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Chazwozel
Wow, this is pretty fucking cool and it features the PussyWagon from Kill Bill
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Wow, this is pretty fucking cool and it features the PussyWagon from Kill Bill
She has some creative mother fuckers on her team, not to mention herself. That was pretty cool.
This is so awesome I can't say exactly why.
D
darkangel6988
Woooooow.....That just uh ...Wow lol ! I have no words for that.
Green_Lantern
Staff member
I wonder how many differents drugs you need to be on to think in something like that
I would love it if a gif were to surface of the bit that says "Let's Make a Sandwich"
I wonder how many differents drugs you need to be on to think in something like that
[/QUOTE]Just watch some Quentin Tarantino movies. Somebody involved in these videos was.
There's an interesting "review", from a feminist (among other things) perspective.
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archiv...ng-to-be-as-important-as-the-telephone-video/
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archiv...ng-to-be-as-important-as-the-telephone-video/
that article was entertaining.
That was interesting, but for all the wrong reasons. It read as if the author was one of the stuck up elitist morons that I used to take Philosophy classes with, except that the author is female, and also a feminist who (on an unrelated note) has no idea what she's talking about. Complaining about the race issue? Really? Now you're stretching pretty damn far.
yeah, I don't agree with most of what she says (even if I still find her style to be funny), but her text helped me in imagining a possible plot for the film I promised myself I would write based on this madness.
O
Occasional Poster
Wow, Prison for Bitches looks a lot more interesting than Wentworth Detention Centre.
While I don't necessarily agree with her on everything, I actually generally respect the author. Her writing style used to be a little more formal, but she gradually evolved in the weirdly loud yet conversational tone that she uses in the article. I enjoy that tone, but I'm not sure what I would think of her if that was first thing I read, since its a) targeted towards people who are already in a particular circle of thought, and b) with some frequency makes more effort to be funny than to be clear.
My experience with the people who consider people like her to be "elitist morons" is that those people haven't seriously looked at equality issues and either don't realize or don't care how complex they are. This video is definitely meant to be dissected intellectually on a level that few music videos are intended to be, and things like yellow Asian subtitles that I'd dismiss as a stupid gimmick in any other video are fair game to be analyzed for subtext.
She doesn't go out and say this video is terribly racist and sexist and bad, she says that it has a lot of interesting stuff going on and some of it makes for wortwhile messages that work decently and some of it isn't that well thought out and some of it sends messages that aren't that great, and overall I think that's a fair appraisal of the video.
My experience with the people who consider people like her to be "elitist morons" is that those people haven't seriously looked at equality issues and either don't realize or don't care how complex they are. This video is definitely meant to be dissected intellectually on a level that few music videos are intended to be, and things like yellow Asian subtitles that I'd dismiss as a stupid gimmick in any other video are fair game to be analyzed for subtext.
She doesn't go out and say this video is terribly racist and sexist and bad, she says that it has a lot of interesting stuff going on and some of it makes for wortwhile messages that work decently and some of it isn't that well thought out and some of it sends messages that aren't that great, and overall I think that's a fair appraisal of the video.
My problem is that she seemed to be stretching. I can respect some of her points, and even agree with her on a few, but it came off as trying too hard. Trying too hard to be funny, but also trying too hard to find problems/statements that might not really be there. And that's what loses it a lot of points in my mind.
Although, I will admit that equality issues interest me very little. I do believe in equality, don't get me wrong, but unless we're speaking in very general terms I don't care to get involved in the discourse.
Although, I will admit that equality issues interest me very little. I do believe in equality, don't get me wrong, but unless we're speaking in very general terms I don't care to get involved in the discourse.
I think a lot of her points seem like stretching because they assume that you've already dedicated a significant portion of your life to examining how media affects people and the equality thereof and are familiar with many arguments that are considered "basic" to feminism (and most equality studies) but haven't really entered general public consciousness (her target audience is people who are reading a feminist website, so I don't really blame her for that).
A lot of people (I have no idea what your background on the subject is so I'm not necessarily talking about you here) think racism and sexism ended in the 60s and everything should be fine now and what can't we just stop talking about all time? And I think that is unfortunate. But it's a complex subject and I don't blame people for not obsessively studying the subject because, hey, there's a lot of other interesting subjects out there. I do blame school systems for reinforcing that viewpoint - I think everyone should be required to take a unit of social studies that showcases how institutional discrimination works and how it can happen without anyone in particular disliking black people or women or whatever group you might be talking about. I didn't get that class until college, and even then if things had gone slightly differently I might have taken a different class.
EDIT: here's a particular post that I think does a good job of introducing some basic principles that form necessary groundwork for a lot of equality discussions. I don't know if this is old hat to you or not, but you might give it a look. All you really need to read is the first few paragraphs. I think, at a minimum, that anyone who ever intends to comment on a discussion about discrimination should read those first few paragraphs.
A lot of people (I have no idea what your background on the subject is so I'm not necessarily talking about you here) think racism and sexism ended in the 60s and everything should be fine now and what can't we just stop talking about all time? And I think that is unfortunate. But it's a complex subject and I don't blame people for not obsessively studying the subject because, hey, there's a lot of other interesting subjects out there. I do blame school systems for reinforcing that viewpoint - I think everyone should be required to take a unit of social studies that showcases how institutional discrimination works and how it can happen without anyone in particular disliking black people or women or whatever group you might be talking about. I didn't get that class until college, and even then if things had gone slightly differently I might have taken a different class.
EDIT: here's a particular post that I think does a good job of introducing some basic principles that form necessary groundwork for a lot of equality discussions. I don't know if this is old hat to you or not, but you might give it a look. All you really need to read is the first few paragraphs. I think, at a minimum, that anyone who ever intends to comment on a discussion about discrimination should read those first few paragraphs.
ElJuski
Staff member
Here's my problem: any of her legitimate points get bogged down in really stupid insults. Yes, the first line in the song is stupid...it's about a dude calling her at the club. And yes, there is a silly line about hamburgers. She can analyze things from a feminist perspective, but can't read it from an authorial perspective...she's missing out a lot of the craft that's going on, just the feminist aesthetic. Which, when dealing with a piece of art, I think it's important to try and figure out the author angle, too.
I hesitate to say that any study or discipline might be frivolous, seeing as I am a Philosophy Major on 'extended sabbatical.' But my gut feeling about all of this is that reading issues of inequality into a humorous subtitle (for example) in a music video is taking things to an extreme. I've been following a lot of the stuff surrounding the The Last Airbender movie, and the race problems that have surrounded that, so I'm not entirely insensitive to the issues of race in the media.
That said, addressing the language of that subtitle does not come off as studying a subtlety. Questioning the joke seems to imply that there is a same-ness that should have been enforced. I realize that at the core, every human being is equal, and in many ways the same. But there are cultural and racial differences that cannot be ignored. The writer of the post said something along the lines of "It doesn't mean that you're not a racist if you ignore racism." Similarly, I would say that ignoring cultural and racial differences does not automatically make you tolerant. In fact, I feel like that's a step in the wrong direction.
The joke in that scene was that various facial expressions were explicitly rendered by subtitles. That's silly, to be sure. But when one of the patrons' subtitles is in another language, it becomes funnier because then the medium is acknowledging the ridiculousness of the subtitles as well. The problem is that I don't feel like the joke would have worked nearly as well with any other race. If the person was white and the subtitle German, it would have been a bit confusing. If the person was black, and the subtitle Swahili, it would have been a bit confusing still, but with an added subtext. With the Asian girl, it's less confusing because the subtitle is unreadable, and instantly recognizable as something from the Far East. The subtext of other-ness is still there with the Asian girl, but it's less of a sore spot than it would have been with a black patron, and funnier anyhow.
I won't assault you with a wall of text, but to put it shortly, I think the reason I'm disinterested is because of my upbringing. There was exactly one black kid in my graduating class. I think he was the only one who wasn't white, but there might have been a Korean exchange student. I don't recall exactly the demographics of the school. Here, 99% of the people here are descended from immigrants from the British Isles. There was no slavery, and most of the indigenous population was killed off by disease, competition of resources, and a few hostile meetings. By the time big immigration began to pick up at all, Newfoundland, and the world, had seen the ugly face of racism far too much.
The prevailing attitude that I've noticed is as follows: If they're black, but just like you, that's pretty neat. If they're Asian, and speak with an accent, and don't quite fit the culture exactly, that's something to be excited and interested about. Here, a person of another race is a curiosity at most. Never something to be feared, judged, or hated.
And after considering all that, perhaps that's as good a reason as any for me not to try and speak too boldly about race issues in America. I don't have the same experience as many Americans. I've got a different perspective, which I would like to share, but maybe I could be a little bit more sensitive to those who are trying to go through videos like this with a fine-tooth comb. The US (and even Canada) has a history that means that level of detail might be important.
That said, addressing the language of that subtitle does not come off as studying a subtlety. Questioning the joke seems to imply that there is a same-ness that should have been enforced. I realize that at the core, every human being is equal, and in many ways the same. But there are cultural and racial differences that cannot be ignored. The writer of the post said something along the lines of "It doesn't mean that you're not a racist if you ignore racism." Similarly, I would say that ignoring cultural and racial differences does not automatically make you tolerant. In fact, I feel like that's a step in the wrong direction.
The joke in that scene was that various facial expressions were explicitly rendered by subtitles. That's silly, to be sure. But when one of the patrons' subtitles is in another language, it becomes funnier because then the medium is acknowledging the ridiculousness of the subtitles as well. The problem is that I don't feel like the joke would have worked nearly as well with any other race. If the person was white and the subtitle German, it would have been a bit confusing. If the person was black, and the subtitle Swahili, it would have been a bit confusing still, but with an added subtext. With the Asian girl, it's less confusing because the subtitle is unreadable, and instantly recognizable as something from the Far East. The subtext of other-ness is still there with the Asian girl, but it's less of a sore spot than it would have been with a black patron, and funnier anyhow.
I won't assault you with a wall of text, but to put it shortly, I think the reason I'm disinterested is because of my upbringing. There was exactly one black kid in my graduating class. I think he was the only one who wasn't white, but there might have been a Korean exchange student. I don't recall exactly the demographics of the school. Here, 99% of the people here are descended from immigrants from the British Isles. There was no slavery, and most of the indigenous population was killed off by disease, competition of resources, and a few hostile meetings. By the time big immigration began to pick up at all, Newfoundland, and the world, had seen the ugly face of racism far too much.
The prevailing attitude that I've noticed is as follows: If they're black, but just like you, that's pretty neat. If they're Asian, and speak with an accent, and don't quite fit the culture exactly, that's something to be excited and interested about. Here, a person of another race is a curiosity at most. Never something to be feared, judged, or hated.
And after considering all that, perhaps that's as good a reason as any for me not to try and speak too boldly about race issues in America. I don't have the same experience as many Americans. I've got a different perspective, which I would like to share, but maybe I could be a little bit more sensitive to those who are trying to go through videos like this with a fine-tooth comb. The US (and even Canada) has a history that means that level of detail might be important.
I think your interpretation of the subtitle issue may be valid. I just watched it again... not really sure what I think. What I'm leaning towards is that the video as a whole may or may not have some racist undertones, but that it's largely irrelevant because it's more about sexuality than race. I think Gaga (or whoever put the video together - I'm not positive to what degree Lady Gaga actually has creative control over her work) is aware enough of race issues that she included a variety of ethnic groups so that she was at least not guilty of Avatar style whitewashing, but focused most of her effort on the sexuality messages.
There's a whole lot of ways you can underrepresent or misrepresent various groups in mass media, and the problems do not come from individual productions but from the collective trends throughout media as a whole. (If Hollywood didn't have a tendency to make white people the main characters of every feature film that wasn't explicitly an "ethnic" film, the fact they did so in The Last Airbender wouldn't be nearly as big a problem). It's not possible for any given story to treat every single minority group with equal respect, and that's okay. I think Sady (the author of the blog piece) is correct in that the video is a little careless when it comes to race, but I don't think that's that bad a thing.
There's a whole lot of ways you can underrepresent or misrepresent various groups in mass media, and the problems do not come from individual productions but from the collective trends throughout media as a whole. (If Hollywood didn't have a tendency to make white people the main characters of every feature film that wasn't explicitly an "ethnic" film, the fact they did so in The Last Airbender wouldn't be nearly as big a problem). It's not possible for any given story to treat every single minority group with equal respect, and that's okay. I think Sady (the author of the blog piece) is correct in that the video is a little careless when it comes to race, but I don't think that's that bad a thing.
The thing here (and this isn't something I can really prove, I just read it differently) is that the author alternates between making serious points and just being (or trying to be) funny, and sometimes is doing both at the same time, and she doesn't make any special effort to tell you which is which. I've read enough of her other work that I *think* have a decent grasp on her sense of humor (and for the most part I do think she's pretty funny). When she's complaining about how we're talking about hamburgers instead of telephones, I'm pretty positive that she's not offering a Serious Critique of a Major Failing of the Video, she's just making fun of the video for being pretty ridiculous in general (which it is).
ElJuski
Staff member
Serious or snarky, it definitely undermines the quality of her post. She's not funny there, and it looks like she doesn't understand that she's dealing with Gaga. I don't feel like bothering excising all that garbage, either, to get to the actual intellectual stuff that she was trying to say. Which reflects, again, on my old post about her editing it up a notch.
Well, as I noted, I DID find her funny. And there's the point where she says:
I think she's aware that she looks at Lady Gaga in a way that is different from the way most people look at Lady Gaga and, to some extent, how Lady Gaga sees herself, and she's aware of how silly the whole thing can get.
I don't think this is the be-all-end-all analysis of the Telephone video, but I enjoyed the entire review and I don't think there was anything fundamentally wrong with the way she went about it. It's certainly not going to be appreciated by everyone, but then neither is Lady Gaga.
She was right on the sandwiches to telephones ratio, though.
ElJuski
Staff member
Well at that point you're just defending her because of subjective taste, and I can't deny you that, dogg.
I don't think there was really anything at issue there other than subjective taste, so there's not much else to defend. I do acknowledge that if she focused solely on the analysis the article would be more universally appealing, but I think Gaga's performance art in general is so outlandish that a drab "academic" paper discussing it would be somewhat of a disservice. Meanwhile, if Sady's style of humor matched yours more I don't think you'd have had an issue in the first place.
Green_Lantern
Staff member
The dinner in the second half of the video was used as a gay porn set in the past.
just wanted to share this with the forum
just wanted to share this with the forum
ElJuski
Staff member
Right. Her style of humor is petty, childish, and missing-the-point. Her academic points are sorely at a loss because of her obvious disconnect.
---------- Post added at 12:59 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:58 AM ----------
Also dear god that "redemption" is fucking painful
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Chazwozel
Why are all "redemption" songs always done by hipster morons?
ElJuski
Staff member
OOH OOH PICK ME PICK ME!
It's because they're all pissed off nobody's giving them money hand over fist to make music. So they sit in their boheme apartments making shitty music hoping to cash in on the indie scene someday and finally be cool.
Also, so people on the internet go "WHOAH DAT CHICK IS HAWT"
Well, I liked that cover, but I would have never called it a "redemption".
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