Randy Newman: C or D/S & D

I mean Pollock and Picasso - these things function on a visceral level (color! shapes! everyone understands these things to varying degrees) outside of their cultural contexts.

xp

shakey you should probably assume, given that Newman is always completely bullseye when his subject is race relations, that you are missing the point. how often is Newman not singing through a personified narrator? how reliably is it the case that if he's saying something stupid, you're to understand that he is singing through the voice of a person he considers stupid, usually to mock that person? it's so clear in "Yellow Man" that it's just weird that you don't get. "Yellow man, oh yellow man/We understand, you know we understand" - you actually hear that as Randy Newman singing in earnest? He's making fun of condescending exoticism by embodying it at a very reductive level.

now what follows 'yellow man' is 'my old kentucky home', shakey i recommend that one to you, it very clearly positions itself so you realise the narrator is dislikable, there is v little room for ambiguity

(there's also something going on in that little triptych vis-a-vis the flatness, clumsiness of yellow man's couplets set against the trick rhymes in 'harlem moon'; his performance of that song has more to it than 'hey, check out how racist this old song is'; but argh it's friday night)

"Yellow Man", lyrically and musically, does not really contain any references or contextual clues beyond it's baldfaced racism. that is all that is there, a bunch of stereotypical, crude descriptions of Asian people. It doesn't situate these lines within a broader context the way the lyrics of "Sail Away" explicitly do. If the insistence is that one has to know Randy Newman's catalog and a bunch of biographical details about Randy Newman and the time and place in which he wrote the song in order to appreciate it - well, those are the marks of a shitty song. Good songs do not require such externalities in order to work.

xp

you don't really need any externalities to hear that the narrator of "Yellow Man" is a moron

you actually hear that as Randy Newman singing in earnest?

where did I suggest this?

He's making fun of condescending exoticism by embodying it at a very reductive level.

and he's doing it in a terrible way - the simple hamfisted replication of racist language - which is his exclusive privelege as a white guy

sad you guys are defending this. this is like "white guy proves how bad blackface is by performing in blackface" level clumsiness imo.

hang on, still trying to make an 'externalities' gag

you don't really need any externalities to hear that the narrator of "Yellow Man" is a moron

if the listener themselves are racist morons, there's nothing in the song to make them uncomfortable with their moronity, which is a problem imho

where did I suggest this?

you didn't suggest it, you said it outright:

wtf is this "Yellow Man" bullshit. can anyone defend these lyrics? This is like "Kung Fu Fighting" level idiocy.

something about disease amongst chinese coal miners just to bring it full circle. also, 30 rock did a bit with jon hamm in blackface a few months ago, it was pretty funny.

A work requiring a lot of external cultural context - particularly the kind which cannot be extrapolated from the work itself and is not referenced in the work itself - to be appreciated is a bad piece of work.

That's just silly. The vast majority of art - particularly in visual and musical forms - is understood largely through context, not explicative narration. Context motivates most art. If you think of the dadaists or impressionists or beatniks or punks or (whatever), context was almost everything. The reason that most of the important movements in art, music, literature (etc) take a while to catch on is because most people aren't very adept at contextualization and generally need to wait until they've been inundated with context before they can even attempt to make a judgment about it or appropriate it. That's why the Swell Maps sold essentially no records in America, but now have their music used in Big Three car commercials on television. Or how, when people dress up for era-themed parties (50's, 60's, 70's, whatever), they all end up wesaring clothes that 99% of the population would never have gone near. (Look at a yearbook from a San Francisco high school in 1968, and you'll be disturbed how many people look like Donna Reed and Pat Boone . . . not Jerry Garcia and Janis Joplin.)

Part of the brilliance of Randy Newman is that the meaning of even some of his slighter songs (including his biggest hit, "Short People") are misunderstood / comprehended in perplexing proportion.

Mo, your initial understanding - posted here - wasn't "This isn't a particularly good song. It's clumsy and subpar." it was:

wtf is this "Yellow Man" bullshit. can anyone defend these lyrics? This is like "Kung Fu Fighting" level idiocy.

I can respect anyone not liking the song. But you still missed the point. Don't blame the narrator; a lot of people got it. Including Harry and Ella and me.

[i]you didn't suggest it, you said it outright:[/]

lol waht

BANJO!

my initial post doesn't say anything about the narrator! you guys are trying to hang some weird, much easier-to-dismiss position on me.

that Hamm thing was really touchy, if Tracy Jordan hadn't been in that scene it would not have worked at all

I'm not going to argue w/you about it though you don't get it & you're in Shakey Is Angry mode you're not going to hear anything & you'll come up with all kinds of nonsense to defend your position. The song is clearly satire. What's making you uncomfortable in it is that the ugliness of petty exoticization is so clear in this song that it's painful to hear. generally speaking, exoticization isn't what a satirist targets - it's something huge like slavery, where you can't miss the point. the target here is the small daily racism of white hegemony. it is successfully and clearly embodied and is horrible to hear. the idea that as a satirist Newman has to wink at you or he's failed is an idea you can really only hold if satire isn't yr deal.

if Randy Newman had sang Kung Fu Fighting would you guys be defending it as satire?

(also the comparison to blackface is offensive tbh and I would earnestly ask you to retract it? the mask Newman's wearing is that of a white racist. that does not, in any way, compare to blackface.)

lol Shakey you are actually criticizing Randy Newman for getting his tone too perfect

personally i think ppl itt should retract their harmful, reductive views of blackface

like I get that you guys want to defend this song because it's all butthurt Randy Newman fans time but this song is lacking in its construction. Not everything the guy wrote was a tour de force satire of race relations. It's simple and crude and entirely indistinguishable from genuine racism.

xp

if Randy Newman had sang Kung Fu Fighting would you guys be defending it as satire?

congratulations on posing a genuinely meaningless question - hard to pull off!

a lot of this argument basically comes down to 'we know this is not racist because randy newman wrote it,' which i am really not comfortable with. i don't doubt that newman set out to write a satire of exoticism but the actual song he produced is underwritten and completely lacking in nuance.

songs are pretty similar imho

except one is funky I guess

xp

if the listener themselves are racist morons, there's nothing in the song to make them uncomfortable with their moronity, which is a problem imho

Morons are going to be morons. And why is it Randy Newman's task to ensure all listeners are educated? He's not Joan fucking Baez!

What you're saying isn't any different from saying that the Ramones should be condemned because the narrator never makes it explicit that sniffing glue and beating on brats is wrong. Nor does it make them "uncomfortable with their moronity" - I don't see much difference here, really. (And I could make the point for hundreds of artists who *also* rely on external context for the listener to "get" their songs.)

You don't like the song - which is fine - but you don't seem to acknowledge that some people did get it right away.

It's simple and crude and entirely indistinguishable from genuine racism.

it's simple & crude & Shakey Mo is incapable of distinguishing it from genuine racism, is a true statement.

"They say they were there before we were here" - if you don't hear the author behind the narrator there, you are a very lazy reader

"You see, he believes in the family, just like you and me" - ditto

"we understand, you know we understand" - ditto

"got to have a yellow woman when you're a yellow man" - the most hideous line in the song, anyone who doesn't cringe isn't listening or is racist. which is the point of the line.

YouTube commenter claims that this song is used to advertise the Simpsons in Sweden

context is extra tricky when you're dealing with a) racism and b) from a position of entitled power, especially so in the case of the latter. If you hand me two bucktoothed, slant-eyed, yellow-skinned caricatures of Chinese people, which are indistinguishable from each other in form and content, and tell you one is racist and one is not... um

xp

tell ME one is

argh

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v18/Estimatedprophet/KellyNewDawn_jpg.jpg

they are distinguishable by most readers. you can't make the distinction. you're also not listening to anybody's explanation, but gainsaying it immediately. there is no point. cling to your wrong opinion, you aren't interested in actually understanding the song.

lol for a LONG time I was like "I do not fucking get it" with those Onion cartoons

If you hand me two bucktoothed, slant-eyed, yellow-skinned caricatures of Chinese people,

except you're not being handed a caricature of Chinese people

you're being handed a caricature of a narrator

you don't understand that, you think the narrator has to say I AM A NARRATOR or it's racism, but that's just your own weird trip

aero I appreciate you goin in on the line readings but yeah I think those lines are pretty weak as signifiers of greater depth - Newman works this angle better elsewhere, it's like his approach is insufficiently developed here. the patronizing undertone in the lines you cite isn't overt enough imho, they're too close to actual patronizing racist lines.

xp

I'm not claiming it's his masterpiece, it's an early song - B effort from him at best. But that it's clearly, obviously, to almost anyone, a caricature of a stance - that is obvious. Without extratextual clues.

you think the narrator has to say I AM A NARRATOR or it's racism

that's ... sort of true. racism is tricky like that.

and again, retract the blackface claim - he's not saying "We are Siamese." The narrator is white, speaking about an Other, not through an Other's voice. You are wrong to compare that to blackface.

xp lol you really severely do not get it

if Randy Newman had sang Kung Fu Fighting would you guys be defending it as satire?

"Kung Fu Fighting" is not reductionist and does not refer or act as meta-commentary on anything from around the same time in the same way "Yellow Man" does, so it's a dumb question. Essentially, Randy Newman never would have written it - it's not like anything he's ever done. "Kung Fu Fighting" was a hit because it played upon the early to mid-70s craze for kung fu movies in urban black neighborhoods. Plus it was sing-songy and catchy as hell - great performance and a good groove, with a fab hook. Carl Douglas (performer of "Kung Fu Fighting") was not, nor has ever been, known for anything else much, and he certainly had no persona that would have provided the context necessary to see it any other way.

Mo, I've got to be believe that if you were much of a Randy Newman fan you would have heard this song long ago. Randy Newman's never been the big seller that one might expect from his acclaim and long career, in part that's because context is generally needed to see all the facets of his work. It's a bit like "Seinfeld" - low ratings at first, because taken on their own (that is to say, without knowing the characters and actors and without having seen other episodes), "Seinfeld" does not seem very funny. It's only when the viewer - through repetition and variations of themes - understands the patterns that the show comes alive. (If you like it, that is!) So I think if you spent more time with Newman and don't hold onto this grudge, the song will began to appeal in a different way. It's worth it, in my opinion.

Steven Fucking Tyler's last few comments take a different tack, but get it exactly right, Mo. I don't think you're trying, you're avoiding reasonable explanations and making silly and inaccurate comparisons (re: the Chinese caricatures and "Kung Fu Fighting") and not really understanding the implicit idea that there is a narrator there . . . just like there is in nearly every other song.

"Kung Fu Fighting" does not refer or act as meta-commentary on anything from around the same time

hahaha this is a joke right

that's ... sort of true. racism is tricky like that.

Again, to you. "Yellow Man" was on the first Randy Newman album I ever had, and I didn't know a thing about him at all. I still got it. Deeper knowledge and further listenings through the years certainly *add* context. But while racism might be "tricky" for you, it doesn't appear to be as tricky for some of the rest of us.

The narrator is white, speaking about an Other, not through an Other's voice.

wait isn't the Other in this case the racist lol

my only point about the blackface thing was that it's dangerous for white people to attempt to appropriate racist imagery with the intention of showing how racist it is. if it isn't done deftly and with a lot of care, it risks just being another reproduction of racist imagery. which is essentially what happened in Yellow Man.

also I hate Seinfeld fwiw

Shakey, I bear you no ill will so I'm going to try again. Literally every line of "Yellow Man" is a clichéd white description of the exoticized other. Kung Fu Fighting, on the other hand, is actually trying to describe then-trendy kung fu movies, and while the language is indeed racist, it's not textbook you've-actually-heard-people-say-this racism like "very far away in a foreign land live a yellow woman and the yellow man." note that this first line situates our narrator and goes out of its way to use the definite article "the" to point out to you, the gentle reader, that an entire race is being reduced to a single person. "Kung Fu Fighting" does not, in fact, have any similar authorial signposts. I consider this explanation pretty clear, but I will also bet five dollars that your opinion is "no way, they're exactly the same."

it's not textbook you've-actually-heard-people-say-this racism

apart from the generic term "Chinaman" ... but in the interest of earning $5 I will concede this is a good point

gotta go now btw

thx for the insights (honest)

i think marcus says something in 'mystery train' about how newman was reluctant to play this song live. kinda understandable, tho it doesn't necessarily reflect on the song's meaning -- i think 'rednecks' is one of the all-time triumphs of newman's songwriting and a total masterpiece in every way, but i'm not putting it on any party playlists.

if you're still in SF I will straight give you five bones next time I'm out there, a bet's a bet!!

Hating "Seinfeld" should not obliterate an understanding of how it works best with external context. I don't like it much either. So what's your point?

I don't even think "Kung Fu Fighting" is racist, to be honest. In fact, the only thing I think anyone could take any offense at is the term "Chinaman," which wasn't intended to cause offense . . . just a little dated (though less so in 1974) and insensitive. But other than that, the song was simply a celebration of kung fu movies . . . and not, as people like to read it, meta-commentary on Chinese people. Unless you're an idiot. But why should art be dumbed down so that idiots don't misunderstand it? (I'm not referring to you, Mo.)

wish there were a randy newman song sung from the POV of someone who doesn't like seinfeld.