CocoRosie member goes to "Kill Whitey" Ironic dance parties and gets called out by brainwashed.com as racist

mostly i just want art to be intelligent, interesting and aesthetically coherent... if anything, i wish that "jesus loves me" were a bit more subtle, conflicted, genuinely confused about its statement, because i find its crude didacticism at least as off-putting as its insensitivity.

See, I'd say that the crude didacticism and the inconsistency in the lyrics w/r/t characterizations of minorities makes the song aesthetically incoherent. It seems like a number of us in this thread would have less of a problem with them and the song if it was more aesthetically coherent, with people citing country teasers as an example of something that is.

I was listening to that Patti Smith song recently, and I really did cringe when she used that word.

^^^ completely OTM re: "Jesus Loves Me" and aesthetic incoherency

but when it comes to develop this theme, it's like "Christianity is bad bcz now we can't kiss our fathers very long...?" They use racism to prop up their song and pretend to be ironic with it, but really it's just treating something very serious as if it was something very frivolous.

― dont forget B.Manning's shout-out to Dock Ellis (Drugs A. Money), Tuesday, June 22, 2010 11:05 AM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark

i find it a very sad song, much more sad than shocking. the sadness arises from the tension between the protected innocence it describes, the idealized state of a child we wish to shield from the world, and the tragic adult realities that it admits, with its talk of choosing between scars or bruises on the road to the wedding rings that will supposedly make everything better for us when we grow up. i can't ultimately endorse or even condone it because i don't think it ultimately justifies its decision to hammer the n-word home over and over again at every chorus, but its conflation of racism and religion isn't as simpleminded as it might initially seem.

it's a sloppily written poorly constructed lyric. There's nothing inherently racist in Christianity, Jesus didn't say anything preposterous on the level of "I hate niggers" and the song draws this line clumsily by just associating the one with the other in the crudest manner possible. It doesn't give any consideration to how black people and Christianity actually intersect, no nuance or actual understanding of history is evident. If I want to think about how racism and Christianity have been intertwined in America, there are any number of Ice Cube lines that are more informative and interesting than this garbage.

xp

"go to church but they tease us/with a picture of a blue eyed jesus"

The conflation of racism and religion is actually as simple-minded as it seems if you know one iota of American history.

I prefer the Vaselines version of "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam" to this song

sorry HI DERE I didn't mean to duck out...I was just getting second thoughts about whether I was actually contributing to the discussion rather than 1) parroting other people's opinions, or 2) spouting off about stuff that I don't have a lot of firsthand knowledge about.*

*This is probably just a euphemistic way of restating what it was that pissed you off.

I'd like to point out that cutting out the "but only realize that they hate religion" from my quote removes 90% of the argument I'm making.

― HI DERE, Tuesday, June 22, 2010 11:53 AM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark

i don't think the song deepens the lyrics, at all

― call all destroyer, Tuesday, June 22, 2010 11:58 AM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark

I suppose it's a question of which is unfairer, thinking someone is unintentionally racist (my take) or intentionally stupid (your take).

Because every word you write in defense of them highlights more of their terrible artistic choices (the dialect, the fake blues styling, the minstrel show vibe) and the idea that anyone with even half a brain in modern America could look at this song as it was shaping up and think "Wow! This captures my point perfectly!" and then be shocked and amazed when people think you are a narcissistic racist, particularly when you also attend racist, ironic Kill Whitey parties, it is amazing that your brain functions well enough to keep your subconscious processes going.

There's nothing inherently racist in Christianity, Jesus didn't say anything preposterous on the level of "I hate niggers" and the song draws this line clumsily by just associating the one with the other in the crudest manner possible. It doesn't give any consideration to how black people and Christianity actually intersect, no nuance or actual understanding of history is evident. If I want to think about how racism and Christianity have been intertwined in America, there are any number of Ice Cube lines that are more informative and interesting than this garbage.

xp

― in my day we had to walk 10 miles in the snow for VU bootleg (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, June 22, 2010 12:17 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

that said, i think you could easily make the case that christianity has a complicated relationship with racism in america, and that the song's argument makes a certain amount of sense in light of that.

"complicated relationship" in implied scare-quotes there...

i'm generally in favor of artists taking risks, and ambiguity and messiness, and works that "problematize" issues - but there are certain subjects, and certain language that are extremely volatile and potent that require greater sensitivity and care taken with their use.

The conflation of racism and religion is actually as simple-minded as it seems if you know one iota of American history.

I really don't think this can be stressed enough - sure you can point out that white racists used Christianity to justify their way of life, and that they forced the religion onto the black slave population, but that's only a part of the picture, and is a ridiculously narrow view that ignores the role of Christianity in the abolitionist movement, or the way black slaves managed to take Christianity and subvert it to their own ends, using it to preserve other cultural and musical traditions, with it eventually becoming one of the pillars/driving forces behind the civil rights movement. there are a LOT of nuances. I don't think MLK would be too down with this "Jesus hates black people" nonsense. And taking the tack that because you put the words "Jesus" and "nigger" in the same song makes you some kind of incisive social provacateur just makes you look stupid.

xp

he song describes an outsider's view of that intersection, and moreover a deliberately childish version of an outsider's view.

who is this hypothetical "oustider"? someone who is neither white nor black nor Christian or American presumably...? that makes no sense.

is this the classic Native American/Syrian take on American racial relations and Xtianity, is that what you're getting at...? they're deliberately hiding behind a character? one that doesn't understand how provocative/inciteful the language being used is? wtf

yeah, that gets at the main problem with reception for an American audience - and might explain why they're better received in Belgium - here in America (with a few exceptions) no one is really an outsider with regards to this.

i'm generally in favor of artists taking risks, and ambiguity and messiness, and works that "problematize" issues - but there are certain subjects, and certain language that are extremely volatile and potent that require greater sensitivity and care taken with their use.

― i don't know whether it's really popular in Canada as well (sarahel), Tuesday, June 22, 2010 12:37 PM (52 seconds ago) Bookmark

contenderizer - have you seen the movie "Farewell Uncle Tom"? (title might be Goodbye Uncle Tom) made by the Italians that did Mondo Cane?

David Allan Coe IS playing a character you ninnies

who is this hypothetical "oustider"? someone who is neither white nor black nor Christian or American presumably...? that makes no sense.

― in my day we had to walk 10 miles in the snow for VU bootleg (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, June 22, 2010 12:40 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

i think you're making an admirable effort to try and unpack the motives and structure and ideas in the song, but for a number of us, it's cringeworthy enough to make us have no desire to go to that effort.

have you seen the movie "Farewell Uncle Tom"? (title might be Goodbye Uncle Tom) made by the Italians that did Mondo Cane?

― i don't know whether it's really popular in Canada as well (sarahel), Tuesday, June 22, 2010 12:47 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah i think this thread would be pretty awful if it was just everybody sagely agreeing abt what massive assholes CR are

farewell uncle tom is probably the most uncomfortable movie watching experience i have ever had that was not a horror movie of the "torture porn" subgenre.

yeah, i've heard good and bad things said about it. it sounds uncomfortable and ill-advised. like the song?

it's basically the problem people have with the song magnified 1000x - except the music is better than cocorosie's.

a ridiculously narrow view that ignores the role of Christianity in the abolitionist movement, or the way black slaves managed to take Christianity and subvert it to their own ends, using it to preserve other cultural and musical traditions, with it eventually becoming one of the pillars/driving forces behind the civil rights movement

This is very important to remember. It's something completely ignored by this song.

With their Native American background, perhaps they substituted a personally appropriate slur for something more sensationalist .

jamie stewart didn't really suck a horse's dick, sorry about that guys

i've said more than enough, but wanted to touch on this. it seems to me that the song presents a series of textbook lessons. "jesus loves me" is the first lesson - a gentle, almost crushingly saccharine affirmation of childlike faith. this is followed up by instructions like "wash behind your ears," "cover them freckles," "don't ask don't tell," and eventually "kiss your papa but not too long."

indie kids seem pretty hung up on their early childhoods tbh

just doin some quick ctrl-f's ... of course contenderizer is a cocofan/apologizer

on being f'd...

why it fails: Because it uses the word "nigger" for no reason other than a hateful evocation of black people, yet uses much more restrained/sensitive verbiage to talk about issues surrounding the arbitrariness of some bible rules as well as the sexism and homophobia, it explicitly singles out black people for disdain and derision in a manner wholly out of keeping with the rest of the song, completely undercutting any meaningful message it's supposed to have with a very strong, palpable undercurrent of "btw if you are black, fuck off; we don't want you listening to our music".

...

Had there been parity in language with references to "faggots" and "bitches", the point of view would have been better defined and the narrative less confused; as it stands, you have a song by some people who hate religion and black people but only realize that they hate religion.

I don't think the inclusion of other slurs would've made it better or less offensive. What I don't like is making the infamous slur the artistic equivalent of a 'SHIT JUST GOT REAL' device, an inexpensive and effortless way to let people know you're a Serious Artist with Something to Say.

This is very important to remember. It's something completely ignored by this song.

― Beach Pomade (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, June 22, 2010 10:38 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

fwiw its perfectly fine to 'ignore' things like this -- theres nothing per se bad abt observing religious hypocrisy -- but this is such a lazy way to do it that u start siding 'with' religion

It's totally fine to ignore, even contradict established history if you know enough about it to make intelligent choices (or if you get lucky; I consider "sufficiently compelling wordplay" to be an intelligent choice).

I don't think the inclusion of other slurs would've made it better or less offensive. What I don't like is making the infamous slur the artistic equivalent of a 'SHIT JUST GOT REAL' device, an inexpensive and effortless way to let people know you're a Serious Artist with Something to Say.

I just wanted to point out that I did not say that adding in more slurs would make the song less offensive. I said it would make it more thematically coherent, which would allow the listener to get its point better. (Given the "explanation" for the song given in the incredibly lolsome interview linked upthread, I concede that adding in more slurs would actually divert the song completely away from what they were trying to say, but since what they were trying to say was a misconceived crock of shit in the first place I don't really think that's a bad idea.)

did they ever find out whether it was popular in Canada as well?

popular everywhere ppl dont get the big deal with a ronaldinho bottle opener basically

so a guy at work just heard cocorosie and now he's challenged me to find something he would hate more than cocorosie...but i can't do it!

it's driving me nuts, any ideas?

has he heard Joanna Newsom?

if your friend hates cocorosie, i can bet she'd really hate Gabby La La

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcQOXCLB_6Q

probably won't like Diane Cluck much either

Cool thanks for the ideas. Tried newsome which he didn't like but her sincerity sat better with him than coco rosie. Did not hate devandra as much as I suspected. He's mid twenties listens to only classic rock dislikes most new bands.

bROKENCYDE?

Xiu Xiu?

Insane Clown Posse?

really -- brokencyde vs. ICP

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

Maher Shallal Hash Baz

Why to hate MSHB?

:(