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.