I’ve noted before that Waka Flocka Flame travels a careful orbit between violent drug rhymes and friendly celebrity. It reminds me of Snoop Dogg and Sean Price — they both sort of make visible the double-consciousness of famous black men. Simultaneously expressing fictional violent anti-social expressions (which are consumed for people’s pleasure) and at the same time in different venues re-representing themselves with a friendly comedic persona (which is consumed for people’s pleasure).
Here is Waka telling a story from his childhood about his grandmother punishing him stylized like a Charles Schultz Peanuts holiday special.
Let’s remember that only the voice is Waka’s the representation is the work of a whole team of experts (sound editors, animators, directors, artists). And a company makes money on the whole thing.
It would be very interesting to map the choices of animated representations of the recent Trae and Waka videos.
Turns out that the 3-part New York Times (you still suck) documentary is available at youtube. Worth watching for the discussion of representation, violence, and consumption of sports bodies. Cannibal capitalism – mediated violence where viewers devour the bodies of sports stars who are trading of their bodies for fame.
There is something toxic about people who have public histories of being offensive arguing that being criticized for hateful comments is comparable to experiencing hate itself.
Here is Zerlina Maxwell explaining why Paula Deen’s recent articulation is exactly this kind of hijack of experience.
“In a recent interview with People, Deen said (via CNN):
“I feel like ‘embattled’ or ‘disgraced’ will always follow my name,” she tells People. “It’s like that black football player who recently came out,” referring to NFL prospect and former University of Missouri football standout, Michael Sam.
“He (Sam) said, ‘I just want to be known as a football player. I don’t want to be known as a gay football player.’ I know exactly what he’s saying.”
It’s no surprise that Deen would feel embattled, but as someone who said racially insensitive things, it is a surprise that Deen sees herself as the oppressed, instead of the one doing the oppressing. How is Paula the victim if she was the mastermind behind the slave themed wedding? It seems to me that actually being oppressed and embattled by structural inequality and policies that lead to disparate outcomes for people of color is worse than being called out for your bigotry. And being the first openly gay player in the NFL like Michael Sam is nothing like being a celebrity chef exposed for referring to your Black employees in explicitly racist terms.”
I’m interested in the idea that folks would become famous because they harmed themselves or allowed someone else to harm them on camera. I’ve been calling it cannibal capitalism – as a means of describing this wide scope on popular media. Cannibal in the sense that viewers consume of the body of another human being who is on camera taking years off of their life
Chief Keef is in rehab for ganja and let’s loose with some great insights about how unpleasant it is.
Nestled inside a nondescript beach house, one of hip-hop’s most controversial rising stars is holed up in court-ordered rehab, and he’s feeling frustrated and alone.
“It’s like being locked up,” Chief Keef, 18, tells Billboard, in his first interview since he entered rehab. “And when I’m locked up, I don’t want anybody to come see me. I won’t let my family come here. I haven’t seen my 2-year-old daughter.”
Cannibal Capitalism is best thought of as a pattern of mediated communication about morality. Along with viewing people getting hurt and enjoying it (Jackass, NFL, Ultimate Fighting) we also get the moral commentary from the narrators and participants about that suffering.
Part of the narration of morality that comes with hip hop and cannibal capitalism is a kind of racism+classism+paternalism. When the articles were popping about Odd Future, the dominant story was just how naughty they were and emphasizing the difficulties they got into. Very little conversation about music, and heavy emphasis on the disciplining of (usually) young black men.
The quote from the Billboard article is the opening passage. Do you think it invites a kind of moral judgement? Do you wonder what this rapper did to get this punishment? Is it framed in a way to encourage you to read it as an omniscient person who hasn’t had this kind of difficulty, shaking your head in faux-sympathy?
There is no doubt that Chief Keef is at the core of a major moral panic. One part of the division is the fascinating language used to divide people up. Richard Sherman and the significance of the representation of thug:
I wonder if the exciting pleasure of the music and imagery of Chief Keef experiencing suffering, particularly mapping up to the discipline and punish strategy of suffering/redemption (recycled) is part of the appeal?
Public consumption of rap stars and their back stories usually includes a kind of nefarious sharing of information. I went over to my buddies house and we listened to music and also to a 5 minute rant from KRS-ONE threatening some dude over a van robbery.
Hip hop fans are usually fiends for gossip, and interested in the music, culture, language and well, anything of our favorite musicians.
Salute to the well-argued piece about Law and Order: SVU from the perspective of a survivor of sexual assault. From Stacey Mae Fowles:
Any rape survivor who has watched her rapist live out his life in relative bliss, while hers is a wreckage of fear and mistrust, will tell you that justice is a fiction we all consent to. While she struggles through the slow tedium of recovery others live in willful ignorance, believing that some sort of redemption is possible. The survivor lives a life redefined by the actions of another—every victory against him, every loss endured in his shadow.
Thanks to the Brain Scoop, the youtube channel for the Field Museum and their top-notch, high-speed delivery. In this case, host Emily Graslie shares an insightful rundown on some artifacts in the museum surrounding this 1893 event.
I guess in the comments section of this video a troll tried to explain that the necklace admired by Emily G is in fact not to be admired and is in fact “primitive”. (Not to mention discouraging political analysis in museum videos).
Bang! Here comes “intern Katie” who explains a few thoughtful ideas to this commenter.
I think this is a good reminder that the comment sections aren’t always toxic. Let us forward accountability to those who would haunt the comment sections. (Not to affirm some of the problematic ideas about humanism represented by Katie.)
I’ve gotten papers with little comments or song lyrics embedded in the prose. I assumed they were little tests to see if I was actually reading the paper. I note it as a technique of surveillance or accountability.
Thanks to openculture.org for the image.
This is a whole extra level of thoughtfulness. Rick-rolling without really altering the content of your paper.
I wonder if this was really a paper for this class or was it made as a gag?
I woke up thinking about the fame/anonymity line that successful artists/graffiti practitioners have to navigate. Made me think about SF’s Barry McGee/Twist.
From a cool interview by Samuel Borkson where Barry McGee emphasizes living, eating kale and going surfing. When asked what he’d do with a lot of money Twist replies:
BMG: I’m more interested in less than more. Our society has become obsessed with having more, having it all. To what end? Excess, while fascinating to watch, is not the answer to me. Most over budgeted art projects I have seen are terrible.
I enjoyed an essay by David Dobbs in Aeon Magazine about genes. Key to the argument is a call for more complex understanding of the relationship between genes and evolutionary change.
The gene-centric view is thus ‘an artefact of history’, says Michael Eisen, an evolutionary biologist who researches fruit flies at the University of California, Berkeley. ‘It rose simply because it was easier to identify individual genes as something that shaped evolution. But that’s about opportunity and convenience rather than accuracy. People confuse the fact that we can more easily study it with the idea that it’s more important.’
The gene’s power to create traits, says Eisen, is just one of many evolutionary mechanisms. ‘Evolution is not even that simple. Anyone who’s worked on systems sees that natural selection takes advantage of the most bizarre aspects of biology. When something has so many parts, evolution will act on all of them.
‘It’s not that genes don’t sometimes drive evolutionary change. It’s that this mutational model — a gene changes, therefore the organism changes — is just one way to get the job done. Other ways may actually do more.’
It seems to me that the arguments that the genetic code are read in different ways most challenges the notions about predictable genetic modification.
Describing Mary Jane West-Eberhard’s arguments about genes, Dobbs notes:
She does have her pithy moments. ‘The gene does not lead,’ she says. ‘It follows.’
There lies the quick beating heart of her argument: the gene follows. And one of the ways the gene follows is through this process called genetic accommodation.
I appreciate that it comes down to a battle of articulation — simple vs. complex. Communication, it always comes back to communication. Some ideas corrode against others and in this case the gene-centric model pushes out the ability to explain that ideas like the selfish gene . . . might be a little more complex than we think.
Yet West-Eberhard understands why many biologists stick to the gene-centric model. ‘It makes it easier to explain evolution,’ she says. ‘I’ve seen people who work in gene expression who understand all of this. But when they get asked about evolution, they go straight to Mendel. Because people understand it more easily.’ It’s easy to see why: even though life is a zillion bits of biology repeatedly rearranging themselves in a webwork of constantly modulated feedback loops, the selfish-gene model offers a step-by-step account as neat as a three-step flow chart. Gene, trait, phenotype, done.
Science video blogger Emily Graslie has a crisp response to the nasty emails she receives. Graslie hosts her show the Brain Scoop. I like the performative readings of the emails themselves.
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Life of refinement 
The Brain Scoop on bullying
Science video blogger Emily Graslie has a crisp response to the nasty emails she receives. Graslie hosts her show the Brain Scoop. I like the performative readings of the emails themselves.
Thanks Feministing for the link.
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Tagged as accountability, accountability and the internet, accountability for sexism, Brain Scoop youtube channel, bullying excludes women from media access, bullying in comment sections, Emily Graslie, feministing, internet bullying