The Hathor Legacy » Other Media

A Thursday Interruption: FEFE DOBSON’S BACK! THE BLACK KIDS RULE! Also: Metric and a Question

Maria — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 07:14:32 +0000

FIRST of all, Tiye Phoenix has come out with a new single that touches on her comments about Nicki Minaj. It’s frikking amazing.

OMFG “Ghost” might have just made me cream my pants, even though I don’t like her bangs, what’s WITH them?

:high-fives:

Some good techno. <3

Okay, so Cee Lo’s anti-gold-digger song?

Sexist. But, here’s a great response to it.

Oh, and an intern from NPR has come out of the closet as having diverse musical tastes that includes the mainstream.

FINALLY, MC’s got a question they want your smartypants help with:

I’m not sure what to make of this music video. A generic love song or the proof that some men dream of a woman who will rescue them?

Here’s the video in question.

Thoughts, dear readers?

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Corpse women in advertising

Jennifer Kesler — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 16:22:31 +0000

It’s been around since I was a child: images of dead women in advertisements for women’s products. Echidne of the Snakes has an article about the latest round of these ads:

The less extreme fashion pictures often borrow similar imagery. The models lie on the floor, staring up with empty eyes and swollen lips. Their legs and arms never look comfortable, but like those of a broken doll or of someone who just got driven over by a car. If the models are upright, they often totter about as if ready to fall over any minute, revealing those same empty eyes and swollen lips. Nothing can be written on those faces, nothing. They just are.

Read the whole article. She discusses how we’re always told these images are edgy and artistic, but asks what’s new and ground-breaking about dead women? Indeed. What’s new or edgy about dead, brutalized women, left to rot alongside the road? What’s edgy about something we see several times a week on fiction shows like Criminal Minds and non-fiction shows about serial killers?

Death isn’t edgy. If it was, we’d see dead men in advertisements too. Maybe we’d even see non-modelesque dead women in ads. In fact, it’s not even murder that’s the edgy factor here.

No, it’s specifically the image of the murdered beauty queen that is some kind of cultural icon to – I think specifically – the United States. I don’t quite understand why. Maybe it’s just the perfect realization of the feminine passivity this macho culture feels entitled to expect from us. Maybe it embodies the hopelessness women sometimes feel, the bone weariness that sinks in as we realize all our putting up with privileged male bullshit hasn’t gotten us anywhere and never will. I don’t get it.

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A Thursday Interruption: Billy Collins! NATURAL WOMAN! Some classical, IDK.

Maria — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 07:01:47 +0000

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVu4Me_n91Y

OMG I love how into the poem he gets!!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtYfs4NlQWM

<3 Oh, Joseph Gordon-Levitt. <3 Covers can be such fun.

HERE ARE TWO MORE COVERS OMG.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo_BadXTA54

A classical cover of “Poker Face”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UlJ69byR3w

And one of “Rude Boy!”

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Midweek Media: an anti-rape campaign that focuses on men

Jennifer Kesler — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:11:33 +0000

BitterBuffalo has found an anti-rape campaign that focuses on what men can do to prevent rape. This should be the norm, but instead most campaigns focus on what women can do to avoid rape, which is sick not only because it puts the responsibility on the targets of crime rather than the criminals, but also because when criminals are denied one target, they just move onto another. So there is worse than no point in advising the targets of crime on avoidance.

This campaign from MenCanStopRape.org is different:

It shows four couples. Above each couple is the slogan “My strength is not for hurting.” At the bottom is the slogan “Men can stop rape.” In all the images, the men look directly into the camera while the women look off to the side.

The first couple is a young Asian man and woman. It says, “So when she changed her mind, I stopped.” The second couple is a young white man and woman with dark hair. It says, “So when she was drunk, I backed off.” The third couple is a young man of color and a white man, and it says, “So when I wanted to and he didn’t, we didn’t.” The fourth a final couple is a young white blond man and woman, and it says, “So when I paid for our date, she didn’t owe me.”

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Why did the mean admin not post my comment?

Jennifer Kesler — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 18:18:47 +0000

Here’s a newsflash: if you are overflowing with male privilege and don’t realize it, you’ll have some trouble getting your comments through moderation. Why? Because your rights are not more important than the rights of all our other readers, and I won’t tolerate your offending them with your bullshit just because you have been assured all your life that your bullshit doesn’t smell. It does. You have been lied to. Let’s look at an example.

In a recent post about The Tubes’ video “She’s a Beauty”, I mentioned that I considered the only black woman in the video being cast as a cave woman to be a bit of a race fail. One commenter, Janbo, made a thoughtful point about how it could be more a comment on race than a race fail. This gave me pause – Janbo is right. It certainly could be viewed that way, and I don’t doubt that was the band’s intention, so perhaps it’s not a fail. Note that Janbo disagreed with me and not only did I post her comment, but I acknowledged her viewpoint as perfectly valid. I mention this because: what do guys with bruised male privilege always tell us? Say it with me, class: you’re censoring comments you don’t agree with, you horrid person.

Next up we have Christopher, a white guy. What’s about the second thing Christopher says? He assures us that he is not offended by the black cave woman. Yeah? That’s about as relevant as a Democrat saying, “I wasn’t offended when someone said all Republicans were child-molesting, baby-barbecuing serial killers.” I mean, I wasn’t “offended” by the black cave woman, either – I’m a white woman, so her presentation affects no one’s view of me. I was thinking critically about how that character might impact the perception of black woman. Janbo had thought critically, too, and found another way to look at it. Christopher just offered his own white male viewpoint, apparently assuming we would find it relevant and valuable because…?

In Christopher’s defense, he like everyone else has been told all his life that the white male viewpoint is the default. It’s the one that matters. No one really needs to look at things from any other viewpoint. But the whole point of equality activism is to challenge that idea. We folks-other-than-white-men are asserting that our viewpoints matter, too. And sometimes they’re a lot more relevant.

Anyway, I actually let that comment through because I wanted to address the male privilege in it. It was the next comment I didn’t allow. First, some background: the rest of his original comment had interpreted the video as warning men against “high maintenance” women. In my response, I linked him to the article in which I explain that high maintenance is a sexist term I never want to hear again. Does Christopher read that article? I see no sign he did in his response, which is the comment I deleted:

People use the term “high maintenance” to describe certain women for one reason- because they are.

Obvious total failure to engage with the point of my article. Clearly, he’s too special to acknowledge my points, but I should listen to him. Wonder why he would think that?

Women use this same term to describe certain men and to describe other women. Men also use the term to describe other men. It’s not a gender specific term, and not one exclusively used my men.

Quite a reach. I know a few scattered people use it this way, but can anyone produce 6 TV show references to a man being “high maintenance”? That aren’t jokes? It absolutely is a gendered term in pop culture, and our comment guidelines clearly ban the use of gendered terms. Again, the rules don’t apply to Christopher!

These are the folks who may be out with you, but still have one eye on the door; or as Carly Simon lamented “one eye in the mirror.”

And we -men and women- tend to fall at least once for these types. They’re beautiful and seductive; they attract the attention of others. They can have anyone they want, for as long as they want, and they carry themselves as such. They’re fascinating, and we feel more powerful and beautiful just being in their presence.

Oh, yes, they are. Except, no, wait. I find them repulsive! Despite Christopher’s categorical statement that these people are all this stuff, period, I’ve always found them pitiful because I knew deep down, they were just deeply insecure. I never felt more powerful and beautiful in their presence, because I have always felt pretty damn powerful and, in my own way, beautiful. I never found these people fascinating because insecurity is very boring.

The song “She’s A Beauty” articulates these feelings quite well. Human insecurity draws us to seek acceptance from those more beautiful; and it’s a dangerous trap for both males and females. Notice the expressionless face of the dominatrix which seems to say “I turn you on without putting out any effort. It’s all just a sell, and you’re just another sucker in the game.” Fee Waybill is simply advising us all not to fall victim to the vanity which is beauty.

Once again, opinion stated as fact – another no-no in our comment policy. Christopher doesn’t know what Fee Waybill’s intent behind the lyrics is anymore than I do, but he feels entitled to speak as if he does: that’s male privilege for you. It shouldn’t exist.

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A Thursday Interruption: Aaliyah! Be Alone! Fight like a Girl! RAY BRADBURY! The Bed Intruder

Maria — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 07:27:56 +0000

First, Aaliyah…

RIP

From the Other Patrick:

From MC:

“Just stand and be strong and fight like a girl…”

NSFW, peeps, NSFW. A lusty ode to Ray Bradbury.

IN CONCLUSION: “Bed Intruder” rant earns family a new home.

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A Thursday Interruption: Nikki and Rich, Tracy Bonham, Kaki King

Maria — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 07:57:35 +0000

Seriously — it’s time to ROCK OUT.

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Midweek Media: The Tubes “She’s a Beauty”

Jennifer Kesler — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 15:15:10 +0000

In the early 80s, The Tubes released “She’s a Beauty” (lyrics here), a song in which a man is selling other men time to look at and talk to a beautiful woman through glass. The customer is promised a look inside “another world” in which “you can talk to a pretty girl.” He’s admonished not to “touch the merchandise”, but reassured he will get “every penny’s worth” but “it will cost you a dollar first.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQ_k_VG6Syc

I’m leaving out some irrelevant visuals for this.

The video begins with a shot of a wall painted to say “Ride the Beauty” in old-fashioned carnival lettering. The camera pans and we see the rest of the mural: a woman in a bikini and high heels, holding a bar like water-skiers use to be pulled along behind the boat. The camera eventually shows us her face: it’s absolutely emotionless.

A crowd mills outside a tent. Fee Waybill steps through the tent flap, dressed as a carnival showman, and sings the first verse of the song to us. He moves to the other end of the wall, and a little cart moves along a track and through a tent flap. The cart contains a woman with a hood over her head and a very long dark gray pony tail sticking straight up and out from it,and a smaller person, perhaps a child. The woman stiffly lowers a bar into place in front of the smaller person, the way a safety bar is lowered to hold people in on a roller coaster ride. We see them from behind at this point.

Now we see them riding along from the front. It’s an excited white boy bouncing in the lap of a mature white woman (yeah, really) dressed as a dominatrix -- black hood, silver mask, black gloves, a black corset. She is expressionless and robotic. She turns to the camera once, and the movement is stiff. Her eyes never blink. She pulls the bar in against the boy’s chest, forcing him back against her, and the cart lurches to a faster speed.

Two white women appear, dancing in sync in silver leotards, until the dom’s cart drives between them. The band appears and performs for the boy in the cart, who is still happily bouncing/dancing in the dom’s lap. The band performs for a while. Then the dom drives the cart through a huge upturned drum skin.

We see a little white girl with frizzy reddish hair in a pink tutu dancing ballet. She turns and the camera moves to a trapeze artist who looks like this girl as a young woman. She’s in a sparkly silver leotard. The dom drives the cart past all this and through some huge stage speakers.

They enter a place with a big cage and several cave women with frizzed hair and wearing skins. The featured woman here is black: the others are white. The boy is clearly scared as the women encroach on them -- even when they do so from inside their cage. He tries to get away, but the dom holds him relentlessly in place with that bar. These women have a more sexualized dance style than others we’ve seen. The lyric “step outside your world” accompanies the black cave woman opening the door to her cage and stepping outside, after the dom and the boy have driven on.

Next we see a white woman in a green mermaid costume languishing on a platform, running one hand over her costume. She sees the camera and glares directly at is (us) briefly, then goes back to her languishing.

Cut to a rather suggestive shot of the trapeze artist’s backside as she performs. This transitions into an image of her spinning rapidly from a strap under the back of her head.

The dom drives the boy out of the carnival, and we see now that he’s an old, withered, frightened-looking man.

This video has some problematic aspects -- for example, the main cave woman being black is a race fail, I think -- but I do believe it might be making a point: consumption consumes the consumer. What do you think?

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A Thursday Interruption: Patsy Cline! Styx! Ruth Brown!

Maria — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 07:06:05 +0000

A blast from the past from Patsy Cline. “I’ve got your memory… or has it got me?”

THEY FINALLY FOUND ME.

Ruth Brown!

and… GOT TO BE REAL.

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A Thursday Interruption: FC Kahuna, Maluca, Cleopatra, Tight Pants, and a Hula Hooping Queen!

Maria — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 07:08:50 +0000

Featuring a piano and a menacing machine!

IN CONCLUSION: Cleopatra. Comin’ atcha.

ADDENDUM ONE:

HIGH KICKS HIGH KICKS WATCH MY WATCH MY BODY ROLL.

ADDENDUM TWO:

No, seriously, WATCH MY BODY ROLL.

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