The tip of the hat goes to William James for 'best sentence I read today.' Via Gretchen Rubin:
"Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, 'This is the real me,' and when you have found that attitude, follow it."
Monday, February 9, 2009
Friday, February 6, 2009
New Podcast: Flight of the Conchords
I pick a lot of good things in California. And, the HBO show Flight of the Conchords is no exception.
In this nine-minute podcast I provide a short gendered analysis of the show. Something very interesting is captured in this show with regards to gender performativity as the two main characters, Bret and Jemaine, represent a naturally comfortable homosociality. Bret and Jemaine represent a homosocial setting that manages to come across as natural, even conventional, because it oozes elements of genuine human intimacy. In this piece I postulate that it is precisely because of this genuine human intimacy that gender boundaries and stereotypes are shattered and the heteronormative framework is shaken. The music featured in this podcast comes from Camille Nelson's new album First Word. The review of my wonderfully talented friend is here.
Listen to the podcast here.
Subscribe to Gendering the Media Podcast
graph per fanpop
Bruce Springsteen Deserves His Nickname
I have never understood why concert goers get punished regularly with higher and higher concert/venue fees. A performer has stood up for his fans, however. The Boss took it upon himself to criticize Ticketmaster for overcharging the fans. Bravo, Boss, bravo!
Making a buck is one thing. Making thirty is thirty wrong things.
So, my tip of the hat goes to Bruce Springsteen today.
"The musician condemned Ticketmaster for redirecting fans to another website selling more expensive tickets. Writing on this website, Springsteen said he had asked the company to "immediately" stop the practice. Ticketmaster said it has removed all links and has pledged to refund fans their additional costs for tickets."
Read more here.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
The Maled Femme Outfit
I approve of this.
Colloquially, I'd be heard using language like, 'yes, that is so 2009.' I have noticed that androgyny in clothing is becoming more and more visible.
And winter is the best season to allow it to shine.
There's something interesting happening with the androgynous preppie look. It oozes a kind of urban compromise that I find not only aesthetically appealing but also functional.
I give the following an a-ok.
How would you read it?
Subscribe to Gendering the Media Podcast
graph per sartorialist
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Kings of Leon: Music to Respect
Maybe you've heard the Kings of Leon's fantastic track "On Call" from their album Because of the Times. If you haven't, then you should. You really should. If you care about the aesthetics of things Indie, that is.
A HetPer reader mentioned the Kings of Leon when I last posted a bit about the Kings of Convenience. And since they're so close alphabetically in my iTunes, I tend to listen to them when I play the Kings of Convenience. I do enjoy them. Well, I enjoy both sets of Kings, it turns out.
But let me tell you briefly why I approve of the Kings of Leon first and foremost.
They are unapologetic about their influences. I like that. Actually, when it comes to Indie, I respect that kind of transparency. The Kings of Leon out themselves as indie rockers who are informed by such greats as Dylan, Tom Petty, U2, and so forth. And I especially like that kind of honesty.
True genius does not reside in a domicile built by one single set of hands, after all.
Tracks like "Knocked up" from the album Because of the Times will make you want to listen to some Dylan even though somehow you will be okay if you don't manage to right away. That's how adequately they inform their music.
And the last favorite tracks of mine would have to be "True Love Way" and "Arizona."
The Kings of Leon gave an interview to Spin magazine recently. Here is a snippet from it.
" I thought on our first record it was obvious we were going to have this Southern thing because we're from the South and we hadn't exactly escaped it at that point, you know? We were still there. So I thought our first record sounded more like Tom Petty. And I thought I tried to rip off Bob Dylan by trying to sing that way a little bit. But definitely on the second album, we had seen the world a little bit. So even though we were still writing that record in Tennessee, in our house, in our basement, I called cigarettes 'fags.'
SPIN: Now that you actually are rock stars, is it more or less fun to party like a rock star?
JF: You actually party much more like a rock star before anybody knows who you are. Once people know who you are, you become sheltered by everybody that works for you, you know?"
Read it all here.
Ben Lee: Inspired by Feminine Mystique
If you are Ben Lee fans, the following interview as featured on Black Book Magazine, will be of interest to you. The main reason why I like Ben Lee is because of his musical and cultural references. I see him as a dictionary to other performers, i.e., in a way he allows other Indie rockers make sense. More specifically, he is a good example of an artist I like because of what he makes me think of and not necessarily because of what he actually does.
The Australian Indie rocker is, no doubt, talented and aesthetically unique but I do admit to only listening to his music when not working intensely on things. Ben Lee is a good choice when some R and R is on the docket. To me, at least.
But I want to like him more. More actively, that is, and that's why I will make sure to 'read' closely his new album The Rebirth of Venus. His latest project promises to be especially gendered and that is yet another reason to invest more time in the performer and his art.
A bit from the interview says:
"If you’re a solo artist, the collaborations are really what inspire. Like next week, I’m about to go sing with Margaret Cho. I feel like in a way, I like to return to the attitude of the beginner. I want to learn. Collaborations really allow me to do that.
[With Kylie], I’ve never really worked with someone who really, quite proudly called themselves a pop artist, someone who didn’t have the pretenses of being a songwriter, but is a great singer and a great entertainer. What Kylie is is kind of like what Frank Sinatra is. She’s a classic, old-fashioned entertainer. It opened me up to parts of myself that I haven’t let myself experience – which is a love with old-fashioned entertainment. Like, you know, you gotta go on with the show. There’s something very appealing about the attitude for me that I never understood— until I met Kylie. "
Read more here.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Current Reading: Understanding Punk Culture
I'm currently working on a modern article on the aesthetics of punk and, in the process, I have encountered some very interesting modern titles.
Might I recommend the following:
1) Daniel S. Traber's Whiteness, Otherness, and the Individualism Paradox from Huck to Punk
Traber's work attempts to elucidate such concepts as individualism, marginal identity, and what it means to be 'punk' in the realm of modern Americana. A high point is Chapter Five: "L.A. Punk's Sub-Urbanism," where Traber's discussion of the role of music is, for lack of a better term, attention-grabbing. A good line says:
"Music can open sites for people to negotiate their historical, social, and emotional relations to the world" (115). And that line was as good as any to hook a long attention span from me.
2) London: From Punk to Blair. Ed. by Joe Kerr & Andrew Gibson.
This book is a non-stop visual and lexical fest!
If punk culture and text were ever concepts you wished to explore, this 2003 edition would be a good Virgil to you. A solid line from the chapter: "Altering Images" says:
"The period that runs from Punk to Blair has been boom-time for - not to say the fetishization of - the London writer" (292).
Monday, February 2, 2009
HBO's Big Love: Stanley Fish Reviews
HBO's Big Love is perhaps the queerest show on TV now. The very premise of the show relies on the concept of the margin, actually margins. This show works because underneath its featured confusing relationships it is about one fundamentally relevant concept: human relatability.
The new season started three weeks ago and thanks to OnDemand features I am now updated. The current season is offering new, (even better than before) drama, a contextualized rendering of the polygamy news that resided on the front pages of many US papers this past year, and yes, a new love interest and potential fourth wife, Ana.
Like Stanley Fish, I approve of Big Love. While on the surface it might be about a concept that many find too bizarre to decode, the core of the show is literarily sound, socio-culturally informed, and religiously aware. Big Love attempts to expose the normal (as Nicki calls it) side of polygamy, the side that explores the humanity of a familial system unknown to many of us.
My more detailed, gender theory-informed review of Big Love will appear on an upcoming podcast after my review of Fight of the Conchords. Since both the shows lend themselves to being gendered, it made sense that I develop two podcasts on them. Stay tuned.
For now, here's a solid paragraph from today's post by Stanley Fish. He writes:
"Near the end of the first episode of “Big Love”’s new season, Nicki (Chloe Sevigny), the second of Bill Henrickson’s three wives, stands up on the roof of her house in the middle of a block party. She’s been repairing the roof rather than joining the festivities because she feels unwanted in the neighborhood. But when a couple of the neighbor kids make off with her ladder, she can’t take it anymore and she rises up to say her piece: “All I ever wanted was to be off the compound and live a normal life and be truly free.”
This is an amazing statement. By “normal life” Nicki means a life in a mini-compound (three houses opening up on one backyard) with her husband, her two sister-wives and the eight children Bill has sired. The compound she has fled is led by her patriarch-father, Roman Grant (the great Harry Dean Stanton) and by other male elders who enforce strict obedience to rules they flout and who demand servile fidelity to their every word. (You must be “in harmony with me” is the byword.) "
Read it all here.
Susan Sontag: A Profile
I highly recommend this Times profile on the brilliant Susan Sontag.
"Then Sontag marries. The sequence of events is breathtakingly abrupt. She moves to attend the University of Chicago on a scholarship in the fall of 1949. In November she writes, “A wonderful opportunity was offered me — to do some research work for a soc[iology] instructor named Philip Rieff.” In the next entry, Dec. 2: “I am engaged to Philip Rieff.” A few pages later, after a trip to California to interview Thomas Mann, comes the entry of Jan. 3, 1950: “I marry Philip with full consciousness + fear of my will toward self-destructiveness.” And then she is on to “War and Peace” and Balzac and lists of works on theology. Her decision to marry Rieff is never explained or examined, and in fact she says nothing more about the matter, barring an ambiguous recounted dream, until she begins fulminating against the institution of marriage in 1956. The intervening years barely exist in the journals — five years dissolve in nine pages. The birth of her son in 1952 goes unrecorded; he makes his first appearance in an aside."
Find it here.
Flight of the Conchords' Murray Has 'Hurt Feelings'
A brilliant piece from the most recent Flight of the Conchords episode. After being mocked by the Australian consulate officers, Murray, the New Zealand consulate officer turned band manager, sings of his 'hurt feelings.'
I give this episode a thumbs up. Methinks episode six of season one entitled "Bowie" has now been demoted. The secondary characters come alive in this new episode as they take their individual oddities to new heights.
And here is Bret and Jemaine's rap version of "Hurt Feelings."
I give this episode a thumbs up. Methinks episode six of season one entitled "Bowie" has now been demoted. The secondary characters come alive in this new episode as they take their individual oddities to new heights.
And here is Bret and Jemaine's rap version of "Hurt Feelings."
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
www.brikenaribaj.com
Posts
All Comments