Grimes/Claire Boucher thread

i like the music though...

ah but you see ... we are entering "post interesting" era

genesis is a lot more interesting than most music videos i have sene this year in which things actually happen tho

the demand for "high concept" videos takes away from the music I think ... who needs another nerdfest at this point?

Right, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with just dancing around in the desert with your friends/models for your video, but the whole vibe of the song/ way the video was filmed and edited makes it seems like there will be some sort of content that never arrives, or at least some interesting imagery more unique than ohh an albino snake.

i kind of imagined it as the first in a never to be continued series about this crew, or like their intro theme

I makes sense if you watch a bunch of grimes videos in a row ... they all feature dancing around in front of groups of people, whether modern dance troupe in white studio or nude guys in stadium locker room ... they're all kind of about various deserts. the "genesis" one just happens to be about California "superficial" scene

a lot of what this video & cultural appropriation debate reminds me of is that endless part of dorian grey where he's just listing all the exotic furs and perfumes he's collected, like ot1h repulsive & imperialist yet, at least ime (most people i've talked to about it hated that part or skipped it when they realized it was goign to be like 30 pages) intriguing and kind of seductive? felt that within the context of all the ideas going on abt aesthetics & youth & art it's an interesting part of the book, the allure of this massive luxury and beauty, and i guess that's where i'd place this video, too. obviously problematic in a post-colonial/globalizing world but i think to deny it any context besides tumblr is wrong, she seems pretty smart in interviews and like, went to college she prob has sth to say about it

Tim F. posted a Pitchfork interview with Claire/Grimes about this video upthread. Deciding what's cultural homage and what's cultural appropriation is not easy, and it does not appear J Shep read up much on Claire before posting and weighing on a complicated subject. She's done much more effective writing elsewhere.

That blog is ridiculous

I think I get where Shep is coming from but it seems like she piles a lot of suggestive disapproval on quite thin foundations - e.g. aeon flux woman has pink weaves therefore she must be "other" therefore she must be some exoticised (marginalised) ethnic counterpoint to boucher's whiteness. This might in fact be the case but you could find a lot of these rabbit holes to tumblr down in just about every video clip if you try hard enough.

To her credit the rest of the post seems to acknowledge this even if only implicitly (and also supports Edward's "madonna of terrible indie artists" zing).

Not sure if the m.i.a. comparison is a good one to use in service of the point she's making - if m.i.a.'s cultural appropriations are problematic than they almost have to be more problematic than grimes' fairly minor misdemeanours in this regard, and the fact that she gets on a plane to go and "mine" influences from other parts of the world is not a point for the defence but a point for the prosecution. In this analogy grimes is like a local business that buys goods made in a sweatshop while m.i.a. is a wholesaler who flies there to negotiate purchases with the factory owner to be shipped back.

OTOH i guess what is firing shep up here is the thoughtlessness of cultural appropriations by white female artists. Which you couldn't accuse m.i.a. of (for more than one reason).

wait wacky ott colored weave ponytails have been a goth thing for like ever

As narrative goes, the visuals are purely aesthetic, a laundry list of representational “art” looks popularized by Tumblr, offering nothing more than skewed prettiness; which is why the presence of Candy’s Aeon Flux dancer is so much more problematic. The video is Grimes playing primitivism, using a lens of a vague “future” as a way to execute notions of… well, future primitive. Some of the same critiques of James Cameron’s Avatar—that it continues the tradition of exoticising and idealizing the “advanced” and “pure” primitive other—apply here. Worst of all, the video begins with Grimes singing a refrain that is not on her album: wailing in her airy voice, she seems to mimic the vocal runs of Middle Eastern music, but without offering any context whatsoever. Presumably, it’s her depoliticized sonic interpretation of what is “weird,” “edgy,” or “other,” without any visible evidence that she has any knowledge of global music

why are there so many quotation marks there when she's not actually quoting anything... it's totally disingenuous writing imo

The criticism of this video is very silly to me because the concept is very clearly get together with some Burner friends, slap on wacky costumes, dance around, and have other hijinks. I don't think a whole lot of deep thought went into it beyond that.

I've tried on numerous occasions but I can't get into this album. I feel like I have to fundamentally warp and contort my brain's music receptors to even begin to appreciate the aesthetic being presented - which Im not opposed to on principle, but in the case of the Grimes record I don't think it's worth the effort.

why are there so many quotation marks there

to scare u

I feel like I have to fundamentally warp and contort my brain's music receptors to even begin to appreciate the aesthetic being presented - which Im not opposed to on principle, but in the case of the Grimes record I don't think it's worth the effort.

Curious about this. I love the album but whether i loved or hated it I think either way I'd still say the aesthetic is easy to understand. What makes you feel like you need to warp/contort yr brain?

ugh are you assholes gonna me me watch a "grimes" video

it's boring, don't bother

Curious about this. I love the album but whether i loved or hated it I think either way I'd still say the aesthetic is easy to understand. What makes you feel like you need to warp/contort yr brain?

― Tim F, Sunday, September 30, 2012 4:19 AM

What I mean to say is that based on my brains music receptors' default settings this album does nothing for me. Specifically, I find the detached vocal delivery not engaging at all. The songs don't seem to go anywhere interesting and the synths and drumbeats sound kind of cheap and thrown together. At least that's how it sounds after about 4 full listens. I feel like I have to make fundamental changes in what I find aesthetically pleasing to begin to appreciate what's going on here. Given enough time and effort I may be even be able to, but I'm not really up for the task.

Oh you mean you don't like it.

Why does everyone feel the need to dress up their objections to this album. It's okay to just not like some things.

If I just flat out didn't like it, I wouldn't have spent any time trying to appreciate it. I'm actually pretty neutral on the album but I feel like I'm missing the point which I'm more than happy to chalk up to a deficiency on my part.

The criticism of this video is very silly to me because the concept is very clearly get together with some Burner friends, slap on wacky costumes, dance around, and have other hijinks. I don't think a whole lot of deep thought went into it beyond that.

isn't this the exact problem with appropriation in a nutshell? being unthinking - wilfully or carelessly - about other people's cultures and treating them as "wacky" (ugh) costumes

(idk whether the grimes video is guilty of this, i assume so because it fits with her persona and i don't like her)

To me, the video reads a lot less like cultural appropriation and much more like a bunch of ladies getting their cosplay on for Comic Con.

Yeah seriously.

I still like Grimes' music but I can't read another word anyone has written about her.

It's like every writer feels the need to use her music or "image" as some kind of springboard to their most pretentious and self-indulgent waffle, saying nothing about her but everything about their own expectations and issues.

I suppose that's the issue raised about - that her work is quite blank, and yet gives the impression of somehow being ~important~, so everyone rushes to fill up that blankness with their own ideas of what ~importance~ is or should be.

isn't this the exact problem with appropriation in a nutshell? being unthinking - wilfully or carelessly - about other people's cultures and treating them as "wacky" (ugh) costumes

― lex pretend, Sunday, September 30, 2012 8:12 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

every pop video ever

Trying to reconcile Lex's dislike of Grimes' wackiness with the image of him wearing one of her pussy rings, isn't that the same thing?

??? Really?

Well, if "putting a girl w wacky pink dreads in your video" = casual appropriation of otherness, doesn't "man wearing goofy vagina ring" kind of equal the same thing? I'm not fighting or criting anyone's right to wear vagina rings (or get Aeon Flux in your vid) I just think there's a little bit too much 'academic rhetoric' being used to justify a person's essentially visceral dislike of something. i.e. she sings like a cat but that's Not Enough, I have to frame her as being Wrong as well as being Bad.

Erm I was kind of made to wear the vulva ring by a (female) friend who owns the thing (and likes grimes) (it was understood by all present that I do not like her music, though the ring is amusing) (the joke was kind of that I did not recognise what it was until told) (I thought it was a star wars thing at first, then a plant)

loooool

Better than a str8 male friend she told me about who thought it was a slug

Appropriation of otherness yeah ok maybe. But really what cultures is she pillaging from, what are these "others" you speak of? Is she supposed to stick with white female Canadian cultural signifiers and if so what are those?

Maybe it will come out that she's never actually been to Burning Man.

Or trained to use a broadsword.

Ya exactly, that piece might have made sense if everything she accused her of wasn't so damn vague. Particularly the "and even worse, she starts the video version of the song with some singing that vaguely reminds me of something middle eastern!" part

Yes! The intro really doesn't sound like anything in particular, she's just wordlessly humming into a mic.

Even if you want to say that she's stealing from Japanese culture in the video, it's hard to ignore that anime cosplay is a pretty well established thing in North America.

every post itt in the last 24 hours is great u are all otm

disclaimer i am going to link to an entirely unrelated article rn but i think that the critique of a partic strain of feminist discourse here (http://jacobinmag.com/2012/08/fairer-sex/) applies to all this hair-splitting over cultural appropriation hipster racism, too

great article, thanks

it's a great mag i cannot recommend it highly enough

been waiting for someone to call out all the rich white people uselessly gnawing at their own tails (to the utter indifference of actual working class people, who couldn't care less about the arbitrarily shifting boundaries of this narcissistic 'I went to college discourse') for a while. def going to follow that mag.

all this hair-splitting over cultural appropriation hipster racism

The Shep article struck me as being a bit like academic seminars that I used to go to when doing critical theory post-grad, where one academic gave a paper and then all the other academics lined up to push their wheelbarrow and identify something the first academic had missed or glossed over.

These critiques were justifiable - as in, relevant, cogent, useful - maybe 40% of the time, which probably isn't that bad a batting average really, but the whole approach struck me as vulnerable to becoming small-minded, a process of peer-review less concerned with helping the original speaker improve their thought, but more to highlight or underscore a perceived shortcoming vis a vis the second speaker.

I was always more interested in people asking questions which drew out a point that the original speaker had made, that tried to get within the headspace of the paper - this was the real benefit (and presumably the official purpose) of the whole set-up, but it characterised a depressing minority of the actual interactions.

The reason I raise this is that it strikes me that as the distance b/w the (esp. indie-associated) artists and the people who discuss them (whether fans, critics, or the many people who hover b/w those rules) diminishes, the more a lot of the discourse starts to resemble that kind of peer review process. A video clip, a HBO TV show and a blog all exist as cultural products placing their creators on a level playing field of critical interrogation vis a vis one another. As with peer review seminars, I see the benefit of this, but it does seem to encourage a lot of self-satisfied oneup(wo)manship as well.

Come to think of it, Bo Diddley never went to Africa either.

I wish I could unsee those vulva rings.

if the video weren't problematic how would we know we're alive

Tim F that's a great post

if the video weren't problematic how would we know we're alive

― a hauntingly unemployed american (difficult listening hour), Monday, October 1, 2012 12:27 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it looks like the Target deluxe edition contains "...All," "Gravity" and

and

and

::shudder::

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdiL01PRtWI