So I showed this documentary in my pop culture class called Chicano Rock! (2008) which was a short one hour documentary on the emergence of Chicano popular music in Los Angeles. So it got me thinking about some old school classics and I remembered "Suavecito" by Malo. It's simply beautiful!
So over the weekend, my partner and I were watching a special on the musical genius of Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of Queen. It was called Freddie Mercury: Magic Remixed, and it aired on Logo, the LGBT channel from MTV Networks. It was a really good documentary, a kind of "True Hollywood Story" biography highlighting the career and life. What I didn't know was that Freddie Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara, of South Asian heritage(!).
That was a huge surprise! And it depicted Mercury's anxiety over his racial identity as well as his sexual one -- how he tried to hide it as much as possible, and his general reluctance to acknowledge it in public.
After watching the documentary, I went on YouTube to look for old Queen videos and I came across one that I remember very well. "Under Pressure" with David Bowie in 1981. My partner saw it and she said that the music video was shot in the style of an experimental film -- something to do with visual thematic repetition ... or something like that.
It demonstrated yet again that I am not a film theorist. But I like the video, and I do miss the music of Freddie Mercury and Queen.
OK, one last one and that's it. But I came across this article by way of Oliver Wang at Poplicks. It's an excellent piece by Baraki Kitwana at Newsday about Imus, black popular culture, and consumerism. It's one critical analysis that hits it on the mark.
The Style, But Not the Substance
Baraki Kitwana, Newsweek
When Don Imus put his foot in his mouth on the air last week with a dirty and derogatory reference to young black women, he was articulating a message that had been clearly voiced by Michael Richards, Rush Limbaugh and countless others long before him. Ditto the white law students at the University of Connecticut who donned big booties and blackface this year on Martin Luther King Day, as well as the rash of undergraduates across the country, from Michigan to South Carolina, who somehow imagine that hosting "pimp and ho parties"is a good idea.
That message is this: The aesthetics of hip-hop culture - from the language and clothing to the style and sensibility - can be absorbed into American popular culture like any other disposable product without any effort or responsibility on the part of the consumer.
It is an idea in part ushered in by the marginal voices of black youth themselves, youth so eager to be visible that they gave up far too much of their identity in the interest of partnering with the corporate music industry. Together, and all the while green-lighted by the Federal Communications Commission, a handful of rap artists packaged and commodified rap music (not to be confused with hip-hop culture lived daily by countless youth around the globe at a local level, from graffiti and break dancing to deejaying, spoken word poetry and political activism.).
Encouraged by the quick bucks, this partnership was quickly reinforced by additional peddlers of one-dimensional images of young black men as violent, and women as oversexed bitches and hos - from filmmakers and television producers to music video directors, comedians and beyond.
These snake oil salesmen marvel at the gravitational pull that hip-hop exerts over American youth and see dollar signs. Drawing necessary distinctions between the various lifestyles (street culture, prison culture and the traditional culture of black America) that converge on the national stage isn't even an afterthought.
The result is what cultural critic Greg Tate addressed in his 2005 book, "Everything but the Burden." That is, far too many American consumers of black popular culture don't take the time to decode the complexity of black life that produces a 50 Cent, a Jay-Z or a Russell Simmons, multi-millionaires all, who peddle rap music riddled with the language of the street.
When I interviewed Jay-Z as I was completing my book "Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop: Wankstas, Wiggers, Wannabes and the New Reality of Race in America," he put it this way: "Hip-hop is not clothing or a place you go, this is people's lives, people's culture."
But who picks up the slack when this gets lost on the consumer?
Imus - and his defenders who claim they learned this language from hip-hop - are only partly correct, even as they are wholly dishonest. They would do themselves and the country a service by owning up to at least three facts. 1) Imus took liberty with a culture that he didn't fully understand, and when he got called on it, rather than coming clean, he pointed the finger at hip-hop to take the weight. 2) Clearly those far more powerful than rappers are complicit in bringing pimp and ho talk to the American mainstream. 3) If indeed Imus is a hip-hop fan, innocently consuming its language and aesthetics, that doesn't remove him from the responsibility to understand hip-hop cultural and political roots in all their complexity.
Rather than an ignorant fan chopping it up in the living room with one of his buddies, he's a public figure whose voice is heard by millions. His responsibility then is even greater.
That is why he had to be removed from his radio and cable TV networks. Lest folks inside the hip-hop activist community who were calling for such be deemed hypocrites, let the record show that media justice advocates such as Davey D Cook (of the organization daveyd.com), Rosa Clementes (of R.E.A.C.H. Hip-Hop) and Lisa Fagers (of industryears.com) have for years been very loudly challenging the music industry and rappers to raise the bar.
Hip-hop's internal criticism is something that a 2007 study by the Black Youth Project recently documented. In a survey of 1,600 young people it found that the "overwhelming majority" of young people agree that rap music videos contain too many references to sex, and "the majority" agree rap music videos portray black women and black men in bad or offensive ways.
Maybe the flak over Don Imus' mean-spirited, sexist and racist comments can help to raise the volume of those voices. Our failure to hear them, like our failure to check Imus, can mean the difference between our ability to escape America's old racial politics and our historical tendency to drown in them.
So now in the aftermath of Imus and his racially and sexually derogatory epithets, his subsequent firings from NBC and CBS, the Rutgers Women's Basketball team press conference, the fans, the outrage, the marvelous coalition of support for the students, the hope that this painful episode will set a new standard for media responsibility, we now turn our attention to ... RAP MUSIC?!?!?
Oh shit. I heard the report on CNN Headline News this morning that there's a greater concerted effort to now target rap/hip hop artists like 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg, and others. The argument, ironically, seemed to have come from Imus himself when he appeared on Al Sharpton's radio show. He commented that he did not get the phrase on his own. That it's origins are in the very worst of rap/hip hop. In other words, he wasn't saying anything new or different from what rappers were saying in the music. I know it's a cop out, and it doesn't hold water. I just can't believe that people are buying into that point. I know elder African American leaders like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, and many others for different reasons, have always had a problem with rap and it's derogatory portrayals of black men and women. But this is a fairly reactionary and conservative critique about the politics of representation and culture -- that the causes of misoygny, homophobia, or racism, etc., can be traced to an offensive representation be it film, picture, television, or even words. The solution then is simple: remove the representation from our public sphere.
This is highly problematic on so many levels. There's no talk about culture in a substantive manner. There's nothing about patterns of economic inequality, or even a commentary about the state of our education. Or worse, once again, it's a "black problem" that they created, that they must now solve, but what's different this time is now it's a fairly diverse coalition of interests willing to go further than before. It's being framed as a personal moral issue and that is worrisome. But as a political logic, it certainly makes sense to a lot of people who work on a simple map of power relations: cause and effect.
But what bugs me the most about this development is the fact that Imus somehow was able to redirect the focus and energy from himself to rap and hip hop. Maybe not by himself solely, but this episode and the mess he created certainly facilitated it. In the end, I can't help but think that cowboy is going to have the last laugh.
So while reading the news today I was overcome with dozens of posts and articles regarding radio newstalk host, Imus, and his obviously imbecilic and shallow characterization of the Rutgers Women's basketball team. Talk about serious trouble now that he's been suspended for two weeks, Al Sharpton is on his case, and the usual corporate pinch of withdrawing sponsorship of his show. Since then, he's apologized for his remarks ... profusely ... to the point that every other statement is an apology. It's as Eugene Robinson says in his op-ed piece from The Washington Post: "Imus is in full self-flagellation mode."
Self-flagellation: (noun) 1. The act of severely criticizing oneself. 2. The act of punishing oneself. 3. A form of punishment by a whip, strap, or rope.
Well, not fully. I haven't seen the whips, straps, or ropes yet. But I'm counting on something grander like his resignation or cancellation of his show. Of late, and thanks to internet sites like YouTube, no one can ever get away with uttering derogatory and offensive statements without being punished: Kenneth Eng's anti-black editorial, Tim Hardaway's anti-gay comment, Michael Richards' "n-word" outburst, and so on. No one can ever get away or claim a defense when the proof of their words is broadcast throughout cyberspace, and it's literally there in perpetuity for others to see. Because of the internet, no one will ever forget what happened. What also makes Imus's comments so out of line is that his target was the Rutgers women's basketball team. That seems to be a "disproportionate attack" (if such a thing exists) because they are simply students, playing on a title contending team, and representing their university on the national stage. You don't put students down or ridicule them for failure when they have been the most responsible and dedicated role models. You can tear apart students when they act stupidly by their own initiative. But when a nationally syndicated talk show host throws the first punch without provocation, then that is simply tasteless. I can also see how an event like this will bring the campus community like Rutgers closer together. I just wish it was under different circumstances than this.
Some articles of interest regarding the controversy. It's funny how "... in the morning" seems to be a popular title phrase for the articles:
SFGate.com: Editorial, "Aiming at Imus"I do agree in a sense about how this will simply blow over. But I'm reminded of Rush Limbaugh's explosive "social engineering" comment on ESPN regarding Donovan McNabb's performance for the Eagles. He was ousted rather quickly. I will point out though that it also depends who's being picked on and ridiculed. I still think it's easier to get away with anti-Asian, anti-Latino, and anti-gay commentary than anti-black. That's evidenced with the number of tv and radio personalities like Ann Coulter, for instance, with her lurid use of anti-gay epithets to describe Democratic politicians.The only thing sorrier than this all-too-frequent cycle of public offense and recovery is the fact that Imus, who shouldn't be talking about anyone else's hair, won't really suffer for his foul mouth. His show is too popular with the right people -- namely highbrow-ish journalists and politicians, who wouldn't be able to expound at length about their wonkish positions to a mass audience in any other way -- for him to stay in trouble. This is rotten, because if he were a politician, he'd be out of a job. The best statement Imus' guests could make would be to avoid him.
Washington Post: Eugene Robinson, "Misogyny in the Morning"
I like Robinson's take on this issue and focusing on gender and race, which everyone seems to subtly acknowledge the gendered politics, but this piece is the first that I've read that makes it explicit. I also like how he analyzes Imus' show as trying to cater to low brow and high brow interests.
If anything, Imus is more substantive and less offensive than many of his competitors. In a sense, that's one reason for his current predicament. Prominent politicians and other notables regularly call in to his show, and sometimes actual news is made -- which brings him greater scrutiny. You can be a shock jock or you can be a respected interviewer, but you can't be both.Matthew Yglesias: blogger, "Racism in the Morning"
No I did not finish my chapter. But I did reserve my copy of J.K. Rowling's final book in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, due out on July 21, 2007. I wasn't a true Harry Potter fan when Book 1 was released. As a matter of fact, I didn't become an avid reader and fan until Book 3. The reason? I had heard over the blogs that a Christian fundamentalist group was staging an anti-Harry Potter rally somewhere in Philadelphia. That the book was heretical and blasphemous and yadda yadda. The rally ended with a book burning of J.K. Rowling's works.
Now, I don't care much about anyone's religious affiliation. I grew up Catholic and I was educated by Jesuits in high school. I'm not a devout Catholic like others, but I do recognize and live with its influence.
But of all the things anyone could ever do, book burning is a huge no-no. It's anti-intellectual, and fascist. But, in a way, I'm glad because I've always found that 99.9% of whatever organized religion condemns, I will generally love especially if it's coming from the Catholic Church. And I love reading J.K. Rowling's fantastic world of Harry Potter.
