Blatantly racist songs that have managed to pass under the prejudice-radar

What would be a phrase now "we don't know any better" that will show up on a thread like this in 30 years?

hipster

"Walk Like an Egyptian" is pretty fuckin racist imo

"Can you believe there was once a band called 'Gay Dad'?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxAr66vtUoQ

whenever I watch old movies I marvel at how skinny Americans used to be

They were Britishes, we lived on tea and bread and margarine until 1965.

egyptians really do walk like that though!

x-post

I'm impressed that kelpolaris has discovered that early Siouxsie and the Banshees may have been racially insensitive tho.

http://images.newstatesman.com/articles/2008/1026/026_p22.2.jpg

just a little Nazi fetishism nothin to see here lol

[/i]What would be a phrase now "we don't know any better" that will show up on a thread like this in 30 years?

"retarded" and "gay", probably

― ali-baba-boob-job-bomb.jpg (DJP), Friday, November 19, 2010 11:34 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink[/i]

yep

What is the non-racist interpretation of Turning Japanese? (Given that it's about a guy in jail, wanking over his girlfriend's picture.)

scott: vids of irl Egyptians walking like an Egyptian or it didn't happen

The song was believed to euphemistically refer to the face a male makes during the act of masturbation.[1] In a VH1 True Spin special the band denied this. Songwriter David Fenton explained: "Turning Japanese is all the clichés about angst and youth and turning into something you didn't expect to."[2]

(x-post) If we're veering all the way back to old vaudeville routines, this is gonna be a loooooong thread...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oK031kvoFI&feature=related

Siouxsie (understandably) feels pretty sore about the Nazi high jinx that her and the rest of the punk hipsters used to get up to but at least she acknowledged this with songs like 'Metal Postcard' and 'Israel'.

XP: Noodle Vague - Goddamn! That's the most disingenuous thing I've ever read!

man we could bust out Chu Chin Chow and so much more but my sand dance vid was only to illustrate the offensive racism of "Walk Like an Egyptian".

"I Recall a Gypsy Woman" is pretty iffy too

um this is from 2005:

""The culture around then," Siouxsie explains, "it was Monty Python, Basil Fawlty, Freddie Starr, The Producers- 'Springtime For Hitler'." She kicks out her leg in a mock goosestep. "It was very much Salon Kitty. It was used as a glamour thing. And you know what?" she sighs." I have to be honest but I do like the Nazi uniform. I shouldn't say it but I think it's a very good-looking uniform."

You shouldn't say it for fear of upsetting the PC mob?

"Yeah. It's almost like you feel like saying,'Aw, come on. Nazis - they're brilliant.' Political correctness becomes imprisoning. It's very - what's the word? It's being very Nazi! It's ironic but this PC-ness is so fucking fascist. In America they're especially touchy about Nazis and it's so Nazi! You go to LA and it's so segregated. It's very Nazi and the irony is they don't get it. They don't realise how Nazi they are about taking offence to mentioning the word Nazi."

FYI Siouxsie, wearing a swastika armband is different from "mentioning the word nazi"

Omigod we've not even mentioned Bowie's "accent" on "China Girl". And it has the riff.

did bowie or iggy write that?

from same Siouxsie interview:

What about the accusation of anti-Semitism? Come on, there was that original lyric in "Love In A Void": "Too many Jews for my liking"...

"That was a Severin lyric."

You sang it.

"Yeah, I sang it, but I took it as it was meant, as 'skinflints'. Obviously a lot of people didn't get it that way, so it was changed."

xpost

Half and half from memory? But Iggy's version doesn't feature that horrible "Just you shut your mouth" bit iirc

Iggy's version is so much better

If you think that bit's bad you should see the live version of him doing that song live and doing slitty eyes and sticking his teeth out...

Bowie that is.

?? but his girlfriend is telling david to shut his mouth in that part, china girl otm

Michael Jackson used 'jew' as a verb meaning to cheat in a song but I can't remember which one.

and sticking his teeth out

Don't think he was doing this on purpose

Yeah, in the original it's 'Oh Jimmy, just you shut your mouth.' as in James Osterberg

Michael Jackson used 'jew' as a verb meaning to cheat in a song but I can't remember which one.

no he used the term "kike"

Noodle: you won't be saying that when you see it, it's unbelievable.

XP: No, I don't know the song you're talking about.

xxpost

"Jew me/Sue me" from "They Don't Care About Us"

Wow. I am so not gonna feel bad about illegally downloading some Siouxsie records. Brb.

"Kick me/Kike me" from the same song

and yeah, Siouxsie has always ben kind of a monster, which was why I avoided that band for a good long time even though I think they are thoroughly amazing

As a pre-teen in good old 70s Britain we used "Jew" to refer to mean kids without having the slightest inkling of the racism behind it. A friend of mine was made forcibly aware of it when he wrote "Jew is a Jew" on one of his exercise books, Jew being his class's nickname for some poor kid. He tells me he was given a fairly lengthy punishment and explication of why that was not cool.

as far as racially-suspect koans go, that one has a very nice cadence to it

I wd like to apologise for growing up in the last golden age of innocent playground racism by the way.

Where's the link to the Siouxsie interview from 2005? I thought the party line was she was full of remorse about the too many jews thing and wrote metal postcard and Israel as a means of trying to make amends. I'd like to know if it turns out she's still some kind of fashion nazi.

I was just skitting lolpolaris btw, I've never thought of the punk swastika as anything but boneheaded offensive provocation rather than ideological statement. Pretty sure Oi! didn't site Siouxsie et al as key influences.

Anyone recall the controversy over the 'Beast Within' mix on Madonna's 12" of Justify My Love?
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/05/arts/madonna-refutes-rabbi-s-accusation-of-anti-semitism-in-a-song-lyric.html

Same with Joy Division. They pretty much ditched all the teenage provocation stuff as soon as they ran into some real racist skinheads.

There were kids in my class in school with home made racist tattoos. The idea kind of boggles the mind now.

Siouxsie interview Uncut magazine January 2005

Pretty sure Oi! didn't site Siouxsie et al as key influences.

I'm sure this is true and of course there are degrees of racism etc. but check that line about Jew being perfectly acceptable short-hand for "skinflint" - that is fucking stupid and anti-semitic.

it's the "I don't understand why stereotypes are dangerous and offensive so what's wrong if I use them" version of racism/anti-semitism

I agree that it's not defensible on any level but I guess there is some dividing line between idiocy and malice.

the problem with practically everyone making the possibly rational/salient point that people take offense too easily towards everything these days is that they then go on to use as examples things that any reasonable person would find offensive

xp: the thing is, that dividing line is meaningless when you're the one getting hurt

A dividing line that this thread has sand-danced backwards and forwards over.

there is some dividing line between idiocy and malice

one hand washes the other, amirite