For anyone who enjoys Macklemore, I have some bad news for you. If you take a gander at this link here, you'll see a rather bemusing story. The song "Wings", one of Macklemore's bigger songs, being used in an NBA All-Star ad. Now, on the surface this might not seem so bad, but when you dig a little you find some disturbing stuff.
First of all, the song "Wings" in its entirety has a very distinct anti-consumerist bent. It focuses on his personal story with basketball shoes, but the overarching point of the song is that getting sold on this idea of consumer culture and what you own having any impact on your worth as a human being is bad. And while the NBA All-Star weekend might not seem to be directly in conflict with this message, it is certainly indirectly in conflict with it. A huge part of the NBA's success has been licencing and some of the biggest companies they licence to are shoe companies. Companies like Nike, which gets directly bashed in the song.
Beginning to see the problem?
What makes it even worse is that the song was deliberately censored to remove any anti-consumerist references. Lyrics that are more in line with the NBA's wallet get put in places where more critical lyrics were. Some lines, like "Nike Air Flight, but bad was so dope / And then my friend Carlos’ brother got murdered for his fours, whoa" or "My movement told me be a consumer and I consumed it / They told me to just do it, I listened to what that swoosh said" just get completely cut. For that matter, practically the entire second verse gets cut, the verse that for me is the most emotional in the whole song. The ad blatantly destroys the entire point and the entire message of the song, just to sell some more shoes.
Now Macklemore has addressed this controversy. If you follow this link, you'll see his response. It's good that he responded, but I'm not sold. He has two main counterarguments: "I didn't know they were going to censor it" and "It will get more people to listen to the full song". Both of these are weak arguments, and at one point he even provides the counterargument to the first one in that article. "In any licensing deal they are going to edit your music. A 4 minute song does not fit into a 30 second movie trailer. Lyrics have to get cut in order for the trailer/ad to make sense with what the company is promoting. And a song about consumerism doesn’t fit into an NBA All Star Game intro without some tailoring," he says at one point, which completely invalidates his first argument. If it's so obvious they were going to rip the soul out of this song, he can't claim ignorance that it was going to happen. That really doesn't work. As for his second argument, I have several issues. For starters, it's based on an assumption. The assumption that the ad will get significantly more people to listen to the full song. Now, this is probably true, but there's a very good chance that it's not. The song is already pretty huge, to the point where the kind of people that haven't heard it are usually the kind of people who don't like that type of music and thus are not going to go listen to the full song. On top of that, someone's first experience with the song affects the rest of their listens. When someone's first experience with the song is the NBA cut, it spoils the preceding listens, always bringing the person back to that ad rather than to the message he's trying to get across. My big issue with that argument though is that Macklemore at this point is big enough in sales and influence to find a much better way to boost his listens. I understand that Macklemore loves the NBA, but there has to be a better way to express that love than destroying your creation like this.
I still respect him, mostly for the song Same Love, but I find listening to this song in particular to leave a bad taste in my mouth.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Thursday, February 21, 2013
I've Figured It Out!
I finally know exactly why I find musicals to be un-immersive and emotionally unimpressive. And no, it's not the singing, it's not the dancing, it's not even (in a way) the narrative or the plot.
It has to do with the presentation of emotion, and it's a trap that pretty much every art form is vulnerable to: the simplification of emotions. The best example I can think of to explain what I mean is a generic modern pop song about love. Generally, rather than painting the more truthful picture of complicated, mixed feelings and difficult social structures, they paint a somewhat simple picture: the person singing is perfectly in love with the person they're singing about. If they already have the object of their desire, then their life couldn't get any better. If they don't have the person they want, then they will never be complete until they do.
I have found that musicals tend to play this trick with their characters, simplifying the emotions portrayed down to a single, base emotion that is incredibly pure. Now, this isn't necessarily bad. It makes the character much more accessible and relate-able to a larger percentage of people. But it rubs me the wrong way.
I don't think I've ever had a moment where I've felt a single, pure emotion. It has always been for me a mix of emotions: Anger with some jealousy, anger with sadness, happiness that leans towards ecstasy or happiness that leans toward contentedness. The idea of experiencing a single, pure emotion is completely foreign to me, and so I find art/entertainment that portrays that to be entirely unfulfilling and unrealistic. I don't believe the person putting forth that emotion because I don't believe it's possible to experience emotion in that way; the human psyche and social relationships are simply too complicated.
And this issue is in no way limited to musicals. It pops up everywhere: music (as I mentioned above), bad video game narratives, bad novels, even bad plays. I just find it to be more prevalent in musicals.
It has to do with the presentation of emotion, and it's a trap that pretty much every art form is vulnerable to: the simplification of emotions. The best example I can think of to explain what I mean is a generic modern pop song about love. Generally, rather than painting the more truthful picture of complicated, mixed feelings and difficult social structures, they paint a somewhat simple picture: the person singing is perfectly in love with the person they're singing about. If they already have the object of their desire, then their life couldn't get any better. If they don't have the person they want, then they will never be complete until they do.
I have found that musicals tend to play this trick with their characters, simplifying the emotions portrayed down to a single, base emotion that is incredibly pure. Now, this isn't necessarily bad. It makes the character much more accessible and relate-able to a larger percentage of people. But it rubs me the wrong way.
I don't think I've ever had a moment where I've felt a single, pure emotion. It has always been for me a mix of emotions: Anger with some jealousy, anger with sadness, happiness that leans towards ecstasy or happiness that leans toward contentedness. The idea of experiencing a single, pure emotion is completely foreign to me, and so I find art/entertainment that portrays that to be entirely unfulfilling and unrealistic. I don't believe the person putting forth that emotion because I don't believe it's possible to experience emotion in that way; the human psyche and social relationships are simply too complicated.
And this issue is in no way limited to musicals. It pops up everywhere: music (as I mentioned above), bad video game narratives, bad novels, even bad plays. I just find it to be more prevalent in musicals.
Friday, February 15, 2013
Holy S**t
As someone who pretty avidly listens to music, I find that I am generally able to express my opinion very quickly. As a general rule of thumb, after several listens to a song, I am able to not only decide whether I like what I'm listening to, but I am able to express why in what I would like to think is a relatively articulate and eloquent manner. Not so this time.
The Wake by Billy Woods is the track that has completely stopped me in my tracks mentally. I listened to it last night (2/14) for the first time, and ended up looping it for almost 45 minutes straight. It reminded me of one of my favorite English quotes of all time: "Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood", said by T.S. Eliot. When I first heard this song, the absolute melancholy nature of it hit me right over the head, but I won't say that I completely understood what he meant. And for a lot of the song, I still don't. While great lines like "Ten years ago she was just some ho / Five years after that, I'm in love / And if you ask me today, I couldn't give a f*ck / Go figure" have relatively obvious meaning, other parts like "Put stove to fire like you're preaching to the choir / spitting through the wire / Like don't even wet that / It ain't about no get-back / We doing digits on Route 90 / Late to your wedding / Sitting in that morning sun with that good Otis Redding" are less obvious. What this does for me is increase the replay-ability of the track. Usually, the arc when I listen to a song goes like this: At first, the communication hits me (for good or bad), but after several listens, I am usually able to grasp the understanding part for at least most of the song. From there on out, my enjoyment of the song generally declines as I begin to become overly familiar with the song. What this song has done, and very few artistic experiences have ever reached this, is create an experience that simply gets better every time I listen to it. Every time, I understand a little bit more of Billy Wood's meaning, state of mind and the message he was trying to get across. Each time, I enjoy it a little bit more.
The best part is, the rest of the album also has that trait. Every track necessitates multiple listens to really get the full impact and enjoyment. It's hit a place that very little music manages to reach. Indeed, with the exception of Neutral Milk Hotel's "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea", this might be the only album I've listened to that gets to this pantheon. If you consider yourself a fan of rap, you absolutely must check it out.
The Wake by Billy Woods is the track that has completely stopped me in my tracks mentally. I listened to it last night (2/14) for the first time, and ended up looping it for almost 45 minutes straight. It reminded me of one of my favorite English quotes of all time: "Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood", said by T.S. Eliot. When I first heard this song, the absolute melancholy nature of it hit me right over the head, but I won't say that I completely understood what he meant. And for a lot of the song, I still don't. While great lines like "Ten years ago she was just some ho / Five years after that, I'm in love / And if you ask me today, I couldn't give a f*ck / Go figure" have relatively obvious meaning, other parts like "Put stove to fire like you're preaching to the choir / spitting through the wire / Like don't even wet that / It ain't about no get-back / We doing digits on Route 90 / Late to your wedding / Sitting in that morning sun with that good Otis Redding" are less obvious. What this does for me is increase the replay-ability of the track. Usually, the arc when I listen to a song goes like this: At first, the communication hits me (for good or bad), but after several listens, I am usually able to grasp the understanding part for at least most of the song. From there on out, my enjoyment of the song generally declines as I begin to become overly familiar with the song. What this song has done, and very few artistic experiences have ever reached this, is create an experience that simply gets better every time I listen to it. Every time, I understand a little bit more of Billy Wood's meaning, state of mind and the message he was trying to get across. Each time, I enjoy it a little bit more.
The best part is, the rest of the album also has that trait. Every track necessitates multiple listens to really get the full impact and enjoyment. It's hit a place that very little music manages to reach. Indeed, with the exception of Neutral Milk Hotel's "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea", this might be the only album I've listened to that gets to this pantheon. If you consider yourself a fan of rap, you absolutely must check it out.
Thursday, February 14, 2013
The Man, the Myth, the Legend
I have mentioned him specifically to some of you, and you all heard at least a couple seconds of one of his videos when Mr. Tallman accidentally played it out loud during proposal day, but I'd like to introduce all of you formally to Steve Roggenbuck. He is probably one of my favorite people in the planet, and the subject of my Senior Project. He is, according to himself, a poet, blogger and inspirational speaker. He is completely straight edge (I promise) and a vegan. He recently dropped out of college, citing a lack of fulfillment from what he is doing as the reason. His goal in life is to make people feel happy and to make people feel good, a goal I think is simplistically noble.
So here he is, in my favorite video of his. Be warned, this video IS explicit (and very immature), so be careful who you listen to it around. Keep an open mind.
So here he is, in my favorite video of his. Be warned, this video IS explicit (and very immature), so be careful who you listen to it around. Keep an open mind.
UPDATE
I've received a request from several people who have watched the video to explain exactly what I value in his message. So I will.
I've received a request from several people who have watched the video to explain exactly what I value in his message. So I will.
For starters, I find his brand of humor to be incredibly funny. I'm a fan of absurdist humor, and he is certainly absurd. Check out this video is you'd like a great example of his humor. More than that though, I find his message of simplistic positivity (yes, I made that word up) to be incredibly appealing. As much it might sound cliche, his take on the idea of being happy simply because you are alive has really resonated with me. I also find his willingness to break from social norms incredibly inspiring. Like I mentioned above, he dropped out of college for the seemingly unsubstantial reason of not being fulfilled by the experience. He sold all of his electronics except a basic cellphone and his laptop and took off around the country. He has found his purpose in life in a way that I think many people don't, and as someone who's struggling to find his purpose in life, I find that really impressive.
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Red & Purple
For some reason on the train ride home today, my mind got onto the subject of colors. Or more specifically, what those colors mean to me. I got really stuck on purple and red. Not because I couldn't figure out what they mean, but because I found so much meaning inside of them. In a way, they're incredibly similar. They're both very deep, powerful colors that tend to be associated with power. But on another level, they're incredibly different. Purple to me represents calm, confident power. Royalty, even. Whereas red has this very internally violent, imploding kind of power. I'm really not sure where I get these associations from, they just kind of come to me. What makes it even weirder is that the next show I'm working on is called "Red" and really supports my view of the color.
What I think I like about this interpretation though is the metaphorical tension the two have when mashed together. A calm, confident power and a violent, angry power come from very different places and result in very different attitudes. And when you mash them together, you get, well you get me, in a way. While that might sound a bit weird, let me explain. At this point in my life, I still haven't quite got it all figured out. I think I've got most of it, but there's still always some nagging doubt...
The result of that doubt is that most of the time, I am able to hold myself with the calm confidence of purple. I know what I'm doing, and I'm mostly doing things right. But every once in a while, when I give myself a bit too much room to think, that little voice comes on and asks "Do you really know what you're doing? Are you really doing everything right?" and as much as I KNOW the answer to both of those is at least mostly yes, something in my mind prevents me from believing it at that moment.
So yeah, that's what's been on my mind. Sometimes I think that I think too much.
What I think I like about this interpretation though is the metaphorical tension the two have when mashed together. A calm, confident power and a violent, angry power come from very different places and result in very different attitudes. And when you mash them together, you get, well you get me, in a way. While that might sound a bit weird, let me explain. At this point in my life, I still haven't quite got it all figured out. I think I've got most of it, but there's still always some nagging doubt...
The result of that doubt is that most of the time, I am able to hold myself with the calm confidence of purple. I know what I'm doing, and I'm mostly doing things right. But every once in a while, when I give myself a bit too much room to think, that little voice comes on and asks "Do you really know what you're doing? Are you really doing everything right?" and as much as I KNOW the answer to both of those is at least mostly yes, something in my mind prevents me from believing it at that moment.
So yeah, that's what's been on my mind. Sometimes I think that I think too much.
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Django Unchained: What Did I Think?
SPOILER WARNING
That title is not a cheesy way to declare this my opinion on the movie. It is actually the question I will be pondering in this post. After watching it, I feel incredibly conflicted over how I feel about it. There were many parts that I really enjoyed, but there were also many parts that I did not like or found to be incredibly distasteful.
For full disclosure, this is my first Tarantino film. So if I sound like I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to him, it's because I don't. My biggest question for someone who perhaps knows him a bit better would be this: should I be taking this movie seriously? Or is the whole thing supposed to be a joke? Either way, I had issues with it, but it would help me figure out my final thoughts on it if I knew which one it was.
If it is all a joke (which I'm leaning towards), then my biggest issue was that some of the comedy was simply not funny. There was more than one time when I felt like the writers were trying to make the N-word funny (combining it with Hercules? Really?) and in general I found their use of the word to be generally distasteful. Now, I understand that people used to word back then so it's "historically accurate", but that doesn't cut it for me. If you're going to be gritty and realistic with a word as virulent as that, then you have to take what you're saying seriously. And this movie did not take that word seriously at all. Another issue I had with the film as a comedy was that it seemed to have this undertone, this hinting that this story would in some way become grand and epic, with deep meaning and an ending that had deep symbolizing, or at least deep SOMETHING. But it never did. It just kind of meandered around, with an extremely unnecessarily violent and bloody shootout, some gullible Australians and a very unsatisfying ending.
Now before it sounds like I'm hating too hard on it, there were many parts that I found extremely entertaining, and even some character arcs that I enjoyed, whether they were accidental or not. The bag scene perfectly toed the line between hysterical and offensive, and was probably one of the funniest scenes I had seen in a while. Also, the opposing character arcs of Dr. Schultz and Django was pretty interesting. Without spoiling too much, it was interesting to watch Dr. Schultz drop his facade and gain some humanity, while seeing Django put up a facade and lose his. Personally, I felt that this theme could have been explored much more, but I liked it nonetheless.
Ultimately, what I can say is that this movie has made me stop and think more than any movie I've seen since Fight Club, so in that sense I guess it's good, although I'm unwilling to admit that Tarantino meant for that to happen. Which I think sums up my feelings about the movie: any sort of depth or interesting symbols or themes seemed accidental and so I feel like I can't really praise it for accidentally being kind of good at parts.
That title is not a cheesy way to declare this my opinion on the movie. It is actually the question I will be pondering in this post. After watching it, I feel incredibly conflicted over how I feel about it. There were many parts that I really enjoyed, but there were also many parts that I did not like or found to be incredibly distasteful.
For full disclosure, this is my first Tarantino film. So if I sound like I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to him, it's because I don't. My biggest question for someone who perhaps knows him a bit better would be this: should I be taking this movie seriously? Or is the whole thing supposed to be a joke? Either way, I had issues with it, but it would help me figure out my final thoughts on it if I knew which one it was.
If it is all a joke (which I'm leaning towards), then my biggest issue was that some of the comedy was simply not funny. There was more than one time when I felt like the writers were trying to make the N-word funny (combining it with Hercules? Really?) and in general I found their use of the word to be generally distasteful. Now, I understand that people used to word back then so it's "historically accurate", but that doesn't cut it for me. If you're going to be gritty and realistic with a word as virulent as that, then you have to take what you're saying seriously. And this movie did not take that word seriously at all. Another issue I had with the film as a comedy was that it seemed to have this undertone, this hinting that this story would in some way become grand and epic, with deep meaning and an ending that had deep symbolizing, or at least deep SOMETHING. But it never did. It just kind of meandered around, with an extremely unnecessarily violent and bloody shootout, some gullible Australians and a very unsatisfying ending.
Now before it sounds like I'm hating too hard on it, there were many parts that I found extremely entertaining, and even some character arcs that I enjoyed, whether they were accidental or not. The bag scene perfectly toed the line between hysterical and offensive, and was probably one of the funniest scenes I had seen in a while. Also, the opposing character arcs of Dr. Schultz and Django was pretty interesting. Without spoiling too much, it was interesting to watch Dr. Schultz drop his facade and gain some humanity, while seeing Django put up a facade and lose his. Personally, I felt that this theme could have been explored much more, but I liked it nonetheless.
Ultimately, what I can say is that this movie has made me stop and think more than any movie I've seen since Fight Club, so in that sense I guess it's good, although I'm unwilling to admit that Tarantino meant for that to happen. Which I think sums up my feelings about the movie: any sort of depth or interesting symbols or themes seemed accidental and so I feel like I can't really praise it for accidentally being kind of good at parts.
Monday, February 4, 2013
Ew
It's amazing what some TV shows will do for viewers, especially in their fading years. I'm referring this time to American Idol, the show that once seemed to be a juggernaut of viewers but has recently seen a serious decline in viewership. Now, I'm not talking about their issues with judges, although that's been pretty ridiculous (and, I must admit, I really have a hard time taking Nicki Minaj seriously...). Instead, I'm talking about a segment they did as a parody of "Les Miserables", "The Miserables".
This segment featured reactions from people who didn't make it. There were many profanities, and the bird got flipped many times (both were censored by the American Idol symbol). I found this to be incredibly distasteful. These were people people who were genuinely crying, who very clearly desired some privacy to get over the denial of what was clearly one of their biggest dreams and this show was essentially mocking them. A large percentage of the people either explicitly said that they wished for this not to be aired, or made some sort of physical gesture that indicated that they wished not to be filmed, and yet the camera crew persisted in following them. It really makes me wonder what kind of people could possibly be the cameramen. As someone who enjoys his solitude when I'm upset, I know I would not feel at all comfortable filming people at what is possibly their lowest moment. The amount of empathy I would have those people would make it impossible for me to stand watching.
The worst part of this whole thing is that these people are most likely often the show's biggest fans, the ones that have followed the show from the beginning and have grown up with this dream of being on the show. And yet this show treats them like trash simply because they didn't live up to the show's standards. If I was someone who actually watched that show, I would have quit right then and there.
This segment featured reactions from people who didn't make it. There were many profanities, and the bird got flipped many times (both were censored by the American Idol symbol). I found this to be incredibly distasteful. These were people people who were genuinely crying, who very clearly desired some privacy to get over the denial of what was clearly one of their biggest dreams and this show was essentially mocking them. A large percentage of the people either explicitly said that they wished for this not to be aired, or made some sort of physical gesture that indicated that they wished not to be filmed, and yet the camera crew persisted in following them. It really makes me wonder what kind of people could possibly be the cameramen. As someone who enjoys his solitude when I'm upset, I know I would not feel at all comfortable filming people at what is possibly their lowest moment. The amount of empathy I would have those people would make it impossible for me to stand watching.
The worst part of this whole thing is that these people are most likely often the show's biggest fans, the ones that have followed the show from the beginning and have grown up with this dream of being on the show. And yet this show treats them like trash simply because they didn't live up to the show's standards. If I was someone who actually watched that show, I would have quit right then and there.
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