MIA

i just re-read the courtney love piece, and this seems meaner than that.

except that had accusations of actual harmful shit

Didion is subtler about balancing disdain and admiration.

I would sub "awe" for admiration, but yeah - Didion gives respect to those qualities which she could not begin to imagine in herself; it is one of her most towering strengths as a writer; a monster, for her, is that which she understands but is only willing to judge with reservations most of the time

and yeah obv as a stylist there is nobody living within a hundred yards of Didion

aerosmith, I miss you.

^^^real talk re: Didion

bringing up Didion is sorta not fair to other writers

alfred I miss you too - mixed a delightful gin drink tonight and thought "man, Lord Sotosyn would appreciate this, I bet"

i would think that the fact that she actually sells some records would be the thing that makes gaga the bigger star but what do i know

Real talk.

And make her more, shall we say, circumspect.

Naw dude, she doesn't have a cock, didn't you hear.

it's pretty obvious from Shakey's post that he meant more Gaga not responding makes her look more dignified and not that he actually thinks there's a question of who's the bigger star, but y'know why get in the way of any excuse for a zing

I think we all know what M.I.A. has to do now (A: do an interview with John Mayer)

She's turning 35 years old in a month, FWIW.

This article is hilarious, and depressing. But M.I.A. has *always* been full of shit and shitty contradictions - and with the really basic stuff ("Kate Moss in ads for mascara / Don't sell out to be product pushers!" --> M.I.A. is the new face of Marc Jacobs within weeks!). None of this should be particularly surprising.

Oh, and Costa Gavras' son seems like a champ, too.

I basically like MIA's music, but yeahhhhh, the fact that she acts literally half her age is pretty damning

http://blogs.bellinghamherald.com/media/users/zoe/madonna.JPG

I dunno, big difference between madonna's 'act like I'm a hot 24 year old even though I'm 79' and 'act like I'm a bratty 18 year old even though I'm 35'

I guess "act like I've got hot 23-year-old body tone when I'm 50" is more repellent to my sense of dignity than a youngish woman whose politics and "worldview" are as disorderly as everyone else's.

eh I'm fine w/ her shitty politics (what musician has good politics? uh...)

alfred otm

at least I can look at a pic of m.i.a. without recoiling in horror

Ted Nugent is pretty consistent iirc xpost

she has all this press to actually get across a legimate pov of tamil

is this her obligation? Serious question. I guess we're entering much-trod terrain here: how coherently do we expect artists to discuss politics when most of them just exploit?

― Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, May 27, 2010 7:39 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this would totally be a cogent argument if she didn't deliberately and repeatedly make it a huge part of her image to be explaining her home country's issues to the western world. i mean you can shrug 'yo musicians are not usually v nuanced re: politics' but she's been depicted, by herself and the media, as a little more engaged and knowledgeable than your average bono wannabe.

But that's the media's fault. What makes her music compelling to me is the degree to which she's able to marry agitprop to "1999." This will inevitably produce some uncomfortable, embarrassing moments.

huh? why is it the media's fault?

But that's the media's fault.

blaming the press for her ridiculousness is sort of a cop-out

yeah, sorry, mayas image is as much her fault as it is the medias

I'm just trying to think, re some dude's point, how she's been depicted as knowledgeable and engaged. Maybe I missed an article or two. Like I said upthread, she's as much a spokesperson for Third World rage as Madonna for Catholic repression.

i mean hirschberg quotes the sri lankan activist whos like, "maya is making the situation worse"

without having to search out specific interviews, the fact that a democracy activist has a strong opinion abt the real-world effects of her posturing tells me that shes selling herself in a certain way

imo if you causally drop genocide and personally getting shot at into your interviews you should know what the fuck you're talking about but hey it's just pop right?

imo if you causally drop genocide and personally getting shot at into your interviews you should know what the fuck you're talking about but hey it's just pop right?

― call all destroyer, Thursday, May 27, 2010 8:58 PM (2 seconds ago) Bookmark

when did we start talking about hillary clinton, amirite

Maybe Madonna's a more useful influence than we think. Anyone here around in 1986 -- when the media depicted Madonna as a Serious Artist knowledgeable and engaged on any number of subjects: teen pregnancy, Catholicism, and whatnot? Obviously the analogies crumble after a while. Madonna even then was a more conventional songwriter in the verse-chorus-verse sense than M.I.A. But she pissed off or confused a lot of people because she seemed to be making a hash out of the Serious Issues her songs and videos were about (I know a few fortysomethings have never actually forgiven her for it). As for me, it's easier from the safety of distance to see that she was just an artist of unusually strong appetites who used teen pregnancy, Catholicism, celibacy, and whatnot as the carapace behind which she created a handful of delirious pop moments.

yeah sure that just seems different to me tho--and it gets at why maya is so much more galling than a dork like bono who believes in world peace--the shit she is exploiting is actually completely horrible.

So is pregnancy if you're sixteen.

::sigh:: not on the level of thousands of people getting killed in a decades-long political conflict but sure ok

plus Madonna incorporating totally commonplace middle America issues/problems into her music and videos is really not going to steer the general public perception of those issues the way virtually the only famous Sri Lankan in U.S./U.K. music is going to steer the image and understanding of that country.

The lesson here is we shouldn't expect too much from our Italian-American and Sri Lankan musical avatars.

i mean just because you can come up with a halfway clever analogy doesn't make it magically steamroll over every detail that doesn't parallel at all (xpost)

ffs, how many MIA fans could point out Sri Lanka on a map? xp

I didn't expect it to, dude.

it's nice that you don't expect anyone to do or say anything of worth, even yourself. it must be very freeing.

damn

how the fuck are you extrapolating this from what I've written?

It's nice that you can't have an adult conversation. It must be liberating.

gotta say it's bizarre to ascribe shit like that to alfred who ime is usually one of the most reasonable ppl in these types of discussions

also irony @ some dude defending shakey mo from similar cheap zings upthread

haha sorry man it just felt like you came back to "this doesn't bother me but then i don't expect much from M.I.A./Madonna/pop stars/my own pet theories" as this frustrating retort to bounce off anything anyone said.

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/images/MIA.jpg

man i get real tired of this whole "its a pop star -- let them be as stupid as they want" kinda defense

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