are in addition, of course, to the song "Watch Me Go", which I posted just one post ago on Thanksgiving.

1. They finally made a good video! Just today the video for "The Loving Kind" came out, and it's really good:



Is it just me, or is this a bit panopticon-y? But, Foucault-inspired or not, it isn't as good as ...

2. Girls Aloud Party advertisement.



I don't have much to say except that this is the best, prettiest commercial ever.

3. Excess! Where their songs are flawed, it's because they're too much. All of Girls Aloud's music is produced by Xenomania, which literally means, at least according to Xenomania itself, "love of everything." So why not throw everything into each song? When it works, this makes for songs like "Watch Me Go" or "Biology", which don't bother with verses and are instead built around multiple choruses and random bits ("I know what you're thinking, you're thinking 'bout my butt!" for one delirious example) shoved together into one intoxicating pop song. (Last night I had a dream about Girls Aloud sitting around and writing the chorus to "Biology," which I'm pretty sure they didn't actually do, but it was a pretty great dream). When it doesn't work, you end up with a song like "Sexy No No No" where promising bits (like the beautiful vocodered intro) get stomped on and the whole song is muddled up with all those sounds. But "Sexy No No No" is pretty thrilling for a failure. Girls Aloud are too excessive to ever be boring. It reminds me of the slogan for Pinus in the Tales of the City books: "Too much of a good thing is wonderful."

4. Their new, subtler, more minimal sound on Tangled Up and particularly Out of Control. On Tangled Up, Girls Aloud still suffered sometimes from too much going on in their songs (after all, "Sexy No No No" is off of Tangled Up), but "Call The Shots" is one of their best songs, the first Girls Aloud song I ever heard, thank goodness. It's restrained and beautiful. Out of Control goes in the direction of "Call The Shots" – the album is full of pretty, minimalist (in comparison) songs. Don't worry, though. Girls Aloud still knows how to be excessive, even within a minimalist soundscape. One of my favorite songs from Out of Control, "Untouchable", is over 6 minutes long, the definition of excess for a pop song. And "Live in the Country" features barnyard animal noises, for goodness' sake! (It also features one of my favorite Girls Aloud lyrics: "[When I live in the country] I'll be out of my head but they'll say I'm eccentric and look the other way.") "Close To Love", from Tangled Up, has a lot going on without making you feel like you got hit by a truck (as with "Wake Me Up", for example, from one of their earlier albums), and still manages to end with Kimberley (I think) shouting, "Man with the chemical stare: hands off! Guy with the terrible hair: back off! Dude with the look in your eye: leave it! Man with the beautiful bride: beat it!"

5. They're fantastic live. I'm not a fan of live music. In fact, I'm generally opposed to it. But I love that Girls Aloud, in particular, sings live because it shows their individual personalities a bit and because it's like getting a whole new version of the songs. I love this live version of "Watch Me Go" because they shout a lot more of it than on the recorded version, which actually suits the song really well. I love this live version of "Close to Love" because otherwise I wouldn't have had any idea Nicola's voice could sound like it does at 2:17. I love this version of "Control of the Knife" because of how Cheryl starts randomly singing a Kelis song at the end (which I realize makes sense because Kelis is much bigger in the UK, but it was a delightful surprise for me). I love these version of "Something Kinda Ooh" and "Sound of the Underground" because the now-more-subtle Girls Aloud can go back and make some of their most manic songs sound restrained and pretty. And I really, really love this version of "Sexy No No No" because: 1) the intro is, like, Kate Bush-level insane, and 2) it takes this song, which seems designed to thwart my desire to enjoy it at every turn, and, after one typically obnoxious chorus, becomes the song I always wanted it to be. Oh, and 3) How Nadine's accent shows through a little bit around 4:55.

6. "No Good Advice"!



This is Girls Aloud's second-ever single, from their more manic, less beloved-by-Spencer phase. The video is pretty bad (what Girls Aloud video isn't, other than the merely alright "Call The Shots" and, of course, "The Loving Kind"). And it has way more guitar than I usually approve of (the amount I approve of is none). But I have been listening to this song over and over the past several days. It's really resonated with me for personal reasons and Britney-related reasons (more on this below). Honestly, I'm not convinced that Jean Genet didn't write this one. Lyrics up to and including the first chorus:

Daddy told me look into the future

Sit at your computer, be a good girl

And Mama said remember you're a lady,

Think before your play and straighten your curls,

Well everybody's talking like I'm crazy

Dangerous and lazy girl with no soul

But I've seen it all from where I'm hiding

Baby cause I'm sliding, out of control

Here I go, off the road, crank the stereo

I flick my finger to the world below

Here I am, dirty hands, I don't give a damn

Shut your mouth because it might show

I don't need no good advice

I'm already wasted

I don't need some other life

Cold and complicated

I don't need no Sunday trips

Tea and sympathizing

I don't need no special fix

To anaesthetize me

This song is helping me process this Rolling Stone article about Britney Spears, and also her documentary, For the Record. All of Britney's freedom has been taken away by the court-ordered conservatorship which puts her entirely under the control of her previously-estranged father. Over the past few years, her life has been a mess, and it seems like she's starting to get it back together. Last spring, after Britney shaved her head, I developed a theory that the only way she could gain any agency in her life was by deliberately making bad decisions (i.e. the head shaving, marrying that Jason guy, marrying K Fed, etc.). Now she's completely controlled, officially and legally, by others, and they're making all the right decisions for her. And as For the Record showed pretty clearly, I think, Britney's sad, bored, and lonely, and she misses the time when she was out of control ("I used to be a cool chick"). I want Britney to be healthy and safe, but I also want her to be happy and to be able to make her own decisions. So this posting of "No Good Advice" is dedicated to Britney.

I don't want to end a post about the deliriously exciting Girls Aloud on a down note, so instead, watch the Girls Aloud Party ad again. It's worth it.

Happy Thanksgiving!

This Girls Aloud live performance of "Watch Me Go" is what I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving.

Return of the Mashup!

I have just started working on an epic mashup project, but it will take awhile. To tide you over, here is a mashup I made actually back in September, just for my own listening pleasure. It is my favorite mashup so far. I figured it was time to share it.

Kate Bush - "Hounds of Love (Alternate)" v. Kylie Minogue - "Speakerphone"

Mariah Loves Roland

Roland Barthes, that is. My microwave:


You probably can't read that, because: pink colored pencil + my bad handwriting + blurry camera phone photo, so here is what Mariah is saying:

What I claim is to live to the full the contradiction of my time, which may well make sarcasm the condition of truth.

This is my favorite Roland Barthes quote. It's from page 12 of Mythologies.

Circus

I was going to write a whole little essay about Circus full of hopefully insightful thoughts. I started writing it on Wednesday and then stopped because I felt like I was just blabbering on and not capturing what's so great about it. I still don't really know how to write about what I love about pop music. All I really want to say is that it's not as good as Blackout, but it comes pretty darn close, and I love it and it was exactly what I needed right now in my life. When it comes out a week from Tuesday, go buy a copy.

Two of my three favorite songs, "Circus" and bonus track "Trouble" (I already posted about the third, "Phonography"):

My Least Favorite Song

This week my favorite magazine, The New Yorker, finally took a stand against my least favorite song of all time, "Stupid Girls" by Pink. Yes, the song is over two years old. But it was sort of topical because Sasha Frere-Jones, their pop music critic, was reviewing her new album Funhouse. He writes:

Two songs on "I'm Not Dead" showed the strain of constructing the perfectly balanced anti-commercial commercial act. ... More troubling yet was "Stupid Girls," a song that tries to recapture the mission-statement feeling of "Missundaztood" but fails owing to a lack of generosity. The song and the video seek to distinguish Pink from Lindsay, Paris, and Jessica, and the lyrics sincerely ask, "Where, oh were, have the smart people gone?" Pink has shown no small amount of flesh in her rise to the top, so calling out anyone else's bra tactics is a highly suspect move. She's no stranger to the Hilton Doctrine ("I'll do what I want, cuz I can"). And "Smart" isn't really Pink's stock-in-trade. She's a female version of Aerosmioth's Steven Tyler, a skilled ham, long on humor, spritz, and vigor, but hardly a visionary.

What I like about this is that he's not saying it's bad that she's showed skin or that she follows the Hilton Doctrine, just that it's "ungenerous" of her to criticize others for doing so. What I don't like about this review is that it isn't negative enough.

Here is the offending song.

I get so angry whenever I hear this song being recommended as a feminist pop song, and that's obviously what Pink thinks she's making. But, really, how hard is it to figure out that a feminist song wouldn't and shouldn't be called "Stupid Girls"? Is this the reason that there's not a female president? Because girls are stupid? This is the worst feminist song ever!

From the wikipedia page about the song:

The single was praised by Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling on her official website. She wrote, "'Stupid Girls', is the antidote-anthem for everything I had been thinking about women and thinness."

Good point, J.K. Rowling. The antidote to all of the negative messages about thinness in our culture that cause girls to have eating disorders is to call girls who want to be thin stupid. How did no one figure this out before?

Also from wikipedia:

According to International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals, the song "highlights the culture's relentless and unrealistic pursuit of thinness and unattainable drive for physical beauty".

Yeah, it highlights it by mocking people who have bulimia and portraying them as brain-dead idiots. Seriously, if you haven't watched the video, there's a skit in the middle where Pink pretends to be a stupid bulimic woman, complete with retching sounds. I don't really know much about the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals, and I'm sure they do really good work, but I'm so dissapointed that they would promote a song that mocks people with eating disorders and call them stupid. Is that how eating disorder professionals deal with their patients one on one? Do skits about them being airheads? Did Pink not consider that a skit of someone vomiting in the middle of her music video could be triggering? Did she not consider that low self esteem is one of the causes of eating disorders, so maybe a whole song about how people who have eating disorders are stupid may not be a solution?

It's the bulimia skit in the middle that really makes this my least favorite song ever. I can't even give Pink credit for good intentions. This song is just her congratulating herself for being smarter than other women. That is not feminism.

In order to cleanse my palate from blogging about this awful song, I will post this song that I've really been enjoying a lot this month. What It Is by Sophia Fresh ft. Kanye West:

Phonography!

One of my favorite songs from the just-leaked Circus is a bonus track, Phonography. Some lyrics:

And I make no apologies, (Uh-uh)
I’m into phonography, (Uh-uh)
And I like my bluetooth buttons comin’ loose,
I need my hands free,
Then I let my mind roam,
Playing with my ringtone.

I love music that is about technology. In fact, I spent a whole quarter writing a paper about it this past winter. Phonography has inspired me to do a list of songs about technology, arranged by technology, of course.

Songs about 808s:

"808" by Blaque (embedding disabled)

"Luv Songs" by The-Dream:



(In looking for Luv Songs on youtube, I also found a chopped and screwed version!! It is amazingly great, actually. Please go listen to it.)

Songs about Phones:

"Beep Me 911" by Missy Elliott featuring 702 and Magoo



"Speakerphone" by Kylie Minogue



What a difference ten years makes in terms of telephonic technologies, huh? Instead of beepers we all have speakerphones in our pockets now ... Actually, I didn't ever have a beeper.

Songs about Musical Technologies

"Mute" by Jessa Luna



"Rewind" by Asia Cruise ft. Fabolous



"Feedback" by Janet Jackson



A Song about Webcams, I think:

"Digital Getdown" by Nsync



I love how people on youtube just can't stand it when their favorite song doesn't have a video. (Sidenote: the first time I saw the video for "Give It To Me," I totally thought it was a fan-made video of this sort. I was like, "Hey, sometimes the lipsyncing almost matches up!" Whoops.)

A Song about Just Technology in General

"Ayo Technology" by 50 Cent ft. Justin Timberlake and Timbaland



I've written before about how this song is super gay, and also how it's secretly about Tomorrow's Eve. Which brings us to ...

A Song About the Phonograph:

"Phonography" by Britney Spears



(Okay, that video will probably dissapear in ten minutes ...)

The phonograph, of course, was invented by Thomas Edison. If you had told me a few weeks ago that there would be a song on "Circus" that was more about Tomorrow's Eve than "Ayo Technology" is, I wouldn't have believed you. And yet, there is ...

Watch Dynasty

I watched the first season of Dynasty last winter. A classmate in my critique group was writing an amazing paper on portrayals of non-normative characters in soap operas, including Dynasty. She loaned me her DVDs of the first season and I watched the whole thing. So I could give her better feedback. No other reason, of course. The common opinion about Dynasty seems to be that the first season, before Joan Collins joins the cast, is boring. Well, if the first season is boring, I can't wait to watch the rest, because I thought it was fantastic. If Joan Collins' Alexis is half as great as her daughter, Fallon, then I will be thrilled.

Last night, much to my excitement, I discovered that CBS.com has full episodes of the first two seasons that you can watch for free. Scroll over "Shows" and look under "TV Classics" on the far right. I watched the first episode of season two, and it was great. Fans of campy soap operas might want to note that they also have the first 4 seasons of Beverly Hills 90210 and the first season of Melrose Place.

If you want to read my classmate's paper, you can find it and my review of it on the Fashioning the Body website. It's "Framing the Body" by Ella Bowman. It also covers Melrose Place.

Gay comics!

I just discovered the blog Comics Should Be Good, which is doing a post each day in November for a series called Month of Good LGBT Comics. Definitely worth checking out.

Science is Both Sexist and the Worst

Next time someone tries to tell you either 1) that science isn't sexist; or 2) that science isn't the worst, show them this article from today's New York Times: In a Novel Theory of Mental Disorders, Parents' Genes are in Competition. For example:

Their idea is, in broad outline, straightforward. Dr. Crespi and Dr. Badcock propose that an evolutionary tug of war between genes from the father’s sperm and the mother’s egg can, in effect, tip brain development in one of two ways. A strong bias toward the father pushes a developing brain along the autistic spectrum, toward a fascination with objects, patterns, mechanical systems, at the expense of social development. A bias toward the mother moves the growing brain along what the researchers call the psychotic spectrum, toward hypersensitivity to mood, their own and others’. This, according to the theory, increases a child’s risk of developing schizophrenia later on, as well as mood problems like bipolar disorder and depression.

Yep, those men with their mechanical systems and their lack of social development, and those women with their hypersensitivity and psychosis!

For the record, the article doesn't give any evidence why genes from the father lead to the autistic spectrum and genes from the mother lead to the psychotic spectrum. I guess we're just supposed to take it for granted?

ATC: Gayer Than Steps!

My sheer joy at discovering this German pop band from the early 2000s has prompted me to post on this blog for the first time in almost 5 months.

"My Heart Beats Like a Drum" by ATC



"Around the World" by ATC



A comment found on this youtube video: "This is obviously a big advert for Homosexuality"

Cultural Consumption Diary

Some thoughts on some of the cultural productions I have been consuming recently:

Bring It On: In It To Win It



I love all the terrible straight-to-DVD Bring It On sequels. This one came out in December but I just saw it a couple weeks ago. This one features two competing teams at cheer camp, the East Coast Jets and the West Coast Sharks. They have a cheer rumble. It must be pretty exciting to be on a teen cheerleading team for an entire coast. They end up having to join up to create one team, the East-West Shets. Seriously. The Shets.

In It To Win It wasn't as offensive as the third one, All Or Nothing. But it was still pretty offensive. There's a big scene where everyone "confesses" their secrets (very Foucault). The gay character, Ruben, turns out not to be gay. He was just pretending. Aeysha, the main character's black best friend, admits that she has been faking her "ghetto" accent all along. Turns out she wasn't involved in drive-by shootings as a child. She says, "I'm just a black girl who enunciates." The blonde head cheerleader of the other team says, "If you want respect that much, you should just be a bitch. That's what I do. Twice the respect, half the effort." What? Also, the goth girl, who previously revealed that she's on the squad because her parents make her? It turns out that she was lying, she loves cheerleading after all! What I learned from this scene: when someone is different from you, it turns out they're just pretending.

Pussycat Dolls - "When I Grow Up"



I've watched this music video kind of a lot of time. Reasons I'm fascinated:
1. Hair decisions. Jessica's new red hair makes her look like Carmit, the one who left the group. Did they need to have one redhead? Like, contractually? You can tell Jessica isn't Carmit though because of her lack of too much plastic surgery on her face. Melody's ponytail, I think, was a really bad decision. I do like Kimberly's new short haircut, though, because now I can tell her and Ashley apart.
2. So campy! Mostly how they lipsync along to the laughing. Especially at 1:32, sitting on the bench, when Ashley and Kimberly lean in to laugh.
3. Every Pussycat Doll song is about being watched by men. At least this song is about how they always wanted to be watched by men. And the "Be careful what you wish for cause you just might get it" is the first time they ever seemed ambivalent about it at all. The part most like earlier Pussycat Dolls is when Nicole sings, "I see you watching me, watching me, and I know you want it," which breaks the song! After that, she just sort of scream-sings for a couple seconds while someone (her, but she's not lipsyncing to it) says the chorus, then she punches the screen and it shatters! And then it goes into a dance breakdown which is only in the video. The song ends with, "Be careful what you wish for cause you just might get it, get it?" So that's the big point and they want to make sure we know it. Be careful when you wish to be famous and have people watching you all the time.
4. I think also that the video is kind of about the end of the world. I mean, gas prices keep going up, and there they are dancing on top of cars in gridlocked traffic. Then they climb up and dance on scaffolding (i.e. new construction) while singing "when I grow up ..." There's a prominent shot of an airplane flying over a car. What are they trying to say?

Sarah Schulman's My American History

I got My American History in the mail yesterday, the only Sarah Schulman book I haven't read. After reading the introduction, I skipped right ahead to the section on the Lesbian Avengers, a direct action political group that Schulman helped found in the early 90s. They're really great. They always make me think of The Avengers, a comic book superhero team. Marvel is always putting adjectives in front of super hero teams in order to make spin-off books. Right now, there's The New Avengers and The Mighty Avengers. In the past, there's been the Young Avengers and the West Coast Avengers. So why couldn't there be the Lesbian Avengers? A team of superheros who use their amazing powers for direct action. For example, one could have the power to make photocopies without having to get a corporate job in order to access a xerox machine. I think that Multiple Man, from X-Factor, has powers that would be really great for direct action. He can create up to 40 copies of himself. If a Lesbian Avenger had those powers, it would be really helpful for preparing mailings, doing door-to-door outreach, and making sure there were plenty of people at a demonstration.

Kathryn Bond Stockton

I have been reading Beautiful Bottom, Beautiful Shame: Where "Black" Meets "Queer" by Kathryn Bond Stockton. I am roughly halfway through, and so far it is fantastic. Here are some of my favorite quotes and phrases:

"...those who elect to wear the sign that trails abuse may attempt to say, 'You gave me regulations, I made something else. ... Read it if you can (though I don't fully care if you do or you don't).'" (31)

She describes both skin and clothes as being "worn on the bone." (33)

"But I want to ask about an unexamined switchpoint between 'black' and 'queer': the switchpoint between these nonelective skins and what are for some queer women and men the highly preferred, habitually chosen, strongly valued, almost sewn-to-the-bone cloth skins that we call clothes." (39)

She calls Jean Genet novels "aesthetic texts of such dense weave, such lyric sheen" (42), whereas in The Well of Loneliness, "no sentence is transforming." (48)

"... it is queer to know a cloth wound when you see one." (46)

Referencing Barthes: "...unlike authors, theorists are not dead..." (72)

I also am quite fond of her term "switchpoint:" "The switchpoints in the texts I examine in this book may act to elucidate incommensurabilities, not cover over them. I emphasize the obvious switching of signifying tracks that occurs when a sign that is generally attached to blacks, let's say, flashes in the signifying field of 'queer'; when, for example, the sign of stigmatized skin flashes in the domain of queer clothing, or, to flip directions, the sign of anality flashes along the track of blacks' economic burdens. Each switchpoint is a kind of off-rhyme (to employ a different metaphor): a poitn at which we intellectually sense how one sign (the stigma attached to the surface of skin, especially its color) lends its force to another (the stigma attached ot the surface of cloth), which we know to be distinct. (An off-rhme, as a term from poetics, means a near or partial rhyme - for example, the rhyme between 'laws' and 'because' or 'down' and 'own.' The reader's ear hears something similar but distinct in these sounds that are not identical.)" (32-33)

Whenever she writes about switchpoints, I think of the Kid Sister song "Switchboard," which is the song with a mini-video stuck at the end of the "Pro Nails" video:



Or the whole song is here. But I kind of just like the part at the end of "Pro Nails."

Thoughts on Fergie

I was discussing this with someone and they asked me to put it up here. So, here are my thoughts on Fergie:

I think Fergie is so successful because she has a very good mastery of attitudes toward popular music. No one wants to like anything sincerely. People like to feel smarter than the entertainment they consume. So Fergie has built a very successful career out of releasing songs that are very catchy and also kind of stupid. I know so many people who have told me that "Fergalicious" is a very stupid song, but that they like it anyway. I used to feel that way too. The brilliance of "Fergalicious" is that everyone can listen to it and feel smarter than Fergie and smarter than everyone else who listens to it.



I mean, Will.I.Am spells "tasty" wrong throughout the song.

I also really like some of the youtube comments on this video:

fergie rocks
and any ppl who dont think so
ARE YOU ON DRUGS????????

lol this video is a lil.. much for my taste lol, but i love fergie's music.

i'm a girl but shes hot

50 Cent is Gay

I've been listening a lot to this G-Unit song ("Rider pt. 2") because it's just so gay:



This post at Idolator pretty much sums it up, with the exception that it doesn't mention the vocoder use. Hasn't 50 noticed that whenever T-Pain, Snoop Dogg, or Lil' Wayne use the vocoder, they're talking about how much sex they have with women? That's because the vocoder makes you sound gay unless you're really careful. Like, Lil' Wayne literally says "No homo" at the beginning of "Lollipop," just in case. Instead, 50 says, "I done told ya boy, I'm a soldier boy, I've got no choice but to be a rider. I approach ya boy, with the toaster boy, get to point blank range and fire." Because apparently he doesn't care if we know he's gay.

(p.s. Lil' Wayne, saying "No homo" isn't really enough because we've all seen this.)

This post on fourfour documents the homoeroticism of 50's movie, Get Rich or Die Tryin'. And these two posts on Rod 2.0 find some very gay stuff in 50's autobiography.

Can we revisit "Ayo Technology" now?



I always thought the beginning (when 50 says, "So special! Unforgettable! 50 Cent! Just-in! Timbaland! God damn!") sounded really gay. But now I realize the whole thing is a duet between 50 and Justin about their relationship. They're tired of mediating their love through technology (like Lord Ewald and Thomas Edison in Tomorrow's Eve). They call each other "she" and "girl" a lot because they're just that camp.

I'm Chuck Bass!

So, my friends Dustin and Hannah came to visit yesterday. After we (ok, me and Hannah) discussed Gossip Girl at length, we searched youtube for a clip of Hannah's favorite character, Chuck Bass, saying his signature line - "I'm Chuck Bass." And then we decided we needed to put it to music. I just happened to have an instrumental version of "Break the Ice" by Britney Spears sitting around in my iTunes. So:



A lot of credit goes to Dustin, who actually has the patience and follow-through to make things line up and such.

one big happy

One of my favorite comic strips is One Big Happy, which is about a hilarious little girl.


The best part is "You have the right to rename science." You have to love a child who keeps up with her poststructuralism.


I think there's something so queer about Ruthie and her tree Suzette. I don't know, I can't quite put it into words.

Most of the daily comics are absolutely hopeless when it comes to popular music (anyone read Curtis?), but obviously Ruthie has a pretty good handle on it.

I've got a bunch more of these I'd like to post, but I don't have the time right now. So there might be a part two.

pop songs + cartoons

Apparently there is a whole world on youtube of cartoon characters lipsyncing to pop songs, mostly "Crank That."

Soulja Boy Pooh

If you watch just one, watch this one, and watch it until the part with Eeyore.



Dora the Explorer ( Crank Dat Soulja Boy)



Soulja Boy Fox and the Hound



Simba's Gonna Buy U Drank



Spongebob sings Don't Cha by the Pussycat Dolls!

(my favorite part is in the description: "Another classic by moi!")



Spongebob sings Just Lose It by Eminem



Crank Dat Soulja Boy Spongebob



The Lion King - Crank Dat Soulja Boy

another mashup?

Last night I perhaps went a bit overboard and made yet another mashup. I was thinking that "Go Deep" by Janet Jackson (one of my favorite songs) might make for a good mashup. Because the title is about depth, I wanted to pair it with something about surfaces. I first tried it with "Lip Gloss" by Lil' Mama, but it was way too unpleasant sounding. Then I remembered the Pussycat Dolls. All of their songs are about being looked at, quite literally. I chose "Buttons." The songs are really interesting paired together, I think.

world war I internment camps

I'm reading AIDS and Its Metaphors by Susan Sontag and was shocked when I read this:

The incarceration in detention camps surrounded by barbed wire during World War I of some thirty thousand American women, prostitutes and women suspected of begin prostitutes, for the avowed purpose of controlling syphilis among army recruits, caused no drop int he military's rate of infection ..." (p 81)

I had never heard of this before. I learned about the Japanese internment camps during WWII in grade school, but this was news to me.

I went to look it up online, and found this blog post, which quotes this blog post, which quotes this blog post. The blogger of that first blog post found out about it from the book Charity Girl by gay novelist Michael Lowenthal. Lowenthal first heard about the internment camps from ... a reference in AIDS and Its Metaphors. How's that for a circle of research?

Here is an interview with Lowenthal, and, even better, here is a page about the book and the process of researching it on his website. He links to some primary documents, some small things he wrote about the process of writing the book, and some history books about "the government's campaign against women during World War I":

• Making Men Moral by Nancy K. Bristow
• No Magic Bullet Allan M. Brandt
• Purity and Hygiene by David J. Pivar
• The Response to Prostitution in the Progressive Era by Mark Thomas Connelly
• Uneasy Virtue by Barbara Meil Hobson

He links to other books that he used in his research, which also looked interesting. These books, and Charity Girl, are going on my reading list. I'm still shocked that I've never heard about this.

p.s. This is not listed on Wikipedia's list of internment camps.

awful t-shirt

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that this exists, but ...

a beautiful mashup

"Cloudbusting" by Kate Bush vs. "Your Body's Calling" by R Kelly



By chance, I was listening to the song "Your Body's Calling" while reading a blog post about Kate Bush earlier. For a long time, I've thought about the two of them as being very similar: both of them, to me, are musical geniuses who also happen to be insane. So I decided to make a mashup, of course. I randomly picked "Cloudbusting" and was amazed at how pretty it sounds. After the Sparkle vs. Changing Faces mashup and now this one, I guess I make mashups that sound nice now.

I also just today got a fantastic comment on the original Mariah Carey / Leona Lewis mashup:

Please STOP MAKING MASH UP VIDEOS!!! This is not your thing so give up please!!!

Youtube videos presented without comment

Chris Brown Feat. Britney Spears - Forever ("Official" Remix)



Akon Calls T-Pain



Fox And The Hound- T.Pain and Akon parody



T-Pain Loves Butternut Reduction

more mashups

I made these two mashups earlier this week. They both consist of songs I just discovered mashed up with a song they remind me of.

1 - "Click" by Ciara vs. "Glamorous" by Fergie

"Click" just leaked to the internet this week. I don't know for sure, but I think it was produced by Polow Da Don. I know (from Wikipedia) that Ciara has been working with him on her next album. It sounds a lot like Polow to me, particularly "Glamorous." It has the same hand-clap as "Glamorous" in parts, and it has the swirly, layered prettiness that "Glamorous" and other Polow songs, like "Forever," have. I think of "Click" as being something of a sequel to "Glamorous." It sounds like it and has somewhat similar subject matter. I think I might even like "Click" better, because I like Ciara so much more than Fergie, and instead of bringing in Ludacris or another male rapper for the rapped verse, Ciara just does it herself. The one thing about "Click" that reduces the pleasure I get out of it is that it's in the Sex and the City movie. In the mashup, "Click" stands out over "Glamorous" to me. I've already received a bunch of comments on the mashup, two of which say that "Click" is better. I'm interested in the idea of the "vs." in mashup songs being quite literal - it's a fight between the two songs to which is better.



2 - "Be Careful" by Sparkle vs. "G.H.E.T.T.O.U.T." by Changing Faces

Both of these songs are written and produced by R Kelly. He duets on "Be Careful," as well as a remix of "GHETTOUT" that I didn't use here. "GHETTOUT" is from 1997, "Be Careful" is from 1998. I really like R Kelly, and I really like both of these songs. I discovered "GHETTOUT" a few months ago and "Be Careful" earlier this week. I realized that, when I had been listening to "Be Careful," I got "GHETTOUT" stuck in my head, because of how similar the songs are. Even though they're kind of the same song, there is definitely room in my life for both of them. I like the mashup because it's actually pleasant to listen to.



When pulling up this video on youtube to post it here, I got distracted by the following:

GHETTOUT Chopped & Screwed

I don't know if it's common or not to chop & screw a slow jam, but I've never encountered it before. I think it's brilliant. The sidebar linked to this, which I also feel a need to link to:

Sensual Seduction Chopped & Screwed

Margaret Atwood is my hero

Margaret Atwood is, and has long been, my favorite author. (Fashioning the Body alums, and everyone else, should check out her novels Bodily Harm and The Edible Woman). Today, I found the following amazing quote from this article online:

An 800-word Harry Potter prequel is one of 13 card-sized works to be sold at a charity auction in the British capital. Waterstone's Booksellers Ltd. says the cream-colored A5 papers — each slightly bigger than a postcard — were distributed to 13 authors and illustrators, including the boy wizard's creator J.K. Rowling, Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing, novelist Margaret Atwood and playwright Tom Stoppard.

Rowling used both sides of her card to hand-write a prequel to her seven-book Harry Potter saga, while Lessing penned a story about the power of reading. Stoppard wrote a short mystery and Atwood was due to fill out her card remotely using a robotic arm controlled by computer linkup.

What could be better than this?

Thoughts on Jawbreaker

I'm not generally a huge fan of movies. I'd rather watch the same 5 movies over and over again than see something new. Last night, I watched two of those movies (Jawbreaker and Spice World) with a roommate. My two favorite mediums of pop culture are pop music (where I repeatedly listen to songs) and reality television (where I rarely repeat-watch an episode, but each episode repeats the same structure). Movies just don't have the level of repetition that I like in pop culture.

I've been thinking a lot about camp the past few months. I decided that, in my opinion, the two main elements of camp are excess and an overcommitment to the marginal. Watching Jawbreaker again reminded me of another element that is often, though not always, present in camp: failure. So many of the plot points and conversations in Jawbreaker simply don't make sense, and it adds to the general campy charm of the movie. Spice World is also very campy, but I don't think it's a failure on any level. I know that many people would disagree with me about that, which points out the important fact that failure is subjective. When something is campy (because it's excessive and features an overcommitment to the marginal), moments of failure (as perceived by the individual viewer) can add to the campiness (for that individual viewer).

Back to repetition: I would imagine that I have seen Jawbreaker about 20 times. I feel like I could watch it many more times, but it's difficult to sit through a movie so many times. I've listened to the song "Glamorous" over 200 times, but I listen to it while doing other things. I've watched over 100 episodes of America's Next Top Model (many twice), and while there's a lot of repetition (of episode structure, activities, themes, the word "fierce," and the judge comment "The camera loves you!") each episode is different. I want to watch Jawbreaker more, but since the same thing happens every time and movies demand that you not do other things while you watch them, it can become almost boring.

I'm considering trying to convert Jawbreaker into other forms. What I've come up with so far is to print off screen captures and put them up on the walls and to convert the audio to mp3 files, about the length of a pop song, and listen to them while doing other things.

Producer as Artist?

Last quarter, I examined authorship in popular music. One things I was arguing against was the way the producer starts to be viewed as the true "author" of a song. In a 1993 scholarly article, Barbara Bradby wrote, " The new textual practices of bricolage, intertextuality and 'stealing' tend to be subsumed back into the old notion of authorship through the ideology of the creativity of 'the producer.'" This is still very true today, perhaps more so with producers like Timbaland becoming famous and subsequently recording their own music. In the course of my project, I developed a viewpoint in which the performer / vocalist was the main "author" of a song, if there can be said to be an author. I am not convinced that this is true to how I listen to music, however.

A few weeks ago, the song "Forever" by Chris Brown jumped into the Billboard Hot 100 top 10 songs. I didn't pay any attention because I'm not particularly a fan of his. However, today I heard that it was produced by Polow Da Don, and right away looked it up on youtube then downloaded it. I absolutely love the song.

I was only interested in the song because of the producer. Polow Da Don was the producer of what is possibly my favorite song, Glamorous by Fergie, as well as a bunch of other songs I love. All of those songs but one are by artists I already loved before they put out a song produced by Polow. However, through these songs, I now like Polow too, enough to check out a song he produced by an artist I don't particularly care for.

It still bothers me when a song is considered to belong more to its producer than its performer, but I should acknowledge that the producer is an important part of the song. Pop music is a collaborative medium. As with featured artists, when a performer collaborates with a producer I like, it makes the song that much more interesting.

On the subjects of producers, in addition to Polow, I am very fond of Danja, particularly the songs he produces by himself (i.e. not co-produced with Timbaland). He produced some of my favorite songs on "Blackout" (Britney's recent CD), as well as couple other favorite songs of mine.

Eclectic?

The other day, my roommate had a friend over. A mix CD I made was playing. At one point, my roommate's friend said, "I like listening to other people's music taste sometimes." I asked why, and she said, "Because it makes me feel like my taste is music is less weird." I said that I didn't think my taste in music is weird (it's pretty mainstream), and she said, "Let's just say you're taste is eclectic."

I know that eclectic isn't an insult, but I was angry to hear it applied to my taste in music. I don't think it's eclectic at all. The songs she brought up to demonstrate that my taste is eclectic were "Murder on the Dancefloor" by Sophie Ellis-Bextor and "Pro Nails" by Kid Sister.

"Murder on the Dancefloor"



"Pro Nails"



I've thought about it a lot since this happened, trying to figure out why it bothered me. I understand that sonically the songs are very different. However, disco-y dance pop and poppy hip-hop made by a female rapper are both two genres that historically have a certain appeal for gay men. Both the lyrics and the videos of the two songs can be read as being very campy. It would have never occurred to me that these songs wouldn't go together. From the perspective of the straight woman who thinks my music taste is "eclectic," they don't fit together at all. Her inability to see that these songs go together is because she could not imagine a cohesive queer perspective towards music. Thus, my mix CD was only coherent to her under the rubric of "eclectic."

To help process this, I made a mashup:

Alice

A lot of my posts on this blog, particularly that involve mashups, have to do with taking things from culture and making something new out of them. Today, Videogum, a blog I recently started reading, posted this music video to a song made up of sounds from Alice in Wonderland.



I think this is an amazing and beautiful object made out of other cultural productions. Of course, this is in contrast to other things I've been making and collecting here, which are more about failure, which is why I wanted to post something that I find incredibly successful.

Found Mashups

After reading the NYT article I linked to in my last post, I decided to look around on youtube at mashups made by other people. Here are some interesting videos I found:

The first is a mashup of "Call the Shots" by Girls Aloud and "Hole in the Head" by the Sugababes (not embeddable). This one is amazing to me because it's just like something I would make. The track is basically "Call the Shots" with the chorus of "Hole in the Head" layered over the chorus of "Call the Shots." I would have totally picked these two songs to stick together, too.

Abba vs 50 Cent - Queen of Da Club



I found this while specifically looking for something that would make 50 Cent sound really gay, but I never could have hoped to find something this good. Not only is "Dancing Queen" very feminine sounding and gay-ish in its associations, the implication is that 50 Cent himself, in the club, is a dancing queen. I love it.

Anticipating VS Runaway - Britney Spears & Avril Lavigne



I hate how this one sounds, but I love the video. Particularly, I love the interesting punctuation choices on the lyrics for "Anticipating." For example:
- I'll be "Anticipating!"
- You're feeling this right? Let's do this tonight?

With the latter, I never heard those as questions, it changes the meaning a lot. I have no idea what's going on in the former. Is she suddenly going to become the song "Anticipating," which she is currently singing? It's all very mysterious.

The same person also made this video: Lil' Kim vs. Nicole Scherzinger



I don't have much to say about it. I love Lil' Kim, and "Whatever You Like" by Nicole Scherzinger has one of my favorite beats, but somehow I'm underwhelmed. And there's no charming video!

Britney Spears' Gimme More/Madonna's Into the Groove Mashup

Okay, this is kind of amazing and also, to me, really difficult to watch. But it's a live mashup.



There's another one with Rihanna's "Please Don't Stop the Music" and J Lo's "Waiting for Tonight:"



And last, not exactly a mashup, but I can't help but post it: