I loved Ellison’s Invisible Man: a smart black man refuses to be the tool of American hypocrisy or Communist rabble–rousers and instead asks society to engage him in the most difficult way possible: as a man in himself.
Ellison’s writing has a stark, almost journalistic character, but you definitely feel his familiarity with the Southern Gothic’s sentimentalism.
In an absolutely beautiful sample of Ellison’s style I cite:
Materially, psychologically and culturally, part of the nation’s heritage is Negro American, and whatever it becomes will be shaped in part by the Negro’s presence. Which is fortunate, for today it is the black American who puts pressure upon the nation to live up to its ideals. It is he who gives creative tension to our struggle for justice and for the elimination of those factors, social and psychological, which make for slums and shaky suburban communities. It is he who insists that we purify the American language by demanding that there be a closer correlation between the meaning of words and reality, between ideal and conduct, our assertions and our actions. Without the black American, something irrepressibly hopeful and creative would go out of the American spirit, and the nation might well succumb to the moral slobbism that has ever threatened its existence from within.
Much hay has been made of late about Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” ( no link to your site from my page, you singer of evil odes ).1
First, is there anyone who doesn’t see this as cynical posturing? Could it be anything but a display to rankle the Conservative Establishment (tm) as a means to guaranteed exposure and sales? After the faux-lesbianism that was t.A.t.U, after the question was explored by Tina Fey and even Roseanne Barr, I can’t believe there’s enough moral outrage left in this issue to squeeze out into that nectar most irresistible to the profit-pollenating bees of controversy. But even when you run out of Christian conservatives, you still have at least twohuge sects wherein this sort of thing is haraam-enough to generate sales.
The song is evil because it celebrates using people.
Opines “Perry”:
I kissed a girl and I liked it
The taste of her cherry chap stick
I kissed a girl just to try it
I hope my boyfriend don’t mind it
It felt so wrong
It felt so right
Don’t mean I’m in love tonight
I kissed a girl and I liked it
I liked it
No, I don’t even know your name
It doesn’t matter, You’re my experimental game
Kissing is a special activity whether your proclivities bend to the gay or straight ( whatever those terms really mean ). In said act the kissed feels special, magical, and the kisser feels a different, but equally important magic.
But for “Perry” this act, described supra, has no magic. Showing absolute disregard for the basis of Kantian-Christian ethics, her experience categorizes her “other” as a thing, a tool, a means to an end and not a person per se.
If we changed the words “a girl” and made the singer a man would any of these formulations be tolerated?
I kissed a fat chick … she’s [you’re] my experimental game
I kissed a black chick … she’s [you’re] my experimental game
I kissed a married guy … he’s [you’re] my experimental game
I kissed a deaf / blind / retarded girl … he’s [you’re] my experimental game
No, they wouldn’t and damn right; they celebrate a selfish paragon of arrant douchebaggery. Close your eyes and imagine the “churlish frat daddy on Spring break” singing the first one and then high-fiving his ’bro as the “fat chick”, heart full of the “ohmygod he actually thought I was the cute one this time”, came up behind the conversation just in time to get her fragile emotional vessel crushed.2 Gets your dander up, no?
Yet because of the cultural infatuation with the Sapphic taboo — especially if they’re young, nubile, and have silky hair like Portia de RossiGeneres — we let unbounded selfishness get a pass. This is wrong.
“The girl” in question was a person and this song completely ignores that. She might have been in the midst of a sexual identity crisis as well and that kiss was meaningful to her, now it’s a cheap game for some self-centered, meretricious, attention-whore.
Selfish bitch.
As if celebrating using people wasn’t evil enough, the song furthers a pernicious form of misogyny: the misogyny perpetrated by the female upon female for the titillation of the heterosexual, male, buying public. The song is celebrating using people to make yourself rich.
Can you even fathom the outrage of a Toofer-from-“30 Rock”-type singing a song about how he wheedled a black woman in the ’hood into a cutthroat loan so he could make his bonus target and get a trip to Tahiti? We’d not stand for it under those conditions, why now?
“I wheedled a hood mom her mortgage / Love the bling on my pinky … What? How dare you judge me
What’s next?
I kicked an old man down the stairs
His medicare check will buy me Prada
I’m put in mind of the stories of the slaves on the ol’ plantation who would rat out slaves planning escape to ’massa as a means for advancement. Cozying-up to ’massa netted succor but did so at the expense of perpetuating a morally reprehensible institution and at the expense of a fellow victim subjugated by said evil institution.
I recall Liz Phair once being called the proponent of “do-me feminism” ( i.e. “women have the right to be sexually active and not be judged differently for the act than men” ). “Perry” is the proponent of fuck-you feminism: “the movement’s dead, I’m looking out for number one, and i’ll put my stiletto heels in the back of as many sisters as I need until I get my ducets — hey sister, at least one of us is advancing.”
Selfish sell-out.
And while the misogyny and the using make the song evil, it doesn’t make it bad. No, that comes courtesy of the internally inconsistent messages within the song itself. While “Perry” is contemplating how nice it has been to baselessly use another human being, later she has the temerity to sing:
Us girls we are so magical
Soft skin, red lips, so kissable
Hard to resist so touchable
Too good to deny it
Ain’t no big deal, it’s innocent
Now while it’s certainly not Shelley, the sentiment here is something that most sexes can recognize as part of the beauty of the feminine form. And “Perry”, I am so with you the first 5 lines of your bridge, but the last one, double negative aside, says that “your game” is “innocent”.
I do not think that word means what you think it means
No, it’s anything but innocent! It’s tawdry and mean. Here’s the worst I’ll say about it, it’s as mean as “In the Company of Men” and that’s about as mean as it gets.
Lastly, Perry’s look is impinging on Zooey Deschanel territory and I don’t like any singers of such hateful material approximating the sweet look of my dear, sweet, blue saucer-eye Zooey - HULK SMASH!
Original: Talented singer and actor Zooey Deschanel
Bad Copy: Possible misogynist and misanthrope “Perry”
I mean really, the look, it’s Zooey’s, stop copying just stop it, stop it, stop it.
In any case, the song is pure evil, and it’s bad, and it, of course, is a hit.3
UPDATE: I left a comment at YouTube under Perry’s video giving a precis of these points and it appears to have been removed. I suppose the clip owner “CapitolRecords” likes controversy about gay or not or tolerant or not, but can’t brook an actual criticism. “Is it OK to be a lesbian” they like being asked, but “is it OK to be a douche of a human being” is too hot to handle, or too inconvenient when you’re making mad money selling the controversy.
Footnotes
1. I say “Perry” because I don’t know if this is actually Ms. Perry’s thought, or if this is the results of some calculated wordsmith who realized that cheap lesbian titillation would sell records. Thus this is the Perry as portrayed by the factual Perry singing the song, versus the factual Perry herself, who may well be a perfectly lovely person — although her taste in material is suspect in either case. “Perry” refers to the singer of the song and Perry refers to actual singer and human. Back
2. Just a quick note, I have only known 2 people in my life in fraternities in any intimate way. One was is my friend who is a thoroughly decent gentleman in Dallas. The other was a guy who was on a project with me my senior year who was kinda flakey. I admit, I’m playing to stereotype here. On the other hand, I’ve heard enough Spring Break stories to think there’s a germ of truth lurking about. Back
3. A culture as bankrupt as this deserves George W. Bush for a president. Back
Ubi sunt qui nos ad civitatem virtutis ducere possunt? O tempora, O mores!
Today starts the Olympics, but you’ll hear little from my corner of the internet. Being a house without even rabbit-ears, we’re going to be incredibly out of the loop. Not to say that I was in-the loop back in the day. The last time I even had a remote awareness of the Olympics was during the “muy muy es olympioso” era of Mrs. Letterman visiting Seoul ( I think ).
For a person who purports to be internationally aware, I’m a horrible follower of these international to-do’s that center on sport. Nevertheless, I do know it’s happening in Beijing, which I suppose has my China-radar up.
But I did notice an interesting piece on eights over at the New York Times’ Op-Art ( proving, to me, that even if their reporters aren’t always truthful or even sane, they do advance our culture, like it or no ).
The feature, “Crazy 8’s”, referenced President Hu ( Jintao )’s 8 traditional virtues, a bit of the old program of civic virtue in the Augustan style.
It’s interesting. I see it as it’s trying to instill a moral-and-capitalist ethic so that the transition to PRC-organized, human-rights-abusing control can occur with less chance of stratospheric wealth inequity ( which would be the base for revolutionary foment and demagoguery ). All nations have a long road to go to get towards a more fair implementation of the rules that they believe will help them to create their national ideals, but I was particularly struck by President Hu’s explicit embrace of science.
My goodness, I would love to have a scientist or engineer be embraced as a national commendee.
Instead I have insanity like this: “Give Intelligent Design Equal Time and Place”. Freed of such Bronze-Age adherence, Chinese medicine and science will outpace the religious world’s ( and no, this isn’t strictly an American problem, other religiously-driven societies will find themselves in the lurch when their primary commodity runs out ).
But by no means do I wish to say that Hu’s guidelines are perfect, or even coherent. Those who innovate in science and business often do so at the expense of the current social or moral order. Thus it seems that several of his dicta are in conflict with the command and control maxim.
Nevertheless, I do like the ensconcing of culture in these adaptable moral frameworks. It’s very virtue ethics.
Once upon a time there was a genius software developer named Hans Reiser. He used to join Linux forums and lambaste other hackers as being foolish, prodigal, indolent, and was generally a bit of an egomaniacal ass.
In other words, par for the course in the world of software development.
But then he was indicted, and convicted, for the murder of his wife amid a tale of S&M, Linux development ( intimately linked ), Russian internet-ordered brides, and infidelity.
A crucial feature of the trial was, well, that the cops couldn’t find the body. Upon being found guilty, Reiser seems to have copped a plea with the judge such that he could get a lesser sentence in exchange for the victim’s family and, nota bene, his own children being able to lay the body of their daughter / mother to rest.
Here was Gawker media’s “Valleywag” summation picture:
First of all, and not to be juvenile, but a copy-editor would have caught the phrase “fingers corpse”—oh right this is blogging, ahem, never-mind.
Secondly, the incapacitated girl in the ad in the party dress appears dead if not really whacked out on laudanum. One could foreseeably think that that was the corpse under discussion.
The whole post is pretty distasteful, I’d say.
I’m reminded of pro-feminist blogs decrying things like “new bikini’s are scandalous” or left-leaning blogs that decry “It’s insane that McCain can run for president in the 21st century given that he can’t even use a computer” only to be served up, guess what, an ad featuring said bikini’s or a clip of the blogger-hating senator as an ad.
Imagine, if you will, for a moment that you are a resident of the isle where that finest of Greek poets, Sappho, practiced her craft. While hailing from a tiny island, you have much history of which to be proud: written of by Thucydides, home to no lesser intellects than Aristotle and Epicurus, etc. The Lesbian has a rich classical heritage to be proud of and a vibrant beach-culture in the here-and-now.
But when searchers of the internet go to discover more about your home what do they get? Well.
…And more of it than you can shake a stick at!
The Lesbians, while having profited handily on lesbian tourism lo these many years, recently undertook to have their name moved out of the realm of the public domain via EU complaint ( toothpaste back into the tube, my good Lesbians ).
Recently, I wanted to research the name used by Iove for Venus in the Æneid, “Cytherea” ( kith-uh-RAY-uh ). It’s so named for the island “Cytherea’ which was sacred to the goddess of love and mother of Æneas. It is also the nom d’ecran of a certain adult actress.
A person walks in and uses the bathroom. They then….
Walk out:
Very gross
Run hand under water ( no soap ) and walk out:
Hypocritical gross: you knew you were gross but made a gesture to appear socially less disgusting.
Wash your hands with soap and walk out with hands wet
Not gross, just a bit sloppy
Wash your hands with soap, dry with a ton of towels
Not green, not gross
Wash your hands with soap, use only one towel
Green, not gross
Wash your hands with soap, dry with 2 towels
Not green, not gross, Joe Average ®
Wash your hands before using bathroom, use bathroom, wash hands afterwards
A bit obsessive, but OK.
Wash your hands before using bathroom, take extra towel, use bathroom, flush with toted towel, wash hands afterwards
You are clean, man, but you might want to look into OCD medication
Wash your hands before using bathroom, take extra towel, use bathroom, flush with toted towel, wash hands afterwards, dry off countertop and all other countertops
You are clean, man, but you might want to look into OCD, and you have a great prospect in the custodial service industry.
Proving yet again the line between ‘decent’ behavior and ‘live in the now, man’.
Here’s something that bothers the hell out of white-people who love grammar:
When discussing non-specific nouns (“water”, “information”, “love”), the correct term to denote a comparative minor is “less”. When discussing things of a countable nature (“wrinkles”, “cigarettes”, “dancing bears”), one should use “fewer”.
So, let me ask, can wrinkles be counted? Oil of Olay ads lead me to believe yes, ergo the proper use is fewer, not less.
