thread for random crit theory bloggers discussing pop music

The aural sign of 50 Cent – his lyrics and vocals – consists of stories of drug dealing, violence and gun play that would seem just as hyperreal to the album’s intended audience (Perkins calls it “white-bread America”) as Disneyland. It should be noted that 50 Cent’s intended audience is largely the same as Disneyland’s – middle class white America – and the purpose of both is the same; to convince people of the “fiction of the real.
— Me. I came across this old paper from 2004 (shit!) on 50 Cent and Baudrillard. KEEPING IT UNDERGRAD!

(that is a quote btw)

Consider that all images of Björk and Acker are remixes of remixes, and that the artists function mainly as conduits for cultural application of identity; thus, the images are points of struggle, manifestations of Donna J. Haraway’s “cyborg” model, particularly of her second “leaky distinction” between the human/animal organism and the technological construct, where “machines have made thoroughly ambiguous the difference between natural and artificial, mind and body, self-developing and externally designed, and many other distinctions that used to apply to organisms and machines. Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert”

It is enough for us to say that dubstep artists is only a name for musical components of the subject “dubstep music,” in such a way that the genius of openings (the thematic continuities of arrhythmia) and that of points (the temporal discontinuities of sampling) are both incorporated into the same subject. Without at least this, it couldn’t be proven that the dubstep-event was really a caesura in the world of “dance music at the end of the 20th century,” because its consequences could have been too narrow or incapable of treating difficult strategic points with success. The local antinomy, internal to the subject, of dubstep constitutes the essential proof of dubstep just as in the case of the subject that Charles Rosen has named the “classical style,” the names “Mozart” and “Beethoven” prove with a quasi-mathematical rigor that what drew itself inaugurally under the name “Haydn” was an event.

next level

real badiou, rmxd?

At the beginning of "Get Me Bodied", Beyonce announces a cryptic set of numbers amid some seriously spacey-sounding reverb: "9... 4... 8... 1." Ominous pause. "... B Day." Now, as it turns out, this set of numbers refers to the day of Beyonce's birth: the 4th of September, 1981. This, it would seem, is her birthday - literally, birth-day, the day of her birth, her B Day. So perhaps what the phrase 'get me bodied' refers to is the incarnation of the godly power of Beyonce in the form of flesh. Previously she'd been just an immanent force in the universe, but what the B Day marks is the becoming-flesh of Beyonce, her getting a body.

omg why r u doing this why am i clicking this

If, as Baudrillard and Korn seem to be saying, everything is a duplication of something else, then perhaps everything is postmodern, in which case nothing is really postmodern except for the entire gestalt of our world. If the "post" in postmodern signifies novelty, and everything is postmodern, then perhaps novelty is not possible, perhaps nothing can ever again be "new."

Durst continues to scream "BACK! BACK! BACK! BACK! BACK! BRING! THAT! FUCKING! BEAT! BACK! BACK! YOU SUCKER! FUCKING SUCKER!" until a bandmate intercedes, yelling "Fred, shut up, alright? This is me telling you to shut up! Shut up! Shut—FRED, SHUT THE FUCK UP!" The manner in which Durst's screaming continues beyond the end of the song, and actually works against the song as his band mate must silence him, illustrates the paradox inherent in the use of linguistic excess by new metal vocalists. Out of a desire to break free of the bonds of languages which new metal vocalists feel are assimilating them, they strive to use their own languages or use language in their own way. "Pollution" demonstrates that, despite helping to create a sense of originality and authenticity, these efforts produce utterances that forge no meaningful connection with their surroundings.

just raised the game itt

'then perhaps novelty is not possible, perhaps nothing can ever again be "new."'

huh? korn already disproved this by introducing bagpipes into headbanger vernacular.

now i have this mental image of baudrillard and korn sitting at a senate hearing, conferring for a moment, and asserting those things

"so you're alleging that novelty is not possible?"
whisper whisper whisper
"yes, senator, that is our current position"
etc.

http://i.imgur.com/ybRb3.jpg

"Deftones' Chino Moreno and Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst, as well as Jonathan Davis, increase the ferality of their performance by using emotive elements such as squeals, moans, whimpers, sobs, and bodily elements such as pants, snarls, and sounds of the throat, teeth, tongue, and lips. Here, "[t]he body in the voice, or embodied voice, is celebrated for exceeding rational meaning through a tactile 'grain' and jouissance (in Roland Barthes' terms) or a corporeal signifiance (as Julia Kristeva puts it)" (Nehring 131). These elements make the music far less rational-sounding than previous emotive angry music, and are indicative of an increased confusion induced by postmodernity."

as Baudrillard and Korn seem to be saying,
as Baudrillard and Korn seem to be saying,
as Baudrillard and Korn seem to be saying,
as Baudrillard and Korn seem to be saying,
as Baudrillard and Korn seem to be saying,
as Baudrillard and Korn seem to be saying,
as Baudrillard and Korn seem to be saying,
as Baudrillard and Korn seem to be saying,
as Baudrillard and Korn seem to be saying,
as Baudrillard and Korn seem to be saying,
as Baudrillard and Korn seem to be saying,
as Baudrillard and Korn seem to be saying,
as Baudrillard and Korn seem to be saying,

big theodor wiesengrund

taxonomy of bigness finally exceeds my intellectual grasp.

i could maybe potentially copy and paste some stuff from my masters dissertation here, but i think just putting myself in this context would amount to some kind of emotional suicide.

When doing a crit theory honours thesis and then masters thesis I considered tackling pop culture but immediately saw in my mind's eye my future self pointing and laughing.

now i have this mental image of baudrillard and korn sitting at a senate hearing, conferring for a moment, and asserting those things

"so you're alleging that novelty is not possible?"
whisper whisper whisper
"yes, senator, that is our current position"
etc.

― oɔsıqɐu (nabisco), Friday, February 11, 2011 8:46 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

that one deserves linking for posterity

http://postmoderndays.blogspot.com/2005/04/postmodernism-simulacra-and-new-heavy.html

We find here a characteristic logic, the peculiar logic of the "inside
out" (‡ l'envers), of the "turnabout,", of a continual shifting from top to
bottom, from front to rear, of numerous parodies and travesties,
humili- actions, profanations, comic crownings and uncrownings. Mikhail Bakhtin

I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer.
It's permitting life to use you in a very intense way.
Sometimes it is not pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful.
But nevertheless it is inevitable. Martha Graham

Can you meet me halfway, right at the borderline?
That's where I am gonne wait for you
I'll be lookin' out night and day
Took my heart to the limit, and this is where I stay. Black Eyed Peas, Meet me Halfway

Meudon, 1912: Serge Diaghilev, impresario of Ballets Russes, in a rage enters the splendid villa on the outskirts of Paris, with one intention: to disturb and forever end the events unfolding in the villa's surrounding garden. Here, he knew he would find his lover, the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, almost naked, dancing in the dubious private audience of Auguste Rodin. Diaghilev’s infamous jealousy, history books inform us today, is the reason that only one 19 cm large draft of the bronze sculpture was delivered to posterity. A second, more apocryphal version of the affair, emerged 76 years later in the publication of Jean Cocteau's diaries. "The statues ended", the diary states, when Nijinsky in his second meeting with the artist, "turns around and Rodin, fly open, is masturbating.”

The Rodin-Nijinsky connection offers yet a third narrative regarding the relation of desire and art: This time evolving around the sculptor's relentless, aesthetic quest for sculptural movement and the dancer's goal to make movement sculptural. This is another story of desire, straining and bending boundaries along the lines of their reciprocal becoming, desiring to possess each other, be like one another, and exploring of the body as tool to unravel the energy, passion and ecstasy common to human experience.

The religious motif is notable in both Mariah Carey and George Clinton – even if in one case it revolves around blind faith (faith in the DJ and in ‘a song’ – in the sirenic seduction of art), in the other around scientific knowledge (which, however, is put to the procreative purposes of a sex machine). This religious tonality is not unusual for pop music. In an unexpected twist to the ‘dialectic of enlightenment’, Derrida has suggested that, far from religion and science being opposed, ‘technoscience’ supports a discourse of ‘salvation’: the two forces (faith and knowledge, precisely) ‘always have made common cause, bound to one another by the band of their opposition’.

"The procreative purposes of a sex machine"

http://deterritorialsupportgroup.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/zizekgaga-communism-knows-no-monster/

Zizek showing the kids how it's done.

im at birkbeck

*hangs head in shame*

i hate comedians

haha

Comic gold.

hope a lot of #monsters do go and get rowdy on all the assorted bloggers/communist apologists when gaga fails to show

Like Syd says, “words are words.” At the most minimal level, they are words, made up of letters, that our society has decided means something. Who is really to say that a table is a table, when you think about it? Jacques Derrida is the father of the deconstructionism movement, and believed that deconstruction is necessarily complicated and difficult to explain since it actively criticizes the very language needed to explain it. So, is Odd Future taking language and meanings down to the most minimal level? At the very least, they are kind of making me reevaluate what is popular and why, especially with their recent mainstream appearances.

On the other hand, it’s completely possible, and more probable, that I am still trying to justify all the money spent on tuition at a private college. Maybe it’s a combination of both, but finding a real-world application from something I’ve learned in an English class has happened like two times, at most. I think Odd Future just likes to yell controversial shit, and try to scare people for the fun of it. Like Syd alludes to, people don’t need to keep listening if it offends them. It’s like people have an unconscious need to be offended, which feeds Odd Future even more. And now, as I end this little piece, I’m more confused than ever. Modernism, along with deconstructionism, structuralism, and even postmodernism, were not my friends, so revisiting them hasn’t been super fun, but I nonetheless wanted to explore the similarities between modernism and Odd Future.

Who is really to say that a table is a table, when you think about it?

i know someone who begs to differ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4I-8bOJ30g

whoever that person is they do not qualify as a 'crit theory blogger'

we are all crit theory bloggers noooow

I nonetheless wanted to explore the similarities between modernism and Odd Future.

*barf*

i dunno, i had this whole long thing i was working on ages ago about adorno and left 4 dead, i used to think k-punk was occasionally readable, i don't think the crossover of Theory and pop is necessarily unfertile ground?

no but odd future certainly is

stfu, blogger

i did see someone's doctoral thesis on radiohead in waterstone's the other day tho, and mentally went COME ON

(xp)

kinda disappointed w/ the odd future theory glosses hence that rather endearing lil apologia excerpted above

twitter/tumblr & other cultural outpourings = pharmakon
'yes but see their music is engineered by a lesbian' = objet petit-a

*doffs cap*

Bikes-R-Better 2 points 1 month ago

I will attempt to convey what I think feminism might look like. French feminist Luce Irigaray suggests that we live in a world constructed by phallocentric discourse. Miley Cyrus is a clear example of a construction of the phallic mechanisms. She is a commodity to be traded for propagation of relationships between men. Think about those that own the record companies. Irigaray suggests that anything created within the phallocentric discourse that we are all, at this point, living within is in itself phallocentric. In order to transcend this discourse we must attempt to return to a pre-verbal state in order to find what is essentially feminine. To try to represent that which is inherently feminine with a system of language which is inherently phallocentric will only convey an idea of the feminine as it relates to the masculine, and not as it is in and of itself. As someone who identifies as a heterosexual white male, I approach these ideas with humility and an open mind. If my views seem in anyway myopic, obtuse or misinformed, please help me to clarify.

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