Thursday, February 28, 2013

ThoughtLeaf (Seth D. Michaels)



"The song, the reaction shots, and Seth MacFarlane's general attitude are all based on a commonplace and awful trope: that sex is a contest, and that men win and women lose when sex or nudity happens. It's an archaic, prudish, creepy concept that derives from twisted notions about female purity and women-as-property.

"MacFarlane thinks if he has seen a woman's breasts, he has won and she has lost, and he is now entitled to gloat about it... Even if your character is naked because she's being raped, it still amounts to a victory for Seth MacFarlane to have seen your breasts.

"MacFarlane presents the whole skit as something he shouldn't do, which makes it even worse, because he wants to get credit for the cleverness of his idea while also pretending it is beneath him. Which is completely candy-ass and cowardly.

"The sexuality-as-contest-between-men-and-women thing is bubbling underneath so much that is awful: rape culture, workplace harassment, slut-shaming, abuse-themed porn, pick-up artist culture, etc., etc. It sets aside women as a separate thing from a person, and makes them into an object that is 'ruined' by sex or nudity.

"In a culture with a healthy attitude about sex and sexuality, MacFarlane's song would have no sting at all, because nudity in film would be a completely different sort of animal... [T]here wouldn't be shame associated with having been naked on screen...

"We don't, yet, live in that culture."

- Seth D. Michaels, "The Awful Gender Politics of 'We Saw Your Boobs'" (2013)

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

SoundLeaf (José James)

How to get your D'Angelo fix while D'Angelo himself continues to crumble under the pressure of following up that masterpiece he made 13 years ago.
 

Sunday, February 24, 2013

American Films and the Tales They Choose to Tell

1

"[The author's] very choice of what he tells will betray him to the reader. He chooses to tell the tale of Odysseus rather than that of Circe or Polyphemus. He chooses to tell the cheerful tale of Monna and Federigo rather than the pathetic account of Monna's husband and son. He chooses to tell the story of Emma Bovary rather than the potentially heroic tale of Dr. Larivière. The author's voice is a passionately revealed in the decision to write the Odyssey, "The Falcon," or Madame Bovary as it is in the most obtrusive direct comment of the kind employed by Fielding, Dickens, or George Eliot. Everything he shows will serve to tell; the line between showing and telling is always to some degree an arbitrary one.

"In short, the author's judgment is always present, always evident to anyone who knows how to look for it... [We] must never forget that though the author can to some extent choose his disguises, he can never choose to disappear."

- Wayne Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961, rev. 1983), p. 20

2

Of the nine films nominated for Best Picture at tonight's Academy Awards, three claim to depict historical events. One is about an American outwitting a bunch of scary Muslims; another is about an American interrogating and outwitting a bunch of scary Muslims, then spearheading an operation to kill one very scary Muslim; and a third is about a white American collaborating with several other white Americans to liberate a bunch of noble, deferential African Americans.

All three movies are expertly written, acted, and directed; one of them will likely win the big prize tonight. (Argo. It's going to be Argo. Or Lincoln? Not Zero Dark Thirty, I think.)

But to the credit of the American critical community, these history-based Best Picture nominees have all been held to account for their political implications. Smart critics and dumb politicians alike have censured Zero Dark Thirty for its insinuation that torture led to the discovery of Osama bin Laden's courier. In a compelling New York Times editorial, Northwestern history professor Kate Masur objected to Lincoln's relegation of black characters to the political periphery. On Slate, Kevin B. Lee slammed Argo for reimagining the disastrous Iran hostage crisis as "a mere backdrop" to the glorious rescue of six American diplomats.

Among the majority of filmmakers and filmgoers, however, these politicized critiques have not gone over well. First, people have been playing the old "it's a movie, not a documentary" card. Disguised as a knowing acceptance of Hollywood's tendency to fabulate, this argument glosses over the fact that inaccurate representations of historical events have real social consequences. When Zero Dark Thirty depicts a torture victim divulging key intelligence, it's not just falsifying a detail for the sake of dramatic unity. It's contributing to the public perception that torture, while ghastly, is effective.

Granted, this pragmatist pro-torture stance is one that many people (read: awful people) agree with, and one that a work of art has every right to adopt. Equally, critics have the right, even the duty, to evaluate movies on political grounds. So far, though, Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal, the creators of Zero Dark Thirty, have refused to concede that their film takes any partisan position. Sometimes they claim artistic license. Other times, journalistic objectivity. Anything to evade responsibility for the real work that Zero Dark Thirty does in the real world.

3

Lately I've become aware of a second mode of thinking adopted by those who dislike politicized film criticism: "Review the movie you saw," they say, "not the movie you wanted to see." Variations on this bromide pervade the comments section below Kevin B. Lee's anti-Argo piece:
"Critique the film based on the filmmaker's goals, not your cinematic wish list." 
"Don't criticize a movie for not being about what you think it should be about. That's not how it works." 
"So, Argo is a fraud because Kevin B. Lee would like it to be an entirely different movie. Great argument!" 
"The worst kind of movie review is the one that says, 'You made the wrong movie! THIS is what your movie SHOULD have been about!' If you want that movie, go make it yourself." 
"Do we have to judge films on what they could have and should have been?"
To answer the last commenter's question: Yes! We definitely should judge films against what they could have and should have been. Les Misèrables sucked. It could have and should have been a different, better film.

But a deeper fallacy underlies the comments on Lee's article, and that is the unwillingness to criticize the premise of a narrative, the "what it's about." Who says we aren't allowed to find fault with an artist's initial, foundational choice of tale? As Wayne Booth reminds us in The Rhetoric of Fiction, when an author decides to tell one story and not another, he takes a significant rhetorical position.

To push this thought further (and into what would be uncomfortable territory for Booth himself), I would contend that an author's choice of tale powerfully determines the ultimate political meaning of his work. Bigelow and Boal chose to depict the successful mission to find and kill Osama bin Laden, not the failed attempt to capture him during the Battle of Tora Bora. Tony Kushner and Steven Speilberg chose to make a film about white politicians negotiating and passing the 13th Amendement, and in so doing, they chose not to make a film about black abolitionists bringing about their own emancipation. (Which, to a substantial degree, they did.)

Most egregiously of all, Ben Affleck not only decided to tell the story of American triumph over Iranian perfidy, but also washed, polished, and waxed the historical record to render the Americans more triumphant and the Iranians more perfidious. Midway through Argo, the stranded American diplomats visit a bazaar in Tehran and barely escape getting their asses kicked by a mob of inexplicably furious Iranians. Didn't happen. Whole-cloth invention. The film also fabricates nearly all of the dramatic complications in the climactic airport scene. We see menacing Iranians at the passport counter, menacing Iranians at the gate, menacing Iranians forcing their way into air traffic control, menacing Iranians piling into a truck with their guns and chasing the plane down the runway. No such Iranians existed. In reality, the Americans glided through the airport without arousing suspicion.

So in addition to focusing on the one U.S. victory in the entire 1979 hostage crisis, Argo finds a number of dishonest ways to emphasize the heroism of the Americans and the malevolence of the Iranians. Perhaps after seeing an early cut of the film and sensing this bias, Affleck tacked on an introductory voice-over (not to be found in Chris Terrio's original screenplay) that clarifies how U.S. meddling in Iran contributed to the instability that, in turn, led to the Islamic Revolution and the storming of the U.S. Embassy. But this brief moment of anti-imperialist lip service fails to shift the film's overall sympathies and politics. The calm, rational C.I.A. operative is still our hero; the fiery, irrational Muslims are still our enemies; and at every turn we are encouraged to feel that our diplomats-in-distress must escape to a safer, whiter part of the world... or else.

This is the tale Affleck chose to tell.

4

So why should we hesitate to hold him responsible? In a New Yorker blog entry, Nicholas Thompson, one of the editors of the Wired article that inspired Affleck's movie, lamely asserts that "none of Argo's fibs really matter."
They don't change the way we think about history or politics. They don't alter the emotional truth of the story.
Wait, the demonization of Iranian revolutionaries doesn't change the way we think about history or politics? The bullshit sensationalism in the getaway scene doesn't alter the emotional truth of the story? I don't know why Thompson would so casually dismiss these possibilities. Maybe Argo insulates itself from serious critique with its larky tone, its self-deprecating Hollywood satire, and the relative obscurity of its historical subject. But light entertainment has always done heavy ideological lifting. We shouldn't let Argo slip under our analytical radar just because it's less po-faced than Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty.

Nor should we stop being critics as soon as we find ourselves questioning a filmmaker's choice of what to tell. Some stories, by their very nature, offer a partial, naïve vision of the world. And one of these stories is going to win Best Picture tonight.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Literary Rejection

When I worked for ZYZZYVA between 2007 and 2009, I spent hours sorting through the slush pile, skimming cover letters, and smirking at resumes. I would trash everything but the manuscripts and the SASEs (self-addressed stamped envelopes).

On my desk, within reach of my left hand, would be a stack of freshly copied rejection letters. I would date-stamp one of these and include it with each manuscript/SASE pair. Gradually I would build a stack of submissions, sometimes hundreds, 99% of which would never get close to being published.

Howard Junker, the founder and now-former editor of ZYZZYVA, would look at every last essay, short story, free-verse poem, and "excerpt from my unpublished novel." Most of the time he would read the first paragraph or stanza, stuff the manuscript and rejection letter into the SASE, and toss the package into the outgoing mail. Sometimes he would persevere through a whole piece, then dispose of it in the same manner. Every now and then, a submission would survive. There it would sit, palpitant with relief, on the office futon.

Ultimately it, too, would probably be rejected.

In an industry full of unpaid slush-pile interns, Howard's routine was an extraordinary display of editorial diligence. Nevertheless, he would occasionally catch flak for refusing to alter his standard rejection letter, with its standard apology "for not offering comments or suggestions," and its standard handwritten (and repeatedly photocopied) sign-off: "Onward!"

("As if we're all on some glorious boat ride to the tropics, sailing through a storm.")

But I, for one, liked Howard's form letter. It was kind ("Do not be discouraged by this or any other momentary setback") yet blunt ("I don't think a few quick remarks would really help"), and unmistakably Junkerian in tone. Why change it?

Besides, I'm not sure how writers would feel if they actually received personalized rejections.

I've often had this thought during the past few weeks, as I've been plowing through microfilm of a nineteenth-century periodical called the Golden Era. Like ZYZZYVA, the Era was based in San Francisco and devoted to west-coast literature. In a weekly column entitled "To Our Correspondents," the editors would publish feedback to recent submissions. Usually they offered polite encouragement. Sometimes, though, they wrote things like this:
Dobbs: There are only two objections to your communication; one, that it is too lengthy - the other, that it is sadly devoid of all manner of interest.
Well, then. Onward?

Saturday, February 16, 2013

SoundLeaf (Kurt Vile)

How to spend nine minutes on a Saturday morning.



Monday, February 11, 2013

50 Years After the Demise of John Lennon's Vocal Cords

On February 11, 1963, during one of the coldest winters anyone could remember, The Beatles entered Abbey Road Studios in St. John's Wood, London, to record a batch of filler tunes for their first album. They had spent the winter touring England with an unremarkable pop singer named Helen Shapiro. Their second single, "Please Please Me," had just become their first major hit, sneaking into the British top twenty. It would rocket to number one by the end of February. Almost exactly a year later, the Fab Four would land in New York and find themselves beset by a mob of crazed Americans.

But on that February afternoon in 1963, The Beatles went to work like an ordinary pop group. Guided by producer George Martin, they bashed out their tunes briskly, using as few takes as possible. By the end of the day they had committed 11 songs to tape. (In contrast, the 13 tracks of 1967's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band took 129 days to record.)

Four of the 11 were Lennon-McCartney originals; the rest were covers repurposed from the band's well-honed live act. The second number they played, "I Saw Her Standing There," was a stunner. A cheeky countdown ("One, two, three, FAW!") introduces a tight Merseybeat groove, driven by Paul McCartney's propulsive bass and John Lennon's bluesy rhythm guitar. The first couplet is sung with an audible leer by McCartney: "Well, she was just seventeen, / You know what I mean." Mm hm, I do. Rock-n-roll.

But where "I Saw Here Standing There" was slyly risqué, the final track The Beatles recorded on February 11 was a goddamn lust-bomb.

Shredded by a heavy cold and a marathon session of tuneful yelling, Lennon's vocal cords were not long for the world. "Every time I swallowed," he later said, "it felt like sandpaper." But 11 PM was approaching, and the group had yet to lay down its most demanding song, a cover of an R&B hit called "Twist and Shout." Recorded in 1962 by The Isley Brothers as a "La Bamba"-style dance number, "Twist and Shout" was reworked by The Beatles into a balls-to-the-wall rager - one that required an ecstatic, throat-ripping lead vocal.

So after a glass of milk, Lennon strapped on his Rickenbacker 325, stood shirtless at the head of the band, and delivered the most thrilling rock performance I've ever heard.



Holy mackerel, that's exciting. Happy 50th deathiversary, John Lennon's vocal cords; you did God's (or perhaps Aphrodite's) work.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

My Top 5 Songs of 2013

This post, which runs down my five favorite songs of 2012, might come as an anticlimax, given that I've spent the past month and a half intermittently, painstakingly descending from #13 to #6. (I've been busy lately.) But today is February 10, the Grammys are about to begin, and it's time to move on.

So.

#5: Killer Mike, "Reagan"

Too often, it seems to me, the rage in hip-hop is directed at rival MCs rather than, say, the War on Drugs. Or mass incarceration. Or American imperialism. Or the legacy of Reaganomics.

There's plenty of important stuff to be angry about.

Thank goodness, then, for Killer Mike, whose bracing blend of straight talk, unhinged paranoia, social analysis, and righteous anger you will not be seeing on stage at the Staples Center tonight.



"They declared a war on drugs, like a war on terror, / But what it really did was let the police terrorize whoever."

#4: Chairlift, "I Belong in Your Arms"

Sweetness and sunlight, open hearts and banana splits. The aesthetic antithesis of Killer Mike's "Reagan." The aural equivalent of the film Amelie. Lyrics consisting of dadaist joy-bursts. Octave jumps! Synthesizers! The 80s! Just the slightest undercurrent of sadness!

All the girls wear polka-dot dresses, and all the boys are uninhibited by masculine norms!

I want to live in this song, even at the risk of turning into a twee lunatic.



"Because the world goes on without us, / Doesn't matter what we do-o-o. / All silhouettes with no regrets, / When I'm melting into you."

#3: Dum Dum Girls, "Lord Knows"

When music critics have no idea what's going on, they use the word "charisma." Why did the Beatles send young concert-goers into hysterics? They played with charisma. What made Michael Jackson different from every other pop star? He danced and sang more charismatically.

And why does "Lord Knows," essentially a pastiche of The Pretenders and "Crimson & Clover," seem unique? Why is it so moving? So much better than anything else by the otherwise unremarkable Dum Dum Girls?

There's something about the vocal. It's really, really....

(Charismatic.)



"I want to live a pure life, / I'd say that it's about time."

#2: Frank Ocean, "Thinkin Bout You"

Yeah, Mumford & Sons (ruthlessly inauthentic as they are) will likely win the Grammy for Best Album tonight. But Frank Ocean's channel ORANGE remains the best loved, or at least the most intensely loved, record of 2012, combining mass and critical appeal in a way that only Kanye West's finest albums have recently matched.

Lead single "Thinkin Bout You" highlights Ocean's most underrated strength: his facility with melody. Listen, for instance, to how he contrasts the circular, low-register verse with the vertical, falsetto chorus. The effect is one of a private, obsessive anxiety releasing into a straightforward ache.

And then you arrive at the bridge. 2:12. Whoa.

(The nonsensical music video I've embedded below features an alternate version of the song. It's the best I could find in the free, legal regions of the Internet.)



"We'll go down this road / Till it turns from color to black and white."

#1: Japandroids, "The House That Heaven Built"

Hey bro, you play air drums. I'll play air guitar. We'll have the BEST F#@$ING TIME EVER.



"And if they try to slow you down, / Tell 'em all to go to hell."

Monday, February 4, 2013

Top 13 Songs of 2012: #6 (Islands, "This Is Not a Song")

There I was, all ready to despise Islands.

In 2006, the Canadian band had a minor indie hit with "Rough Gem," a shapeshifting number with a peppy riff and a kitchen-sink aesthetic. It got passed around the nascent mp3 blogosphere, placed on a few best-of lists, and developed into a rousing concert closer.

But unlike their fellow montréalais Arcade Fire, who also broke through in the mid-aughts, Islands were not ready to be adored. Their music began to take on a willful inscrutability. Band members quit, returned, and quit again. And a few years ago, frontman Nicholas Thorburn announced in concert that he would henceforth refuse to sing "Rough Gem."

Granted, he was being partly, perhaps mostly, tongue-in-cheek. But it's clear that he was also being a bit of an asshole:
This next song we're about to do - it's an old song, and it's a song we all collectively don't like at all. And I think we're gonna retire it tonight... The song is called "Rough Gem." [Crowd cheers.] You shouldn't applaud, 'cause it's a shitty song... I'm not gonna sing it, 'cause I hate this fucking song so much. And here's how much I hate this song. I puked twice up there and then down there. Didn't tell anybody about it. 'Cause I wanted you to smell it. And now I think the whole venue smells like puke 'cause I didn't clean it up and didn't tell anybody. And then someone jerked off 'cause it smells like cum, so that helps. And then I dropped my phone in the toilet, which was cool. I don't know how that relates to this, but I just thought I'd tell you that. Anyway, so I'm not gonna sing "Rough Gem" tonight...
Congratulations, dude. You're better than "Rough Gem." What's more, you're better than anyone who enjoys "Rough Gem," including and especially your fans. You, my friend, are the greatest hipster of all time.

*          *          *

All in all, I would have loved to have kept hating Islands, to have treasured them as my personal paragon of indie insufferability. But, damn it all, in the past six years Nicholas Thorburn has learned a thing or two about songwriting.

On 2012's underappreciated A Sleep and a Forgetting, he uses a minimal backdrop of piano, guitar, bass, and drums. Gone are the addled synthesizers, the jolting shifts in tempo, the GarageBand trickery. Vocals, lyrics, and melodies take center stage. And they're all stunningly well crafted.

The album's second track, "This Is Not a Song," rides a stately chord progression to violin-section solo straight out of R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts." It's a simple, gorgeous ballad - one that Islands should never give up singing.



"If this is just a song, / Then why-y-y-y-y do I fi-i-i-i-ind it so hard... to move on."