How much fun would it be to see Alice Cooper in the day? Daaaaaamn. Stick around for Black Juju. It gives me some ideas for monday’s class on semiotics.
Thanks to Dangerous Minds for the suggestion.
New thinking about crack
I appreciate the insights of Dr. Carl Hart, professor at Columbia University writing about drug use and moral panic. Quoted here in an interview with Salon.
CH: I think crack cocaine is the easiest example In the 1980s, as I was coming of age in my teens and my early 20s, people—black people, white folks, a number of people in the country—said crack was so awful it was causing women to give up their babies and neglect their children such that grandmothers had to raise another generation of children.
Now, if you look at the history in poor communities—my community, my family—long before crack ever hit the scene, that sort of thing happened in my house. We were raised by my grandmother. My mother went away because she and my father split up. She went away in search of better jobs and left the state, but it wasn’t just her. This sort of thing, this pathology that is attributed to drugs, happened to immigrant communities like the Eastern European Jews when they came to the Lower East SIde, but people simply blamed crack in the 1980s and the 1990s.
Another example is that, since the crack era, multiple studies have found that the effects of crack cocaine use during pregnancy do not create an epidemic of doomed black “crack babies.” Instead, crack-exposed children are growing up to lead normal lives, and studies have repeatedly found that the diferences between them and babies who were not exposed cannot be isolated from the health effects of growing up poor, without a stable, safe environment or access to healthcare.
via Carl Hart: Drugs don’t turn people into criminals – Salon.com.
When asked about what to do about these problems, Dr. Hart explains:
CH: That is complex, but quite simple to start. The first thing is we decriminalize all drugs. More than 80% of people arrested for drugs are arrested for simple possession. Wen you decriminalize, now you have that huge number of people—we’re talking 1.5 million people arrested every year—that no longer have that blemish on their record. That increases the likelihood that they can get jobs, participate in the mainstream.
Number two is dramatically increase realistic education about drugs—none of this “this is your brain on drugs” stuff, but real education, which looks like making sure people understand effects of drugs they’re using, particularly potentially medical affects. Don’t use heroin with another sedative because it increases the likelihood of respiratory depression. Realistic education, telling people what to do, how to prevent negative effects associated with drugs. We do it with alcohol—you shouldn’t binge drink, don’t drink on an empty stomach—and could do it with other drugs.
via Carl Hart: Drugs don’t turn people into criminals – Salon.com.
Hart has a book: High Price, check it out. Thanks to Salon.
Filed under drugs, health, learning, race, representation
Civil disobedience for immigrant rights
I salute the civil disobedience outside the House of Representatives to encourage serious action for imprisoned immigrants.
In a historic action, today approximately 100 women will risk arrest by blockading the intersection outside the House of Representatives to send a message: inaction on comprehensive immigration reform that treats women and families humanely is unacceptable. The action is being organized through We Belong Together, a national campaign to bring forward the priorities of women in immigration reform. Their priorities include: a clear path to citizenship; a system that keeps families together and upholds the family immigration system; protects survivors of violence; honors women’s work inside and outside the home; and is not driven by enforcement. Today’s act of civil disobedience is expected to include the largest ever number of undocumented women to date to willingly risk arrest, and will also include allies from organizations advocating for reproductive justice, racial justice, LGBT people, and domestic workers, among many others.
via Immigrant women and allies risk arrest to demand humane immigration reform.
And cheers to Feministing, one of the most consistently intersectional feminist news outlets.
Filed under feminism, human rights, intersectionality, prisons, protest
Mixtape media: DJ Drama
Thanks to Nah Right for the two part interview with mix tape innovator DJ Drama. Here are my favorite snippets from the interview, starting with some DJ insights:
“And I was an East Coast type of guy with my taste. When you come to school, particularly in a place like Atlanta, you’ve got so many people from so many places. So I had to relearn how to DJ, and it made me much more of a worldly DJ than I might have been [if I stayed] in Philly. You had people from California, and people from D.C. that wanted hear go-go, and people from the islands. You got your people from Atlanta that want to hear A-Town shit. Then there’s people from New York. So you gotta learn how to please a bunch of people.
via Mixtape Memories with DJ Drama (Part 1)Nah Right.
I appreciate him noting that it was the absence of mixtape DJs working with southern artists that created his lane.
“There was a store called Tapemasters, my man Marco used to work in there. And I would try to sell my CDs in there, but I would get blown out, because I was making East Coast CDs trying to compete with Whoo Kid and Kay Slay and Clue, and no one was checking for me because I was getting beat to the punch [by them having the exclusives before me]. So my senior year of college, I realized that I needed to make a South tape. And that shit flew like hot cakes. The first song ever on the pre-Gangsta Grillz DJ Drama South tape was ‘Bling Bling.’ That was like ‘99. And Marco was like, ‘You need to focus on your neo-soul tapes, and your South tapes. That’s where you have niches at.’
via Mixtape Memories with DJ Drama (Part 1)Nah Right.
Part II here.
Filed under capitalism, do-it-yourself, hip hop, media, music
Star Trek and the NSA and paywalls
I think it is totally messed up that the NSA spy dude General Keith Alexander built a replica Start Trek: Enterprise bridge. HEY REAL WORLD SURVEILLANCE WARMONGERS: leave my fiction alone. Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing explains using a quote from a Foreign Affairs article:*
When he was running the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command, Alexander brought many of his future allies down to Fort Belvoir for a tour of his base of operations, a facility known as the Information Dominance Center. It had been designed by a Hollywood set designer to mimic the bridge of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek, complete with chrome panels, computer stations, a huge TV monitor on the forward wall, and doors that made a “whoosh” sound when they slid open and closed. Lawmakers and other important officials took turns sitting in a leather “captain’s chair” in the center of the room and watched as Alexander, a lover of science-fiction movies, showed off his data tools on the big screen.
via Replica Enterprise bridge used to sell surveillance to Congress – Boing Boing.
*I couldn’t read the actual article because Foreign Affairs paywall was so dominating. I guess I’ll have to read it via the school library server. You know, paywall-mass-media-publication people: most of the nerdy people would read FOREIGN AFFAIRS probably can get a copy through their library.
It is convenient that I can follow the link from the Boing Boing article to the essay in question. But if I open another tab, log into my school account, finding the article is a matter of a few more links. So be honest, paywall-media-people, what you are selling is convenience.
Charge me convenience prices. I just want to read one story. Let me drop ten cents (or a quarter!) of hard-earned digital cash for a nice story. I don’t want to sign up, I want to pay for something the way you used to be able to buy a newspaper and not have to give your vital information. Please mass media sources, get with the 2000s and make portions of your insightful work available to the public at reasonable prices.
And kick some of that digital cash to support investigative journalism.
Filed under human rights, media, propaganda, representation, Surveillance
Run the jewels: overdetermination and puppets
I wrote a little piece on El-P and Killer Mike’s Run the jewels album and rape culture. I guess I was thinking about the socially conscious history of both of the artists. You might describe El-P as a nihilist leftist and Killer Mike as an organic intellectual.
Of course Run the jewels is competitive over-the-top rap music. In the effort to make the best art — artists attempt to outdo each other. In the genre of hip hop this means bigger, harder, louder, and more outlandish.
The financial claims of most rappers have grown to ridiculous levels, with a number of artists simply shouting out expensive brand names to convey their own particular shopping allegiances.
It makes sense that the claims about violence, drugs and sex would also become more and more outlandish.
MF DOOM always seemed like a hip-hop critic. His villainous characters (and in particular the masked versions of DOOM) always seemed pitiful — articulated as a mockery of other rappers whose representations of criminality seemed shallow in comparison to the lyrical work of the clever DOOM.
In the same way modern hip hop can be critiqued from the traditional morality perspective. It might also be performed and overdetermined (made excessive and taken to the extreme) in order to achieve a very similar moral critique.
Which works as a basic introduction for “36” Chain,” a video which contains violence against old women, violence against young women, gun violence, violence against Andrew W.K, and a dual sense of mockery/sincerity that will probably excite some people and deeply offend others.
Noting the character Killums — the kidnapped puppet plays such an important role it might be worth including the El-P video for “Full retard” in this discussion.
Of course this video contains some drinking and driving, a lot of drug stuff, violence against moms, nudity, and of course, the lightly disturbing choice to have the puppet Killums lead in most of the debauchery. We can note that the expressive fiction of a puppet gives liberty . . . a kind of implicit defense. At the same time thumbing the nose at the idea of childhood as an innocent time.
Killums seems to be El-P’s id. An expression of what he would like to do . . . the unfettered brain presented as a sex and drug obsessed squirrel. Some artists make up Tyler Durdin . . . El-P chooses a one-eyed junkie squirrel.
Dave Chappelle’s sesame street mockery Kneehigh park runs through some of the same transgressions. Pushing buttons with ever-increasingly crass discussions voiced by puppets that seems to be giving humorous versions of public service announcements.
You can say anything if you have a puppet voice the idea. And as I’ve written about before — any moralistic critique sounds silly when lodged against a cute fuzzy animal with a human voice. It is insulated against these kinds of arguments because you can always say “it’s just a puppet.”
Filed under art, communication, drugs, hip hop, music, representation
Happy Birthday Sylvester
The illuminating blog Dangerous Minds noted that today is the birthday of the electric-disco-star Sylvester. I appreciate that they frame Sylvester’s radical elements within his Disco successes:
. . . .if it wasn’t for disco there is no way that a linebacker-sized, black, openly gay, outrageous, gender-bending performer like him could have reached the top of the world’s charts.
via Dangerous Minds | Excellent documentary on the life of Sylvester.
Happy Birthday Sylvester and all who party with ya!
Filed under funk & soul, Gay, memorial, music, punk, race, representation
Juxtaposition: Fiona Apple and Dave Chappelle walk off the stage
Artifact One: Fiona Apple at a Tokyo fashion event.
Apple grew frustrated with the ongoing chatter in the venue, a hall at Tokyo Station Hotel, where the exhibition makes its home. Partway through her short set, she climbed on top of her grand piano and asked the audience to be quiet so that she could perform. She then challenged everyone to be silent for the duration of a tone she created by striking a small metal bell. The performer grew even more angry when the noise in the venue continued.
Apple instructed the audience to “shut the f–k up” and uttered other expletives, both audibly and under her breath, calling the event’s attendees “rude.” She continued with her set before shouting, “Predictable! Predictable fashion, what the f–k?” as she stormed off the stage. The show was punctuated with other bizarre moments, such as when she hit her head with her microphone, did a back bend over her piano bench and stared intensely at her guitarist as if in a love-struck trance.
via Louis Vuitton Toasts ‘Timeless Muses’ in Tokyo – Parties – Eye – WWD.com.
Artifact 2: Dave Chappelle walking off the stage at a Connecticut comedy club.
Chappelle wasn’t having a meltdown. This was a Black artist shrugging the weight of White consumption, deciding when enough was enough. This isn’t the first time Chappelle has done so and it isn’t the first time his behavior has been characterized as a meltdown.
There is a long history of asking African-Americans to endure racism silently; it’s characterized as grace, as strength. Chappelle’s Connecticut audience, made up of largely young White males, demanded a shuck and jive. Men who seemed to have missed the fine satire of the Chappelle show demanded he do characters who, out of the context of the show look more like more racist tropes, than mockery of America’s belief in them.
When he expressed shock at the fact that he’d sat there and been yelled at for so long, people yelled that they’d paid him. They felt paying for a show meant they could verbally harass him, direct him in any tone of voice, as though they’d bought him.
via Dave Chappelle Didn’t Melt Down – Entertainment & Culture – EBONY.
Filed under art, fashion, juxtaposition, media, protest, race, representation, resistance, vulnerability
Life of refinement 