Hey folks. Awhile ago there was a video that was banned on YouTube. It was the music video for the Staten-Island based MC, NY Oil, for his song "Y'all Should get lynched". The song and music video criticizes mainstream rappers who have "sold out". The video takes images of these artists, like 50 Cent, Foxy Brown, (and later condoleezza rice) etc. and juxtapose them with old "coon" and sambo imagery, as well as photos of lynched black men. I was curious what other people thought of this.

Here's a link to view the video: http://www.unkut.com/2006/10/lynched-video-banned-by-youtube/.

I have mixed feelings myself. On one hand, I agree with what his criticisms are, however I'm not sure if I agree with how he goes about it. Lynching is a very powerfully violent image to provoke. Also, there's a section of the song where he talks about women, and how they're disrespecting themselves by shaking their asses. He has a line that says (to an extent cuz i'm doing it by memory) "with your tits popping out...bitch ass hos get pimped, not treated special", and then that is followed by clips from a porn where a black woman is being raped by a white men. It felt like he was saying that women who choose to dress or act a certain way, deserve the assaultive treatment they get. in the end, he reproduces a lot of the misogynist and homophobic aspects of mainstream rap, though he challenges an essentialized notion of blackness, he does so by creating another.

While listening to Metallica, I had a thought. As is often the case when I am listening to Metallica, I was catching up on my world affairs. By this I mean that I was buried in a Newsweek, able to escape only for second at a time to check people's away messages.
As I was reading, I came across two articles on the Michael Richards incident, which is being referred to in the media concisely as "the rant." Anyways, I had already posted in the blog about this rant right after it happened and I was, as was much of right-thinking America, very critical of the guy who plays Kramer.
Anyways, one of the articles was about Michael Richards' recent 'apology tour' as it is being called by many. The article was not just about his apology, but about the utter slough of celebrity apologies for various deplorable shit that they've done lately. From Senator Foley to Mel Gibson, to Kramer himself, celebrity apologies are everywhere. However, in Kramer's case, his offense was caught on camera, which sucks for him. Anyways, the article, which I won't try to summarize made the point that it isn't a positive thing that Richards said these things, but it is a positive thing that there has been such a public outcry, and he feels the need to go on an apology tour.

Blogging is kind of like that time in a conversation with a vague acquaintance when you still have two more blocks to walk together and you’re searching for anything interesting to bring up. Except since the whole class is presumably reading these, it’s like walking with 25 vague acquaintances. So gather ‘round, here is my interesting tidbit for today:

The Michael Richards stuff is pretty sad, and generally I haven’t been seeking out articles about it because it all seems self-evident given the basic run-down of what happened. But the title of this article (same as the title of this post, at least in the physical LA Times) caught my attention.

I just watched the you tube video of Michael Richards (Kramer) from last Friday in LA. He is really quite out of control. I somehow don’t really feel like this is going to end his comedy routine though. These comedians seemed to be easily forgiven because of the nature of their profession. Clearly he comes off as being exceptionally racist here, but he also seems to be pushing the limits of what comedy routines often do. That is, taking a specific group and making them the butt of a joke.
This particular rant doesn’t have the soft humor and sarcasm of racial jokes. It is Michael, losing control fully exercising his racist demons. The content however could be near to the same, said in a different manner, and taken with a laugh. This made me think about the boundary that comedians play on. I think that some people blogged about this in relation to Borat. (By the way my friends Grandma went to see this not knowing what it was and said to my friend, I quote, “I guess that is really what it is like in their country”.) Perhaps the Kazaki’s do have reason for concern. The Grandma’s of the world are all going to pass judgment.

Speaking of rants, and terrible shit being caught on camera and put on Youtube, this post is about a hybrid of those two things. I'm assuming some people have seen the clip of Michael Richards performing at the Laugh Factory last friday.

Well, for those who haven't and don't know, Michael Richards is the actor who played Kramer in the show "Seinfeld." Now he is in his late 50s, performing stand-up comedy, and is a huge racist apparently. Obviously until now, he was a closet racist, but just last weekend, he came sprinting out of that closet.

Here it is. sorry i don't know how to do hyperlinks yet...

Everyone seems to be talking about House of Leaves right now, and a lot of you have really interesting things to say, but the book messes with my head too much for me to have anything intelligent to say about it, so for the moment I will discuss something else entirely...

I have Net Flix and lately I haven't had time for movies, I mean since when do I actually have over an hour of concurrent free time that isn't sleep? So instead I've been getting lots of TV shows from them. The problem is I've burned through most of the Simpsons and all of the Futurama that they have, plus a couple of crazy anime series (Serial Experiments Lain fucked with my head in a way similar to House of Leaves), so I'm beginning to look more at live action TV series. I tried Sex and the City, can't stand it. Desperate Housewives was even worse. I hate cop/law dramas, so that counts a lot out, and unlike most people I know I hate both Seinfeld and Friends. I've been told I should try Monk and House MD, I've seen a few episodes randomly and they seem promising. But that's beside the point. Anyway, last night was one of my biggest strikeouts yet. I took Net Flix and a couple of my friends up on their suggestion that I try Weeds, thinking, "oh this will be fun, light-hearted, maybe even a little counter cultural”. I made it through the first episode, put it back in its mailer and sent it back, the worst run of any series yet. I mean no offense to anyone who likes Weeds or any of the other of the aforementioned TV shows. Many people that I like and respect like at least one, if not more of them, I'm just really picky about TV. But I mean really!

So... as we all begin to turmoil over the horrible 't' word, I just thought I'd lay out my general idea and see if anyone had feedback/ideas/criticisms, etc.

Basically, I took this Hip Hop Culture class while I was abroad in New Zealand. Seeing as hip hop culture has its roots in the United States, it was interesting to study it outside of the US (although my prof was American) and the class actually focused on tying in the abundant use of rap music in the Maori community in New Zealand and other marginalized groups across the globe. This inspired me. So I want to write about international hip hop on the small scale, i.e. how individuals outside the US use hip hop as a form of voice to speak out against oppression in their individual communities. I'm debating whether I tie this in with the early stages of US hip hop, before it was a mainstream commodity and most rappers used hip hop to communicate within their communities and speak out about their daily experiences and oppressions.

Both authors brought up the issue of language as a stumbling block in the participation of non-mainstream groups in the mainstream of intelligentsia. As someone who's grown up surrounded by academics (I'd say a good 1/3 of my family, extended and otherwise, are professors), this is not something that I ever realized was a problem, as academic-speak comes almost more naturally to me than that Spanish I took for four or five years.

As someone who would probably be considered a member of both oppressed groups that we are considering this week (as a woman, and as a "racial minority"), I have to wonder what the solution to the problem of the dominant academic language being sourced from a different "culture" would look like. As Bell Hooks discusses it, it makes perfect sense--black youth choose not (or perhaps cannot) to participate as heavily in what might be considered "high culture" or "academic" cultural pursuits simply because these activities, as we perceive them in the wider Western culture, simply have no bearing on their cultural experience... they are not framed in a "language" or set of conceptual building blocks which they can consider their own, and therefore a language they feel they cannot adequately express themselves in.

I have to say there is one thing I didn't particularly like about the readings for this week. This "thing" is that these articles open up whole other cans of worms than what we, as a class focusing specifically on authorship, are able to deal with.

There are so many side issues dealing with, for example, what exactly is feminism? why does it exist? what about the continuing issues of racism as a hegemonic imbalance of power, as Bell Hooks deals with? I find it problematic that (despite the fact that I, as someone who personally finds these issues relevant and therefore has some background in these things) we're given these readings and left to just take at the author's word that these issues are real, and exist exactly as they are described.