#it made hudson's parody all that much better | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

autolenaphilia · 3 years

Text

Granada Holmes (series review)

The 1984-1994 Granada series of Sherlock Holmes adaptations, starring Jeremy Brett as Holmes are regarded by fans as a milestone among the many adaptations of Sherlock Holmes that were made. Brett is said to be “the definitive Holmes”. And I would largely agree with that, despite it not being my favourite version, and it having some flaws and weak episodes, especially as the series went on.

The first thing that set this show apart is that it went back to the original stories and adapted those. Now, it isn’t the first version to do so, as some people (including Brett, apparently) claim. The 1920s silent film series with Eille Norwood was fairly canon accurate, and the 1960s BBC tv series with Douglas Wilmer and Peter Cushing also followed the canon. There is also the 1979-1986 Soviet Russian series with Vasily Livanov. And on radio you have more canonical dramatizations, such as the British John Gielgud 1950s series and the BBC Carleton Hobbs series from the 50s and 60s. People have an unfortunate tendency to ignore radio in favour of screen adaptations.

Still, it must be granted that Granada at its best is probably the supreme screen adaptation of the canon. The production values and acting are far superior to what the 60s BBC tv series had.

Jeremy Brett was a revolution in Holmes performances. The previous era defining Holmes, Basil Rathbone, as great as he was, made Holmes into too much of a straightforward hero. Brett brought back the eccentricities (including the drug use), the nervous energy and the character’s general moodiness and emotionality that was there in the text.

Holmes in the Granada series was ultimately on the side of good and a benevolent figure (if occasionally rude), but fictional justice perhaps had never an odder champion. He did everything from sitting weirdly, jumping over couches to taking drugs. Holmes felt neurodiverse, and indeed Brett used his own experiences with bipolar disorder in the performance. And it was true to canon, in a way we seldom had seen on screen before.

Jeremy Brett’s performance as Holmes is extremely influential and often imitated by later screen adaptations, but has never been surpassed. The portrayal of Holmes in BBC Sherlock and the movies with Robert Downey Jr. is clearly inspired by Brett’s nervy eccentric genius Holmes, but ends up a bad parody. Holmes in the Granada series can like his canon counterpart occasionally be rude or careless towards other, but it was lapses, not a general trend. They seemed to be caused by an eccentric brain on another wavelength from the people around him, rather than any malevolence. Holmes in BBC Sherlock is a male nerd wish-fulfilment fantasy, where the character’s eccentric genius are allowed to excuse any crimes.

At its height, Brett’s Holmes is an awe-inspiring performance, with the actor pouring everything of his skill and energy into it. You could criticize it as melodramatic over-acting, but it makes for great viewing and fits the man who said “I never can resist a touch of the dramatic”.

The Granada series gets much credit for rehabilitating the role of Watson. Both of the actors playing him depicted as very much intelligent and capable. It is somewhat overstated of course, the turning away from the comedic figure Nigel Bruce portrayed started already with Andre Morell’s Watson in the 1959 Hammer Hound of the Baskervilles. Still, the Watson depicted by the Granada series is still one of the show’s chief draws.

The series had a switch in the actors playing Watson, with David Burke portraying him in the first two seasons of 13 episodes and The Empty House featuring Holmes return to a Watson portrayed by Edward Hardwicke. And honestly it is hard to choose between them, because they are both great and there is a consistency in the writing that makes them feel like the same basic character.

Burke’s Watson comes across as younger and more energetic of the two actors and has perhaps the better comedic dynamic with Holmes. He is perhaps my pick, as despite his actual age while playing the part, he feels closer to the young Watson of the canon.

But that is no serious slight against Hardwicke’s performance, which is still first-rate. Hardwicke’s Watson feels older, despite the difference in age between the actors being but a few years. The performance is also defined by an effortless charm and warmth, giving Watson an avuncular aura. But Watson is not at all infirm and is still an intelligent medical man and an experienced soldier, ever ready with his revolver.

An interesting change from the Canonical stories is that Watson never gets married and moves out of Baker Street. The Sign of the Four features Mary Morstan, but at the end she walks out of the story without any romance between her and Doctor Watson. The reason this was done, is that it simplifies the set-up of the stories. With Watson in 221B, he is always on hand to join Holmes. No need for a scene at the beginning of Holmes taking Watson away from wife and practice. Also it saves them keeping track of when Watson was married or not, something that Conan Doyle himself got into a serious continuity tangle about.

As producer Michael Cox (quoted in David Stuart Davies’s book Starring Sherlock Holmes) noted, Conan Doyle himself probably regretted marrying off Watson, considering The Empty House has Watson suffering from a “sad bereavement” and then moving back in with Holmes. So it is a very much acceptable deviation from canon.

It also frees the writers to focus on the most important relationship in the canon: the friendship between Holmes and Watson. The canon has been called “a textbook of friendship” by Christopher Morley, and the chemistry and relationship between Holmes and Watson is vitally important to any adaptation. And that aspect of the stories is wonderfully conveyed here, with both actors playing Watson working together with Brett as Holmes well to convey the odd but close friendship between the two men.

Rosalie Williams plays Mrs. Hudson, and she is excellent in the role. The Granada series has a lot of little scenes of Mrs. Hudson added into the canonical cases, and they work excellently, giving her more of a presence. Many of them are comedic, making jokes about how a difficult and eccentric lodger Holmes is, but there is a clear undercurrent of affection throughout their interactions.

The recurring cast members include Charles Gray as Mycroft Holmes and Colin Jeavons as Inspector Lestrade.

Gray as Mycroft is close to ideal, fitting the character of the overweight, lazy and intelligent canon character perfectly. He was such a good fit for the role that he had actually earlier played the part in the film adaptation of The Seven-Per-Cent Solution.

Jeavons fit the part of Lestrade and his acting is superb, capable of showing the full extent of Lestrade’s character, having both smug over-confidence at times, yet also having genuine respect and affection for Holmes.

The acting skills of the actors playing characters who only appear in one episode is also generally very high. And that is part of the general high quality of execution the show had for most of its run. The period sets and the directing was of a similar high standard. The music by Patrick Gowers is excellent, and I suggest any fan take a listen to this Youtube playlist of his soundtrack.

The scripts are quite excellent, for the most part sticking close to the Conan Doyle stories. Of course there are always infidelities here and there, and sometimes the episode would go on non-canonical tangents.

Usually it was to make the story work better on screen. For example, the villains in The Greek Interpreter escape from Holmes and Watson, ending up being killed “off-screen” as it were. So the Granada version of the same tale has a non-canonical ending of Holmes, Watson and Mycroft confronting the villains on a train, something that works rather well. Another example is The Musgrave Ritual which entirely ditches the original story’s framing device of Holmes telling Watson the story of an early case of his. In the Granada version Watson is with Holmes on this case, and it works better that way.

And with all of these elements working together, for most of its run, the Granada series is perhaps the definitive screen adaptation of Sherlock Holmes. The first four seasons of 50 minute episodes, which were broadcast under the titles of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Return of Sherlock Holmes from 1984-1988 plus the feature length adaptation of The Sign of Four are pretty much all great. It went from strength to strength, consistently making very well-made adaptations of the canon.

The Sign of Four is probably a good pick for Granada’s peak, due to its epic nature. And it is definitely the best of the five feature-length films they did. Outside of leaving out any romance between John and Mary, the film is faithful to the book, although it goes too far in that direction in keeping in the racism of the story. But it also has all of the book’s virtues as a story too, and fine acting from Brett, Hardwicke, and John Thaw as Jonathan Small make for an enjoyable viewing experience.

There was however a decline in the series later years. The lynchpin of the series was Jeremy Brett, and his health began to seriously fail him by 1987, leading to his death in 199 (my source of information on Brett’s health decline and general behind the scenes things is mostly Davies’s book Starring Sherlock Holmes) Once lean and looking remarkably like the Sidney Paget illustrations of Holmes, his conflicting medications for his heart problems and bipolar disorder caused him to retain water and bloat, causing him to no longer look like the lean figure he once was. His looks wasn’t really the problem, what was however was that his health problems drained him of the energy that he once was able to put it into his performance, creating through no fault of his own a more lethargic and weaker Holmes.

There was also a growing lack of care shown towards the series by Granada itself. The budgets began to shrink by 1988, and while the series looked good for the most part, it did impact the show.

Probably the first disappointing episode is the double-length adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles from 1988. You would expect the Granada series, with their excellent leads and excellent track record up to this point, to create the definitive version of this often-filmed story, but it just isn’t. It isn’t bad, but it is ultimately mediocre in a way that is hard to pinpoint. My guess is that the direction and cinematography doesn’t manage to create the suspense the story needs, resulting in a slow-paced and slightly boring experience.

It also ends up show-casing the problems the show would now begin to have, with the production crew not having the money to do location shooting on Dartmoor and Brett obviously showing the signs of his failing health.

The Hound film was followed by a season of six 50-minute length episodes, called The Case-book of Sherlock Holmes. And these were mostly fine, considering the circumstances. The budget had been reduced compared to earlier seasons and you could tell the writers sometimes lacked a first-rate canonical story to adapt.

There were one or two weaker episodes, but those were due to the original story being weak. For example, the season ended with a faithful adaptation of The Creeping Man and it is as good and well-made a tv adaptation you could ever hope to make with such a bizarre plot. The result is of course pure camp, but so is the original story. When the show had a good Conan Doyle story to adapt, like The Boscombe Valley Mystery, The Problem of Thor Bridge or The Illustrious Client, the results are indeed up to the standards of its past.

The real nadir of the series came later, however, when in 1992-93 the series decided to do three double-length episodes. Granada wanted the Holmes series to copy the success of Inspector Morse and its 100 minute tv film format. The problem was the show would still adapt Conan Doyle’s short stories into a format that was far too long for them. So the scriptwriters had to pad the stories out with their own inventions.

This sort of worked for the first film of these three films, The Master Blackmailer. It was based on Charles Augustus Milverton, which is one of the shortest stories in the canon, but one of the most rich in dramatic potential. Writer Jeremy Paul’s script decided to show in detail what is merely mentioned in the story, such as Milverton blackmailing people and Holmes courting Milverton’s maid in order to gain access to his home. The end result works, it is somewhat slow-paced but is ultimately coherent and at its best feels like you are watching the backstory to the canonical events.

The same can’t be said for the second and third of these films, The Last Vampyre and The Eligible Bachelor. The Last Vampyre is an almost completely incoherent non-adaptation of The Sussex Vampire, where elements from the canonical story probably make up less than 5% of the resulting film. There is an attempt to create intrigue and suspense around the original character Stockton, but the film is so vague about what he is and what threat he poses that the resulting film makes no sense.

The Eligible Bachelor is a similar adaptation of The Noble Bachelor, where the canonical story elements that remain is entirely subsided by a new bizarre plot where Lord St. Simon is now a ruthless Bluebeard-like villain. It is slightly better than The Last Vampyre, simply because the villain here poses an identifiable and somewhat coherent threat. Still, the film has to pad things out with bizarre subplots, like Holmes having prophetic dreams, which ultimately doesn’t lead anywhere.

Wisely, the series returned to the 50 minute format for the last season of six episodes, which aired in 1994, under the name of “he Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. It was with this season Jeremy Brett’s health problems and the lower budgets really began to seriously affect the show. Brett was in a bad state at this point, and the description of the production in Davies’s book makes for sad reading.

During the filming of one episode in this season, The Three Gables, he had to use a wheelchair between takes and supplementary oxygen to ease his breathing. His performance is naturally lacking in the energy he once had, but the fact it is a performance at all is testament to his commitment. The Three Gables is actually one of the better episodes of this season, as it actually manages to improve on one of the weakest stories in the canon.

Edward Hardwicke was unavailable to film The Golden Pince-nez, and they couldn’t re-schedule the shooting dates (which I suspect was a budget issue). So the writer wrote out Watson and replaced him in the role of Sherlock’s assistant with Mycroft, since Charles Gray was available. The result is well-made otherwise, with guest stars Frank Finlay and Anna Carteret giving great performances, but the lack of Watson is sorely felt. It is fun to see Charles Gray’s Mycroft again, but it feels contrary to his character to accompany his brother like this.

And before he could film The Mazarin Stone, Brett’s health gave out on him and he was hospitalized. Again Charles Gray was called in by the producer to play Mycroft as a substitute. It is nice to see Mycroft for a fourth time, but Mycroft doing this doesn’t feel true to his character. And this episode is one of the weakest in the series, due to the script. Not that I blame the scriptwriter too much, The Mazarin Stone is one of the worst stories in the canon. The efforts to improve on the story by combining it with another weak story The Three Garridebs don’t at all manage to rescue it.

However, there are still some rather good episodes in this season . The Red Circle is good and The last ever episode of the series, The Cardboard box manages to close out the series on a good if dark note.

Jeremy Brett died in 1995 due to heart failure, ending all hope of any future series.

I might have delved too much on the series failures in this essay. Because all of that is outweighed by the consistent high quality the series managed to achieve in the first four seasons, and with a few failures, still managed to sometimes achieve again in the later ones. Those adaptations are perhaps the peak of Holmes on screen.

It is not my favourite adaptation, that is the BBC radio drama versions made starring Clive Merrison as Holmes from 1989 to 2010. Those were just as consistently good, with Merrison and Williams/Sachs as Holmes and Watson being on the same general level as Brett and Burke/Hardwicke as performances. In fact, the BBC version is more consistent, never going off the rails as the Granada version sometimes, and it actually managed to achieve the goal Brett had hoped for: adapting every canonical story.

Still that doesn’t take away from Granada’s great achievement in adapting the Holmes stories with such quality. It is an achievement that later movie and tv adaptations haven’t been able to surpass.

#granada holmes #review #sherlock holmes

17 notes · View notes

jackie-talks-about-starkid · 3 years

Text

Black Friday (Rewatch #12 [last one!], 11/30/2020)

YouTube publish date: February 29, 2020

Number of views on date of rewatch: 1, 788, 310

Original Performance Run: October 31 - December 8, 2019 at the Hudson Mainstage Theatre in Los Angeles

Ticket prices: (x)

General Admission: $45

Priority Access: $75

Digital Ticket: $15

Rush Tickets via TodayTix: $20

Director: Nick Lang

Music and Lyrics: Jeff Blim

Book: Matt Lang and Nick Lang

Cast album price and availability: $14.99 on iTunes

Release date: February 29, 2020

Parody or original: an original sequel to The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals

Funding: funded by a Kickstarter jointly dedicated to the StarKid: Homecoming concert celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the company and Black Friday (x)

Goal: $155, 000

Total (combined): $547, 439

Backers: 11, 704

Main cast and characters

Lex Foster - Angela Giarratana

Hannah Foster - Kendall Nicole Yakshe

Tom Houston - Dylan Saunders

Becky Barnes - Kin Whalen

Linda Monroe - Lauren Lopez

Uncle Wiley/Homeless Guy - Joey Richter

Wiggly/Gary Goldstein - Jon Matteson

Ethan Green - Robert Manion

Man in a Hurry/General MacNamara - Jeff Blim

President Howard Goodman - Curt Mega

Frank Pricely - Corey Dorris

Sherman Young - Jaime Lyn Beatty

Xander Lee - James Tolbert

Musical numbers

Act I

“Tickle-Me Wiggly Jingle” Characters: Uncle Wiley and Ensemble

“What Tim Wants” Characters: Tom Houston

“CaliforM.I.A.” Characters: Lex Foster and Ethan Green

“What Do You Say” Characters: Tom Houston, Becky Barnes, and Ensemble

“Our Doors Are Open” Characters: Frank Pricely, Lex Foster, and Ensemble

“Feast or Famine” Characters: Ensemble

“Monsters and Men” Characters: General MacNamara, Pres. Howard Goodman, and Ensemble

Act II

“Deck the Halls (of Northville High)” Characters: Ensemble

“Take Me Back” Characters: Tom Houston, Becky Barnes, and Ensemble

“Adore Me” Characters: Linda Monroe and Ensemble

“Do You Want to Play” Characters: Becky Barnes and Tom Houston

“Made in America” Characters: Uncle Wiley, Pres. Goodman, General MacNamara, and Ensemble

“Black Friday” Characters: Lex Foster

“Monsters and Men (Reprise)” Characters: General MacNamara

“If I Fail You” Characters: Tom Houston

“Wiggle” Characters: Linda Monroe and Ensemble

“What If Tomorrow Comes” Characters: Hannah Foster and Company

Content Analysis:

Black Friday is monumental for the theatre community. While The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals was the first in the Hatchetfield series, Black Friday solidified that StarKid has created a theatrical universe of horror-comedy musicals that are all interconnected. There have been sequels to musicals before (including the infamous Phantom sequel Love Never Dies and the Annie sequel), the only group of titles that have come close to creating a theatrical universe a la Marvel is William Finn’s Marvin trilogy which encompasses In Trousers, March of the Falsettos, and Falsettoland, the last of the two often performed as the two-act musical Falsettos. Even then, Finn’s work doesn’t equate to StarKid’s latest and theatrical project; whereas Finn intended his works as a group of one-act musicals to be viewed in succession and continuing the same storyline, StarKid’s Hatchetfield series revolves around the town of Hatchetfield and the growing cast of characters within it as the audience witness different apocalyptic scenarios in alternate universe connected by a singular entity.

Where The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals was the introduction to the universe, Black Friday was the introduction to the extended Hatchetfield Theatrical Universe’s lore. The introduction of this universe’s version of force-sensitive children, Lex and Hannah, perfectly weaves together the growing plot and alternate-universe characters the audience is already familiar with, such as General MacNamara, Emma, and Paul, and adds so much more depth to Black Friday’s predecessor, providing so much potential for StarKid’s future Hatchetfield projects. When viewing it as a stand-alone musical, Black Friday holds its own because of the strong writing, creative story, and excellent characterization, but it would be a disservice to this individual story to only view it as such. Considering that it’s a part of a currently-growing larger theatrical work, the only way to fully comprehend the complexity and creativity of Black Friday is to view it in tandem with The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals.

The book is a perfect companion for The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals because of its great writing and each actor embodied their character so well that I would say the greatest performance throughout the show was given by the ensemble as a whole. An interesting difference between the two shows, however, is the tone. The overall tone for the show feels heavier and the plot bears much more significance to the characters, as well as the audience. A lot of that is largely due to the lighting and set design, provided by Sarah Petty and Corey Lubowich respectively. Even when viewing the production from a screen, I feel like I’m trapped in an enclosed space that increases my sense of impending doom the longer I take in the dark complexities of the plot.

Yet, story-wise, the plot is a lot darker because the consequences are higher and less laughable than being stuck in a musical. Black Friday does not shy away from its message that capitalism will eventually be the end of us all and is not afraid to say that if America continues its self-serving ways, then it will be a major, if not the sole, reason for the beginning of the end of Western civilization. Ignoring the fact that the entire show is about the poisonous effects of money in modern capitalist society, the running thread of the interpersonal disputes and internal struggles within the main characters revolve around selfishness and material gain. Our protagonists, Lex and Tom, spend the entire show trying to repair their relationships and make life better for their loved ones, but they bet their entire future happiness on a doll (who happens to be an evil being from another world set to destroy Earth but that’s beside the point). Granted, a lot of personal issues can be fixed with money - housing, food stability, education, healthcare, etc. are all dependent on a person’s finances. But, as Black Friday argues, people can withstand the worst of tragedies life throws at them as long as the people they love are close by and emotionally available.

#@TeamStarkid #black friday #black friday musical #hatchetfield theatrical universe #hatchetfield universe #hatchetfield #htu #team starkid #starkid productions #starkid musicals #starkid #musical theatre #musicals #theatre

23 notes · View notes

grimelords · 5 years

Photo

Hello I’ve finished my February playlist for you. There’s no timeline on these things anymore they just come out whenever they come out it seems. A good mix, and I’m sure there’ll be at least one thing in here you’ve never heard before that you’ll like.

Doncamatic (feat. Daley) - Gorillaz: This song is extremely traumatic for me because they released it after Plastic Beach as a standalone single and Damon Albarn said they had a whole other album worth of songs from the Plastic Beach sessions that they were thinking about releasing with Doncamatic as the lead single that just never materialised, and the idea of Plastic Beach 2 sitting on a hard drive while we get The Now Now (The Fall 2) instead is maddening.

Portait Of A Man (live) - Marlon Williams: I feel like I've used The Secret to bring this album into existence. It's exactly what I wanted from him - no studio artifice or weird genre pigeonholing and his huge voice on full display. It's incredible and long as hell and this is definitely the highlight.

Houdini Crush - Buke & Gase: I'm in love with the structure of this song. It takes SO long to get back to the chorus. It takes about three different sections in the middle and then finally gets back there and it's so satisfying because of it. You could edit this song into a tight indie pop piece but instead it has the space to go wild and jam and it's great.

AE_LIVE_KRAKOW_200914 - Autechre: Sorry but Autechre finally put all their live albums on spotify and they're very VERY good. Not the sort of thing that you want to listen to as part of a playlist exactly cause they go for an hour each but a very nice reminder nonetheless.

Sheet Metal Girl - Pig Destroyer: I think Pig Destroyer is one of the best band names I've ever heard. I found out later they meant pigs like cops which is still good but the idea of absolutely eviscerating a hog for no reason is very palpably metal. Just looked up the lyrics and this song seems to literally about having sex with a girl made out of sheet metal. Good!

Horizon - Aldous Harding: I absolutely love this song and the way she says 'babe' lights my brain up like a christmas tree. Every now and then I think about when you’ll die baaaaabe.

Born Slippy (Nux) - Underworld: There's a good bit on the Genius page for this song that says "Lots of 1990s acts helped popularize techno, but in Karl Hyde, Underworld had something that was the exclusive province of rock bands: a totally full-of-it frontman who sounded cool." and it's interesting that Underworld and The Prodigy are the biggest names to survive that time and still be at least slightly relevant now. No matter how much you put into your instrumentals nothing can really compare to just having an insane guy yell a bunch of garbage over it.

A Change Is Going To Come - Baby Huey & The Baby Sitters: This is like all good all normal and then he does that huge squeal at 2 minutes in and you're rocked to your core and then it only gets bigger and bigger and better from there. Also maybe one of the best mid song monologues I've ever heard.

No Signal (feat. Roy Woods) - 24hrs: The whole thing of emo rap mirroring mid 2000s emo is still so strange because it's not just the mindset and content being repurposed it's the literal melodic conventions. Change the instrumentation of this song and it's melodically just an emo song. Very strange, but this song is great regardless.

De Aqui No Sales - Cap.4: Disputa - Rosalia: Rosalia rocks and I only just found out El Guincho co-produced this album which is very exciting to me. I love the way this song feels like it never really gets to the big build up it's promising. It has a big intro for about half the song and then when it feels like it's about to blow up when the handclaps come in it just sits in that groove for a while and ends. I also feel like I should mention the video for this song because it's like the platonic ideal of a music video. It's got everything you could ask for. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvGt2BcDl_g

Glass Jar - Gang Gang Dance: Here's how good brains are: I had a sudden urge to listen to this album the other day but couldn't remember what it was called or who it was by, only the album cover, but for some reason locked away in my brain was the fact that it was from 2011 so I just looked through Pitchfork's Best Of 2011 list until I recognised it. Incredible. Anyway I'm so glad I did because I ended up having a huge phase with this album. They walk the fine line of psychedelic jammy bands like this of taking up a lot of space with atmospherics but it never feeling like it's lost momentum. Even when this song takes fully half of its 11 minute runtime to properly get started it never feels like wasted time somehow, it's always moving somewhere.

Heavyweight - Infected Mushroom: It's unbelievable that this song's good because it absolutely shouldn't be. The unholy mix of goa trance and metal usually reserved for Command And Conquer soundtracks is so unbelievably naff that it's come all the way around again and I absolutely love it.

Black Static - Health: I'm still absolutely furious about Pitchfork giving this album a 3 and not particularly for the score but because it's some of the worst Pitchfork Writing I've seen in a quite a while. They tried to cancel them for calling the album Slaves Of Fear I think: "The “we,” it seems, refers to the slaves, the slaves of fear, and if I try any harder to connect the dual sensation of edginess and laziness with slavery, the all-American institution that killed and brutalized millions of people for hundreds of years, I am going to have to take a long walk into the sun." Not sure about that. Anyway this song's great sorry for talking about a review instead of the song!

Burn Bridges - The Grates: Twee pop is an underrated genre and The Grates are an underrated band because they brought so much attitude and power to it it's hardly twee at all. It's huge and it rocks!

Girlfriend (feat. Lil Mama) - Dr. Luke Mix - Avril Lavigne: Sorry for putting Dr Luke on your dash in 2019 but this is mostly for Lil Mama. Removing Avril's verses and replacing them with Lil Mama but keeping the chorus and big guitars makes it sound like a lost Girl Talk song and it's so, so much better than the original. There's also a good bit in this where she really puts a lot of emphasis on saying 'Jennifer Hudson' and the weird harmony vocals in the background mirror it which I like a lot.

Panic Switch - Silversun Pickups: It seems like Silversun Pickups had no lasting impact beyond being one hit wonders for Lazy Eye which is so strange to me because their first two albums were absolutely solid. This is also a good example of totally nonsense lyrics feeling like they have meaning because the melody it so good.

3 - Seekae: It's very strange now to think that Alex Cameron was in Seekae. But that's not important. What is important is how good this song is. In the extremely narrow genre of Mount Kimbie-ites +Dome really stood out to me as album from guys who really got it. It's extremely catchy music but it still sounds like nothing you've ever heard before which when you think about it sounds like it should be impossible.

Shooting Stars - Bag Raiders: Bag Raiders did a little Song Exploder thing for Triple J about this song a little while ago and pointed out something I'd never noticed before which is that this song has the extremely strange structure of 1 really long verse, breakdown, 1 really long chorus, end. Which is.... completely amazing. And also that this song blew up and charted higher than it ever had before via memes like 6 years after it came out is still bizarre. Remember when it was in the video for Swish Swish by Katy Perry? God I hope they got paid a million dollars for that.

Romantic Rights (Erol Alkan's Love From Below Re-Edit) - Death From Above 1979: Huge fan of this remix that seems to just drop the full song unedited right in the middle. The perfect way to remix an already great song - just make it longer.

Dwa Serduszka - Joanna Kulig: I saw Cold War and subsequently couldn't get this song out of my head. I loved that movie so much but I also extremely agreed when @cyborgbree said the ending was like a Simpsons parody or foreign movies.

Holes - Mercury Rev: This song gives me depression and makes me feel like I'm sorting through old records and merch from my old band that tried really hard but never got anywhere even though I've never even been in a band. That's the power of music!

It's Never Over (Hey Orpheus) - Arcade Fire: Reflektor is a great and underrated album and to this day I am still finding new things to love about it! Namely this song which I've never paid much attention to before but massively jumped out at me last time I listened. It's a 3 note riff but it's absolutely amazing.

Dance Your Life Away - Audiobooks: Huge fan of having the gall to name your band Audiobooks and a huge fan of this song! It sounds like if Life Without Buildings was a dance band, which is a theoretically perfect idea. It sounds like she's just making the words up on the spot and she probably is and it's absolutely great.

Everything (Deathless) - JW Ridley: I'm so glad that War On Drugs brought heartland rock back for the masses and finally gave us back extended guitar solos outside of a metal or prog context. It is so inspiring what you can do with two chords and a propulsive groove.

Unmarked Helicopters - Soul Coughing: Sorry for continually putting Soul Coughing in these playlists but check out how good this song they did for the X Files movie soundtrack was. 'check out this Soul Coughing song they did for the X Files movie soundtrack' is a very specific kind of 90s sentence. Anyway the 'black black black black and blacker' part with the distortion on the vocals is so good, love it lots.

Don't Sit Down Cause I've Moved Your Chair - Arctic Monkeys: I saw Arctic Monkeys a couple of weeks ago and it was amazing but also extra good because they played this song that I'd completely forgotten about and it went off. The Josh Homme produced Arctic Monkeys albums are very good because his fingerprints are all over them and they sound like Queens Of The Stone Age covers.

What Can I Do If The Fire Goes Out? - Gang Of Youths: It's fucked up how good this song is. I listened to it the other day and was like 'what the fuck how come I never listened to Gang Of Youths second album that much? But then I kept going and realised it was 70 minutes long and had about five interlude tracks on it. I love Gang Of Youths but they need a producer that will yell at them until they make a 40 minute album. Fuck this song's good though. So good I'm mad I haven't seen it live yet.

Shark Smile - Big Thief: I don't even know the words to this song or what it's about but it makes me cry anyway. I'm very glad I found out about Big Thief this month, like two years after everyone else. Their description on Bandcamp says "Listening to Big Thief is like the feeling of looking at a dog and suddenly marvelling that it is like you but very not like you; when you are accustomed to looking at a dog and thinking 'dog', watching Big Thief is like forgetting the word 'dog' and looking at that naked animal and getting much closer to it and how different it is to you" which is a certainly a way to feel.

Inhaler - Foals: I don't know how I've avoided it but I've never really gotten much into Foals even though they have multiple songs that I really really love, this one being one of them. I think it's an amazing piece of recording simply for how huge it gets. This song swells to about ten times its original size as the chorus hits before totally deflating again. Also a huge fan of anyone that can make a Battles riff work in a conventional song like this does.

Red Bull & Hennessy - Jenny Lewis: Another fantastic song in the long pantheon of great songs about getting twisted and being horny. The isolated 'ohh' after 'all we've been through' feels like a real Shania Twain piece of production and I love it. Also the drums on this song are absolutely massive for some reason which is very cool.

listen here

#playlists

117 notes · View notes

gaming-rabbot · 6 years

Text

Rabbot Reviews: Far Cry 5

Great taste, empty calories.

Far Cry 5 is the latest game in quite the lineage of a series known, as you might surmise, as Far Cry. Game number 6, actually, dependent on how canon you feel Primal was. FC as it stands now, though, is a bit of a… how to put it? A long call? A distant yell? An outlying wail? A remote shout? No, a far cry from the original two games, before Ubisoft bought the franchise.

(Yeah, that’s the phrase. Glad I thought of it, though I don’t know where I got it.)

((Incidentally, Remote Shout is the name of my new indie punk garage band. Album drops: never, because this is a joke.))

Starting after Far Cry 3, Ubisoft has been telling their dev teams to make lightning strike twice. Thus, each game hereafter has been an excited waiting game of seeing how they’ll try and ultimately fail to match the demented, yet incredibly charismatic villain that was Vaas.

And 5 feels like this illogical conclusion of just that. Because you have not one, not two, but four scenery-eating, rompy villains. Less a refined, precise attempt at the concept, and more of a blunderbuss approach; hoping to tickle a little of everyone’s villain fancy.

That, I feel, is the perfect metaphor for the game in general.

Last call to avoid spoilers.

Speaking of fitting descriptions of the entire game, let’s start with the intro. Because I have mixed feelings about it, at best. There’s a lot it does right, and some things it simply gets wrong, in regards to the rest of the narrative as a whole.

The pacing and atmosphere are phenomenal. The very air feels heavy around you as you enter into the church, here to take the titular Joseph Seed away from his flock. The pressure of the stakes are established flawlessly, leaving a feeling of palpitation, and a true understanding of just how dangerous Joseph is. Surprised as I was, the game even managed to shock me a little.

In that respect, it’s fantastic.

But then the game uses the cop crew you rolled in with as your motivation for the entire rest of the game, in the form of saving them from the Seed family, and oh god, it’s Fallout 4 all over again.

Just like the Bethesda example above, this aspect of the intro simply doesn’t work. And not just because it’s asking me to unconditionally care about cops.

This sequence of the narrative focuses on every other aspect of narrative setup except for the characters that you’re supposed to get invested in. You get but the most cursory taste of who they are as people. Such a small amount of time can mainly attach their personalities to a specific emotion.

Whitehorse is the calm voice of reason. Marshall Burke is frustrated. Pratt is nervous. And Hudson is… there too, I guess. Look, I’ll be honest, I had to look up half these people’s names for this review. Which I’m sure is only a good sign.

With so little to go on, I found I simply didn’t care whenever a cultist bigwig dangled one of them in front of me on a string, expecting me to bat like a good little kitten. Instead, I yawned and wandered off to play with the packaging the toy had come in.

Like a mischievous little kitten.

Which is such a shame, because there are so many other more interesting characters I actually did care about. And in the few scenes where the Seeds held them to ransom instead, the game suddenly had actual stakes.

Nick and Kim Rye were delightful every time they showed up. Virgil was so honestly sincere, I couldn’t help but like him; and his past, as it unfolded, was interesting to dive into. And Jerome was pretty much cool by default, and an excellent concept for a foil to the cultist bad guys, and everything they stood for.

But the story feels almost unconfident in its execution. Like the team is scared you’ll get bored. So the solution, write more story, or rather, several seemingly self-contained stories across the three separate regions.

With no overarching theme or plot threads besides “Joseph Seed probably gave the command for this at some point,” however, the connection feels loose at best. And this looseness makes the narrative feel all the weaker.

I’d much rather the story had been more focused and condensed. If they’d honed in on about one third as many characters, and if the villains felt a little less redundant, the overall narrative could’ve been much more refined and interesting.

Even the gameplay, while fun, has the same issue.

When traversing from place to place, you can’t drive for five minutes without a dozen random encounters passing you by, whether they travel by wheel or foot or paw. What should be a ten minute trek can sometimes take 30.

Again, it feels like the game is nervous. Like it’s worried that if I’m not firing a gun every two minutes, I’m losing interest. Look, I know this is the age of the internet, but my attention span hasn’t deteriorated that bad.

What were we talking about again?

But it’s sad though, as it detracts from what could be some very nice vistas and scenic routes. I can barely enjoy the quiet, introspective new addition of fishing without a randomly spawned cultist with an exaggerated country accent shouting “Fay-oond ‘eem!” and scaring away all the darn fish with a wild assault rifle volley.

Speaking of guns, let’s talk about politics. Something that could only ever be fun and only ever go over very well.

I don’t want to get too deep into this, as it’s been covered to death, and more eloquently than I’ll probably put it. For a better dive into the subject, I’d recommend watching Errant Signal’s “The Art of Saying Nothing.” To sum it up though, while at face value, FC5 might seem as though it’s about to lay down a scathing indictment of certain aspects of American culture, it really doesn’t.

Not for lack of bringing it up though.

The lady who owns Peaches the cougar, that is to say, the former owner of this sweet large kitten (no I’m not looking up the name this time; she’s not even a narrative footnote), is a prejudicial old woman who lives alone in the woods.

Immediately upon entering her domicile so I could acquire my new kitty and leave, she mentioned that my player character looked vaguely Italian, and made an off-color comment about not wanting her silver/jewels to go missing.

What is this, the turn of the century, last century?

At Hurk’s place, you can meet his dad, who wants to build a wall. What, no, not a wall down there. A wall in the north, to keep out those accursed Canadians and their liberal ideology.

Addressing controversy by obfuscating the real world equivalent is cute, but it lacks the punch that makes it such that it’s proving some kind of point. Here, it’s npc’s that you’re expected to stay on good terms with, so that you can get more quests and goodies, like a new pet or ride.

(Shame you never get a new pet who is also your new ride, though.)

And why? Because they’re supposedly better than the cultists who only physically hurt and impede people different than themselves? What’s the takeaway here supposed to be, that it’s only physical extremism that’s bad and--oh god wait no, it’s Bioshock Infinite all over again.

Of course, we all know the real reason why. To offend as few people as possible. Because every offended party is a potential lost sale. Hence why despite clearly using Christian/Baptist imagery and motifs, no cultist ever actually mentions Jesus by name, and the peggy symbol only vaguely and technically resembles that of a cross.

I’ve bad news for you, though, Ubisoft; it’s too late. If you wanted to offend as few people as possible, it was already over the instant you let writers set it in a rural, dominantly Christian, dominantly white community, in America. Right wing talking heads were lining up to be officially offended the instance promos started showing bad guys toting guns, bibles, and the American flag.

Because despite bragging about having thick skin, when it comes down to it, they typically don’t.

At some point, you almost want to lean in uncomfortably close to the game’s face and tell it “Go on. Say what you really mean.” And it never does. Making it satire with no teeth, which isn’t actually satire, but parody. It’s a flag-waving, gun-toting parody of American culture. It’s an American beer commercial meets Saint’s Row. It’s a romanticized outdoorsy rural locale with tacky looking guns and gruesome murder set to made-up gospel and old rock hits.

Which doesn’t feel that far off from a Saint’s Row game, but it wildly conflicts with the tone Far Cry 5 very quickly establishes for itself. And it’s such a waste, because to use an on-theme colloquialism, “bless its little heart.”

It’s trying so hard, and there are some things I can’t help but enjoy about it.

There was a moment early on, when I was creeping through the bushes of a small neighborhood as slowly and quietly as I could. I had not but a bow and a pistol to my name. Cultists were stacking dead bodies while their speaker-mounted truck played their very own choir, singing about water washing away sin. As they were finishing up, they began to sing along.

It was as First Blood meets Jim Jones as the entire game felt, and it all just clicked. The gameplay and tone all lined up so perfectly and felt so right. Where did that go?

Luckily, the game is also pretty charming in various other inadvertent or otherwise unintentional ways.

Obviously it’s cute and wholesome that you can pet all the non-hostile animals. But it’s completely adorable how Peaches growls at you when you go where she can’t follow.

There’s also random npc’s you can recruit for the game’s buddy system, aside from the nine named specialty partners. At first, I seriously wondered how any of them could compare to Peaches, the oversized mewling kitten, or Grace, the cool as a cucumber sniper lady.

But then I found some lady named Evie, who looked like somebody’s mom, and I honestly found it hard to part with her. There was something so ernest and amusing about the idea of somebody’s mom who used to embarrass them at every PTA meeting or bake sale, now in an awkwardly-fitting militia vest yelling “Get some!” to every other cultist who dared cross our path.

The gameplay is also varied enough with timed races, and puzzling treasure hunting segments. The latter in particular, I really enjoyed. They had me doing everything navigating mazes of fire to hopping and swinging along successive grapple lines under a bridge, skirting river water along the way. It’s good, varied fun.

I also really appreciate the organic way in which story beats are unlocked, which is really saying something for a sandbox. Normally, there are specific missions that unlock the next cutscene that actually matters, and everything else feels like so much filler and padding.

Far Cry 5 had the genius idea that everything should contribute to an overall progress bar. This makes it that nothing feels like padding, as you’ll always be working toward the next story beat, even if you’re doing what feel like side quests.

But it’s one step forth and one step back with you, isn’t it Far Cry 5?

Once you’ve unlocked the next story beat, you’ll be whisked away to the next cutscene to have one of the villains get in your face for the next five minutes, whether you were ready for that or not. It gets annoying after the second time, and downright numb the fifth or sixth.

It’s also where the writing starts to fall apart some more.

You know that old James Bond trope where the bad guy has him right where they want him? But then because the villain is so contrived in how they want to handle him, he ends up getting away? Well that happens almost every time. It’s cheesy.

Also where some of the worst writing in the game comes into play.

Jacob Seed has a neat gimmick, I’ll admit. He’s all about classic conditioning, A Clockwork Orange style. Alright, interesting enough. And instead of escaping, you wake up, presumably days later, having finally escaped his mind control. It was a neat twist at first.

What’s incredibly stupid though is everyone points it out. Dutch, Eli, all characters who know about Jacob’s MO, and none of them think anything suspicious about it. Nope, just “Hey, now that I can finally get in contact with you after an entire week of you not responding, come back and get uncomfortably close to me and people I care about.”

Nobody thinks anything’s up with that? Even after it happens three or four times?? And not even my own character thinks to warn them that I’m being psychologically manipulated to kill them???

Oh. Look at that. The game made me kill Eli. How very unsurprising. What is that, something like four hours of build up to a twist anyone could see coming if they’ve ever seen a story?

“Who cares, it’s fun, isn’t it?”

I mean, yes, sure. It’s very fun, in fact. Fewer things have been more satisfying than timing it just right to take down three baddies at once, with a sniper shot from Grace, a mauling from Peaches, and a throwing knife from myself.

And like I said before, the gameplay is just varied enough to not grow dull. But what should be a good game is held back by mediocre writing and a lack of commitment.

Weirder than any of it though is the troves of people lining up to say it doesn’t matter, because the game is fun. Listen, I can enjoy the gameplay for hours of mind-numbing fun, but still be able to pick apart everything wrong with the overall experience. There’s nothing really wrong with that. It doesn’t completely impede what enjoyment I, or anybody else, was able to get out of it.

I really don’t get this, though. This is no critique of the game itself, mind you, but it is at fault for bringing it up again, even if by accident. So it bears discussion.

Clean Prince was right when he said that Far Cry 5 brought up a lot of what’s wrong with modern gaming culture. Yet I can’t help but disagree with his reasoning behind this statement. Because he, like many, asked why any of it matters, so long as the game is fun.

Look.

Gamers clamored for years, demanding our hobby be taken seriously. Entire groups and brands like Extra Credits formed, to try and gain for games the same respect film and literature already had.

Nowadays, we have critics aplenty, like Super Bunny Hop, and the above-mentioned Errant Signal, who regularly dissect games with the same attention to detail movies, shows, and novels receive.

We did it. We’re here. We made it, right?

No.

People tear down bad writing in games, and suddenly it doesn’t matter. The game being fun is the only feature that matters, now that it’s convenient to dismiss anything that seemingly gets in the way of your enjoyment.

Even though it doesn’t.

If Far Cry 5 were a film, people would be trampling over each other to repeat the critics’ disregard of its milquetoast shotgun approach to writing, and lack of commitment to an actual point, despite advertising itself as any kind of satire.

It’s not like having an actual statement is foreign to Far Cry either. Far Cry 2 had a well implemented theme of deterioration in every aspect; your character’s health thanks to the malaria, the guns falling apart from being old, fire spreading wildly out of control.

It’s not even necessarily a Ubisoft problem either.

Far Cry 3 was all about the lengths you’d go to for the people you care about, and how growing and changing as a person ends up alienating you from them anyway. There was also an underlying theme about there being no real winners in a setting so deeply seeded with violence.

Ending sucks too. That’s not a good transition, but it’s as good of one as it deserves, to be frank.

It’s awful, but not because it’s unsatisfying and you don’t get to technically win. Not every game needs to end on a positive note, just because you work for it. Spec Ops: The Line had some of my favorite gut-punch endings in a game.

But the takeaway is just bad, for either ending.

Either you walk away from Joseph at the end, and Jacob’s conditioning kicks in again, and you kill everyone you just saved, or randomly and completely out of bumbling nowhere, several nuclear warheads go off around the tristate area. And everyone you just saved dies in irradiated fire anyway.

What’s the takeaway here? That we should just let dangerous people get away with violent uprisings, because hey, who knows, they may actually have been right all along?

The nuclear ending especially is just bad writing. It’s a twist out of left field meant to shock, and take you by surprise, but only because there’s nothing to indicate it’s going to happen. It’s trying, and failing, to ape the nuke scene from the first Modern Warfare game. But that scene was the dramatic release after an entire level’s worth of building tension regarding the bomb which was mentioned earlier. Of which said established tension, there’s simply none here.

Each region even caps off with you burning out the cult’s various bomb shelters. Only to find out, what? That you should’ve given up and let them kill and maim and steal all they like, so you could huddle down next to them in their bunkers? All because some uninformed zealot who doesn’t even sound like he’s actually looked at a bible lately made a lucky guess?

No thanks.

Instead of inspiring shock and awe, the ending feels random and nonsensical. Once again destroying any coherency the overall tone the game could’ve had. Is this supposed to be a fun, silly game to be enjoyed with a beer or a friend?

Or a serious and somber game where you face the deepest human fear of all: how people manage to justify overt acts of pure evil as “the right thing?”

All in all, Far Cry 5 is like a cheap burger from a fast-food joint. The taste is fine and it’ll tide you over, but it’s probably not very good for you. And you can’t help but think about how much better it looks in the pictures on the menu.

#video games #review #Far Cry 5 #spoilers #rabbot reviews

25 notes · View notes

the-dark-side-of-the-blog · 7 years

Text

Top 25 Greatest Cover Songs Ever

How often do you find out that one of your favorite songs by one of your favorite artists was originally by someone else? Happens more commonly than you think, yet it does not really undermine the work because we understand that even with the words already written there is a very precise alchemy needed to create a truly great cover. These are my top 25 best cover songs.

25) Sweet Child O’Mine, Luna (Originally Guns N’Roses): The list is 25 best covers, not 25 covers that are better than original because it would be impossible to do a cover that was better than Guns’ Sweet Child O’Mine. Say what you like about Axl and co (really say what you like) but that is truly one of the greatest songs ever, yet Luna more than do it justice. There cover is certainly a very different interpretation but also not all that detached. In terms of its composition it is not all that different but it takes the more electric energy of the original and delivers something more laconic, which should not work but yet does.

24) I Fought The Law, The Clash (Originally by The Crickets): Now some may have known that there was a version of this song before The Clash’s top 10 cover, in the form of The Bobby Fuller Four but unless you have been on the wiki page you probably wouldn’t have known that was a cover to, no matter The Clash’s version is a punk anthem that still stands up all these years later.

23) Valerie, Amy Winehouse (Originally The Zutons): People knew of this song before it was covered by Amy but her version has endured in ways that The Zutons have not. Mark Ronson displays his unparalleled knack for catchy compositions and beats, but its all about Amy and her voice, which was not only one of the most powerful ones we ever had but full of such personality, The Zutons had no chance (although they’ll thank her for all the money she has made them).

22) Jealous Guy, Roxy Music (Originally by John Lennon): Both versions are great but Roxy music might just edge Lennon out. Ferry is somehow able to infuse the song with an even greater sense of regret than Lennon did, while the rest of the band give the song a jazzier edge with the use of the saxophone, which nicely offsets the use of the piano here.

21) Tainted Love, Soft Cell (Originally by Gloria Jones): Okay it might be harsh to call Soft Cell one hit wonders because Say Hello, Wave Goodbye was certainly a hit in its own right as well, but let’s face it they never got close to what achieved with Tainted Love again. A defining track of the eighties and one of the great covers.

20) Take me to the River, Talking Heads (Originally Al Green): Memorably performed on the great Stop Making Sense live album David Byrne made the Al Green classic a staple of Talking Heads work.

19) Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door, Guns N’Roses (Originally Bob Dylan): Post Appetite a lot of things held GNR back, mostly themselves to be fair, but on a purely artistic level Axl’s lyrics and their ridiculously grandiose quality has always struck me as a problem. Its not to say he’s a bad lyricist, a song like Sweet Child O’Mine has deceptively great lyrics which stop it from being a bland ballad and make it something more poignant, but after Appetite I think he was far too self-serious and over-ambitious. One way to solve that problem is to use others lyrics and who better than Dylan. This cover just makes sense and I may even go as far as to say it is better than the original.

18) Needles and Pins, The Ramones (Originally by The Searchers): Because The Ramones were such a revolutionary band it is easy to forget that they did have influences, some pretty big ones. They did plenty of great covers of bands from the 50s and 60s that Joey and co grew up with but none better than Needles and Pins which among other things highlights what an incredible voice Joey Ramone had, one that goes a little underrated.

17) Superstar, Sonic Youth (Originally by The Carpenters): Superstar is one of those songs that has been over-covered for sure but there is no getting away from what a brilliant rendition Thurston Moore and co delivered. Its heartbreankingly restrained by Moore, communicating a soft desperation with his voice and giving us some of Sonic Youth’s best work of that decade.

16) Girl You’ll Be a Woman Soon, Urge Overkill (Originally by Neil Diamond): Immortalized by its use in Pulp Fiction, if you had never heard or known of Diamond’s version you could never have guessed it was his song from the Urge Overkill version, which is so dark with Kaatrud’s vocals implying so much more than the lyrics actually say. Urge Overkill may have done little else but they will have always given us this.

15) It’s Oh So Quiet, Bjork (Originally by Betty Hudson): It is tough to say if there is any one quality that is key to a great cover, but I think it always to have a unique and identifiable voice and personality bringing them-self to the song and there are few better examples than Bjork 1995 classic. It has a grunge loud-soft quality, but without the angst, almost to the extent of a parody it fluctuates so much, but whatever the case it is unmistakably Bjork and there in lies the greatness.

14) Piece of my Heart, Janis Joplin (Originally by Erma Franklin): For an iconic artist it may come as a surprise to some that both of Janis’ most enduring hits, this and Me and Bobby McGee, were covers. Whatever the case both are great, but it is Piece of my Heart that makes the list and for obvious reasons, a classic that still holds up today.

13) Where Did You Sleep Last Night, Nirvana (Traditional American Folk song): Its funny before Kurt begins his rendition of this 100 year old song (also covered by Lead Belly) he seems in quite good spirits joking about trying to buy the Lead Belly lead singer’s guitar, but once he starts singing all of that changes. This is one of the most incredible performances ever seen, it goes far beyond showmanship and into something far deeper and darker. Neil Young described it as “like a werewolf, unbelievable” and he wasn’t wrong. There is a moment at the end where Kurt opens his eyes and breathes out for just a second and it is one of the most powerful things I’ve ever seen by a performer. It is wrong that we look at everything Kurt through the prism of suicide but with this cover it is impossible to escape the pain he felt and lived with.

12) Stop Your Sobbing, The Pretenders (Originally by The Kinks): The Kinks and The Pretenders are connected by a lot more than just this song, Hynde and Ray Davies had a child in 1983, but that is beside the point. Stop Your Sobbing is the perfect first single for The Pretenders. Hynde’s voice has this almost brutal confidence and assurance as she instructs whoever to “stop your sobbing”, it straddles the line between pep talk and dressing down perfectly and in the process far surpasses the original.

11) Walk This Way, Run DMC ft Tyler and Perry (originally by Aerosmith): I’m at best an Aerosmith agnostic I like some of their songs but they have never been the great American rock band to me. There is no doubting the greatness of Run DMC’s cover of Aerosmith’s defining hit from the previous decade, but there is also no doubting that it wouldn’t be half as good with Tyler’s contributions. Rock and rap have rarely if ever worked so well together.

10) Respect, Arthea Franklin (Originally by Otis Redding): It is a cliche to say when talking about a great cover that the person covering the song owned it but boy did Franklin own this. By changing the perspective of the song from a male to a female one she not only made a feminist classic but one of the great covers and maybe her definitive track (although there is plenty of competition).

9) Hallelujah, Jeff Buckley (Originally by Leonard Cohen): The most over-covered song? Potentially. Whatever the case Buckley’s rendition overshadows all others. Buckley’s vocals are incredible but in a way that is not very flashy. His sound set the tone for the likes of Thom Yorke and while tragedy may have prevented him from amounting the discography his talented deserved Grace is still a great album.

8) What A Wonderful World, Joey Ramone (originally by Louie Armstrong): One of the great musical parting gifts. On Joey Ramone’s first solo and final album he gave us his surprisingly perfect rendition of What A Wonderful World. The cover achieved a certain level of fame for its us at the end of Bowling for Columbine but that may misunderstand. Its use in that movie emphasizes the ironic quality of the cover, Joey Ramone who sang of wanting to be sedated now telling us what a wonderful world it is, but actually there is nothing sarcastic about this at all. Joey’s vocals are fully committed when he sings of love and hope and that’s what makes such a beautiful cover.

7) Wild is The Wind, David Bowie (Originally by Nina Simone): For all of his incredible achievements and strengths Bowie had a pretty bad success ratio when it came to covers. His Across The Universe is alright but not great, same goes for his Let’s Spend the Night Together and the less said about his God Only Knows the better. Amidst the less than inspiring rendition of classic rock anthems though Bowie delivered a haunting, atmospheric and all round beautiful cover of Nina Simone’s Wild is the Wind. The problem with some of his other covers I think is he tries to make them too Bowie, whereas here I feel he lets the song itself guide the way he sings it. It is simply one of the best album closers ever.

6) Nothing Compares 2 U, Sinead O’Connor (Originally by Prince): Throughout the 80s and 90s the music video became a medium for greater and greater innovation, yet a lot of my favorite music videos of that period are the most simple and stripped down ones, where it is essentially just a camera looking at the performer. I’ve always loved the videos that accompany Alanis Morrisette’s Head Over Feet and Radiohead’s No Surprises and maybe the best example of this comes in the form of Sinead O’Connor’s Nothing Compares 2 U. Her raw emotion in the video completely re-frames this break-up song as one really about a much deeper grief, as she channeled the lose of her mother in a tragic accident. Her raw emotion made this cover unavoidable and unforgettable.

5) Killing me Softly, The Fugees (Originally by Roberta Flack) The Fugees cover takes the softness and melodic qualities of the Roberta Flack original but makes it that much darker and beautiful. It is an incredible cover. Lauryn Hill’s voice has this, I find, difficult to define quality but I’d describe it as a knowingness. I think in lesser hands this cover would have overly emphasized the hip hop traits of the song but here that drum loop is enough to make it a distinctly Fugees composition but also subtle enough to not intrude on Hill’s amazing vocals.

4) Alabama Song, The Doors (Originally by Bertolt Brecht): While Light My Fire and Riders on The Storm have endured as The Doors defining hits Alabama Song is the track I return to most. There is this offbeat darkness, it is not the smoothness most refined sound of a band from that era but it unmistakably The Doors and Jim Morrison. He may not have written the lyrics but you don’t need me to point out just how prophetic it was for Morrison to ask to be shown to the next whiskey bar and demanding you “don’t ask why”. So while it may not be Morrison or Kreiger’s words this is the song that I feel best epitomizes what made The Doors so different and so iconic.

3) The Man Who Sold The World, Nirvana (Originally by Bowie): Before I was a massive Nirvana fan I avoided listening to this rendition of what was then my favorite Bowie song (still in my top 5), I even resented people telling me it was better than Bowie’s original. Once I fell in love with Nirvana and put it on I could not believe just how perfect it was. Kurt and co’s rendition is every bit as brooding, dark and unfortunately prophetic as all the best of Nirvana’s work. The title alone feels fitting of Kurt, but it also worth mentioning how this cover is about more than him, the sound created by the band here is fantastic. Suffice to say this is one of those rare things a good Bowie cover, except it is much more than just a good one.

2) All Along The Watchtower, Jimi Hendrix (originally by Bob Dylan): It is rare for such an iconic artist that there most famous song is a cover but while Hendrix was a good lyricist his status as an icon is about more than his words. It was about his voice, his sonic experimentation and of course what he could do with a guitar. Dylan on the other hand was all about his words. All Along The Watchtower sounds like only something Hendrix could compose and play and reads like something only Dylan could write and that is a combination that can create one of the finest rock anthems ever.

1) Hurt, Johnny Cash (Originally by Nine Inch Nails): Hurt was always going to be high on this list but why it comes number one is that I think more than any song on this list it comes to define what an artist can do with someone else’s work. Everything about Cash’s rendition is trans-formative but not just for the sake of being different. There are many covers that completely change the originally but in ways that are ultimately detrimental. Cash’s Hurt changes the sound, the mood and the meaning of the song but in a way that only enhances its power. I talked about Joey Ramone’s What a Wonderful World as the perfect parting gift but this trumps even that. Its sad and introspective but so, so powerful. Cash’s voice has such gravitas and really Trent Reznor said it best when he described how it was no longer his song.

2 notes · View notes

bobbystompy · 5 years

Text

My Top 127 Songs Of 2018

Previously: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011

Not the most ever... just the second most ever. The record of 132 stands. I hope it is never broken.

As always, criteria and info:

This is a list of what I personally like, not ones I’m saying are the “best” from the year; more subjective than objective

No artist is featured more than once

If it comes down to choosing between two songs, I try to give more weight to a single or featured track

Each song on the list is linked in the title if you wanna check any or every out for yourself; there is also a Spotify playlist at the bottom that includes 122 of the 127 songs

Well?

youtube

/grins

127) B.o.B - “Food Fight”

Some triplet rap, pretty boring, and I have no idea what this song is supposed to be. But the “Food of the WiFi” part makes me laugh, and I always picture my buddy Matto singing it to his eye rolling wife (even though I’m pretty sure he’s never heard the song before).

126) French Montana f/ Drake - “No Stylist”

This song sucks -- even Drake can’t save it. French Montana is cancer except you don’t get to die.

125) 21 Savage - “Monster”

Not a huge Savage guy, but the Gambino verse helps.

124) The Kooks - “All The Time”

Kind of a lazy chorus, but it’s aight.

123) Sean Paul f/ Jhené Aiko - “Naked Truth”

Love Aiko, have never cared for Paul... but the collab weirdly works.

122) REASON - “Summer Up”

My buddy Josh sent this one, and it’s got the warm vibes. Money stretch:

P asked me is REASON still workin', shit N***a, is Amber Rose still twerkin', gold diggers still flirtin' horny teens still jerkin', all my exes still lurkin' black lives still hurtin', black lives still hurtin'?

121) Nipsey Hussle f/ YG - “Last Time That I Checc’d”

B’s vs. C’s. And a beat that sounds like DJ Mustard combined with ‘90s G-funk. Also, YG’s bandanna scarf is just very cute.

120) Thrice - “Only Us”

Weirdly, another reds and blues music video. But this time, it’s kids at a summer camp. This could absolutely be used by networks as a pump up song for sporting events.

119) Anderson .Paak f/ Kendrick Lamar - “TINTS”

Anderson .Paak -- ohhhh, that dot will always annoy me -- really does not make bad songs. Kung Fu Kenny fits right in, and it’s a very easy hit-the-spot driving song.

118) Mr Hudson f/ Vic Mensa - “Coldplay”

A serious song that uses an emotional reliance on Coldplay to take objective shots at Coldplay, which is pretty hilarious. Vic’s verse is good (”I lost my Queen poppin’ Ace of Spades at King of Diamonds ... I hate Coldplay”).

117) Logic f/ Wu-Tang Clan - “Wu Tang Forever”

Long cypher song. If you care about hip-hop, you probably know Drake also released a song called “Wu-Tang Forever” five years ago (which featured no members of Wu-Tang). There was talk of a remix -- RZA even recently said he wished they did -- but Inspectah Deck articulated why it didn’t happen back then:

“When I finally got to hear the song, I was more or less like, ‘Wow, I thought it was a tribute song like, it would be in respect of all eight members,'” Deck said. “And when I heard it, it was about a girl.”

You can just sense the colossal and spiritual disappointment.

Well, this one is more about fire than females; you’ll shout “Wu-Tang” proudly at least once. My MVP verse is Ghostface.

116) Jhené Aiko f/ Rae Sremmurd - “Sativa”

Rae Sremmurd* still sound like little kids to me. Conversely, Jhené Aiko is all that is woman.

(* - never knew they were brothers until just now)

115) Sam Coffey & The Iron Lungs - “First Time”

Sam Coffey first got on my radar with The Clash-sounding song “Talk 2 Her”. This is less of that and more, like, ‘80s hair metal. It’s almost hard to tell if this is sincere or parody. The video absolutely does not take itself seriously.

114) Saves The Day - “Kerouac & Cassady”

Always been impressed with the very unthreatening Chris Conley’s ability to create such sinister, dark, and menacing imagery. This maybe has the most bleak closing line of any of these songs.

113) 5 Seconds Of Summer - “Youngblood”

This is what Fall Out Boy tries to sound like with their new stuff... but they just suck so bad now.

112) She Killed In Ecstasy - “Dissension (Gold)”

I remembered this being a dope instrumental before totally forgetting about the just-as-awesome vocals; great band name, too. Recommended by my friends Jim and Bill over brunch after taking in their show at Subterranean in Chicago the previous night. This could be the closing theme for a critically acclaimed TV show.

111) Night Birds - “My Dad Is The BTK”

Straightforward, bratty punk rock that promotes snitching (if you’re sure it’s for the right reasons).

110) The Decemberists - “Once In My Life”

Why does such an outwardly melancholy song still feel so damn uplifting? Probably the video. They have a long statement attached on YouTube, so for sure peep if this catches your interest.

109) Mad Caddies - “She’s Gone”

Here we have a straight up reggae cover of NOFX. Sometimes I don’t think I like this song at all, but it might just be hard to separate it from the original; almost wish it was possible to go in with a clean slate. Maybe you can on my behalf?

108) Rivers Cuomo - “Two Broken Hearts”

Would you rather not know the video uses Bitmojis or the pre-chorus promotes two different ice cream brands before the song ends?

107) XXXTENTACION - “Train food”

This song is intense; gave me memories of listening to Kendrick’s “The Art of Peer Pressure”. X not surviving 2018 makes it that much more haunting.

106) Kanye West & Lil Pump f/ Adele Givens - “I Love It”

Not sure why, in his most embattled year yet, Kanye decided to be a part of such a derogatory song towards women. Listening to it makes me feel bad. And sure, the MAGA imagery will be what we think of when we think of 2018 Yeezy, but this picture shouldn’t be too far off either.

Shark: jumped.

105) New Lenox - “Do You Think We Made The Most Of Those New Years Eves”

That is a very long song title. But not as long as the time since passed on this reflection of the final night of the year, over a decade now gone. But even though he’s looking back, you know Chris Trott gets to hit reset at the end of the night, whether it’s December 31st or January 1st. And when NYE hits again, whether you return to the same party in the same place or a different experience in a totally different hemisphere, celebrating something is what makes this all matter.

(Full disclosure: yours truly has a minor backup vocal part in the outro)

104) Jeff Tweedy - “Having Been Is No Way To Be”

This for sure made it on the list because of the “And if I was dead, what difference would it ever make to them?” line, but upon closer scrutiny, the “And I’m sorry when you wake up to me” line is even more crushing.

103) Panic! At The Disco - “Dying In LA”

Brendon Urie’s voice is so polished and full. This song is him in complete control, and he knows it too (the “Dyin’ in LA” falsetto part at the end of the chorus is... probably not necessary).

102) Sugarland f/ Taylor Swift - “Babe”

Though Taylor’s impact in the music video is significantly stronger than her impact in the actual song, it’s still rock solid country. Or... country solid country?

/curtsies

101) ZHU & Tame Impala - “My Life”

This song has such a dancy cool on the power of its instrumentation; really doesn’t need vocals at all.

100) Kidd Russell & Southside Jake - “Slow Motion”

The poppiest SSJ has ever sounded. This is his best song to date. I’m not so sure if “Shots kill the butterflies” is an actual expression, but it should be.

99) Hop Along - “What The Writer Meant”

Hot damn, what a voice. This song is beauty in our not-often-beautiful world.

98) Retirement Party - “That’s How People Die”

This reminds me of a female fronted version of the departed Modern Baseball. Eager to see how they develop and definitely plan on checking their Audiotree session soon.

97) Lil Peep - “Sex With My Ex”

It’s... really good, you guys. The grimy nihilism of the “Fuck me like we’re lying on our deathbed” is palpable. It’s impossible not to think of the heights Peep would have almost definitely hit had he not passed. Also, super interesting tidbit on how the album got posthumously made:

Lil Peep died of an accidental drug overdose last November [2017] at 21. Afterward, attention turned to his computer. First, it went to London, where the files were backed up by First Access Entertainment, the company that helped guide his career.

Then it went to his mother, Liza Womack. In an interview in her cozy Long Island home, sitting on a nondescript couch that belonged to Peep and was shipped cross-country after his death, she calmly recalled walking into an Apple store, handing the laptop to a clerk, and saying: “My son died. This is him. Take this and put it on a new one.”

96) Kurt Vile - “Bassackwards”

I was on the beach, but I was thinkin’ about the bay

This has Kurt Vile’s signature laid back-ness (good) but also has a 9:46 track length (VERY VERY BAD). I’m not saying it has to be even four minutes long... but, like, could you have given us seven, KV? All of that aside, it really doesn’t slog at all despite mostly staying the same the whole time. Though I still can’t stop thinking about how much shorter it should be.

95) Christine And The Queens - “Doesn’t matter”

Kinda ‘80s pop sounding. Also, there’s a foreign accent there. British maybe?

/googles

French! Even better.

94) Brendan Kelly And The Wandering Birds - “Shitty Margarita”

Wish the drums were louder, BK.

93) Courtney Barnett - “Nameless, Faceless”

Barnett does not fuck around with her chorus/old adage:

I wanna walk through the park in the dark Men are scared that women will laugh at them I wanna walk through the park in the dark Women are scared that men will kill them

This type of perspective, down to the description of how she has to hold her keys in a way your average dude might not think about, remains so crucial as we all hope to continue to better understand each other.

92) Jeff Rosenstock - “Powerlessness”

Meet me at the Polish bar I'll be the one looking at my phone Shaking like a nervous kid Absolutely terrified of being alone

...it doesn’t sound how it reads. All of his skittish energy fuels this fist pumping jam. And don’t miss the guitar solo.

91) Charli XCX - “5 In The Morning”

Pretty standard fare pop song, but Charli makes it cooler and better than if the average person jumped on.

90) Pinegrove - “Darkness”

Gonna be honest: it was nearly impossible to listen to Pinegrove in 2018 without thinking of the sexual coercion accusations from the previous year. Jenn Pelly’s long ass piece really did nothing to help matters. So because of all this, I listened to their new album “Skylight” wayyyyy less than originally anticipated. The few times -- really maybe ‘time’ in all actuality -- I was able to separate the story from the songs, it definitely became enjoyable. This has head clearing guitar leads and a lyric straight outta Sublime’s “Garden Grove”.

89) Pete Yorn & Scarlett Johansson - “Bad Dreams”

Brooding, nighttime, driving; good ingredients for a successful duet.

88) Meek Mill f/ Rick Ross & JAY Z - “What’s Free”

Now, if I’m Rick Ross, I spend my entire career avoiding any situation where people can compare me to Biggie. But since Rick Ross is Rick Ross, he went with the opposite plan. This is his (to my knowledge) second reimagined Biggie song*, and... it’s... it’s rough. I mean, how far can you take it with the line “Mona Lisa, to me, ain't nothin' but a b***h” and end with a gay slur. Pass.

But we also have the GOAT. In classic Jay fashion, he spits a lot of good words, you know it’s complex, and there’s no way to process it without more listens. And yes, the immediate brand checks are super annoying, but he pushes through and delivers some bars:

They gave us pork and pig intestines Shit you discarded that we ingested, we made the project a wave You came back, reinvested and gentrified it Took n****s' sense of pride, now how that's free?

When he finishes, the song itself ends, and we have one of the more long and uneven Jay cameos ever put on wax. It’s, like, a 5-star B-.

(* - the first being 2014′s “Nobody”, a take off “You’re Nobody [Til Somebody Kills You]”, featuring French Montana, which spawned an all-time Rap Radar comment, “If someone killed French, he’d still be a nobody”; I will bring it up with the most minor of segues for the rest of my life)

87) Red City Radio - “In The Shadows”

I tend to prefer Red City Radio playing more uptempo, but they drag us down to a slower speed for this one. This centers around the cryptic “I show no fear when I know that the devil’s here” line, and the guitar solo is definitely overqualified for the genre.

86) Kanye West - “Yikes”

/cracks knuckles

The song: banging chorus, solid beat, lyrics meh. Of course it was the song he got Drake for, because it’s the only one on his solo release that vaguely resembled a hit.

The album: Calling “ye” bad is a little unfair, but the best and realest description is sadder: it’s Kanye’s most inessential record. It was forgettable at best and cringeworthy/offensive at worst. The one about his daughter was particularly appalling:

Don't do no yoga, don't do pilates Just play piano and stick to karate I pray your body's draped more like mine And not like your mommy's

This doesn’t even get into the entirely warped mental health takes that I’m not nearly qualified enough to address.

Kanye himself: Every Kanye fan has defended Kanye, some Kanye fans have abandoned Kanye, but 2018 was legitimately the tipping point where it felt like we all finally had enough, in unification. Shock, betrayal, and disappointment are probably the best adjectives. When you are willing to forgive someone for 90% of their behavior, and they up their bullshit to 110%, an understandable separation must occur. At this point, the man we once called Yeezus is now the hip-hop Louis C.K.: no type of constructive or negative feedback can penetrate his brain, and any new attempts at creative output only make everything worse.

85) Royce da 5′9′’ f/ Eminem & King Green - “Caterpillar”

As lyrical as it gets on this list, but what else do you expect from Em and Royce? Not a huge fan of the chorus (at least that loud part in the first half). Eminem legit goes off for, like, ten lines with a pooping metaphor to close the song.

84) Nicki Minaj - “Barbie Dreams”

Staying in the redone Biggie songs lane, we have Nicki with a passive evisceration of your favorite male rapper. You can call it crass, but I’d argue her playfulness makes the whole thing work, combined with the fact that it’s flipping the male gaze on its head. And though she’s having fun, some of these movie punches catch real faces. My favorites:

3) “Drake worth a hundred mill, he always buyin' me shit / But I don't know if the pussy wet or if he cryin' and shit”

2) “I remember when I used to have a crush on Special Ed / Shoutout Desiigner 'cause he made it out of special ed”

1) “Had to cancel DJ Khaled, boy, we ain't speakin' / Ain't no fat n**** tellin' me what he ain't eatin'”

Goodbye forever, DJ Khaled.

83) Bad Bunny f/ Drake - “MIA”

I do social media for my high school alma mater’s football team, and this song first got on my radar when of the players tweeted something like “I can’t understand a word, but this is really good”. I was piqued, and it delivered. Nobody cultural appropriates quite like Drizzy Drake. Also, am I the only one who would have maybe been happier if the song was called “Bad Bunny” and the featured artist was M.I.A.?

82) Phoebe Bridgers - “Christmas Song”

Christmas songs are hard to write because they’re either taken or terrible, but Bridgers definitely carved out her own lane. This could work as a single person under a spotlight or sung by a group of lonely strangers finding camaraderie at a bar; within the song, you actually get both scenarios.

81) Remo Drive - “Blue Ribbon”

Got into this band for the first time in 2018, and though some of their older songs got more spins, this was my favorite from the new album.

80) The Sidekicks - “Twin’s Twist”

Mostly just impressed they were able to seamlessly integrate the “Chronic 2001″ into lyrics of a lighter rock song.

79) Real Friends - “From The Outside”

My favorite chorus they’ve ever written. While remaining thoroughly pop punk, the catchiness puts it more on the pop side of that spectrum.

78) Mike Posner - “Song About You”

Posner sounds like he’s barely trying, and it’s still so, so good. Favorite moment is this non-rhyme: “Since you’ve been gone, I got nothing to do / I sleep until noon, I wake up and feel bad”. It’s like a pop freestyle or something.

Also, extra shout out for how well he took his social media roasting after the Thanksgiving performance in Detroit. Love this dude.

77) Bad Religion - “The Kids Are Alt-Right”

What if I told you Bad Religion made a song with an intro that sounded like Andrew W.K.’s “Party Till You Puke” but were somehow still able to stay afloat? Hell, I’m confused too. The satirical lyrics mark 2018 for what it was. The pre-chorus, I remain torn on.

76) Blood Orange - “Saint”

You said it before

Looped keyboard beat over some smooth lyrics and melodies.

75) Juice WRLD - “Lucid Dreams”

I cannot change you so I must replace you

Still unclear how this *isn’t* a Post Malone song.

74) Tancred - “Queen Of New York”

Own the city.

73) We Were Sharks - “Drop The Act”

Ohhhhh, I love this production.

72) Cloud Nothings - “Leave Him Now”

This band continues to possess all of the melodic fury (and the Russell Westbrook of drummers).

71) Childish Gambino - “Summertime Magic”

Wasn’t big on “This Is America”*, so Glover releasing an ode to the best season as an alternative selection helped.

(* - at least not the song; vid was interesting)

70) The 1975 - “Love It If We Made It”

The 1975 are one of those bands where liking them makes you feel like an alien because everyone else either loves or dogs them. I’m keepin’ this casual, aight?

Also, since all writers are contractually obligated, we must mention the “Fucking in a car, shooting heroin” line which opens the song.

69) Kississippi - “Cut Yr Teeth”

Saw this band play in a classroom at a high school (google “BLED FEST”) in Michigan in May of 2018. They were fun, diverse, and covered Jimmy Eat World’s “The Middle”. This tune is a little more serious and locked in.

68) Muncie Girls - “Picture Of Health”

Every part of this song is well-written, but it all builds to a massive chorus.

67) Justin Timberlake f/ Chris Stapleton - “Say Something”

There was a time, in January 2018, when not a ton of music had dropped yet, and this song was everywhere. It was like the dead-of-winter equivalent to the Song of the Summer. This one definitely gets docked some points for what I’d call weak lyricism. You can tell both dudes were way into it though, which does help make up for it some.

66) Interpol - “The Rover”

As speedy as I’ve ever heard Interpol; pretty unskippable.

65) Dashboard Confessional - “Catch You”

Imagine if this were the only Dashboard song you’d ever heard. You’d think they were, like, happy. Our protagonist has a trustworthy assurance that should put you at ease.

64) Gulfer - “Secret Stuff”

No singing on this list will alienate you faster than the first eight seconds of this one.

63) Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - “Talking Straight”

Though this feels like two band names in one, RBCF know exactly what they’re doing as it pertains to the actual songwriting. This would fit right in during the mid-2000s garage/indie rock boom; could listen to the chorus on a loop.

62) Rita Ora f/ Cardi B, Bebe Rexha & Charli XCX - “Girls”

This song has the unique distinction of being think pieced and outraged cycled before I even got a chance to hear a second of it. The case:

Now, it goes without saying that the best people to explain why this song feels damaging and hurtful to queer women are queer women themselves – girls who kiss girls whether they’ve been gulping back Malbec or not. “A song like this just fuels the male gaze while marginalizing the idea of women loving women,” wrote Hayley Kiyoko on Twitter. Kehlani said it has “many awkward slurs, quotes, and moments”. MUNA’s Katie Gavin noted that in ‘Girls’ she hears “the familiar chorus that women’s sexuality is something to be looked at instead of authentically felt”.

To her credit, Ora apologized the very same day that piece came out (PUN INTENDED). What’s weird is the idea of this song being problematic made me like it more. It gives the sexual flippancy of the chorus authenticity. I don’t know, man -- this stuff is complicated.

Not complicated? Cardi B’s awful green screen cameo featuring cheap looking special effects.

/shakes head in disappointment

61) Eminem f/ Ed Sheeran - “River”

Though not apples to apples -- since he’s not spitting -- we shall remember this as the time Ed Sheeran > Eminem in a song.

Marshall remains our unquestioned king of the ‘relationship dysfunction’ genre.

60) Culture Abuse - “Calm E”

Everyone’s getting back together

The writers of the perfect and generational “Dream On” continue to stay in the mellow lane with their subsequent releases. When you can pull off both, why not?

59) Brian Fallon - “Silence”

Fallon covers -- /checks notes -- Marshmello f/ Khalid, but it really could be an original. Dude really knows how to pick ‘em. I remember hearing this randomly at Shinto (a sushi/hibachi place) in Naperville; don’t remember if it was this or the original. Such a moving chorus.

58) Okkervil River - “Don’t Move Back To LA”

Gotta appreciate the persistent sentiment -- even though it’d be the opposite of my advice. Also took about 99.9% of the year for me to stop calling this band “Overkill” River in my head.

57) Natalie Prass - “Short Court Style”

Uber catchy and with a real groove.

56) The Interrupters - “She’s Kerosene”

2018 Rancid, down to the raspy-ish singing from Aimee Allen.

55) boygenius - “Me & My Dog”

When I heard Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and someone named Lucy Dacus were forming a super group, I was stoked. This tune was the one that jived the most with my vision of the project. Amazingly sick harmonies, dropping elbows on your heart like a professional wrestler, and introspection on introspection.

I wanna be emaciated I wanna hear one song without thinking of you I wish I was on a spaceship Just me and my dog and an impossible view

So, so, so, so good.

54) Shack Wes - “Mo Bamba”

How do you explain “Mo Bamba” to someone who doesn’t like rap? How do you explain “Mo Bamba” to someone who does like rap? I don’t know, but I am Teddy Bridgewater now.

53) Lil Dicky f/ Chris Brown, Ed Sheeran, DJ Khaled & Kendall Jenner - “Freaky Friday”

If you thought Rita Ora’s “Girls” was messy, allow me to introduce you to our last bad rap song on the list. Actually, maybe the Virginia Tech women’s lacrosse team would be a better candid--OHHHHH LADIES NO!!!!!!!!11111111

So yeah, whether it’s the most lightning rod word in American history, cultural appropriation, reverse cultural appropriation, or even just a good ol’ “I Blame Chris Brown” take, this attempt at comedy hip-hop got put under a microscope for all the right and wrong reasons. No one came out unscathed. But, like Ora’s song, if you can ignore some components (read: nearly everything), it’s so god damn fun, man. I mean, Dicky and Chris Brown swapped bodies -- pretty nuts. And it’s rare for an MVP line to be “How his dick staying perched up on his balls like that?”

52) Jay Rock f/ Kendrick Lamar, Future & James Blake - “King’s Dead”

I gotta go get it- I gotta go get it- I gotta go get it- I gotta go get it

The back half of the Future verse is the worst part about this song... yet the most fun to talk about. He raps auto-tuned, in falsetto... and these are the lyrics:

La di da di da, slob on me knob Pass me some syrup, fuck me in the car La di da di da, mothafuck the law Chitty chitty bang, murder everything

What a disgrace. Yet, almost like a whimsy 2 Chainz verse, it’s really fucking memorable.

51) Soccer Mommy - “Your Dog”

Noticeably good bassline? Check. Skin crawlingly bad band name? Check. Cool swearing? Yup.

50) Vince Staples - “FUN!”

Vince could rap his way out a bottomless pit; floating elevation flow.

49) Dan + Shay - “Tequila”

Tried so hard to get this one next to “Shitty Margarita”. Genuinely love this song. Maybe it’s the mountains in the music video, but that chorus just soars.

youtube

48) Meg Myers - “Numb”

Look up in the air and see this tidal wave chorus crashing through the world in slow motion.

47) The Penske File - “Fairgrounds”

My new working theory -- which really feels more like fact -- is how cool lyrics with the phrase “Meet me...” are. It creates this aura of unknown, mystery, and maybe even danger; like anything could happen if you just agree. Here are some from songs just off the top of my head:

Meet me by the lake

Meet me at the reservoir

Meet me in Montauk

Meet me in the middle (more on that one later)

Meet me in the back

Meet me at midnight

The list goes on. So please say “yes” to The Penske File at the fairgrounds, won’t you?

46) Lil Wayne f/ Swizz Beatz - “Uproar”

Weezy goes this entire song only using “oh” rhymes; not sure how he does it. Sometimes, I listen to this and pretend I’m a buffalo.

45) Cardi B - “Be Careful”

Cardi sampled Lauryn (wayyyyyyyy more on this later) and made it work. The chorus always sticks with me, and though the verses have a few bumps along the way, they might even be better.

44) Elway - “Crowded Conscience”

Elway pulls up their roots in this All Colorado Everything lyric video, and you’ll be ready to tap the Rockies when the singalong chorus finishes.

43) Pkew Pkew Pkew - “Passed Out”

A punk rock drinking song with a real bummer of a chorus for how happy the theme itself comes across.

42) Joyce Manor - “I Think I’m Still In Love With You”

I have no scientific proof, but Barry’s lyrics seem to be getting worse and worse. The drug references are still there, sure, but there’s an almost elementary simplicity to the proceedings. Still, like “Heart Tattoo”, this song doesn’t get in its own way and takes advantage of the basic words to create a big, big hook. You sing along even though it feels too easy at times.

41) Alkaline Trio - “Throw Me To The Lions”

So much desperation in the chorus; this could work as their last ever song.

40) The Bombpops - “Dear Beer”

My favorite opening line on this whole list -- the sweet and simple “I’m about to hit send / I’m waiting for the weekend”. Before you know it, a full blown self-loathing chorus. It’s got it all.

39) Foxing - “Lambert”

In quiet awe listening to this masterpiece of a song. Saw this band way up close in 2018 -- here is a picture:

Hello, Foxing

38) Lucero - “To My Dearest Wife”

Civil War soldier or rigorous rock and roll touring schedule? Either way, the Lucero singer misses his wife and family, and he’s gonna let you know they’re on his mind. I saw them open for Frank Turner in 2018, and he played their new album front to back -- before it had been released -- as their entire set because “I promised to do this when drunk on Instagram”. Gotta respect a man with principles.

37) BlocBoy JB f/ Drake - “Look Alive”

Favorite Drake hook of the year. BlocBoy JB... less necessary. Also kinda crazy to think we didn’t know who producer Tay Keith was at the beginning of 2018; definitely made his impression felt by the end.

36) The Front Bottoms - “Tie Die Dragon”

As psychedelic as I’ll ever get. Unless it’s, like, The Beatles. But that’s different.

35) The Lawrence Arms - “Laugh Out Loud”

Released on their Best Of record (legitimately titled “We Are The Champions Of The World) and an “Oh! Calcutta!” b-side from 2006, TLA prove even their leftovers can be a main course.

34) Tinashe f/ Future - “Faded Love”

I know he’s a rapper and she’s a singer, but nothing is more illustrative of how much harder women have to work compared to men than the 1:36 mark when Tinashe sensually sings “Let’s just feel this feeling”, doubled with Feature’s auto-tuned ass doing the exact same thing, only 10x worse. Not enough to taint the song, even a little. His verse, however...

33) Chance The Rapper - “65th & Ingleside”

Chance -- who almost always makes the correct choices -- did this super annoying thing where he released a bunch of songs in single batches in 2018.

“But Bobby, he gave you tons of free music! Why are you complaining?!”

Because we couldn’t easily sequence it, bruh. Look at this shit!:

Not even Drake would pull this stunt. EP next time, Chano.

Anyway.

Fun lines, really contagious beat, and a few types of flows; he spazzes at the end.

32) Complainer - “Drunk (Again)”

Gotta love when a song can’t start until multiple beer cans crack. These guys are a tiny band inspired-by-but-better-than Jeff Rosenstock, and I hope they get so much more traction.

31) ScHoolboy Q f/ Kendrick Lamar, Saudi & 2 Chainz - “X”

I LIVE ON TEN

Always read this title as the letter X even though the word “ten” is used 40 times in the song.

30) KIDS SEE GHOSTS (Kanye West & Kid Cudi) - “Reborn”

From Kanye’s only useful project in 2018 comes “Reborn”. Luckily, it’s mainly Cudi on this track (chorus/bridge/a verse). It feels like Ohio’s son is breaking through... or breaking out; verging on real triumph over his demons. Kanye, meanwhile, is surprisingly understated (read: good) and fits into all of his parts like a non-OJ glove. The sparing use of Yeezy reminds me of how the master himself used to feature people like Chief Keef just enough to harness the talent but not enough to ruin the song or do too much. Those alpha days appear to be way in the rearview now.

29) Travis Scott f/ Drake, Swae Lee & Big Hawk - “SICKO MODE”

Stacey Dash, most of these girls ain’t got a clue

This joins “Mo Bamba” in the Top 2 of Rap Songs That Need To Be Played At All Parties In The Year 2018. While “Bamba” is more consistent -- seriously, “SICKO MODE” is four songs in one -- almost nothing tops hearing the start of this and immediately anticipating the rest (like the opening of “Tuesday” when that was hot). The third part is probably my favorite. #likealight

28) SOB X RBE f/ Zacari & Kendrick Lamar - “Paramedic!”

Our third selection from the “Black Panther” soundtrack. Second favorite beat of 2018; I can’t not move the second it drops.

27) Drug Church - “Unlicensed Hall Monitor”

Favorite guitar leads of 2018. It’s as sleek as the vocals are gruff.

26) Matt And Kim - “FOREVER”

Was a dead tie between this and the equally emotional “Youngest I Will Be”. But this one has a vid -- and they make the best vids. This song also references the 1992 Dream Team. Our world will never be shit if they stay a part of it; first time I’ve came close to tearing up so far. These two inspire.

25) The Ramblin’ Boys Of Pleasure - “Joyce Jawbreaker”

Speaking of turrs, my band of 14 years released our maybe last song ever in 2018. Written in Maine, titled for Joyce Manor and Jawbreaker, and about lost love, Chicago, futures, playing music with your brothers, tiny hands, and found love. We also did a video:

youtube

24) Ariana Grande f/ Nicki Minaj - “the light is coming”

I really, truly am not excluding “thank u, next” to be contrarian. While I agree that is her defining song of 2018 -- and biggest hit to date? -- “the light is coming” is so much more unique. It goes in so many directions while the hook ties the rope around you a hundred times. Yep, I’m right.

23) Laura Jane Grace & The Devouring Mothers - “Apocalypse Now (& Later)”

Wish I could forever keep this song’s opening line as my mantra: You make me walk away from the hate I carry.

22) Restorations - “Nonbeliever”

Another band that should be bigger, so they can always be free to do anything they want. This song will always boil down to this part, which captures the push and pull of 2018 America:

I love your protest lines Oh, but who has the time? We all saw the same thing at the same time, okay? Got a partner for starters And a kid on the way Can’t be doing all this dumb shit no more

For how crass, clumsy, and non-rhyming that concludes, the song itself ends dire.

21) The Get Up Kids - “I’m Sorry”

One of my favorite videos of 2018. Similar to “Apocalypse Now (& Later)”, I’m not sure if it’s about a love interest or a kid. Does it matter? No. But it does to me.

20) Antarctigo Vespucci - “Freakin’ U Out”

A band name for the ages. With Chris Farren (of Fake Problems) on vox and Jeff Rosenstock on instruments, this song could power a car -- or at least one person who didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.

19) Bayside - “It Don’t Exist”

Anthony Raneri has a new grill, but this song feels 50 years old. A classic in real time.

18) The Carters - “APESHIT”

Is this artsy, all-time vid somewhat undermined by the Migos ad libs?

Yes.

/makes note to maybe dress up like this for Halloween next year

17) Post Malone f/ 21 Savage - “rockstar”

This song is so good -- albeit misogynist and also bad -- it makes me genuinely eager for a 21 Savage verse. And though I love any bars relating to his 12-car garage...

my favorite 21 savage quirk is his yearly 12 car garage updates:

2016: “why you got a 12 car garage?”

2017: “they like ‘savage why you got a 12 car garage / and you only got 6 cars?’”

2018: “why you got a 12 car garage? / cause i bought 6 new cars”

(via @ottergawd)

...his intro line is just so, so terrible: “I've been in the Hills fuckin' superstars / Feelin' like a popstar”. You know that’s... not really a rhyme, right?

16) Andrew McMahon In The Wilderness - “Ohio”

/will always, always death stare that dumb name to start any Andy section

Ah, but if we did start with a lyric?

Katie’s counting crows

This song is about leaving the worst state for one of the best. But if we’re doing that, why do we feel so melancholy?

15) Kendrick Lamar & SZA - “All The Stars”

You've gotta be mesmerizing to make Kung Fu Kenny look pedestrian, but SZA's galactic hook does just that.

14) Frank Turner - “1933″

Frank isn’t from here, but he’s setting out to remind us of where this all began.

13) The Wonder Years - “Sister Cities”

As far as pop punk legacies are concerned, The Wonder Years’ is secure. There is no longer necessity to churn out bangers; they’re already on the Mount Rushmore. Still, they go. Every part of this song is essential: the build up verses, blown out chorus, Panic! At The Disco 2005-era hi-hat off-time drum transitions, end-of-the-rope bridge. The true standout is the closing of V2:

I'm guarded like I'm wounded, my first instinct's always “run” I wanna turn to steam I wanna call it off I wanna lighten the dark I wanna swallow the sun

Good guitar leads add even extra.

12) YG f/ 2 Chainz, Big Sean & Nicki Minaj - “BIG BANK”

“Alexa, what does big bank do to little bank?”

The highlight line from each:

YG: “Ayy, I set the bar, I'm the fuckin' bar / Look in the sky, I'm a fuckin' star / I don't fall in love 'cause I be lovin' hard / Do everything like my shirt, extra large”

2 Chainz: “Big shit like a dinosaur did it”

Big Sean: “I'm rare as affordable health care”

Nicki: “Told em' I met Slim Shady, bagged a Em / Once he go black, he'll be back again”

Let this also be remembered as the song that created a Madden controversy.

11) Dean Summerwind - “Parked By The Lake”

What is there to say about the legend that is Dean Summerwind? With only one song on Spotify, he’s batting a clean 1.000. Calling this genius feels like an understatement. It’s real, it’s parody, it’s persistent, it’s ours.

10) The Dirty Nil - “Bathed In Light”

The Canadian Local H. Reaaaaaaaally wanna see them live in 2019.

9) oso oso - “gb/ol h/nf”

I stylized oso oso as “Oso Oso” last year to stick it to their frontman Jade, but a year later, I’ve lost the energy. Blame Ariana Grande. This song -- which stands for “goodbye old love, hello new friend”* -- has my favorite chorus of the year. It’s so simple, it’s obvious: “But I still come through, when you want / And if I serve no use, where do I get my purpose from?”

Also, this is indie/pop/punk/rock’s version of “SICKO MODE”: got more parts than “The Wire”.

(* - had to look that up multiple times in 2018 and never retained, despite it being the bridge of the song... I didn’t notice)

8) Kacey Musgraves - “Space Cowboy”

If any song *survives* the existence of this list, I hope it’s this one. Kacey has this predictable-yet-surprising way of taking existing tropes and co-opting them with her own twist. Homegirl is like the Jim Nantz of pop/country in that way.

7) Direct Hit! - “Welcome To Heaven”

This song makes me want to die to, you know, check. Blustering chorus, fascinating premise, and charged up while simultaneously patient/in control.

6) FIDLAR f/ The 90s - “Are You High?”

This not being on Spotify was one of the worst non-Michigan football things to happen to me in 2018. Man, I hate Michigan football.

5) Drake - “Nice For What”

- My favorite beat of 2018 (New Orleans bounce, ftw)

- My favorite release of 2018 - Drizzy said it would drop on a Friday - We were thinking morning or midday (not late evening, in the last remaining hours of the day, when were were faded and had waited so long it was almost forgotten -- it hit perfect) - On top of that, he also sampled Lauryn Hill’s “Ex-Factor” -- the same week Cardi B did the same -- with even more pulsating results - I will always interpret that as a real or sneak diss, yet no one I know has ever said anything

- My buddy Josh sent a selfie vid of him and his girl and some friends bopping to it; I’ll remember that forever; the moment felt like such an event, as if the world simultaneously celebrated at such an atypical time

- Drake deserves 30% less credit for this female empowerment anthem because of the “these hoes” sample

- Maybe a Top 5 Drake song, all-time

- There is no planet, solar system, or multiverse where 2018 Drake finishes ahead of 2018 Pusha T

4) Pusha T - “The Story Of Adidon”

You are hiding a child.

Let’s not mince words: this is the No. 2 greatest diss track of all time. Pac is No. 1 -- this will not be debated. From there, Nas is DQ’d for “Ether” homophobia, annnnnnd no one else is in the realm. King Push...

- Unearthed a photo of Drake in blackface and uses it as the art for the song - Goes at Drake’s mom (”Marriage is something that Sandi never had...”) - Goes at Drake’s dad (”Dennis Graham stay off the 'gram, bitch, I'm on one”) - Outs Drake for having a child (and hiding said child!*) - Goes at Drake’s baby momma - And -- /gulp -- goes at Drake’s longtime producer 40 for having multiple sclerosis, suggesting he will not be alive soon**

He does this over “The Story Of O.J.” beat... a rather chill backdrop, all things considered.

(* - Drake responded later with the line “I wasn’t hiding my kid from the world, I was hiding the world from my kid” which just isn’t cool at all but is competent enough to win some people back over; /barf)

(** - HOLY FUCK***)

(*** - much debate occurred in the aftermath regarding if Push “went too far”; I was 50-50 at the time but now am 100-0 that it was the right choice; this song is cyanide venom, so why pull back even an ounce?)

Though Drake survived -- turns out the mainstream pop boost is bigger than hip-hop beef -- he took the fattest of L’s on this one.

Really can’t decide on a lyrical ending, so I’m gonna go with two:

Surgical summer.

If we all go to hell, it’ll be worth it.

3) Spanish Love Songs - “Buffalo Buffalo”

In my head, this was gonna end up ahead of The Menzingers, but that would be like putting Greta Van Fleet ahead of Zeppelin. Spanish Love Songs were my breakout band of 2018. They released my favorite album, I saw them as an opener at Sub-T in Chicago, and I promised their bassist I’d see them in Florida at the Fest (this did not materialize). While their vocals and guitar leads sound identical to Scranton’s finest, if you listen to them as much as I did, you’ll realize they offer a sound and perspective* of their own as well.

(* - no one hates themselves more than this singer)

2) The Menzingers - “Toy Soldier”

There’s so much to be sad about these days

/that guitar intro

Followed by the best musical moment of this year: from 0:06 to 0:07 -- the ever-so-slight delay before the band blows it out. Spent a lot of time in 2018 debating if I should change my Twitter bio to “I lost my accent in the plague”. Listened to this song on the floor of the living room on my 32nd birthday; then I read “The Great Gatsby”. From there (at this point, it was past midnight), I realized this sounded like The Lawrence Arms’ “Requiem Revisited”, which was inspired by Naked Raygun’s “Soldiers Requiem”. It’s all a triangle of that perfectly fitting punk chord progression. That’s right: I am Pepe Silvia.

1) Horror Squad - “I Smoke The Blood”

Best song title of 2018. Best song of 2018.

This has 729 views on YouTube -- be the 730th.

youtube

Spotify playlist.

Thank you for reading.

0 notes

scripturehomosexuality · 6 years

Text

Editorial: #MeToo, Same-Sex Activity, and How The Two Are Related

For many months, even as I was writing on this blog, I have been closely watching the #MeToo movement sweeping through the U.S. At first, I was keeping out of it. Though I supported it initially, its original purpose wasn’t related to this blog’s purpose, so I didn’t intend to remark on it.

However, things have changed so much, and the stakes have been raised so high, this male writer feels compelled to say something on it.

Now, before I go any further, I need to make the following perfectly clear: I do not hate women. I do not support the rape or sexual assault of any woman (or man), under any circumstances. Rape and sexual assault is always inexcusable. I’m sure any longtime reader of this blog will know that I do not endorse misogyny. In fact, the Additional Links page will unequivocally show that I support both female sexuality and male sexuality.

As such, if you disagree with what I’m about to say, please do not flood my inbox with condemnatory messages. If you wish to comment, please use the Discus plugin at the end of this post, which allows guest and pseudonymous commenting.

As I said before, sexual assault and rape horrifies me, so I initially supported the #MeToo movement. However, as November 2017 came along, I began to have reservations. To me, it was beginning to feel like a general witchhunt. To give #MeToo the benefit of the doubt, I kept quiet and kept watching its development.

Now, it seems my apprehension was justified. More men and women find the movement increasingly troubling. We are all disturbed by its apparent inability to make distinctions. Sophomoric behavior and mild harassment are being equated to rape and sexual assault. Due process is being skipped in favor of swift justice, as accusations are now enough to impose severe punishment. The fact that women are human beings too, and thus are equally capable of fabrication, is becoming too taboo to suggest.

By no means am I defending the rape and sexual assault of women. My point is that, in trying to end those harmful actions, we’re throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Not every problem is a nail that must be hammered, which the #MeToo movement doesn’t seem to realize.

The crescendo reached a climax this week, as comedian Aziz Ansari was accused of sexual assault. What was the problem? The Ansari story was quite ordinary to most people. To them, it was too ordinary to merit public shaming.

Because of all this, I can confidently say that the #MeToo movement has been hijacked. Rape and sexual assault are now a minimal focus of this movement. Right now, it’s focused on transforming our sexual culture into one that is punitively and brutally governed by certain women. It seems bent on creating a system where, solely by a woman’s whim, an encounter caused by mixed messages becomes punishable sexual assault.

Other writers are reaching similar conclusions. In fact, a few writers openly say that we’re in a full blown sex panic. In a column for the New York Daily News, philosopher Christina Hoff Sommers said “a new puritanism seems to be ascendant,” where “suddenly, office Christmas parties and happy hours are under a cloud.”

As such, there is a vital point being missed in the debate - the #MeToo movement is inextricably linked to developments involving “homosexuality”. If we are serious in analysing what caused the movement, and where it is headed, we must consider this indispensable history.

Firstly, the #MeToo movement owes its existence to the recent history of “homosexuality”. In the United States, the current definition includes all same-sex acts, with “gender inversion” an important but secondary component. At this point, participation in any same-sex act counts as “homosexuality”.

As much as that definition seems established, it’s actually pretty new. Before the second half of the 20th century, “homosexuality” was more defined by “gender inversion” than behavior. Engagement in same-sex activity didn’t automatically merit a “homosexual” identity. From the 1930s onward, a man felt compelled to identify as “homosexual” if

he was primarily or exclusively attracted to men (which was considered a form of “gender inversion”)

his mannerisms parodied those of women

Even then, true “homosexual” men were considered to be effeminate.

We must also remember that back then, sex was mainly defined by penetration. Thus, if the contact was non-penetrative, it wasn’t “sex” per se. After World War II, anal sex started becoming more common in the “homosexual” identified community. However, among non-”homosexual” men, the contact usually was non-penetrative.

As a result of these factors, same-sex activity was relatively common for non-”homosexual” men up until the mid-20th century. It didn’t automatically require a new identity, and since they avoided anal, their contact didn’t count as “sex” for most people. As a result, the rate of premarital opposite-sex contact was also relatively low. Since they were having sexual satisfaction with fellow men, contact with women wasn’t as necessary.

That began changing with the Stonewall Rebellion of 1969. The revolt caused massive upheaval in both the “homosexual” and non-”homosexual” worlds. Now, “homosexual” men could now be validly masculine and effeminate, as shown by the explosion of the Castro Clone. What those masculine and feminine men shared in common - their engagement in same-sex activity - increasingly became the basis of the new “gay” identity.

This wasn’t all. From its slow start after WWII, anal sex became widespread in the “gay” community by the mid-1970s. Up until that time, and despite its increasing popularity, anal still had a bad reputation among “gay” men. Then, as the late 1970s arrived, a cultural seismic shift happened. Anal soon became the ultimate fulfillment of “gay” love, and a necessary act for “gay” men.

In the 1980s, these factors helped change the overall sexual culture of the United States.

HIV/AIDS, a disease mainly spread through anal play, began ravaging the “gay” community. Yet the “gay” community was not the only group affected. The entire United States was traumatized by the disease, because to a point, it affected them too. A significant number of presumed “heterosexual” men, including celebrities like Rock Hudson and Anthony Perkins, were among those who died from AIDS.

These deaths were significant because, while they were “gay” identified and very active in the “gay” community, their identity and activity was unknown to the general public. They were able to keep it hidden because outwardly, they appeared to be “normal” men, and were thus presumed to be “heterosexual” identified.

As to why they interacted in the “gay” community, remember a point made before - the morphing definition of “homosexuality”. Because of that, more of these men felt compelled to sexually engage in the “gay” community, even though that wasn’t the case a few decades before. Unfortunately, that also means they engaged in sexual practices unique to the “gay” community that gave them the disease.

Since men not perceived as “homosexual” were AIDS victims, the predominant definition of “homosexuality” (still mostly based on gender inversion) appeared inadequate. Thus, the definition fully and quickly turned into the behavior-based definition that dominates today.

At the same time, it appears the fact that anal sex drove the epidemic, in lieu of other same-sex acts, was lost on the general public. As a result, all same-sex activity began to gain a stigma.

These other relevant factors added into the mix -

Remnants of 1950s Red Scare attitudes. Though the fervor of McCarthyism waned in the 1950s, elements of its attitudes endured throughout the Cold War era. As such, during the Red Scare, a link was established between “homosexuality” (as they defined it then) and Communism. The AIDS epidemic breathed new life into these ideas.

Growth of the Religious Right. The 1970s was characterized by many revolutionary movements - Women’s Liberation, Gay Liberation, the Sexual Revolution, the acceptance of evolution, etc. In response to the changes, a new reactionary form of Christianity developed. Seeing themselves as saviors as morality, the Religious Right staunchly opposed the “gay” community, and “homosexuality” by extension. In the face of the AIDS epidemic, they abandoned reinforcing their historical condemnation of anal sex. Instead, they went full-throttle with the shifting definition of “homosexuality”. As the definition continued to change, their condemnation of “homosexuality” continuously grew in scope and sharpened in tone.

The changing definition of sex. Before long, STDs began affecting “straight” relationships. At times, these diseases were spread through acts that weren’t usually considered “sex”. As a result, sex was soon defined by both penetrative and non-penetrative acts. Paradoxically, this helped reinforce the shifting definition of homosexuality. For better or worse, all same-sex acts were now validly “sex”, and thus were validly “homosexual”.

All these factors combined into a ferocious hysteria over same-sex activity. This hysteria would increase correspondingly with the growth of AIDS, as it reached its peak during the 1990s. However, one of the features of hysteria is its irrationality, as it perceives threats in all kinds of places. Thus, the resulting stigma over same-sex activity soon spread to same-sex attraction, and even to homoerotism.

The frequency of same-sex activity in the general population went down dramatically, as everyday people wanted to escape being touched by the growing hysteria. At the same time, the rates of opposite-sex contact outside marriage shot through the roof. This strongly suggests that, true to their bisexuality, most people went to the opposite gender when same-sex activity became unacceptable. It was in this environment that our current sexual culture - where opposite-sex contact outside marriage is expected - became set in stone.

In other words, the AIDS stigma created the culture that made #MeToo possible. That fact is inescapable, and utterly necessary to understand this movement’s origins. If AIDS didn’t happen, opposite-sex activity outside marriage wouldn’t have become as acceptable or prevalent. As a result, there would have been no culture that could have spawned anything like #MeToo.

Secondly, the radical feminist movement (which is driving the #MeToo phenomenon) is a sister of the modern “gay” movement. As such, many habits existing in the “gay” world are replicating themselves in the #MeToo movement.

For instance, the “gay” movement has no ability to make common sense distinctions. To them all sex is good yet risky, despite all evidence that anal is uniquely dangerous. To them both men and women are designed for penetration, despite all evidence that they are not. To them all men into men have always had anal sex, despite direct and circumstantial evidence to the contrary.

In the same way, and as said before, #MeToo makes similar moves. To the movement, clumsy advances and sophomoric jokes are apparently tantamount to rape or assault. All merit brutal and severe punishment. In its view, no woman is capable of coloring or fabricating stories, and few men treat women with the dignity they deserve. In fact, a few writers openly wonder how women can pass ANY man on the sidewalk without fear.

As another example, both movements feel that “if you’re not with us, you’re against us”. In other words, if your opinions don’t march in lockstep with their own, you will be considered their enemy. It doesn’t matter how much you might agree with them.

This has been the reigning motto of the “gay” movement for years. This is why this blog, the g0y movement, the Man2Man Alliance, and other like outlets are ignored or opposed. We agree that the Religious Right has abused their power considerably, and must be stopped from causing further damage. However, we also oppose the anal sex ethos of the LGBT leadership, because we see that as equally harmful. For those and other differences of opinion, we have earned their scorn.

Additionally it should be noted that, when talking about the “gay” movement, the Man2Man Alliance said that their attitudes reeked of fascism.

Something similar is happening with the radical feminist movement that is driving #MeToo. Their more moderate members have voiced concerns over the direction #MeToo is taking, and the overall thrust of the movement. In response, they have been viciously attacked and ridiculed by their fellow feminists. Anything other than uniform opinion will not be tolerated. Examples include Cassie Jaye, Laci Green, and Catherine Deneuve.

Another commonality comprises our third point - both movements contain a vicious streak of misandry, which seems to be currently driving the #MeToo movement.

The “gay” movement has been proudly misandronic for years. To them, masculinity naturally gives birth to homophobia, despite the fact that masculinity has never been a monolith. Anything that seems masculine is constantly disparaged and denigrated, and deserves destruction. “Straight-acting gay” men are treated with suspicion and skepticism, because they don’t want to imitate women in their mannerisms. To them, the more a man imitates a woman in everything he does, the better.

In saying this, I’m not trying to disparage women. My point is that the “gay” movement constantly slams things that are most natural to men, and instead encourages behavior that isn’t natural for them.

On a closely related note, that’s also why their worship of anal makes sense. Throughout history, the penetrated male was thought to be “acting like a woman”. Whether the “gay” leadership admits it or not, that same logic guides them today. They also believe anal feminizes a male, which they think is proper and desirable.

That’s also a reason why they hate frot with a passion - it’s simply too masculine for them to tolerate.

The radical feminists do the same thing. Of late, they have constantly decried the effects of “toxic masculinity”. This phrase usually doesn’t say that certain forms of masculinity are toxic, which is completely true. Instead it says that masculinity itself is toxic and evil, and deserves total eradication. That is shown in terms they have coined that associate masculinity with incivility - “mansplaining”, “manspreading”, etc. Their words constantly encourage female distrust and dislike of men. As a result, as Cathy Young said in the Washington Post, “Things have gotten to a point where casual low-level male-bashing is a constant white noise in the hip progressive online media.”

As part of its misandry, radical feminism also wishes to control how men interact with each other, even in the smallest of matters. A post from the Man2Man Alliance mentions an interesting development among Blackwater mercenaries (U.S. military contractors) in 2007 Iraq. In their off hours, the male mercenaries liked to sunbathe naked together on their trailer roofs. That came to an end when female helicopter pilots flew overhead, became extremely displeased, and complained to their superiors.

Think about that for a minute. These men were simply minding their own business, and weren’t bothering the female pilots at all. They were simply doing what felt comfortable. Plus, this probably wasn’t the first time those pilots saw penises. Yet, they felt compelled to disrupt a naturally occurring male activity, simply because they didn’t like it. What motivated these women to react so strongly?

As Alliance founder Bill Weintraub put it, “their objection...is the expression of a puritan impulse, and a puritan impulse alone.” This same puritan impulse seems to characterize radical feminism, which evidently motivated the pilots’ actions. It also seems to drive the #MeToo movement.

Mind you, things are even worse now. A recent British study told women that male friendships posed a deep threat to their own relationships with men, and encouraged them to keep those relationships under surveillance. Thus, the deep feminist suspicion of male intimacy rages on.

Thus, to me, this is what’s really driving the #MeToo movement at present. The radical feminists are no longer satisfied with controlling male relationships. Now, they wish to dictate how men interact with them and other females, where women have total possession of the keys of power.

Once again, I’m not trying to disparage women. My point is that as long as one gender feels justified to dominate the other - men over women or women over men - there will always be war. Ultimately, a gender war benefits neither men nor women. At most, extremists of either gender will be the only victors.

At this point however, I hope you fully understand how “homosexuality” relates to #MeToo. They are completely enmeshed and impossible to separate. This connection fully reveals the origins of this movement, and the motivations for its current actions. #MeToo also reveals what was “business as usual” inside the “gay” world, in a way most people can no longer ignore. Whether most people realize it or not, the attitudes of the “gay” world are now affecting their own lives.

As such, this link leads to a question no one is asking - how “homosexuality” will affect the endgame of the #MeToo movement.

First of all, I completely agree that #MeToo will affect our entire sexual culture. Quotes from a “Spiked Online” article by 13 female writers shows that clearly. In the article, writer Joanna Williams said “...a new wariness has taken hold. A voice in our heads asks how our interactions might be interpreted by others. Is it best to leave the office door open? Invite a third party along to the lunch meeting? Under what circumstances can you hug a colleague? Or touch their elbow?” Meanwhile, writer Lionel Shriver said, “I am concerned that sex itself seems increasingly to be seen as dirty, and as a violation, a form of assault, so that we’re repackaging an old prudery in progressive wrapping paper.”

As such, this will affect men more seriously than you might realize. Remember what was said before - our modern sexual culture aren’t that old, and are historically unprecedented.

If this movement happened under past sexual concepts, the outcome would be different. In times past, “sex” was defined by penetration, and thus excluded most same-sex activity. Thus, if “sex” indeed became a taboo activity, that wouldn’t equate to male sexual deprivation. Instead, those men would turn to each other for sexual pleasure. They would have been able to satisfy their urges even as the hysteria raged on.

That doesn’t exist today. In the United States, “homosexuality” now includes all same-sex activity and attraction, and engagement in such activity now warrants the “gay” label. This process has inordinately affected male relationships throughout its duration. As modern sexual philosophy further evolves, it encroaches further into more areas of life. At this point, “bromances” are increasingly considered light versions of “homosexuality”, which might lead to their stigmatization in the near future.

This takes away the avenue of same-sex intimacy from most men. Thus, as sexual interaction with women becomes more precarious, we will enter an unprecedented reality. One of two outcomes will then happen, both of which are equally horrendous -

Most men will end up having no sex at all

In their frustration, those men may immerse themselves into the “gay” world with all its concepts and practices, including its disastrous practice of anal play

The first one will have effects that, in a very scary way, we cannot exactly predict. Sex is a need of most humans that must be satisfied somehow, much like eating and drinking. As such, Psychology Today plainly says, “Nothing inspires murderous mayhem in human beings more reliably than sexual repression...if expression of sexuality is thwarted, the human psyche tends to grow twisted into grotesque, enraged perversions of desire.”

Sexual repression among Christians has helped transform modern porn in size and content. Can you imagine what will happen if such repression exists throughout the United States? Do we really want to create sexually desperate men who will act out in harmful ways?

Mind you, I have my own reservations with our current sexual culture. Since intimacy among men is so taboo, men feel compelled to satisfy same-sex needs in opposite-sex relationships. This causes all kinds of dysfunction that’s unnecessary, but at least there’s some manner of sexual outlet. If total sexual repression becomes reality in the United States, no man or woman would be safe.

The second one will have effects that we do know, which are equally scary. The “gay” world conceptualizes same-sex activity as an abnormality, which is extremely harmful. That thinking justifies the practice of anal play, which has caused all kinds of medical, physical, and psychological harm. If sexual frustrated “straight” men enter this world, the resulting explosion of disease and injury would threaten human life.

Worst of all, it would trivialize women (and men) with real claims of sexual assault and rape. The systems causing so many problems would remain. Only the positions of the players would change.

In other words, under current conditions, the current version of #MeToo would be disastrous.

If there’s one thing #MeToo has done for good, it has caused further cracks in the imaginary wall between “gays” and “straights”. This blog has constantly said that “homosexuality” is impacted by social and political pressures that also affect “straights”. Given the link between #MeToo and “homosexuality”, and how one affects the other, it’s now harder to pretend that “gays” and “straights” live in completely different worlds.

In conclusion, if you are a feminist, I hope that you think long and hard about what I’ve just said. Please don’t react in a knee jerk fashion to this post. Instead, I ask you to really meditate on my words. With everything that I’ve just described, is this a movement that you should blindly support?

For my readers in the United States, I have a special message for you. Don’t think that we are merely seeing a rebellion against sexual assault. We’re really seeing the seismic transformation of our sexual culture. It is now teetering on the verge of collapse, and what replaces it can be very bad or very good.

This movement has inadvertently continued what footballer Aaron Hernandez began, whose suicide made modern sexual philosophy begin to wobble. At this point, it’s highly doubtful that the sexual status quo will continue.

No matter how you identify, you have a dog in this fight. If you have found this site’s content educational and valuable, don’t keep quiet about it. There is no better time to speak than right now. Let people know that the Scriptures don’t condemn “homosexuality”. Publicly acknowledge that most people swing both ways. Educate your peers on history that reveals modern sexual philosophy as fraudulent.

Make no mistake - from what I can see, we are in the middle of another sexual revolution. Our sexual culture is on the verge of fundamental change, and the content of the discussion will determine what will supplant it. In this era of turmoil, the ones who participate will shape its outcome, which will affect us for years to come. Make sure that in this process, you make your voice heard.

Post-Scriptum (added on 1/22/2018)

I’ve just become aware of a third possible outcome for #MeToo - the utilization of sex robots. At this time, its possibility seems somewhat remote, but it still deserves mention.

As male-female sex becomes more fraught with tension, and same-sex contact remains taboo, sexually frustrated humans might turn to sex robots to fill their needs.

To me, this outcome is as horrendous as the first two. Sex is ultimately an expression of intense love and affection. Meanwhile, sex robots are simply manmade objects, not human beings. How can humans make love to objects that can’t reciprocate?

Thus, I believe that under this outcome, their use will likely have long-term detrimental effects. Sex robots may aggravate social isolation, at a time when social cohesion is already under threat. Sex will simply become a reflex detached from love, and not an extreme interpersonal experience. Humans may somewhat lose their ability to mix the sexual with the social, which might cause a decrease in population.

Furthermore, it would work to reinforce the “straight”-”gay” dichotomy, with all its concepts and ideas. Sex robots would remove the risks cursing extramarital opposite-sex contact, such as pregnancy, disease, emotional turmoil, etc. Furthermore, robots might also remove risks inherent in male-male anal sex, such as disease and physical injury.

I think though this is a rather distant option in the United States (at least for now), because

Sex robot technology is still in its infancy, and currently seems resistant to advancement

There’s still a strong social stigma against sex with robots. At present, it simply rubs most people the wrong way. That stigma may or may not last.

Feminists will likely oppose them. If men turn to sex robots en masse, that would undermine the power of women over sexual relations, which would be unacceptable for them

The third point highlights a possible consequence that would be interesting. Corporations and radical feminism, who are currently working together on #MeToo, may end up at each other’s throats if sex robots become popular.

Sex robots can command high prices, which would yield big profits for their manufacturers. If their demand increases, profits would only grow bigger. This might be a reason why corporations are supporting #MeToo - its encouragement of puritanism would create the perfect market for sex robots.

Thus, #MeToo might be yet another infusion of neoliberalism into our sexual dealings. It might further develop the relationship between neoliberalism and modern sexual philosophy.

#metoo #me too movement #homosexuality #gay #lgbt #editorial #homosexual #lgbt christian #lgbt christianity #Gay Christian #gay christianity

0 notes

iamjohnlocked4life · 7 years

Text

Love in The Six Thatchers

I know what you’re thinking: we’ve been talking about this for a week already. In fandom meta time, that’s practically forever. Reams have been written, every bit picked apart and analysed. You’re right, of course, and this has probably already been said before, but I’ve been thinking about it all week and just have to throw in my two cents before tomorrow’s episode airs, so bear with me.

I’m firmly in the camp of the D-Notice Scene as The Key to the Episode, about which plenty of brilliant things have already been said. I'll be basing this on the theory that everything we are shown in the episode is the “official” story, the doctored footage version.

The word “love” features prominently in this episode, so I’m going to take a look at how it’s used... and how it’s notably not. In particular, I’m going to focus on the scenes where it’s used in relation to Sherlock, because it’s his heart we are to deduce, as we were outright told in the s4 trailer.

The first instance is when Mycroft lists off the codenames of the people in the room: Antarctica, Langdale, Porlock and Love. Notably absent from the list is the secretary (Vivian Norbury); Mycroft overlooks her as a real threat, which later comes back to bite him in the arse. We find out later that Love is the codename for Lady Smallwood, when Sherlock draws the incorrect conclusion about who the English woman is that betrays the special ops team. This shows Sherlock’s fallibility when it comes to drawing conclusions about Love.

Next we have Sherlock, talking about being out on a mission that meant his certain death, but now he’s back “in a nice warm office with my big brother and-- are those ginger nuts? Love ginger nuts!” This is the first instance of incomplete sentence being completed by a follow-up that has a deeper meaning related to love. More on that later, but for now, let’s just look at this one as written on paper. He’s talking about being safe with his big brother, and he jumps to the word love, hidden in the guise of his love of sweets. Sherlock has associated sweets and gluttony with his brother throughout the programme, with his portrayal in TAB as the most extreme example, and his subsequent gluttony with the ginger nuts (grabs four, eats them messily with great gusto) can be seen as a direct reference to the TAB plum pudding scene. Sherlock can’t profess his love for his brother directly, so he does so indirectly, through this self-interruption.

The next mention of love is VERY important, and one of two that convinced me I had to write this, one of two scenes I’ve been thinking about all damn week. It’s the first line that struck me as really wrong, beyond Sherlock’s OOC (probably high) antics. As Sherlock is leaving, he boasts, “I always know when the game is on. Do you know why?” which he follows up with:

Cut to opening credits. It’s cheesy af and it falls flat, and here’s the thing: it’s supposed to. It’s supposed to make us roll our eyes and think oh my god, because it’s a façade, the face he’s trying to show the audience. The official story: Sherlock’s a sociopath who only cares about the game; Sherlock’s a show that’s only about the cases. We know it’s not true. We’ve been shown it’s not true, repeatedly, bashed over the head with it, and yet it is the same party line that mainstream media touts, and casual viewers eat it up. Look at the context of this line being uttered: Sherlock is putting on his coat, donning his armour. He’s visibly shrouding himself in his sociopath persona. Look at that coat collar cutting across his face. Dark and mysterious: that’s the story being shown to the audience. Never mind the fact that the previous episode literally took place inside his head, revealing the inner recesses of his subconscious. Never mind that he restarted his own heart at the thought of John Watson being in danger. Nothing to see here, move along.

The next instance of love is when John says he and “Mary” would love Molly and Mrs Hudson to be godparents, but as I mentioned, I’m going to skim over the instances not directly related to Sherlock. It is notable that he does not include Sherlock in this part, rather asks him separately without the term love, downgrades it to “we’d like” ~ perhaps he’s not comfortable assuming Mary has any sort of love for Sherlock?

A big callback to the opening credits line comes next. When chatting with Lestrade about Sherlock, Hopkins says, “he loves a really tricky case.” Again, this is the only type of love Sherlock Holmes is allowed to officially express to the general public: love of a case, love of the game.

The next couple uses of love are not at all related to Sherlock, but I will call out one, since I screamed when I first heard it, and it makes me so happy. After Sherlock tells Mycroft that A.G.R.A. is an acronym, Mycroft replies, “Oh, good. I love an acronym. All the best secret societies have them.” I think this line was the very first thing I posted after I saw the episode, as did countless other TJLCers, and having Mark tell us that he loves us is just. The Best.

Anyway. Back to Sherlock. Well, first another small detour, because while it’s not directly related to Sherlock’s heart, it is very telling. We have “Mary’s” letter to John when she runs away definitely doesn’t run away, which includes the line, “I’m sorry, my love.” Much parody has been made over the super loving tone of the letter, because we’ve never heard her be so affectionate to John. I think it’s important to call out here that we never hear either of them tell each other “I love you.” Not in their wedding episode, not during her death scene. This omission is intentional, and significant.

And now we come to the other scene that made me know I HAD to write this: Ammo = Amo. First, Sherlock asks his brother how his latin is, and then proceeds to take us through the declension of the most basic Latin 101 verb. Overlooking the fact that Mycroft would ridicule him for such a rudimentary query, the back and forth between the two brothers here is crucial:

Sherlock makes Mycroft translate the declension, because he is not going to utter the words “I love you” in that order. Not yet. We all know it’s coming; that’s the brilliance of including it in the s4 trailer. We know, we’re waiting, we’re cluing for looks. But this is certainly not the episode for him to say those words. So instead we have Mycroft taking the plunge first, saying them to his brother, just as he took the plunge in HLV, confessing to Sherlock that his loss would break his heart, to which Sherlock had no response. Mycroft was the first to openly admit he has a heart, just as he is the first one to use the words “I love you” in succession. Reading the declension as a series of declarations, we have Mycroft saying “I love you” to Sherlock, followed by stating that “You love he” ~ calling out his love for John. This is significant, because in Latin 101, you learn amat as “he/she/it loves” so if they wanted this to be ambiguous, or also relating to Mary, they could have said “He/She loves” but they didn’t. So we get Mycroft loves Sherlock, Sherlock loves John, and John loves... well, that’s the crux for Sherlock, isn’t it? Mycroft actually says, “He loves... what?” This is followed by Sherlock similarly leaving an open-ended sentence: “Not ammo as in ammunition but amo meaning...” Again, he can’t finish it with “I love” so he leaves it hanging. Mycroft replies that he’d better be right, and we find out later that Sherlock wasn’t right: he misdiagnosed who John loves. (hint: not “Mary”)

And then we get my favourite transition in the episode:

sorry I have zero giffing skills BUT LOOK!!! We have the brothers turning off to the same side, and cross dissolving into each other. I had trouble screen capping the thing but they actually do completely align right before the scene changes. Sherlock is following his older brother; following in his footsteps. This can be read on the surface level, the “official story” reading: Sherlock is choosing the game, choosing the Antarctica Ice Man path. For all appearances, he is following the “caring is not an advantage” mantra laid out by his brother. But when read with the subtextual meaning of this scene, Sherlock is doing the opposite: he is following his brother’s lead, acknowledging his heart, and will confess his love for John, just as Mycroft did for Sherlock.

And that is it for love! As I mentioned earlier, it is notable that the word love is NOT uttered in “Mary’s” death scene. Sometimes an omission is just as important as a declaration.

Thank you to Ariane DeVere for always providing such detailed transcripts to the fandom: your speedy work made this meta infinitely easier to write. Tagging people who may be interested in this: @heimishtheidealhusband @may-shepard @roseinmyhand @monikakrasnorada @hopelesslybenaddicted @queenmab3 @hotdiggitydollie @inevitably-johnlocked @just-sort-of-happened @jenna221b @mollydobby @justacookieofacumberbatch @sherlock-overflow-error @alexxphoenix42 @delurkingdetective @the-7-percent-solution @deducingbbcsherlock @datmycroft @tendergingergirl @isitandwonder @keagan-ashleigh @totallymydivision @simpleanddestructivechemistry @waitingforgarridebs @marcespot @miadifferent @havetardiswilltimetravel

Apologies if any or all of this has been stated before; there has been so much meta this week I haven’t been able to keep up. I linked to people’s meta I had seen that was related, but hadn’t seen this exact thing dissected like this before. If it has been, please *gently* let me know, as this took quite some time to write and assemble ♥ at the very least, perhaps we can say that obsessive minds think alike!

#my meta #s4 meta #s4 speculation #TST #I love you #the whole episode is D-Notice #and if you're not reading the subtext #hell mend you

210 notes · View notes

thisdaynews · 5 years

Text

My Weekend At the Activist Bootcamp Trying to Reshape the 2020 Race

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/my-weekend-at-the-activist-bootcamp-trying-to-reshape-the-2020-race/

My Weekend At the Activist Bootcamp Trying to Reshape the 2020 Race

STONY POINT, N.Y. — “When we were taught about the civil rights movement as kids, it was told to us as if a few big marches just happened and then the laws changed,” Emily LaShelle told me last weekend as she smoked a cigarette. Behind her, a group of her peers played Frisbee in a field while the sun set behind them. “But there was so much more work and effort by activists behind the scenes,” she said. “And that’s the kind of work we’re teaching people to be involved in for this movement.”

LaShelle is 21, with short-cropped blond hair and a nose piercing. Her movement is the Sunrise Movement, an organization of mostly twenty-something climate activists who are best known for seemingly instantly and improbably injecting the idea of a “Green New Deal” into the national conversation. This past week, more than 70 Sunrise activists, including LaShelle, traveled to a rural, multifaith retreat center along the Hudson River, about 50 miles north of New York City, to take part in a weeklong boot camp that’s intended to transform them into the next generation of climate activists—who, in turn, are supposed to transform American politics.

Story Continued Below

Sunrise has already moved shockingly swiftly on that front. Last November, Sunrise activists joined newly elected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a splashy protest at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office that catapulted the group to national relevance. The resulting publicity added thousands of people to the group’s ranks of supporters and active volunteers. Less than a year later, Sunrise’s proposal for a Green New Deal has gone from being widely mocked as an overly ambitious socialist fantasy (or the “Green Dream,” in Pelosi’s words) to being endorsed by 16 of the Democrats running for president—most recently by none other than Joe Biden. Four years after it was founded by several activists in the fossil-fuel divestment movement on college campuses and a climate policy researcher supported by the Sierra Club, Sunrise has become an influential force not just in climate activism but in Democratic politics. And its oldest staff member is only 33.

The most pressing question Sunrise now faces—and one that occupied this past week’s boot camp—is not unlike the one that faced Robert Redford at the end ofThe Candidate: What do we do now? How do a bunch of twenty-somethings, somewhatblindsided by their own success, come up with a next act?

The Sunrise Movement is part of a crop of progressive groups that have sprung up outside the mainstream Democratic Party and have helped to dramatically reshape the left’s agenda, often with minimal infrastructure. At its founding, Sunrise saw itself as solely focused on changing public opinion as an indirect means of pressuring the party’s establishment. But after the election of President Donald Trump, the group and its leaders underwent a change in philosophy: They needed to convert their idealism into power by engaging in hard politics.

In less than five years, Sunrise has grown from a small and quixotic project to a full-fledged advocacy organization that draws thousands of volunteers across the country and tens of thousands of participants to its events, including a large protest that’s being planned around the Democratic presidential debate in Detroit later this summer. Among the activists at the Sunrise boot camp, there was a palpable sense of enthusiasm but also anger and even desperation at what it calls the “climate crisis.” There was a pervasive feeling that previous generations of adults had ignored the apocalyptic threat of climate change and left it to be solved by millennials and Gen Zers. At times, Sunrise’s leaders seem like they’re winging it, or even engaging in a right-wing parody of performative wokeness. Yet it’s also undeniable that whatever this earnest and improvisational organization is doing, it’s working. The national discussion around climate change has moved more in the past eight months than it did during the previous eight years.

Last year, Sunrise held a similar boot camp for its activists, 75 like-minded young adults who were volunteering their summers to help a fledgling movement. No members of the news media showed up. “We were sending press releases out, but no one was responding,” Stephen O’Hanlon, Sunrise’s communications director and one of its eight original co-founders, told me last weekend. O’Hanlon is 23.

This year’s camp was for 60 full-time organizers who will receive food, housing and a stipend for up to six months, during which they’ll be placed in “movement houses” around the country.Politico Magazineshowed up, and so did a reporter forVogue. ANew York Timesvideo team was expected, too. “It’s fucking insane,” Victoria Fernandez, who’s 26 and another of the movement’s co-founders, said to me about the media coverage—and the organization’s rising status.

***

“Initially we thought,”Sunrise co-founder Sara Blazevic, who is 26, told me of the group’s founding, “if we can build the public support and the public pressure, our political system will follow. We’d be a movement that was pretty solely focused on the outside game strategy: building public pressure, elevating the urgency of the crisis in the eyes of the American people and demonstrating it to political leaders and forcing them to reckon with it,” she said.

That was the summer of 2016.

“And then when Trump got elected, and we realized there was just no credible path to passing any type of federal legislation on climate in four years, we realized that we also had to contend with how to win political power pretty seriously.”

Over the next year, Sunrise participated mostly in demonstrations organized by others, like a People’s Climate March in D.C. and a protest at the United Nations climate talks in Germany. As the group’s plan for how to focus its efforts on hard politics began to take shape, Sunrise began to acquire, either from donations or by paying rent, a series of houses across the country. In the summer of 2018, Sunrise placed activists in these movement houses, as it calls them, to work on campaigns in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York and Florida. They focused on picking candidates in Democratic primaries who would stand for bold progressive policies—candidates like Ocasio-Cortez, who received Sunrise’s endorsement and support.

After picking a candidate, the activists would, says Aracely Jiménez, a 22-year-old Sunrise staffer who started as a volunteer canvasser in New York last summer, knock on doors for them, often in working-class communities, telling people why “just any Democrat having a D next to their name doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to be fighting for immigrant rights or housing justice or climate justice.”

That fall, the election of Ocasio-Cortez, and the protest she joined at Pelosi’s office, was a “turning point” for the organization, said Claire Tacherra-Morrison, a 24-year-old University of California, Berkeley graduate who participated in the protest and is now a Sunrise staffer.

“We were saying all the same shit on November 12 as we were on November 13,” Blazevic said, “but having Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez saying it with us really did change everything.”

She added, “Part of what made our protest so powerful was because we had this story: We just hustled and worked our asses off for six months to help win back the House for Dems, and they owe us better than this. They owe us a plan, and they don’t have one.”

A year ago, Sunrise had an organized presence in only about a dozen cities. By December, that grew to around 80, and now has reached more than 250. Each city is organized from a “hub,” usually led by regular, part-time volunteers; each hub is autonomous, choosing where and what to protest and whom to endorse in local elections, and volunteers write op-eds and letters to the editor for their local newspapers on behalf of the broader movement. “We don’t have a super hierarchical structure where a CEO or CFO has to sign off on every plan,” Blazevic said to a group of the activists at this past week’s boot camp.

Last year, Sunrise operated on a budget of about $850,000, its leaders say, while this year they have a budget goal of about $4.5 million. They received several large foundation grants, but they also said “a huge portion of funding comes from individual grassroots donations.”

***

The boot camp itself sometimes seemedlike a cross between a summer camp for hippies and a high school pep rally. There were a lot of songs sung in circles, the facilitators shared many favorable videos and articles about Sunrise published over the past year, and people snapped incessantly to show support whenever anyone said anything remotely vulnerable or profound. Other times, it could feel like first-year orientation at a liberal college. Participants were asked to share their preferred gender pronouns along with their names during introductions. A Sunrise leader opened the very first session by thanking the spirits of the Native Americans whose land they were on.

But when they got down to work, the boot camp felt more like a corporate retreat designed to foster team-building and to inculcate new recruits on the values of the organization. The activists were trained on the history of Sunrise and its theory of change. On how to be “compelling storytellers.” On how to canvass, how to plan protests and how to strategically question presidential candidates on the trail. Others were trained to be trainers, so that Sunrise can expand exponentially.

Benjamin Finegan, a 22-year-old activist who took the last year off from Cornell to move into Sunrise’s Philadelphia movement house, says while the group is young and likes to emphasize its youth, it isn’t trying to reinvent progressive activism—just the politics of climate change. “We take a lot of guidance from slightly older to much older people in other movements,” he said. Sunrise uses a “public narrative model” developed by famed community organizer-turned-Harvard professor Marshall Ganz. Movement houses were used by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s. Another Sunrise activist Nikola Yager says the group has a roster of “coaches” from various other movements like Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Streetwho volunteer as mentors for Sunrise’s organizers.

“This is unlike any other fellowship program,” Tacherra-Morrison said to the Sunrise activists at the opening of the boot camp.

The 60 activists, who are embarking on three- to six-month fellowships with the potential to stay for longer, make up the bulk of the full-time workforce of the Sunrise Movement. There are about 25 actual staff, like Tacherra-Morrison, but the distinction says less about the kinds of roles they play in the organization and more about their compensation. Staff are salaried, while fellows receive stipends.

More than 200 people applied to the program. Many of the fellows are recent college graduates or are taking a gap year to work with Sunrise. Others left jobs as congressional staffers or at other environmental organizations, like the Sierra Club. LaShelle joined last summer after her freshman year at Wellesley and has taken time off from school to continue working with Sunrise ever since. She lives in a movement house in Philadelphia with Aru Shiney-Ajay, another 21-year-old who’s taken time off college (in her case, Swarthmore), and several other Sunrise activists.

Half of the boot camp’s sessions were held in a makeshift classroom, and half were, naturally, outdoors. There were PowerPoint presentations, but they were distinctly millennial, with gifs and memes that underscored whatever point is being made. To illustrate futility, one slide featured a child trying and failing to eat a cookie while wearing armband floaties.

A key messaging guideline was “make it hopeful.” As another PowerPoint slide stated, “a winning story needs both a national crisis of historic proportions and a vision that tells us how to beat it.”

The Green New Deal is Sunrise’s policy vision, now taken up by its allies in Congress. It ties together the group’s twin goals of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and a federal jobs program, one that would employ millions to expand renewable energy generation and improve infrastructure.

“The right-wing media is doing a lot to tell the story of the Green New Deal from a certain perspective that is mostly around sacrifice: That Americans will have to sacrifice their cars, airplanes and hamburgers,” Fernandez, the Sunrise co-founder, said. “Fox News watchers are hearing a lot more about the Green New Deal than the average voter, and they’re not hearing about it in relation to climate change.”

At one point, the activists were asked to turn to the person sitting next to them and role-play as if they were a Fox News host interrogating a Sunrise activist. One man turned to the woman next to him and asked her whether she really wants to “drag this country into socialism?” She laughed and said, not entirely seriously, “Yes, that actually sounds great!”

Later that day, Shiney-Ajay opened a discussion of the Green New Deal by passing out a printed one-page summary of the resolution put forward a few months ago in Congress by Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts. Shiney-Ajay asked the room if there were any questions.

Where does the Green New Deal stand on the use of nuclear energy? one fellow asked.

“We don’t want there to be any new nuclear energy plants,” Shiney-Ajay began tentatively, before revising her answer to say, “Actually, I’m not sure if nuclear is considered carbon neutral.” She then asked the room whether they knew the answer.

How about carbon capture? another fellow asked.

“The resolution was created on a very short timeline,” Shiney-Ajay said.

These are the sorts of specifics—not legislative arcana but principles for how best to confront climate change—the movement has struggled to come to a consensus on.

“Sunrise’s role is not to be super caught up in the details,” Shiney-Ajay told the room. “We’re 18-, 19-, 20-, 21-year-olds who don’t really know policy.” It’s their job, she said, to lay out a vision while others write proposals that meet that vision.

When I asked Fernandez about this, she responded: “Everyday Americans, they want to know the impact of the policy. Most people don’t want to debate the actual policy or the years or the timelines or things like that. They want to know what the impact is, and that’s how they’ll make their decisions.”

***

Sunrise wants to play a major rolein the 2020 presidential election. It wants a Democrat who can not only beat Donald Trump, but also has signed on to the group’s vision of remaking the economy on a New Deal-era scale to fight climate change. To get there, it is pushing every candidate who isn’t already on board to become so.

As part of that effort, Sunrise is planning to host debate watch parties across the country, and it’s going to open movement houses in Iowa and New Hampshire. It plans for activists to accost candidates on the trail to ask them about their commitment to fighting climate change. “The way that we got Kamala Harris and Beto O’Rourke and Cory Booker and so many other candidates to commit to the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge and feel the heat around the Green New Deal is relentlessly confronting them at all of their campaign events across the country,” O’Hanlon said. By bird-dogging public figures in this way, Sunrise intends, as the boot camp worksheets instructed the activists in training, “to elicit a public response from a powerful person through strategic questions or actions.”

Earlier this year, the group announced grand plans for a summit and protest in Detroit, timed to coincide with the second round of primary debates at the end of July. Sunrise has sent three demands to each candidate: To commit to prioritizing the Green New Deal, to reject money from fossil fuel executives and lobbyists, and to call upon the Democratic National Committee to host a primary debate dedicated to climate change—something that, so far, the DNC is assiduously refusing to do.

According to Sunrise’s latest count, 16 of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates have endorsed the Green New Deal, 18 have signed the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge and 16 have called on the DNC to host a climate debate. Sunrise did not respond to a request fromPolitico Magazineto list which candidates have met which demands.

Detroit represents the perfect intersection of Sunrise’s twin theory of change, said Nicholas Jansen, Sunrise’s Michigan state director, who is 24. “Electorally and narratively,” he said, it has huge potential: the decline of industry and need for economic revitalization, Trump’s narrow margin of victory there in 2016, its racial diversity, its history of environmental disasters like the water crisis in nearby Flint.

The next iteration of the Sunrise fellowship is scheduled to begin six months from now, in January 2020 rather than June. The group hopes to recruit hundreds of new full-time organizers to work on primary campaigns across the country and then the presidential election in November.

“For our entire lives, we’ve seen politicians and the political establishment totally fail our generation,” O’Hanlon said. “I wish that the adults in the room were solving this crisis, but the reality is they aren’t. So now it’s on our generation to do it.”

#Foreign #Politics #Reshape #trying

0 notes

spynotebook · 5 years

Link

Age Of HeroesWith Age Of Heroes, Tom Breihan picks the most important superhero movie of every year, starting with the genre’s early big-budget moments and moving onto the multiplex-crushing monsters of today.

“The Marvel Universe has gone nuts; we’re going to have a fricking Captain America movie if we’re not careful.” This was Zack Snyder speaking to Entertainment Weekly in 2008. Every once in a while, that quote finds itself recirculated online, evidence of Snyder’s philistine ideas about superhero movies and what a misguided idea it was for DC to recruit him to attempt to replicate the Marvel Universe’s success. (Another Snyder line from that same breath: “And Iron Man—$300 million domestic box office on a second-tier superhero!”)

It’s unfair to Snyder to use that quote out of context. If you read the whole interview, Snyder is, if anything, excited about Marvel’s success, if only because it proves that “pop culture is just, like, so ready for Watchmen,” the movie that he was promoting in that interview. (Note: Pop culture was not.) Snyder was simply showing his own surprise about how quickly and completely superhero movies had taken over, something that would only snowball in the years after that. Also, that Captain America movie was already in development when Snyder said what he said, and Snyder probably already knew that. (The whole Snyder interview is, however, a deeply entertaining and insane historical document. Dismissing the idea that Batman Begins is a dark movie, Snyder notes that Batman “doesn’t, like, get raped in prison. That could happen in my movie. If you want to talk about dark, that’s how that would go.” Eight years later, Snyder would make a Batman movie that did not feature Batman getting raped in prison.)

Here’s the thing: Even if Snyder had been dismissing the idea of a Captain America movie, he would’ve been totally right. Before there was a Captain America movie, there was no evidence that a Captain America movie would ever work, on any level. The entire idea of Captain America—a square-jawed avatar of everything great about the US of A, a guy who intentionally makes himself look like a big flag—seemed almost hopelessly hokey and anachronistic in 2008, when Snyder said what he said. There was nothing dark or gritty or sexy or intense about Captain America. He was a symbol of a time that never existed—an advocate for the greatness of a country that, at least on a geopolitical scale, has long been a globally dominant hegemon rather than a scrappy and idealistic underdog. Even Captain America, the comic book hero, wasn’t so sure about Captain America, the symbol of American pride. In a ’70s comic book storyline, Steve Rogers, disgusted after learning of governmental evil, had briefly forsaken his own identity, instead becoming a costumed adventurer named Nomad. If Captain America himself wasn’t so sure about Captain America, how could Hollywood be?

The 1990 Captain America movie had been such an outright catastrophic failure that it just barely got released. In the years after that, internal debates about America’s role in the world had only heated up. A Captain America movie could’ve gone wrong in so many different ways. It could’ve gotten caught up in post-9/11 Toby Keith jingoism. It could’ve played out as a goofy parody, a broad satire of Dudley Do-Right postwar heroism. It could’ve been another crappy, interchangeable Fantastic Four-level superhero movie, just with more shots of billowing flags. Instead, Captain America: The First Avenger turned out to be the movie that, at least from where I’m sitting, ultimately made the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe experiment work. It took some unbelievably skillful needle-threading to make it happen, but the people at Marvel managed to turn Cap, the personification of corniness, into something like a beloved cinematic icon, the soul upon which all of the MCU rests.

There was groundwork. A new Captain America movie had been in the planning stages since 1997; lawsuits and financial issues had stalled it. When the project finally got going, Marvel had done a few interesting things with the character. Ed Brubaker had built a complex and masterful noirish espionage saga around Cap in his Winter Soldier storyline, while Mark Millar’s blockbuster Civil War event had delighted in its depiction of Steve Rogers as an inspiring and charismatic leader and as someone who would defy his own government if he thought it were straying from the country’s true ideals. (In both Millar’s book and in the Civil War movie that eventually came out of it, Cap is wrongheaded and shortsighted, but that’s an argument for another day.) Captain America: The First Avenger only alludes to those comic book visions of the character, which later movies would explore more thoroughly. But if you were actually reading comics at the time, it was clear that Captain America, in the right hands, could be a layered and fascinating character.

Ultimately, the movie works because Marvel hired the right people. Director Joe Johnston was a longtime journeyman with an inconsistent record and at least a few genuinely bad movies on his résumé. (Shout-out to 2010’s The Wolfman.) But he was also a veteran special-effects guy who’d worked on Star Wars and Raiders Of The Lost Ark, which means he was comfortable with the levels of visual trickery needed to make a story like that work. And with his own 1991 movie The Rocketeer, he’d nailed exactly the kind of old-timey adventure-serial energy that a Captain America movie would need. (He even had powered-up Nazi villains.) It’s hard to imagine anyone more qualified for the job.

It’s also hard to imagine a better Captain America than Chris Evans. Evans had already been around the superhero-movie block before taking the role. He’d done what he could as a devil-may-care playboy version of the Human Torch in two near-unbearable Fantastic Four movies. He’d been a superpowered test-subject mutant at war with shadowy governmental agencies in 2009’s misbegotten Push. He’d lampooned his own absurd handsomeness in the superhero-adjacent Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. He’d never really had much chance to be anything other than a life-size Ken doll. But he had a depth to him, and with Captain America, he finally got the chance to show it.

Evans had to be convinced to take the Captain America role, and he’s always hinted at a little discomfort with it. But he’s perfect. He’s warm and friendly and inspiring—all the things that Captain America is supposed to be. He spends so much of The First Avenger as a scrawny weakling—a special effect much more convincing than it probably should’ve been—that he has to find non-physical ways to project his own idealistic determination. And he does it. The sight of digitally shrunk Chris Evans refusing to back down after a beating from a movie-theater heckler—fists clenched, jaw bloodied, “I could do this all day”—remains one of the most indelible images that the MCU has given us. When he finally does balloon out to superhuman proportions, we’re already on his side. Throughout the movie, he struggles against his own propaganda utility, fervently and innocently trying to get out into the field and help his comrades.

Like Christopher Reeve’s Superman, Evans radiates genuine Boy Scout virtue, and he comes off as an anachronism even in the ’40s. The movie doesn’t joke about him or make him an object of fun. Instead, the movie is just as gee-whiz idealistic about Captain America as Captain America is about America. Even a hint of acid, sarcastic self-consciousness could’ve sunk the movie. In Evans, it has none.

Johnston and the producers built an impressive cast around Evans. As Agent Peggy Carter, Hayley Atwell brings a clipped Katharine Hepburn precision that’s enormously appealing. (The short-lived Agent Carter ABC spinoff, which kept that First Avenger tone intact, remains Marvel’s greatest TV project.) The grumpy authority figure is just Tommy Lee Jones playing Tommy Lee Jones. As Cap’s buddy Bucky, Sebastian Stan is a pleasant slab of beef, which is all he needs to be. Stanley Tucci has fun as the good-guy version of a mad-scientist character.

The only real weak point in the movie’s cast is Hugo Weaving, whose Red Skull has less fleshed-out humanity than Agent Smith, the computer program that Weaving played in the Matrix movies. Even Red Skull’s motivations are muddy. He tells Cap, his fellow super-serum test subject, that he’s “too afraid to admit that we have left humanity behind,” like a K-Mart-brand Magneto. Also: “I have seen the future, Captain! There are no flags!” I don’t know, that sounds pretty good, though it would presumably sound better if a muscle-faced fascist sorcerer wasn’t the one invoking it. (The Red Skull doesn’t even get a satisfying end. When he showed up in a quick surprise cameo in Avengers: Infinity War, I’d completely forgotten that he’d been sucked into a wormhole or whatever. It happens so quickly that you barely process it.)

The movie’s version of ’40s America is a blast. Many of the characters are just as gung-ho as Cap himself. When a HYDRA agent tries to slow Cap down by throwing a little kid into the Hudson, the kid squawks, “Go get ’im! I can swim!” Natalie Dormer, a year away from becoming Margaery Tyrell on Game Of Thrones, gives Cap a big situation-complicating smooch because she likes that he saved a bunch of guys (and also, presumably, because he looks like Chris Evans). In a quick montage after Cap’s apparent death, we see all of America uniting behind him as a martyr and a legend. It’s a comforting vision of a better, simpler version of America.

It’s probably too comforting. The movie only barely alludes to racial inequality in America. When Cap puts together his crack team of commandos, they’re a rainbow coalition, and nobody acts like that’s weird. I wasn’t around in the ’40s, but given what I know, that seems unlikely. I think the movie might’ve been more effective if Cap had seen and wrestled with America’s failures. The same is true of the ravages of warfare. None of the soldiers ever seem freaked out or traumatized. Instead, they just charge into battle, oblivious to their friends disintegrating all around them. (If the Red Skull’s magical weapons didn’t allow for bloodless, PG-13 death, some of those skirmishes would’ve looked like the beginning of Saving Private Ryan.)

In the movie’s second half, when it turns toward action, The First Avenger becomes a pretty generic (though well-done) superhero punch-up. A lot of the storytelling is clumsy and inelegant. At one point, Cap is suddenly in a motorcycle chase with Nazis, with no real setup and little indication of why he’s there. Most of the fight scenes are too CGI-heavy to be truly great, and a few of the effects scenes, like Bucky’s fall from the train, just look like ass. The big finale, when Cap wakes up in a decades-later New York City, is clearly just setup for the next movie, which means The First Avenger can never really stand as its own cohesive story. It’s not a perfect movie. There are real flaws.

But it’s also an elegant piece of myth-building, and small connections to the rest of Marvel enrich the whole world we’re seeing take shape. We meet Tony Stark’s father, a tycoon adventurer who connects the dots between Howard Hughes (who Johnston had depicted in The Rocketeer) and Stark himself. HYDRA science worm Arnim Zola first shows up as a face on a screen, a role he’ll grow into. Before getting his iconic shield, which honestly looks pretty great, Cap fashions one for himself out of a trash-can lid and a ripped-off car door. Marvel wouldn’t bring all its characters together for another year, but little touches like this make it a fuller experience.

Captain America: The First Avenger was a hit, but it wasn’t a huge one. It wasn’t one of the top 10 grossers of 2011; the same year’s decidedly shittier MCU entry, Thor, made more money. And yet it’s a crucial movie for the MCU, since it showed just how much fun this whole Marvel superhero business could be. After the initial miracle of 2008’s Iron Man, Marvel had made three straight movies that were not special at all. There are things worth appreciating in The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, and Thor, but none of them really demonstrates why this whole world matters to people. Captain America: The First Avenger made that case. And if it had failed in any of the myriad ways that it could’ve failed, the present-day movie landscape would presumably look very, very different.

Other notable 2011 superhero movies: Kenneth Branagh’s aforementioned Thor got one thing exactly right: Chris Hemsworth, who looks like a Michelangelo sculpture of a lion-man and who brings a crazy level of life to what was then an underwritten role. But the movie itself is a bore, full of turgid fantasy gobbledygook and thin CGI and sub-Crocodile Dundee fish-out-of-water jokes. The central love story is so across-the-board half-assed that it practically insults both Hemsworth and the paychecking-hard Natalie Portman, and even Tom Hiddleston’s slithery Loki is really only a rough draft for what would come.

The First Avenger wasn’t the only Marvel adaptation to go period-piece. Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class tried to make a swingin’ ’60s espionage thriller out of a prequel, which works pretty well. The cast—James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence—is almost hilariously overqualified, and while the period details never reach the full Mad Men-style immersion they were clearly shooting for, they’re fun enough. The CGI remains terrible, which for whatever reason is true of almost every X-Men movie. Whenever (speaking of Mad Men) January Jones’ Emma Frost turns into her diamond form, she looks like a Virtua Fighter character. This was a series bounce-back after the putrid X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but it was also a clear sign that the non-MCU Marvel movies would never be the main event.

2011’s notorious boondoggle was, of course, Green Lantern, a movie that managed to be a self-aware punchline in two different 2018 superhero movies, Deadpool 2 and Teen Titans Go! To The Movies. (As I’m typing this, I haven’t seen Aquaman or Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse yet, so it’s entirely possible that even more 2018 superhero movies will make fun of Green Lantern.) It is a 10 ten-car pileup of a movie. A post-Deadpool and pre-Deadpool Ryan Reynolds attempts to smirk his way through everything, Van Wilder-style, while the writers build a whole interstellar cosmology that somehow comes off both thin and over-developed. Various respected character actors submit themselves to the indignity of bad alien makeup. (In particular, Peter Sarsgaard, a very handsome man, falls victim to makeup-artist ambitions.) You can almost see Tim Robbins and pre-Black Panther’s mom Angela Bassett thinking, mid-scene, about how they’re going to spend the money that this bullshit is getting them. Also, Future Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi is in there in the nerdy tech-head comic-relief sidekick role? Altogether, Green Lantern makes for a great lesson of what can happen when you try to combine intelligence-insulting children’s entertainment with detail-heavy fan service without filling it all out with any kind of resonant storytelling. Also, Reynolds’ CGI super-suit might be the single ugliest costume in superhero-movie history.

And in other chartreuse-misfire news, Seth Rogen’s long-in-development The Green Hornet finally came out and made no impression. There’s certainly plenty of talent involved in the movie. For a while, slapstick visionary Stephen Chow was attached to both direct and to star as Kato, which would’ve been fascinating. Instead, the directing job ends up with Michel Gondry, the sometimes-great homespun music-video fantasist and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind auteur. Rogen and his Superbad partner Evan Goldberg get the writing credits. Christoph Waltz played a villain, which is something that Christoph Waltz knows how to do. Cameron Diaz is in there, too, as Rogen’s implausible love interest. You would think that these people could do something great together, but instead it’s just a rote nothing of a movie, one that never quite gets around to demonstrating why it deserves to exist.

Also, it’s not really a superhero movie, but I remember thinking that Steven Spielberg’s feature-length CGI cartoon The Adventures Of Tintin was a lot more fun than its reputation would suggest. I have not revisited it.

Next time: In January, this column will tackle The Avengers, the long-planned corporate-crossover blockbuster, which kicked the MCU into high gear and proved just how entertaining this kind of movie, when executed just right, can be.

#IFTTT #Feedly

0 notes

mrmichaelchadler · 6 years

Text

Goodbye to the Sigh Guy: A Tribute to Tab Hunter, 1931-2018

When Tab Hunter was at the apex of his stardom in the Fifties, virtually every aspect of his career and life was under the control of a Hollywood studio system that determined everything from the roles that he would play to his very name. As a result of this, he had a few years of fame before he was inevitably pushed to the side for a new wave of hot young things ready to take his place. And yet, it was the very things about him that the system sought to repress—such as a sly, self-effacing sense of humor and his homosexuality—that helped breathe new life into his career a couple of decades down the line. Now that he has left us, three days before his 87th birthday, Hunter will be remembered not just as a pretty face with an admittedly memorable name. He'll also be celebrated as a trailblazer whose accounts of his experiences as a gay matinee idol in Hollywood at a time when such things were unheard of helped pave the way for acceptance.

He was born Arthur Andrew Kelm in New York City on July 11, 1931 and, following his parents divorce a few years later, moved to California with his mother and older brother. After taking his mother’s surname of Gellen, he competed as a figure skater and even joined the Coast Guard at the age of 15, though he was soon discharged once his real age was discovered. The turning point in his life came when he made the acquaintance of actor Dick Clayton, who suggested that he take up acting as well and who later introduced him to agent Henry Wilson. Wilson, who specialized in guiding the careers of actors whose talents were, more often than not, secondary to their looks—his clients included the likes of Robert Wagner, Guy Madison and, most famously, Rock Hudson—signed him on despite his lack of acting experience and even gave him his soon-to-be-famous stage name. He made his screen debut with a tiny role in the film noir “The Lawless” (1950) and had his first lead role two years later with “Island of Desire” (1952), a soapy romance in which he played a Marine stranded on an abandoned South Pacific island with an older nurse (Linda Darnell). The film wasn’t much but it was a minor hit back in the day for reasons attributed almost entirely to the fact that he spent much of the running time bare-chested. Over the next couple of years, he appeared in such programmers as “Gun Belt” (1953), “The Steel Lady” (1953) and “Return to Treasure Island” (1954) and also made his first stage appearance in a production of “Our Town.”

Hunter’s first truly notable film performance came in 1954 when he was hired to play the key supporting role of Robert Mitchum’s younger brother in William Wellman’s frontier-based psychodrama (and future cult favorite) "Track of the Cat" (pictured above). Yes, I am aware of the potential absurdity of casting Mitchum and Hunter as brothers, but it actually works surprisingly well. Hunter more than holds his own in it acting against the likes of such veterans as Mitchum and Theresa Wright. At this point, Hunter was sufficiently hot enough to earn him a contract with Warner Brothers that first saw him playing a small part in the John Wayne war drama “The Sea Chase” (1955) and then wooing another older woman, Dorothy Malone this time, in “Battle Cry” (1955). Both films were among the top-grossers of the year and the studio decided to promote him to leading man status by co-starring him with Natalie Wood in a pair of films, “The Burning Hills” and “The Girl He Left Behind.” He even transferred his screen stardom to the music world with the hit song “Young Love,” which was #1 for nine weeks in 1957, and the #11 charting follow-up “Ninety-Nine Ways.” His singing success was so great that Warner Brothers studio head Jack L. Warner forbade Dot Records, who Hunter had been recording for, from releasing an album he had cut because of his contract and established Warner Brothers Records specifically as an outlet for his music.

During all of this, Hunter’s personal life was beginning to become a source of some controversy within the industry. In 1955, the scandal sheet Confidential ran an article about a 1950 disorderly conduct arrest that also included numerous innuendos regarding the actor’s sexuality. (Ironically, the article ran because Wilson arranged with the magazine to print that in exchange for keeping a story about the more-popular Rock Hudson buried.) This revelation did not have any discernible effect on Hunter’s rise but it did open up gossip about whether he was gay or not—if he was, that would have effectively killed his career right in its tracks. To combat this, the studio publicity department went into overdrive to convince the public that he was as manly as can be, hyping up non-existent relationships with such women as Wood, Debbie Reynolds, future co-star Etchika Choureau and Joan Perry, the widow of Harry Cohn. There were even rumors of impending marriage with the latter two but while all of this was supposedly happening, he was in the middle of relationships with the likes of Anthony Perkins and figure skater Ronnie Robertson.

1958 would prove to be the apex of his career. He reunited with William Wellman to star in “Lafayette Escadrille,” in which he played an American pilot who goes to France to fly for the country during World War I—when preview audiences objected to his character’s death, the ending was reshot so that he lived. He followed that up with a role as Van Heflin’s hot-headed son in the Western “Gunman’s Walk,” a part that he would cite as his personal favorite. His next film would prove to be one of his most notable, the big-screen version of the Broadway musical hit “Damn Yankees” (pictured above) that saw him playing Joe Hardy, the magical incarnation of a middle-aged man who has sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for his beloved Washington Senators, with his help, to beat the New York Yankees for the pennant. Hunter was the only major member of the cast who was not part of the original stage incarnation and indeed, he would later complain that director George Abbott (who made the film along with Stanley Donen) was more interested in replicating what he did on stage than in making it a movie. Perhaps as a result of this, Hunter gets a little bit of the short shrift (especially with the removal of a couple of his songs) in the end product. Still, Hunter more than holds his own in a film that is a reasonably solid film version of a stage classic.

After a couple more films, including the war movie “They Came to Cordura” (1959) and the romantic drama “That Kind of Woman,” in which he co-starred opposite Sophia Loren for up-and-coming director Sidney Lumet, Hunter elected to end his contract with Warner Brothers in order to get better offers on his own. This proved to be a mistake as he now had no studio with an interest in promoting him and newer stars like Troy Donahue were being groomed for the same heartthrob roles over which he once held sway. After failing to win the lead in the film version of “West Side Story,” he moved to television with “The Tab Hunter Show” (1960), a sitcom featuring him as a hip and swinging bachelor that had middling ratings and was cancelled after a single season. For the next couple of decades, he found himself making guest appearances on such shows as “Combat!,” “The Virginian,” “Cannon,” “McMillan & Wife,” “Forever Fernwood” and “The Love Boat.” He also found himself appearing in such second-tier films as “Operation Bikini” (1963), “Ride the Wild Surf” (1964), “Birds Do It” (1966), “Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood” (1976) and the immortal “Katie: Portrait of a Centerfold” (1979). He tried changing things up a couple of times but these efforts led to nothing—he appeared on Broadway in the Tennessee Williams play “The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore” in 1964 but it lasted only five performances and his attempt at shattering his image by playing a sexually dysfunctional psycho killer in “Sweet Kill” (1972) was a dud that is notable today only for marking the directorial debut of Curtis Hanson. He had a funny bit in the dark comedy “The Loved One” (1965) and was good in the Western “The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean” (1972) but at this point, it seemed as if his career was destined to be stuck in a rut of crummy TV movies, forgettable features and the dinner theater circuit.

And then, true redemption and reinvention finally came Hunter’s way in the unexpected form of John Waters, best known then for the cheerfully demented underground cult films as “Pink Flamingos” (1972) and “Female Trouble” (1974) that he made in collaboration with the force of nature known as Divine. His next project, “Polyester,” was going to be an overt spoof of the Fifties-era soap operas made by the likes of Douglas Sirk. For the role of Tod Tomorrow, the handsome hunk who sweeps unloved and ignored housewife Francine Fishpaw (Divine) off her feet, Waters hit upon the idea of casting an actual star from that era in the part. Considering the notorious nature of Waters’s previous efforts—this was his first project aimed at a broader audience—signing on for such a thing would have been regarded as a huge risk, especially since this would be the first time that Waters had ever worked with a “real” actor. Nevertheless, Hunter took on the part and was pretty brilliant in it, demonstrating a flair for comedy and self-parody that he rarely was allowed to show in his movie star heyday. Not only that, he and Divine actually managed to generate a kind of chemistry between that helped to further sell the story. The idea of hiring Hunter may have seemed like a gimmick at first but it proved to be a genuinely winning and effective one and the end result is arguably Waters’s best film to date.

Although not a smash hit, “Polyester” got a lot of attention for Hunter and this was parlayed into a string of roles, many of which also goofed on his former image. In “Grease 2” (1982), he plays substitute teacher Mr. Stuart and leads the now-infamous “Reproduction” musical number—the film is bottomlessly horrible (though still preferable to the even-worse original) but that sequence is one of the few moments when it actually comes to life. That same year, Hunter then turned up in the silly mad slasher spoof “Pandemonium” and then reunited with Divine for “Lust in the Dust” (1985), a Western comedy that he produced and which was directed by Paul Bartel (and not Waters, as many have assumed). The movie is pretty silly and nowhere nearly as good as “Polyester” but he gets to goof of the Man with No Name image of Clint Eastwood (his former “Lafayette Escadrille” co-star) and he and Divine are still fun to watch, especially with the addition of Lainie Kazan to the mix. He and Divine would turn up again in the thriller “Out of the Dark” (1988) and he would also appear in the horror film’s “Cameron’s Closet” (1988) and “Grotesque.” His last feature film was “Dark Horse” (1992), a gentle family drama about a girl and her horse that he also wrote the story for.

Then came the unexpected third act of his career. In 2005, he, along with co-author Eddie Muller, wrote his autobiography, Tab Hunter Confidential, in which he acknowledged that he was gay and described the lengths to which he and the studio went in order to keep his true sexuality completely under wraps. At the time, such revelations were still considered to be shocking, especially coming from someone who was still alive, and the book became an instant best-seller. The book also became the basis for the acclaimed 2015 documentary of the same name that was produced by Hunter’s longtime partner, Allan Glaser, and which featured interviews with the likes of Waters, Eastwood and Reynolds, among others. The end result, like the book, was a fascinating portrait not just of Hunter but of the studio system that spawned him and then spat him out when it was done with him. And yet, Hunter seemed to bear no particular grudge against the industry and would turn up as a talking head in a number of documentaries on the history of Hollywood in his later years.

Was Hunter a great actor in the conventional sense of the word? Probably not, though to be fair, he was rarely given a chance to do much more than look handsome. However, he did have a flair for comedy that he was unfortunately not really given a chance to demonstrate until long after his heyday. His name will always instantly invoke a style of filmmaking that has long since passed, and it will also be remembered among members of the LGBTQ community for his struggles within the industry. It may be a cliche to say but in this case, it is true—the passing of Hunter really is the end of an era.

from All Content https://ift.tt/2NCRvZR

0 notes

njawaidofficial · 6 years

Text

Why Katy Perry Can’t Save “American Idol”

https://styleveryday.com/2018/03/13/why-katy-perry-cant-save-american-idol/

Why Katy Perry Can’t Save “American Idol”

American Idol judges’ giant head display takes over the Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard, March 12, 2018, in Hollywood.

Brandon Williams / Getty Images

Since the announcement early last year that American Idol was coming back on ABC, after wrapping up its supposedly final season on Fox in 2016, most of the excitement about its return centered on the new panel of judges. The trio that ABC ultimately selected is a motley assortment, plucked from across the musical celebrity spectrum: contemporary pop queen Katy Perry, throwback R&B legend Lionel Richie, and the “King of Bro-Country,” Luke Bryan. The controversy over Perry’s $25 million salary probably made the most news, and since the show’s debut, Perry’s antics have garnered most of the attention. But the overall focus on these celebrity judges speaks to a larger problem for Idol that helps explain why the onetime ratings giant lost steam and seems unlikely to regain its former glory.

It’s hard to remember now how Idol grew into a groundbreaking ratings juggernaut, outperforming the Oscars, peaking at 36 million viewers in 2006, and inaugurating a new wave of old-fashioned talent competitions, from America’s Got Talent to The X Factor. It did so by making stars, not hiring them. The original judges — producer Simon Cowell, ’80s pop star Paula Abdul, former A&R executive and bassist Randy Jackson — became iconic as judges, not for bringing their own pop star brands onto the show. But once Abdul, and later Cowell, left the franchise, it was reduced to relying on outside celebrities to attempt to bring audiences in — losing ratings, its own star-making power, and some of its identity as a forum for pop democracy in action. The show’s producers started trying to generate ratings by moving the focus from the contestants to the judges, in a way that distracted from the show’s musical focus and inspirational aura, as the legendary 2013 blowout between Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj proved.

The show’s uplifting brand became tarnished through these “reality” tactics, which began to seem increasingly desperate as the show’s ratings fell — ending its run on Fox with 9.3 million viewers, a quarter of the audience it drew at its peak — and the later winners failed to graduate to successful (or even visible) careers in the music industry. In contrast, NBC’s The Voice, the kind of competitor that Idol’s success opened the door for, found a more organic way to center its celebrity judges. They were reframed as down-to-earth “coaches” who could relate to the singers onstage, in a role that allowed them to keep their own brands intact (and be replaced, as celebrity schedules inevitably demand, without upsetting the fundamental dynamic of the show).

The fact that Kelly Clarkson, arguably the face of Idol, chose to join The Voice this season as a coach — as well as Idol’s ratings loss to The Voice in its premiere — underlines that the fresher competitor now better represents the earnest authenticity that Idol is struggling to recapture. Everything about the reincarnated Idol, besides the judging panel, is nearly unchanged from its first life — down to the set and Ryan Seacrest’s blinding white smile. And relying on the star power of Katy Perry or her fellow judges to bring in viewers is at best a temporary patch over the changing realities of television and music that made Idol’s promise of blockbuster pop stardom impossible to keep.

Winner Kelly Clarkson embraces fellow contestants during the American Idol Season 1 finale on Sept. 4, 2002.

Kevin Winter / Getty Images

Even if you didn’t watch the first season of American Idol in 2002, you might have seen Kelly Clarkson’s coronation from the first finale. It is, by design, one of the most compelling moments of reality television history. YouTube is full of bootleg videos of the moment; one has over 5 million views. Clarkson had just been selected — through 15.5 million phone calls, pre-texting — as the first American Idol. Like a pop Miss America in prom-night curls, she immediately went on to sing the perfectly crafted pop power ballad “A Moment Like This” — cowritten by one of the Swedish pop wizards who helped launch Britney Spears to stardom — which was supposed to become everybody’s prom and wedding anthem. As the song builds, Clarkson makes it her own with her big, belting voice, which begins to crack as she sings “I can’t believe it’s happening to me.” She apologizes for her tears, the camera often turns to her own crying mother, and it all culminates with the other contestants coming in for a group hug and helping her finish the song as her voice breaks.

Clarkson cry-singing “A Moment Like This.”

Fox

That one moment represented what made early American Idol great: a brilliant mixture of pop perfection, unembarrassed sentimentality, and reality television surprise. With its promise of a major label recording contract at the end, it was less amateurish than Star Search, yet it still flourished on the underdog appeal of its contestants. After Clarkson’s win, the entertainment press raised questions about how “amateur” she really was, but the focus and excitement was entirely on her, and such questioning was still entirely in line with what the brand was selling.

Clarkson wasn’t the only previously unknown quantity whose stardom was minted during that first season. Throughout the process of auditions, “Hollywood week,” public voting, eliminations, and results shows, the public also came to know and love (or love to hate) the judges. Cowell, with his be-sweatered pecs and performance of snooty Englishness, seemed almost like a parody of American ideas about critics as effete Europeans. Paula Abdul had disappeared from the music scene, clearly done with her pop moment, and had never really had a defined public personality beyond her brilliant dancing and music videos, so she was a revelation. Witnessing her loopy attempts to frame feedback in positive terms was almost like watching Hallmark spoken word poetry. Randy Jackson was the seemingly objective, level-headed judge, giving practical feedback on singing — often describing performances as “pitchy” — and coining an iconic catchphrase/meme (“gonna be a no from me, dawg”).

The original trio established the perfect template of commentating chemistry: the good cop, the bad cop, and the neutral tiebreaker.

After the auditions phase of each Idol season, the judges acted more like sports commentators than active participants in shaping the contestants’ personas — they were central to the show, but not the center of it. And in retrospect, that original trio established the perfect template of commentating chemistry: the good cop, the bad cop, and the neutral tiebreaker. There was a delightful quality to all this perfect, cheery fakeness, which could be enjoyed both sincerely and as camp. The show, initially itself an underdog, turned unknowns into stars at every level and remained on brand, and growing, for a decade.

The show’s growth was aligned with its mission of launching pop stars, and the drama it generated was primarily about the contestants — both the clashes of different musical styles and their fates on the charts after the show. The second season had the show’s highest-rated finale ever, followed by eager speculation over whether runner-up Clay Aiken would end up outselling winner Ruben Studdard. Season 3’s Jennifer Hudson went on to win an Academy Award and star on Broadway, and Carrie Underwood emerged as the show’s country star in Season 4, which pitted her folksy appeal against Bo Bice’s rocker style.

Idol ratings peaked in Season 5, in 2006, as sexy-sad rock singer Chris Daughtry was upset by Taylor Hicks’s drunk-uncle-at-karaoke act (much to Cowell’s annoyance), though Daughtry ended up massively outselling him. From there, the show’s winners began to blur into a forgettable hegemony of white guys with guitars, punctuated by the spectacle of Season 8 runner-up Adam Lambert as the show’s first not-yet-openly gay pop star in 2009 — arguably the last season the show made news for the right reasons.

Judges Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul, and Randy Jackson on the set of American Idol, broadcast live July 16, 2002.

Kevin Winter / Getty Images

Paula Abdul uttered one of the great truths of our time when she declared, on her masterpiece Bravo reality show Hey Paula, that people don’t treat her like the gift that she is. On Idol, she was the gift that kept on giving: a tireless engine of train wreck television and sweet platitudes. But when her salary demands weren’t met for the ninth season — she reportedly wanted a raise from $4 million to $12 million — she tweeted her goodbye. “I’ll miss nurturing all the new talent, but most of all being a part of a show that I helped from day one become an international phenomenon.”

It’s impossible to pinpoint one cause for Idol’s struggles in its later years, as it failed to produce pop stars and ratings declined, but songwriter Kara DioGuardi’s addition as a fourth judge during Abdul’s final season (she was most memorable for her singing battle with “Bikini Girl”) certainly upset the existing balance and chemistry of the judging panel. The show’s falling ratings fell further once Abdul left, and even more tellingly, that was the first season that none of the top four finalists achieved noteworthy singles or sales success.

Ellen DeGeneres joined the panel for Season 9, in what she later called the biggest mistake of her career. Like Abdul, she didn’t want to be mean, but as a professional comedian she gave harsh critiques wrapped in humor (“the line between sexy and scary is a thin line”) without any of Abdul’s loopy charm. (Though she did jump on Cowell’s lap to dispel persistent rumors of a feud.) Ellen’s stint on the show made clear that Abdul was impossible to duplicate, and probably worth every penny. But more importantly, it highlighted the difficulties of bringing established celebrities onto the show in an organic way.

Some critics have argued that Cowell’s departure after Season 9, which both diluted the Idol brand and contributed to TV’s singing-competition overload by bringing The X Factor to the US, put the nail in the coffin of the show’s ratings. But X Factor and post-Cowell Idol both had the exact same problem: They were trying to bring in ratings and recapture the magic of watching no-name artists become big stars, while leaning on static formats and the attraction of famous judges who would inevitably distract viewers from actually paying attention to the contestants.

Big pop stars like Jennifer Lopez have no incentive to pollute their existing brands by becoming a mean Simon or a compellingly zany Paula.

Idol tried to solve the problem by hiring Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler for the 2011 season, but neither were distinctive or compelling judging personalities, and even their big names weren’t enough to prevent a major 13% ratings drop. They played their already existing pop personas and seemed more interested in boosting their own careers than adding to the show. As CNN noted, it was unclear if Tyler was promoting Idol or himself. Lopez debuted new videos on the show, performed her own songs, and used the job to launch a further TV career. But big pop stars like Lopez have no incentive to pollute their existing brands by becoming a mean Simon or a compellingly zany Paula. Idol offered these stars in need of a career boost a huge platform, but the celebrity judges got more than they gave, and Idol only slid further into irrelevancy.

While Idol and The X Factor (which recruited Britney Spears, with disappointing results) were struggling with their judging problem, The Voice appeared in 2011, and seemed to find the best role for itself in the new pop landscape by giving the judges, and their interactions with contestants, as much screentime as possible. Featuring Cee Lo Green, Christina Aguilera, Adam Levine, and Blake Shelton in its first season, The Voice purposely framed the judges as coaches and co-conspirators, and made their relationships with the contestants the point of the show: They work together on teams. Because they didn’t have the specter of any original, archetypal judges to compete with, The Voice’s pop star coaches basically played themselves, and the format still worked.

The show also benefited from viewers coming to accept that TV competitions are — for numerous reasons having to do with the way the music industry has shifted — no longer a viable way to instantly mint stars. The Voice’s very name doesn’t promise pop stardom, but rather the chance to craft a style based on “pure” vocal talent, as the famous chair-swiveling shtick of the show’s blind auditions suggests. The turn to live television for the public eliminations on Voice does send some of their songs rushing to the top of iTunes, and this more modest success somehow seems like an acknowledgment of the way that pop stardom — in the age of Spotify playlists and SoundCloud indie rap — can no longer be a big destination predetermined from the top down, but an ongoing process of tiny wins. The complaint against The Voice has always been that it has never launched a star, but arguably, after Adam Lambert, neither did American Idol.

The Voice Season 8 coaches, from left: Adam Levine, Pharrell Williams, Christina Aguilera, and Blake Shelton.

Nbc / Getty Images

0 notes

digital-arts-etc · 7 years

Photo

15 Things You Might Not Know About A Sunday on La Grande Jatte - 1884

BY Kristy Puchko - May 1, 2015

At first glance, Georges-Pierre Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte —1884 seems a warm portrait of a sunny day in a lovely park. But a closer look at the Neo-Impressionist's most famous work reveals much more.

1. A Sunday on La Grande Jatte —1884 is made up of millions of dots.

Forging the new style with this first-of-its-kind painting, Seurat became the father of Pointillism and of Neo-Impressionism. However, he preferred to call his technique "chromo-luminarism," a term he felt better stressed its focus on color and light.

2. It took Seurat more than two years to complete.

This complicated masterpiece of Pointillism began in 1884 with a series of almost 60 sketches Seurat made while people watching at the Paris park. Next he started painting, using small horizontal brush strokes. After this initial work, he began the labor-intensive realization of his vision with tiny dots of paint—a process that would not be completed until the spring of 1886.

3. Science was Seurat’s major muse for color choices.

"Some say they see poetry in my paintings," Seurat said. "I see only science." The artist was fascinated by the color theories of scientists Michel Eugène Chevreul and Ogden Rood, and he explored Divisionism in A Sunday on La Grande Jatte —1884. This painting method utilizes colors in patches that essentially trick the human eye into blending them, creating luminance and shape.

4. Ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Phoenician art inspired the Parisian scene.

Seurat sought to capture the people of his Paris just as these eras immortalized their citizens. Or as he once put it to French poet Gustave Kahn, "The Panathenaeans of Phidias formed a procession. I want to make modern people, in their essential traits, move about as they do on those friezes, and place them on canvases organized by harmonies of color."

5. Critics initially hated it.

Seurat's groundbreaking techniques were a major turnoff for some critics at the Impressionist exhibit where A Sunday on La Grande Jatte —1884 debuted in 1886. Other observers sneered at the rigid profiles of Seurat’s subjects. Meant to recall Egyptian hieroglyphics, these poses were negatively compared to tin soldiers.

6. Sunday was revised in 1889.

Seurat re-stretched its canvas to allow for room to paint a border made up of red, orange and blue dots.

7. Seurat was just 26 when he completed his best-known work.

Thanks to his involvement in the artist collective the Société des Artistes Indépendants, the daring young painter's reputation was growing before A Sunday on La Grande Jatte —1884 debuted. But while his output was seminal, it was also cut short in 1891 when Seurat died of an undetermined disease at age 31.

8. Sunday was largely unseen for 30 years following Seurat's death.

The opportunity to view the historic painting returned in 1924 when art lover Frederic Clay Bartlett purchased A Sunday on La Grande Jatte —1884 and loaned it indefinitely to the Art Institute of Chicago.

9. An American philosopher helped reshape public opinion on the painting.

In the 1950s, Ernest Bloch's three-volume The Principle of Hope explored the socio-political interpretations of A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, spurring a renewed interest and appreciation for the piece.

"This picture is one single mosaic of boredom, a masterful rendering of the disappointed longing and the incongruities of a dolce far niente [idleness]," Bloch wrote. "The painting depicts a middle-class Sunday morning on an island in the Seine near Paris…despite the recreation going on there, seems to belong more to Hades than to a Sunday…The result is endless boredom, the little man's hellish utopia of skirting the Sabbath and holding onto it too; his Sunday succeeds only as a bothersome must, not as a brief taste of the Promised Land."

10. The painting is now displayed as Seurat intended.

Once he'd added his painted border, Seurat re-framed A Sunday on La Grande Jatte —1884 in a specially-made wooden frame painted a crisp white. This display choice is still in effect at the Art Institute of Chicago.

11. But its colors have changed.

Seurat employed a then-new pigment in his painting, a zinc chromate yellow that he hoped would properly capture the highlights of the park's green grasses. But for years this pigment has been undergoing a chemical reaction that began turning it brown even in Seurat's lifetime.

12. It's bigger than you'd think.

Not just Seurat's most popular piece, but also his biggest, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte —1884 measures in at 81 3/4 inches by 121 1/4 inches, or about 7 feet by 10 feet. Its large size makes its every inch flush with tiny dots of color all the more remarkable.

13. This park scene may hold hidden sex workers.

The titular locale was a favorite of prostitutes on the prowl, so some historians suspect that fish are not what the fishing-pole-toting woman on the left was hoping to hook. The same speculation has arisen around the lady on the right, with a monkey on a leash and a man on her arm.

14. The painting was nearly incinerated while visiting New York.

On April 15, 1958, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte —1884 was on loan at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City when a fire broke out in the adjoining Whitney Museum. The fire damaged six canvases, injured 31 people, and killed one workman, but Seurat's beloved work was whisked away to safety through an elevator evacuation plan.

15. It's one of the most reproduced and parodied paintings in the world.

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte —1884 earns screen time in the Chicago-set comedy Ferris Bueller's Day Off,

the science fiction cult classic Barbarella, and on the crude cartoon series Family Guy. It's been parodied by Sesame Street, The Simpsons, the American version of The Office,

and even the cover of Playboy. In Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd invade the painting. And celebrated Broadway icons Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine made a musical about its creation called, Sunday in the Park With George.

He is a thorny soul, a man neither happy nor particularly kind, and not someone you’d be likely to befriend. But when the 19th-century French painter Georges Seurat, reincarnated in the solitary flesh by a laser-focused Jake Gyllenhaal, demands that you look at the world as he does, it’s impossible not to fall in love.

Or something deeper than love — closer to religious gratitude — is the sentiment you may experience in the finale that concludes the first act of the marvelous revival of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s “Sunday in the Park With George,” which opened on Thursday night at the newly restored Hudson Theater.

We have watched a restless day of rest in the park of the title, where an assortment of flâneurs and poseurs have become steadily more fractious and discordant.

Jake Gyllenhaal, far left, and Annaleigh Ashford, far right, in “Sunday in the Park With George,” at the Hudson Theater

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/theater/review-sunday-in-the-park-with-george-jake-gyllenhaal.html

http://mentalfloss.com/article/63510/15-things-you-might-not-know-about-sunday-la-grande-jatte-1884

0 notes

theworstbob · 7 years

Text

yellin’ at songs: 5.5.2007 & 5.6.2017

the songs that debuted on the billboard chart this week and this week ten years ago

5.5.2007

41) "Big Girls Don't Cry," Fergie

This is the second Fergie song I actually enjoyed once I was able to separate it from the whole thing that Fergie was, which means we're one away from this being a trend and the funding of a Song-From-Artist Extraction Chamber becoming necessary. If this song had been given to Pink, it might be a classic. If it had been given to noted YAS hero Jordan Pruitt, I could say it was a buried treasure, but because we gave it to Fergie, I have to defend the fact I sort of dug this song. I don't use the term "guilty pleasure" because why on earth should I feel guilty for finding pleasure, but it IS weird to sit here on a Sunday morning and enjoy a Fergie song and have to formulate a defense for it. I dunno, "I'm gonna miss you like a child misses their blanket" is a kind of touching lyric. If we'd given it to someone who could actually say words (all these years I thought she was saying "a child miss a step blanket"), we'd be more fond of it.

63) "A Different World," Bucky Covnington

THINGS THAT ARE GOOD, AS TOLD BY BUCKY COVINGTON'S 2007 SMASH HIT "A DIFFERENT WORLD:" ~Expecting mothers smoking and drinking ~Babies sleeping in cribs painted with lead-based paint ~Child abuse ~Being an adult person named Bucky ~Kids not making the football team, their carefree days ending at the realization that life is a long parade of disappointments (a parade which includes parades) ~Drinking from garden hoses, and I agree that it would be nice if clean water were readily available, but this seems less like something that millennials made happen with video games and more a problem with various local governments? Specifically Flint’s? Flint still doesn’t have clean water, and I understand there’s no way this ten-year-old song could possibly know this, but this line is making me angry today! ~Schools being closed on Sunday (which... they... still... are?) Bucky Covington sings this song about how "we," which I would imagine includes Bucky Covington, grew up without video games. Bucky Covington was born in 1977. Pong dropped in 1972. This entire song is garbage. Speaking of garbage: you remember when we didn’t have to sort recyclables from the trash? It was a simpler time. A BETTER time, daresay. We didn't die, so, it wasn't bad.

80) "Party Like a Rockstar," Shop Boyz

This song is the real America. Big, dumb, loud, and proud of all its excess. One example cited of partying like a rock star is golfing with Ozzy Osbourne and his family. This is the only recorded instance of anyone thinking golf was a party.

88) "Lucky Man," Montgomery Gentry

/looks at this country dude song /looks at the country dude song two songs ago /looks at the five country dude songs still to come /looks at "Lucky Man," the j-pop song by arashi The Arashi boys are back in town! Sho once again stakes his claim as 2007's greatest living MC, and the funky track imbues the song with a boundless energy only the Arashi boys bring to the table! Another A+! Have they ever done wrong?

90) "When You're Gone," Avril Lavigne

My favorite part of this song was the 15 seconds of "Freedom," by Beyonce ft./Kendrick Lamar, that played in the Apple ad before the actual song started. This is a song that's bad no matter who you give it to. It's just schlock, and then they went ahead and made everything so... Extra? This song is extra. Avril is belting the absolute best that she can and goodness she is trying her heart out, yet she's still somehow drowned out by the strings. There is nothing subtle about this song. I don't know what the notes process is like for records, but someone in the studio should've given this song a note that said "calm the hell down."

93) "Don't Make Me," Blake Shelton

Blake Shelton has been a country music institution for something like 15 years, he's probably its most visible artist in the mainstream world, and I cannot for the life of me tell you what the most iconic Blake Shelton song is. He has 23 #1 country hits. Is there any one you can point to and say, "That is the best Blake Shelton song?" Is the best Blake Shelton song something country music fans argue like we might over Mariah Carey's catalogue? Is it even worth arguing? I dunno. Blake Shelton is sort of the Drake of country music. He just does the same shit over and over again, but people really dig the same thing over and over again, so they keep listening, but there's no one moment we can point to and say, "Only Blake Shelton could have made that happen." I don't feel like it's expecting too much to expect iconic pop artists to make iconic songs. "Some Beach" kinda goes, I guess. That's not enough! Fuck's sake, even Luke Bryan has "All My Friends Say."

94) "A Feelin' Like That," Gary Allan

This dude says his girlfriend's more beautiful than the Great Barrier Reef, and I am so thrilled that there is something in one of these country dude songs I could enjoy. That's how it's DONE, man. Hyperbole is your friend when you're making a song about some non-specific feeling a woman gives you. Is this the song Flight of the Conchords is parodying when they sing "If You're Into It?" Absolutely, but goddamnit, if someone told me I gave them a more intense emotional rush than one of the great natural wonders of this earth, I'd fuck 'em.

95) "Wrapped," George Strait

yeah i guess i liked this. you give me the lyrics to this song and four other country songs with the word "wrapped" in it, i'm not sure i could pick it out, but, y'know, it killed a few minutes in a manner that wasn't unpleasant. i wouldn't say "yecch" if someone performed this at a karaoke. i might say "interesting choice," i might not believe this is the song their heart has felt the most, but i wouldn't say no.

97) "Johnny Cash," Jason Aldean

The thing about this song is the same thing I had with that "Marvin Gaye" trash from a couple years back: if you're going to name your song after an iconic artist, you have to give me reason to believe that there is more value to be gained from your tribute than there is from just listening to one of that artist's songs. In a sense, the song you offer me with that title has to be on par with the best entries in their catalogue. I don't know why I would listen to a song about a young couple listening to Johnny Cash when there are hundreds of actual Johnny Cash recordings out there that all punch this song in its stupid face. I don't think this is an unreasonable expectation. If you're naming your song after a legend, your song should be legendary. This is the fifth-best country dude song I've heard in the last hour, and all told, it's probably gonna end up #6. That makes it bullshit.

98) "Me and God," Josh Turner

I'm not really qualified to address Christian music. It's easy to call out when something is pandering, like that Florida Georgia Line mess 2017 dredged up a few weeks back, but a song like this, where a young man is earnestly singing about his relationship with God, that's so far away from my alley, I'm not 100% sure we're even in the same tri-county area. I recognize that this song isn't made for people like me, and it'd be unfair to make fun because it's, y'know, not trying to sell itself to me, it's just trying to say, "God's my buddy!" Do you. Doesn't sound like you're using it to hurt anyone, so do you, Josh.

99) "Dig," Incubus

Given how horribly Papa Roach's whole thing has aged compared to Incubus' whole thing -- i THINK we all still like "Drive," and "Anna Molly" goes hard as hell -- I really wish I liked that one Papa Roach song less than this Incubus song, but man, this Incubus song and I never really met. ...Yeah, you’re right, you didn’t come here to read me seriously contemplating my buttrock feelings, I’ll stop there. Video’s cool. I like the heart-lip girl digging the dude out of his head, that was dope. You sure you don’t wanna read my buttrock power rankings? You sure you don’t wanna take inventory of my buttrock feelings? I have a lot of opinions on this genre! I think you’re really missin’ out! Ah, we’ll catch up on ‘em later, lotta 2007 still to come, I’ll hit you up with that buttrock good-good when it’s time to talk about Finger Eleven.

Well. 2007 Top 20. It’s the same as last week’s. 20) "Que Hiciste," by Jennifer Lopez (4.28.2007) 19) "When I See U," by Fantasia (4.21.2007) 18) "Movin' On," by Elliott Yamin (3.17.2007) 17) "U + Ur Hand," by P!nk (1.13.2007) 16) "Doe Boy Fresh," by Three 6 Mafia ft./Chamillionaire (1.20.2007) 15) "Breath," by Breaking Benjamin (4.14.2007) 14) "Stolen," by Dashboard Confessional (4.21.2007) 13) "Beautiful Liar," by Beyonce & Shakira (3.31.2007) 12) "Cupid's Chokehold," by Gym Class Heroes ft./Patrick Stump (1.13.2007) 11) "The River," by Good Charlotte ft./M. Shadows & Synyster Gates (2.10.2007) 10) "Say OK," by Vanessa Hudgens (2.17.2007) 9) "Alyssa Lies," by Jason Michael Carroll (1.13.2007) 8) "Get Buck," by Young Buck (4.14.2007) 7) "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going," by Jennifer Hudson (1.13.2007) 6) "Thnks fr th Mmrs," by Fall Out Boy (4.28.2007) 5) "Candyman," by Christina Aguilera (1.13.2007) 4) "Because of You," by Ne-Yo (3.17.2007) 3) "Umbrella," by Rihanna ft./Jay-Z (4.28.2007) 2) "Dashboard," by Modest Mouse (2.17.2007) 1) "The Story," by Brandi Carlile (4.28.2007) Alright, 2017. 2007 gave me seven country dude songs, and you will have at least one cut off DAMN. If anyone can fuck this up, it’s you. I’m excited.

5.6.2017

4) "DNA." by Kendrick Lamar 14) "LOYALTY." by Kendrick Lamar ft./Rihanna 16) "ELEMENT." by Kendrick Lamar 18) "LOVE." by Kendrick Lamar ft./Zacari 32) "YAH." by Kendrick Lamar 33) "XXX." by Kendrick Lamar ft./U2 35) "FEEL." by Kendrick Lamar 37) "PRIDE." by Kendrick Lamar 42) "LUST." by Kendrick Lamar 50) "FEAR." by Kendrick Lamar 54) "BLOOD." by Kendrick Lamar 58) "GOD." by Kendrick Lamar 63) "DUCKWORTH." by Kendrick Lamar

DAMN. is a classic record that has grown on me in the week and a half I have spent with it, which is amazing given that my relatively lukewarm first impression was that it was a classic, and I have no qualms with any of these songs making the list. I do have some reservations about songs that are never going to make it to radio (whatever that means in 2017) making my personal Top 20, but at the same time, I can say I've only liked three songs in the field more than I liked "ELEMENT." Even "HUMBLE." has grown on me, now that I've heard it in the context of the album (and that beat, I mean hell). These are all Very Good Songs and like I'm not gonna put all of them in the Top 20? but hmm I wonder which I like more, every song off DAMN. or any Lady Antebellum song. Tough choice.

39) "The Cure," by Lady Gaga

I pretty much dig this song for what it is, a nice kinda-EDM-y kinda-'80s-y synth jam, but I'm disappointed that this sounds like A Good Song and not A Gaga Song. It's fine! I accept this, it's a treat and I enjoyed all three minutes, but if I had first heard this song being covered on The Voice or something, there's no way in hell I would've pegged this as a Gaga song. Like, this is the safest song I've ever heard bearing her name. It's a nice song, though. Aside from the complaints just registered, I will register no complaints.

76) "Good Life," by G-Eazy & Kehlani

"I bought the crib and it's in escrow now." Is this like an elaborate I'm Still Here satire/prank of the concept of a white rapper? He talked about closing escrow on a home. Who the fuck. This song is what happens when Drake and Rihanna cancel and you have to grab two people off the street to impersonate them and hope they're good enough mimics that no one can tell the difference.

78) "Peek a Boo," by Lil Yachty ft./Migos

YOU KNOW HOW YOU MAKE THIS SONG INSTANTLY A THOUSAND FUCKING TIMES BETTER WITHOUT LOSING ANYTHING? "Give her the shocker like Pikachu." YOU WERE SO FUCKING CLOSE. "Give her the shocker like Pikachu." LIKE THREE DRAFTS AWAY IF YOU GAVE THIS SONG FIVE MINUTES TO BREATHE BEFORE SCHLEPPIN' IT TO THE BOOTH, YOU COULD HAVE HAD "GIVE HER THE SHOCKER LIKE PIKACHU." I think this song is fine? I dunno, I like the noise Yachty is making behind this song, it's a quality noise. Not bad! Not, y'know, good, and it's actually a failure when you realize how close it was to being amazing GIVE HER THE SHOCKER LIKE PIKACHU. YOU RHYME PEEKABOO WITH PIKACHU AT THE END OF THE SONG. WE WERE SO CLOSE TO ACHIEVING THE PERFECT SONG. Y'all fucked up. I can't believe you kids failed me like this!, but other than the fact it’s a profound disappointment it’s a’ight.

87) "Black Spiderman," by Logic ft./Damian Lemar Hudson

OK. OK, I think, after two songs, I understand what Logic is: he's the most accessible rapper for someone who just listened to Hamilton for the first time and wants to start checking out real hip-hop. Because if you go straight from Hamilton to Danny Brown, man, you're gonna get the bends, y'all ain't ready for "Ain't It Funny" at all, that is a rough 180 to try to navigate, you gotta hit this dude up first. It's a positive song with little to no misogynistic language, but still hard enough that it might put off some people who were initially into the nice man who did raps about the $10 man. If you can listen to this and still want to go deeper, then you listen to Chance, then Tribe or The Roots, and then you're ready for Kendrick. It's rap for people who don't listen to rap, is what I'm trying to say. It's its own fun little thing, but this song is what it sounds like when your biggest worry in life is about a dog you saw on the internet which was in a stressful situation. Hope the dog can make it! It looks so worried, poor puppers!

93) "Broken Halos," by Chris Stapleton

It's country Kendrick! And it's country "HUMBLE." in that I'm not immediately sure how much I dig it, but I know I dig it way more than I dug all the shit I had to listen to Sunday morning for this stupid post. Chris Stapleton got big making traditional country music, and I think it might be because he got big doing this that now this feels like paint-by-numbers Stapleton. Sad gravel man growling over an acoustic guitar some lazy religious metaphor, I dunno, it kicks most other country songs' ass, but I would honestly argue "Craving You" is a riskier move than this song. I think I might revisit this and Gaga's songs in a few weeks and realize I liked them way more than I initially did and I was just being a Tuesday evening grumplord for no reason, but this is the opinion of record, is that this song is just standard-issue Chris Stapleton but Chris Stapleton being a thing whcih comes standard-issue is more good than bad.

99) "The Night We Met," by Lord Huron

It's the last song of the week, and it's a haunting indie song from the Netflix teen mystery drama. Looks like I'm clockin' out early, boys and girls! Sorry! Ain't got nothin' for ya here! This song's pretty dope! GOODBYEEEEEEEEEEEE!

The Top 20, where we dumped “The Heart Part 4″ a little bit because I felt it was appropriate: 20) "The Cure," by Lady Gaga (5.6) 19) "Guys My Age," by Hey Violet (2.11) 18) "Heatstroke," by Calvin Harris ft./Young Thug, Pharrell Williams & Ariana Grande (4.22) 17) "Yeah Boy," Kelsea Ballerini (3.4) 16) "You Look Good," by Lady Antebellum (4.22) 15) "The Heart Part 4," by Kendrick Lamar (4.15) 14) "Selfish," by Future ft./Rihanna (3.18) 13) "Slide," by Calvin Harris ft./Frank Ocean & Migos (3.18) 12) "Now & Later," by Sage the Gemini (2.25) 11) "DNA." by Kendrick Lamar (5.6) 10) "It Ain't Me," by Kygo x Selena Gomez (3.4) 9) "Craving You," by Thomas Rhett ft./Maren Morris (4.22) 8) "That's What I Like," by Bruno Mars (3.4) 7) "Chanel," by Frank Ocean ft./A$AP Rocky (4.1) 6) "Run Up," by Major Lazer ft./PARTYNEXTDOOR & Nicki Minaj (2.18) 5) "Green Light," by Lorde (3.18) 4) "ELEMENT." by Kendrick Lamar (5.6) 3) "Despacito," by Luis Fonsi ft./Daddy Yankee (2.4) 2) "Issues," by Julia Michaels (2.11) 1) "iSpy," by KYLE ft./Lil Yachty (1.14) Hey, “Despacito” made the top ten in Kendrick week! That’s an insane accomplishment! I see it carries an “+ Justin Bieber” credit, now! There is no reconsideration of “Despacito” forthcoming. I choose to only acknowledge “Despacito” in its original form.

Who won?

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm a kendrick album or a bunch of dudes in cowboy hats. 2017, y’all brought a gun to a knife fight. where the hell was this last week. 2007: 3 2017: 3 So next week, we get new Paramore (probably) stacked up against Josh Groban with a children’s choir. I’m liking 2017′s odds at a repeat. Come on, friend! 2007′s taking a few weeks off, it looks like, NOW’S YOUR CHANCE!

0 notes