I Can’t Believe I’m About To Say This…

but Michelle Malkin had a point in the entire Rachael Ray business. Sure, on the specific points, she was horrifically wrong. Ray isn’t wearing a keffiyeh, keffiyeh’s aren’t necessarily “hate couture” and enforcing this type of conservative political correctness is just stupid. But she still had a point about the proliferation of the keffiyeh as a hipster accessory. Although in the Middle East, the keffiyeh is hardly terrorist wear - in Jordan its red and white, in the Gulf it’s just white and Palestinians of all stripes sport the black and white one - but it’s only popular in the West because of its terrorist chic. Just like Che shirts, or more accurately, the spate of khaki and leather military-esque jackets that proliferated in the 60s and 70s, they are only cool because of the inherent association with revolt and violence. Now, I don’t particularly mind people wearing keffiyeh’s, they are remarkably useful and look really cool, but the argument that they’re totally innocuous and have no association with violence, nationalism or revolt just ain’t true.

Full disclosure. I own a keffiyeh. I bought it when I was ten in Palestinian East Jerusalem. It’s really cool.

UPDATE: If you dare look below, I’ve uploaded some really crappy pictures of me sporting my authentic Palestinian keffiyeh in both relatively traditional and hipster fashion. View at your own risk

Weezy Handicaps The Race

I used to think that no once could top DMX as far as election related nuttiness spouted by a rapper. The convicted felon, so he can’t vote, has admittedly not been following the race, and when asked by XXL magazine what he thinks of Obama, he had this to say:

You know there’s a Black guy running, Barack Obama and then there’s Hillary Clinton.
His name is Barack?!

Barack Obama, yeah.
Barack?!

Barack.
What the fuck is a Barack?! Barack Obama. Where he from, Africa?

Yeah, his dad is from Kenya.
Barack Obama?

Yeah.
What the fuck?! That ain’t no fuckin’ name, yo. That ain’t that nigga’s name. You can’t be serious. Barack Obama. Get the fuck outta here.

You’re telling me you haven’t heard about him before.
I ain’t really paying much attention.

I mean, it’s pretty big if a Black…
Wow, Barack! The nigga’s name is Barack. Barack? Nigga named Barack Obama. What the fuck, man?! Is he serious? That ain’t his fuckin’ name. Ima tell this nigga when I see him, “Stop that bullshit. Stop that bullshit” [laughs] “That ain’t your fuckin’ name.” Your momma ain’t name you no damn Barack.

Could any rapper top that? Here’s Lil Wayne

Barack, I guess, but I can’t make a real opinion. I ain’t watching no debates. I just want my people to understand that Hillary and Barack are not running for president–they running to be able to run for president. There’s a Republican party, too–we ain’t about to win, fool! A woman or a black man versus an old white dude? Fcuk no! They gonna be like, This black-ass nigga trying to come in my Oval Office? Fcuuuuuk no.The world about to end in 2012 anyway. ‘Cause the Mayans made calendars, and they stop at 2012. I got encyclopedias on the bus. The world is gonna end as we know it. You can see it already. A planet doesn’t exist: There’s no more Pluto. Planes are flying into buildings–and not just the Twin Towers, but dudes who play baseball are flying planes into buildings. Mosquitoes bite you and you die. And a black man and a woman are running for president!

Although Wayne gets points for at least knowing who Barack Obama is, he does better than DMX by talking about the Mayan calendar and citing there being “no more Pluto” as proof that the world is surely coming to an end. And extra pop-culture awareness for citing the tragic Corey Lidle incident. But perhaps Weezy is being extra insightful, four years of a McCain presidency - ending in 2012, could well bring the world to an end.

But to be fair, “there’s no more Pluto” and “mosquitoes bite you and you die” should definitely be new catchphrases for when something really weird is happening. Now only if Tha Carter III could drop…

It’s Like Reading an Opera Review By A Deaf Person

One thing that’s just incredibly frustrating is seeing well-meaning, smart people write about GTA IV, despite never having played the game, or even being video game fans themselves. It’s very hard to give an honest review of a product or even to write about it intelligently, if you can’t at least be sympathetic with those that enjoy it. A good example of this tendency for everyone to opine on a massive, complex and highly original series like GTA is Samhita at feministing:

I think it is really problematic to lump all criticisms of GTA4 together. I believe at some point, I was written about along with a conservative writer (shudder to think) and that is not giving the full range of view points space to air their concerns. I am pretty sure if a movie had prostitute killing in it, I would write about it, but that is besides the point. GTA4 is not a movie, it is bigger than a movie. In fact, movies switched around their release dates for the release of GTA4. In the first week out it has grossed 500 million dollars. Furthermore, it is played, repeatedly and it is a role playing game, where you are the person engaging in violent acts. It is a fantasy, your fantasy. Perhaps there is a moment of identification like this with movies, but it is different then actually acting something out yourself.

“Perhaps there is a moment of identification like this with movies, but it is different then actually acting something out yourself.” Ok, let’s break this down. In the course of my lifetime playing GTA III, GTA Vice City, GTA San Andreas and GTA IV, I’ve “killed” thousands of people. Yes, some of them were sex workers that I ran over with a motorcycle, and others were construction workers I gunned down with an automatic weapon. Did I have a “moment of identification” at any of these points, do I now look at people differently in the real world and have an itch to run them over with my Subaru? Not just no, but heeeeeeel no.

One would think that as video games got not only more realistic in the strict graphical sense, but also more realistic in the psychological and sociological sense, that people would “identify” with their characters more, but that is not the case in GTA. Unlike a truly free virtual space like Second Life, or an MMORPG like World of Warcraft, in GTA, you still only have the choice of one character and one general storyline (with one important exception) to follow. Of course, you have a ton of options about how you go about following this story, but every one who plays GTA IV knows that they are playing as Niko Bellic, and you’re still in “Liberty City.” At not point does the line between Bellic and Matt Zeitlin or Liberty City and Piedmont become particularly vague.

What’s especially distressing about Samhita’s uninformed opining on GTA IV is that it could have very easily been avoided by talking to those who play, and actually like, the game. They would have gladly said that they don’t have new desires to beat prostitutes in the street. Or by actually playing the game itself. But for some reason, GTA has become the one piece of mass entertainment/art that people think they can opine about without actually experiencing it. If Samhita is worried about her feminist criticisms of the game getting lumped in with no-nothing cultural conservative criticisms, then perhaps she should wonder why GTA apologizers lump the two together. And that’s because both criticisms come from a pre-determined view that is uninformed by an actual sympathetic look at the game.

And on the very specific issue of violence in the entire Grand Theft Auto Series, it’s worth pointing out, once again, that as video games got more and more graphically sophisticated and the violence became more realistic, violent crime rates have been at historic lows. The connection between digital and behavioral violence just isn’t real. If anything, the connection could well be the other way.

I Prefer My Discussions of Power and Knowledge Vulgar

Kathy G suggests that had the American military been told to read Orientalism by Edward Said, as opposed to the anti-Arab filth that is The Arab Mind, perhaps things would have been different:

Yet at the same time, as Foucault noted, knowledge itself constitutes power relations. Books and ideas can have a profound impact. I don’t think it would have been quite as easy for the Bush administration to do what they did if racist, imperialist attitudes were not so prevalent amongst the military and foreign policy elites. And if those same elites had read Orientalism instead of The Arab Mind, I’m not so sure that said elites would have been quite so comfortable in their racism and imperialism. A powerful book, which Orientalism (which I have read) certainly is, and which The Arab Mind (which I haven’t read) apparently is as well, can change minds. It can persuade readers who have no fixed views on the subject, and strengthen the views of those who are already inclined to agree with the author.

If Orientalism had been widely read among the military and foreign affairs folks, perhaps the attitudes of some highly influential people would not have been quite so smug. Perhaps they would have entertained a few more doubts. Perhaps the thought of torturing their fellow human beings might have made them a bit queasy.

Although I have an quasi ironic respect for Edward Said and hold the view that the last few years have tragically vindicated Orientalism’s thesis (trust me, it’s very complicated) I think Kathy is ignoring how a more straightforward discussion of knowledge and power could explain why The Arab Mind found its way onto military reading lists. That’s because it’s a whole lot easier to launch a war against utter savages, as opposed to rather normal human beings whose reactions are very similiar to ours. I mean, anyone would know that breaking into people’s homes, taking the men out of the houses, humiliating them and forcing black hoods on their heads would anger your average European, but for Arabs, it would make them fear and respect us.

The Iraq War was what social scientists like to call “overdetermined” - it had a whole lot of caues, one of which was the Fouad Ajami-style depictions of Arabs as simplistic brutes who could be cowered into submission and parliamentary democracy. But I don’t think you needed that intellectual substructure for the war to happen, it was just one of many causes.

And on the subject of Orientalism more broadly, it’s odd how it’s come under such fearsome assault, as it’s thesis was being so decisively proven. That thesis, being “that when it came to “the East” scholarship itself had become a means of serving and legitimating imperial dominance over the Oriental “other.”” And so, more than 30 years after Said’s book we are in the midst of an imperial war in the Middle East, which was partially justified on the back of depictions of middle easterners as alien, other and totally opposed to the “West.”

And so, is Said being recognized as a prescient, far seeing public intellectual? Sure, those who originally read the book and subscribe to The Nation think he’s the shit, but in more conventional liberal circles, he’s the avatar of anti-American intellectuals that one can look really good loudly bashing. The Eustonite Left, Marty Peretz and that whole gang are only upping the ante in Said bashing. In the past few years, we’ve seen a a proliferation of anti-Said tracks. At least 1/3 of the issues of Democratiya - the Eustonite British politcal journal - have included some sort of denunciation of Edward Said. Many of his critics, who aren’t scholars of the Middle East but instead political opponents, point to Roger Irwin’s Dangerous Knowledge. While Dangerous Knowledge itself is a legitimate scholarly work that takes issue with Said’s treatment of specific Orientalists, especially those Germans who were actively opposed to Imperialism, it largely misses the forest for the trees. Although Irwin is certainly right that Said plays a tad fast and loose with the facts in order for them to fit his thesis, the basic thrust of Orientalism is undeniable: Western imperialism and Orientalist scholarship were “co-productive” in producing the conditions to subjugate the East. Daniel Varisco and Ibn Warraq  have also both written book length criticisms of Orientalism. Although Varisco is broadly sympathetic with Said’s political agenda and Warraq is incredibly hostile, it’s no surprise that Democratiya is trumpeting them as weapons to wield against the Saidite menace. Said’s ghost haunts more than just discussions of his own book. All of the hysteria we see surrounding Columbia’s Middle Eastern Studies Department and abominable treatment of Nadia Abu El-Haj can be explained as the expression of the endless frustration that “pro-Israel” types and conservatives felt at never being able to take Said off his pedestal.

This is not to say that I endorse all of Said’s political stands. On Israel, Kosovo and the first Gulf War, I think he was profoundly wrong. But on his main scholarly point, he was unfortunately correct.

Brideshead Revisited Revisited

Alex Massie makes a somewhat compelling case that snobby purists like myself shouldn’t get apoplectic about this adaption massacre that’s soon to hit the screens:

And in any case, if we’re honest, Brideshead is ripe for a Dynasty style makeover. Brideshead is a soap opera after all and, frequently, a contrived, over-written, nonsensical drama to boot. That’s part of its charm of course - itself, natch, the novel’s fatal flaw…

Matt Zeitlin, on the other hand, suggests one should weep over this trailer. Now there’s something to the argument that given the great success - indeed brilliance - of John Mortimer’s Granada adaptation there’s no need for a new film. But then again, what damage can there really be? Anyone who loves Brideshead - and it’s one of those novels that despite its brilliance attracts too many too passionate defenders - has no monopoly or veto on how the book must be interpreted. In fact some of them need winding up…

Massie is right - us loyal Brideshead defenders are a small bunch (outside of my household, I don’t know where to find such utter fanatics) but that doesn’t mean I have to sit and cooly contemplate the ruining of a masterwork. After all, once this tripe hits the big screen, how am I supposed to explain that when I say Brideshead Revisited is the best thing on film ever, that I mean the miniseries, not this melodramatic crapwerk? And even if I can patiently explain which Brideshead I love so dearly, it would still be a pain.

But I sound like a old fogey complaining that they’re just making a rather staid, langrouous book/tv series into something more exciting. It also turns out that they’re totally mangling the plot:

The television version was faithful to the plot, but Davies warns he is writing a “darker, more heterosexual” approach. Instead of Charles Ryder’s relationship with Sebastian Flyte, he seeks to concentrate on the doomed affair between Charles and Julia Flyte. He also intends to ignore Charles Ryder’s conversion to Catholicism, and to reveal how the faith destroys the relationship. “If God can be said to exist in my version,” he said, “he would be the villain.”

This, if really true, is horrendous on so many levels. At first, it’s just weird. So often, it’s the remakes and modern interpretations that try to elevate the homosexual subtext to the forefront. With the original Bridesheads, it was just kind of there, and not really that big of a deal. But even ignoring whether or nor Charles and Sebastian are “gay” (a pointless question), it’s impossible to ignore that it’s their relationship, not Charles’ with Julia, that’s at the center of the book.

Also, do we really need another romantic drama where the strictures of religion are unambiguously evil? One of the many things that makes Brideshead so distinctive is that it takes an incredibly complex subject - being Catholic in England - and treats it with extreme sympathy. How many other great 20th century novels have an urbane, educated agnostic end up believing in God because of the faith of boorish, Catholic aristocrats? Although the ornate language, or in the movie, the great clothes and sumptuous settings are nice and all, Catholicism really lies at the heart of the work.

The adaptor, Jeremy Brock, claims that it’s not belief in God, per se, that he’s after, but instead “man-made theology; the emotional and moral contortions forced on to individuals by their adherence to a particular set of codes and practices.” I’m afraid that when it comes to Catholicism, and especially the faith of the Flytes, this is a distinction without a difference. When Charles Ryder whispers the catechism, or when Lord Marchmain comes home to have the last rites administered, when Sebastian ends up in a monastery or most importantly, when Julia leaves Charles, is that just unimpeachable personal faith, or instead that bugagboo of “man made theology”?

This is not too say that Waugh’s perspective is necessarily correct, I surely wouldn’t want to live my life like the Flytes, but it’s an important perspective nonetheless, and one that deserved exposition in serious literary and cinematic form. At a certain point, adaptation turns into artistic misuse, and I’m afraid this is one of those times.

Via Ross Douthat.

What? 15 Year Old Girls Have Backs?!

I think I figured out why some people are outraged at the infamous Miley Cyrus picture in Vanity Fair. The Wall Street Journal editorial page tells me that coastal elites in “Manhattan or Hollywood” (does the Bay Area count?) are totally OK with 15 year olds who are seen on TV every day by millions of people having a not-very-revealing picture of them published in a magazine. That’s because we coastal elites go to the beach a lot. And at beaches people wear swimming attire.  And surely even the salt-of-the-earth folk at the Journal know that this swimming attire leaves a lot of skin exposed. But I guess in “Buffalo, Charlotte or Iowa City,” they don’t have beaches and so they expect 15 year olds wear their niqabs until they’re 18.

But seriously, what’s there to be outraged about? The picture itself is almost impossibly tame. And it’s not like she was sitting by her pool and some papparazzo snapped a candid shot. The photo shoot was overseen and the subsequent photos approved by Miley and her parents. So what are they apologizing for? Sure, she’s 15, but she’s also a 15 year old with more national exposure, power, influence and money than most adults can ever dream of. If she’s a victim of anything, it’s her and her parents own ambition.

I mean, seriously, have you been to a high school dance before? A high school? A gathering of 15 year old girls outside of the FLDS compound? Sheesh. But I guess I’m a coastal elite, so I don’t have the “ordinary wisdom” of “Small Town USA” and can’t grasp the “photo’s essential vulgarity.”

PS - If you look at the behind-the-scenes photos that Vanity Fair released, it’s even more clear that nothing untoward was going on. But wait, the photographer, Annie Leibovitz is a lesbian! A ha! Now we know what this was all about!

Does Hip Hop Cause Cultural Decline

Ross Douthat is right to point out that even though calls of cultural decline are often times superficially cyclical, it’s still possible that specific epochs of cultural decline are worse than others. Specifically, just because in the past, black conservatives pointed to jazz as symbolic of cultural degradation among blacks, and that today, Bill Cosby and the like are making a similar criticism of hip-hop dooes not mean that, ergo, jazz equals hip hop. As Ross said, I doubt that Dr Dre, despite the considerable merits of The Chronic, will become not only domesticiated by the bourgoise (he already has) but actually high brow.

It’s just true that the decline of the black family, especially the poor, urban black family in terms of single motherhood, the fraying of social bonds, lack of strong norms oriented towards middle class sucess and the whole host of problems that have been festering in urban areas since the mid-to-late 1960s are especially acute. But that doesn’t make these overblown claims that hip-hop, which is largely a response or an epiphenomenon of this horrendous social reality, is somehow deserving of the criticism that Cosby et al throw at it. Hip hop is not responsible for people not graduating from high school, committing crimes, not becoming fathers of their children etc. Sure, the value system that most hip hop that black people actually listen to isn’t exactly positive, it’s also not exaclty normative.

What hip-hop really “promotes” more than anything is a certain bravado and exaggerated sense of masculinity that makes a certain type of sense as a short-term survival strategy in an urban environment that many rappers come from. But inveighing against the music itself, is as pointless as inveighing against jazz was. Douthat may or may not be right to say that there actually were real problems with drinknig and gambling associated with jazz establishments, but it was still stupid to see the music as anything resembeling causal. This is especially true in the case of hip hop because it has so escaped its roots as being primarily a form of music for the urban, black underclass and is now America’s popular music. Which is to say that it’s less responsive to real conditions on the ground in black communities, and now more responsive to the tastes and expectations of its racially  and culturally diverse (read: largely white) audience. Cosby is probably right to go after norms and expectations in the black, urban community that he sees as negative, but going after a popular music form will do him no good.

Can A White Guy Just Like Black Music?

I guess the subject of how white people can relate to black culture just isn’t on my mind. Stacey Patton, who actually grew up in a dysfunctional, black, inner city household (unlike Margaret Seltzer) and wrote a memoir about it, has a piece in the Post Outlook section that looks at white people’s fascination with black culture - going all the way back to the 1600s - and sees it as all too often a minstrel-y cultural appropriation, with little possibility for genuine cultural dialog or appreciation.

First, she gets a lot right. As a white guy with few black friends or acquaintances, I can say that I am in some ways “fascinated” with black culture. I love rap , motown, funk, blues, soul food etc etc. Am I genuinely respecting black culture, or am I just using it as a way to make myself feel cooler? I can’t say conclusively, but it’s clear that many whites, and myself, have a “long-standing white fascination with blackness” that often doesn’t let actual black people articulate their culture for themselves. Where I part with Patton is in thinking that white people can, and have, genuinely enjoyed black culture in a respectful, dynamic manner.

The classic example of white appropriation of black culture is Elvis. Here was this truck-driving hick, singing songs in a unmistakably black style, who even adopted the sexually potent persona of many black entertainers. Did Elvis just plunder black culture in a disrespectful, stereotypical manner? I would argue that Elivs, and many of his Jewish songwriters, had a genuine respect for black music and that they “appropriated” it because they loved it and found it to be more vibrant and dynamic than what middle-class, white, 1950s culture had to offer. Or take the Rolling Stones. They even claimed to have written Robert Johnson’s “Love in Vain.” Yet I think to call Mick Jagger a cynical appropriator of blackness is entirely missing the point of what him, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin and all the British-Bluesmen were doing. They were taking music they loved and putting a slightly new spin on it, combining black 12 bar blues with some Scotch-Irish ballads, merseybeat and pop songwriting and creating a whole new form of music that was heavily indebted to the Delta Blue, but distinct. This is how cultural evolution happens. If we were to draw firm lines between cultures and music, saying that white people couldn’t do black music, we’d have no Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin, or even Jimi Hendrix.

Patton tries to work her way out of the conundrum of calling the representatives of America’s most culturally vibrant period cynical minstrels by claiming that “Most of these white artists made undeniable contributions to American popular culture, and their gifts and the value of their work, unlike Seltzer’s, are not in dispute. At the heart of the matter, though, lies the question of whose voice should speak about and interpret the black experience in America — and whose voice white America wants to hear.” But then she claims that Eminem is just like Paris Hilton dressing up in blackface and equates white people listening to gangsta rap with Janet Cooke’s fake 8 year old heroin addict. It’s certainly true that white people prefer to have other white people represent blackness or black culture, but to call Eminem a minstrel is just a horrible misrepersentation and gets to the core of why oversensitivity about saying who’s allowed to “represent blackness” often leads who misunderstanding the context in which white people actually engage with black culture.

Take a look at Eminem for example. If Bill Clinton was the first black president, then Eminem is the first black white rapper. He came from a very dysfunctional household, his father walked out on him and his mom just after he was born and he was always shuffling between Kansas City and Detroit. Usually, people with this type of “white trash” background - which is also typical of many black urban families - would express their considerable angst in rock or country music. Marshall Mathers had all the emotional and poetic capacities to be Kurt Cobain, but he decided to be Eminem, why? This is the part that cultural critics like Patton can’t help but ignore - it was because he is one of the most talented rappers of his generation. Take away all the self-promotion, controversy over his lyrics and the cultural fascination with his whiteness, and you have someone who is an amazingly skilled MC. When he was coming up in the Detriot hip-hop scene, his race certainly wasn’t an advantage, so the only way he could gain attention was just by being way better than every other local rapper. Just like so many black people in largely white environments, he had to prove himself by being that much better than everyone else.

Listen to the Marshall Mathers LP and the Eminem Show, just as a hip-hop fan, and tell me that he isn’t scarily talented. Yes, it’s certainly true that he got more mainstream attention because of fascination with his race, but I would argue that it wasn’t because white people wanted a familiar face to transmit black culture for them - Eminem, if you remember, was hated by much of the cultural mainstream as either as a profane and bad influence on youth or as a poser - but because people were so amazed by a white guy who totally embraced the persona and mannerisms of a rapper. It was because of our willingness to draw such stark, artificial lines between race and culture that Eminem was such a culturally captivating figure. Another thing critics like Patton who only see his race and then listen to his music and assume that it’s all “appropriation” can’t seem to get their heads around is that Eminem was able to speak to legions of white teens who love rap music, but don’t feel that black rappers, with their own unique experiences and perspectives, can truly speak to them. Eminem, on the other hand, could. This was a genuine feeling felt by many white teens that can’t just be labeled as appropriation or as demeaning fascination with blackness. Patton, however, just can’t seem to recognize that in today’s culture, where hip hop is America’s popular music, that the lines between black culture and mainstream, white culture are very fuzzy, just as they should be.

A Defense of Combat Zone Wrestling

My Campus Progress Blogeague, Brittany, has a good exploration of the mad, mad world of “Combat Zone Wrestling.”  It’s basically professional wrestling, except that it’s fully willing to describe itself as “ultraviolent” (here’s a clip from the Philly Inquirer). What this means in practice, according to Wikipedia, is that there’s plenty of actual blood, barbed wire, breaking chairs, fluorescent light tubes, thumbtacks and even fire. One of the main events every year is the “Tournament of Death” and a popular promotion is “Fans Bring the Weapons.” Its website makes it very clear that the show is all about violence - the tagline is “Experience of Ultaviolence.”  Now, notwithstanding the Clockwork Orange reference, it makes sense that someone could be worried about a society in which this event could flourish:

I am not sure exactly what it is that disturbs me so much about these events, as objectively I do not think I have the right to judge what other people find entertaining. After all, one could hardly say that my obsession with “What Not to Wear” has any educational value. That being said, something about organizations such as Combat Zone Wrestling does not reflect well on American society as a whole.

But is there a case to be made that the celebration of violence, or watching semi-staged violence, is bad, in and of itself? Maybe if you were some kind of conservative virtue ethicist, you would think that there was something intrinsically bad about Combat Zone Wrestling, but most people’s objections are to entertainment violence’s effect on society as a whole - by actually increasing real acts of violence. But the empirical evidence that any specific cultural celebration of violence - violent music, tv shows, movies - actually causes real violence is vague at best.

Let’s look at video games - they are now more violent and realistic than at any time in history, and yet violent crime has been decreasing since the early-to-mid 90s, when violent video games were much cruder and more tame.  The same goes for music.  Gangsta rap was peaking at the same time the crime wave was peaking.  The rise of gangsta rap was more of a reflection of the unprecedented levels of violence and crime in the 80s and early 90s than a cause of it.  And rap music is still plenty violent, so it hasn’t dropped off with real violence the way it should if there was any real correlation or causation.  And movies have been really violent since the 1970s, and peaks in movie violence haven’t exactly matched up with peaks of violent crime.

But even more importantly, there is good empirical evidence that events like Combat Zone Wrestling can actually reduce violence.  The way this works out is that a whole lot of criminal violence - assaults and the like - are caused by the combination of two volatile elements.  Young men in crowds and alcohol.  Any place where you have young men drinking, the likelihood of there being some violence is pretty high, relatively speaking.  Ever seen a bar or night club closing (not that I have…)?  And so anything that can take young men, especially those who would be more likely to be violent after a few drinks,  out of bars and into an environment where they will spend a good portion of the night not drinking, you are basically sure to see a reduction in violence.  Two University of California economists did research looking at the effect of large showings of violent movies and had some encouraging results:

Instead of fueling up at bars and then roaming around looking for trouble, potential criminals pass the prime hours for mayhem eating popcorn and watching celluloid villains slay in their stead.

“You’re taking a lot of violent people off the streets and putting them inside movie theaters,” said the lead author of the study, Gordon Dahl, an economist at the University of California, San Diego. “In the short run, if you take away violent movies, you’re going to increase violent crime.”

Professor Dahl and the paper’s other author, Stefano DellaVigna, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, attach precise numbers to their argument: Over the last decade, they say, the showing of violent films in the United States has decreased assaults by an average of about 1,000 a weekend, or 52,000 a year.

Replace “violent movies” with “Combat Zone Wrestling” and I imagine the effect is identical if not even more pronounced.  So how does this effect our moral or cultural evaluation of CZW?  What do we value more: vague, unsubstantiated claims that Combat Zone Wrestling is bad for our culture because we feel icky about it, or empirical evidence that things like Combat Zone Wrestling actually have a real effect of reducing violent assaults?  I don’t  know the answer, but this research is definitely something to keep in mind next time anyone talks wrestling or any public display of violence as some kind of cancer on our culture.

Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself

There’s been a little tussle in Ezra Klein’s comment section since he linked to my post (thanks a lot dude!) about the political prospects of Hip Hop.  As usual, there’s people complaining about my age, kinda-sorta calling me a racist and all that charming stuff.  But “Brendan” chimed in and summed up  my argument better than I could:

Most of thse artists have no real street background, their fake ass punks who wouldn’t last a day having to survive on the streets.

This is the white liberal blogger narrative on hip hop for some reason, and it drives me nuts. First, it’s just wrong; most prominent rappers actually did grow up in projects or slums in big cities. Second, of course the audience for rap is going to be majority white, because 75% of America is white. People who believe that it is strictly suburban white kids who are listening to Young Jeezy while Authentic Black People are listening to Common reveal, hilariously, that they have never set foot in a black neighborhood.

There is a black subculture that pushes some of these “conscious” rappers, but their audiences remain disproportionately white compared to mainstream rappers. This, I think, is because evaluated aesthetically as rap music they are generally not as good as mainstream rappers, with a few exceptions. Lots of white people, who don’t really know how to evaluate rap as art but have a sentimental idea of what “real hip hop” is supposed to be, are the target audience. (As for self-consciously “arty” rappers like MF Doom or whatever, forget it–their audience is 99% white hipsters, for good reason.)

It’s really amazing that the white liberal dialogue about rap can go on without anyone stopping to ask why we are evaluating rap by criteria that we would apply to no other art. It’s almost as if we don’t respect it as an autonomous art form, but expect it to play the role of a political cypher, or something.

Much of my frustration with the attempted poiticization of hip-hop and the denigration of rappers whose music is either apolitical or even antipolitical comes from an aesthetic standpoint.  I just think that many “mainstream” rappers, and their old school predecessors, are just better at making music than “conscious” rappers like Mos Def or Common.  TI, for example, raps mostly about the common litany of the thug live, how awesome he is, guns, women etc.  And yet, his songs are better produced, are more musically interesting, have better beats than most stuff out there.  He’s also an exceptional rapper.  The same can be said for Young Jeezy - who exclusively raps about selling cocaine. It’s just annoying for my favorite rappers to be denigrated because they’re not adhering to some mystical standard of political consciousness that “real” hip-hop is supposed to.

And while this is a poor standard for determining what “real” rap music is, for obvious reasons, it’s worth pointing out that urban, black youth, the supposed ur-audience for rap, don’t really like the socially conscious or “real” hip-hop.  They, for the most part, either like the mainstream stuff like everyone else, or the local subgenre for their area.  Socially conscious rap is, for all intents and purposes, a white hipster game.

The historical roots of this complaint come from the original West Coast-East Coast split.  According to New York partisans, all was well, Public Enemy was making great, socially conscious music that was mostly listened to by urban blacks.  Then NWA, Snoop Dogg and Death Row busted on the scene, started making incredibly violent music, denigrating women and mostly appealed to white people. There’s some merit to this analysis. Snoop’s music and Dre’s The Chronic weren’t particularly serious.  And NWA was promoted by Jerry Heller, who courted controversy with the FBI to increase Staight Outta Compton’s record sales.

But who cares that “Gin and Juice”, “Gz and Hustlas” or “Nuthin’ But a G Thang” aren’t socially conscious like some overbearing Public Enemy track?  They were revolutionary musically.  Dre pioneered using live music in his recording and his G-Funk style was the most effective at bringing in the other revolutionary form of black music form the last 30 years - funk- right into rap.  And Snoop Dogg’s raps on The Chronic and Doggy Style were just amazing for how laconic and easily delivered they were, despite the considerable verbal gymnastics he featured on just about every track.  This was rap that could finally be described as truly musical, which most late 80s, East coast rap just couldn’t compare to.

And not only did the early 1990s West Coast scene revitalize hip-hop musically, it do so culturally and financially.  They expanded the audience for hip-hop by showing that it could be cool, relaxed and just banging.  I dare you to listen to Gin and Juice or Nuthin but a G Thang while driving and not be immediately bobbing your head and just start chilling to the music.  So my basic complaint with the politicization of hip-hop and the implicit denigration of mainstream rappers as being toadies for white suburban kids or not having enough political conscious is that it makes no sense to approach music this way; in a way that we do with basically no other genre, especially one which has crossed over into being our country’s popular music.  I like good music, I like good politics.  I see no reason why they have to be especially congruent.

Hip-Hop and Movements

Being a liberal who loves, loves, loves rap music can be hard sometimes. On one hand, it’s a great way to show empathy and forge cultural connections with a marginalized ethnic group. When blacks and whites are becoming more segregated economically and socially, it’s nice that a black form of music (even in a way rock n roll or jazz wasn’t) has come to dominate popular culture. Especially in the Bay Area, where there is very concentrated educational and social segregation, there is fair amount of musical overlap; kids from the hills and from East Oakland (which easily could have been the setting for The Wire) all like the same rappers and the same local subgenre of music. There’s also the fact that much of the hip-hop backlash comes from incredibly square conservatives who can’t seem to understand that rock music has plenty of objectification of women, encouragement of philandery and all the stuff to object to. It’s easy for liberal hip-hop heads to get on their high horses and describe conservative critics as racist, which is always fun.

But even though I love hip-hop music, I think it’s important to recognize that it’s just music, and the possibility of using it organize young black voters, create any political movement or do anything more than have a great track for a banging party is probably an illusion. Samhita Mukhopadhyay has a post at the Nation discussing the possibility of some sort of hip hop movement or the general political possibilities of hip hop.

How could a genre of music whose most prominent representatives celebrate violence and misogyny be a tool of progressive political organizing? This fantasy depends on a certain over-romatnicized, fictional version of “authetnic” hip hop in which in the South Bronx in the late 70s and early 80s, there was this pure art form uncorrupted by violence and misogyny that was about having a good time and/or criticizing Reagan budget cuts and the evil of the Cross Bronx Expressway and Robert Moses. In the white liberal/black activist narrative, things got really good with Public Enemy explicilty taking on the mantle of Malcolm X and Black Liberation. Then, NWA and Death Row records came in, white people became the majority of hip-hop listeners, and black artists became tools of the man and started an arms race to make the most violent, misogynistic records so as to attract white audiences. This narrative needs to be true for there to be any hope of Hip-Hop being poliitically viable, because as currently constructed, or even how the mainstream of the music has been developing for the last 15 years, there’s little hope that Young Jeezy talking about selling cocaine, Too $hort rapping “I busted a nut and killed a bitch” or that any rap music black people actually listen to can be leveraged to anything greater than an album.

So why do people always turn to hip-hop and expect it to be more than a style of music or a subculture? There are a few reasons. For one, it really was a form of music that emerged from a specific political and culture millieu. The South Bronx in the late 1970s was ground-zero for a certain type of paleoliberalism. You had malevolent public planners victimizing urban blacks, you had welfare cuts, you have rising fear and growing paranoia of the urban black population by outer borough ethnic whites. Add on the fact that there was a genuine cultural renaissance, some of which could be interpreted as political expression by marginalized urban blacks who had no other way to speak out. It was also inevitable that hip-hop would be interpreted this way. White liberals like those satirized on Stuff White People LIke have been looking to urban black communities as loci of “cool” and authenticity since at least the 1910s.

It’s too bad that this history of hip-hop is basically false. Early hip-hop was really party music, Grandmaster Flash was a DJ remixing Blondie tunes before he released “The Message.” There never really was an age when the “socially conscious” music was popular among blacks, not popular among whites and was the best selling hip-hop around (and even Public Enemy had clownster-in-chief Flava Flav to sweeten the message a bit).

But the dream of people who see hip-hop as a method for political organization, protest or for activism depend on an idealized world whereby all the “bad” hip hop with the violence, misogyny and materialism (50 Cent, TI, Nelly etc) is only liked by suburban white people and there’s a legion of frustrated, urban black youth who are flocking to Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Common, Dead Prez and all the socially conscious music. Too bad that this isn’t true. From as far back as Jonathan Kozol’s writing about the Harlem family reciting Langston Hughes’ poetry, many just assume that urban blacks are a fount of artistic and cultural enlightenment. But as far as hip-hop goes, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. It turns out that most of the hip-hop that is celebrated as “complex” or “socially conscious” has an audience with similar demographics as Arcade Fire fans. So sure, I’d love Mos Def to get black youth politically active, but it’s no accident that he has his own entry on Stuff White People Like. It turns that black youth basically like the same rap as white youth — the really popular stuff. If you look video clips of Hot 97’s Summer Jam, you’ll see a bunch of black kids, all loving the mainstream hip hop that is supposedly the exclusive domain of clueless, white suburban teenagers.

I’m not trying to say that black youth are uniquely misogynistic, materialistic or violent. I really like mainstream hip-hop. Often forgotten in these discussions is music that isn’t mainstream, liked by black people, and is hardly politically galvanzing. Look at most local sub-genres. Crunk from Atlanta, Hyphy from the Bay Area and Houston’s Chopped and Screwed are all examples of hip-hop at its purest. These are basically autonomous sub-cultures whose music has developed, much like in the late 70s South Bronx, as a response to specific cultural and social conditions. This is the type of music that could be used to spur political action. But when you look at the content of your average Mac Dre song, you’ll hear about smoking a lot of weed, taking a bunch of ectascy and just generally having a good time. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

To pretend that for Hip-Hop to be genuine, it all has to sound overbearing like Immortal Technique is to do great violence to those who genuinely love hip-hop.

Is any other genre expected to be the “genuine” voice of an oppressed people or to be leveraged as a uniquely effective tool for political organization? No, and it’s unfair for hip-hop to bear that burden. It’s just music. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, but to pretend it’s something more than music that’s tight to listen to is to make a rather large mistake.

Stuff I Like

I’ve avoided commenting about Things White People Like, partially because it was getting so much blog attention and also because it just hit so close to home. I estimate that around half of the entries describe things that I like a lot. And not just the obvious ones like Barack Obama, but some of the better ones like “expensive sandwiches” “being the only white person around” “the idea of soccer” and “Arrested Development. ” But I just have to correct the entry on Modern Furniture. Since I have two interior design obsessed parents and actually sit down to eat breakfast and dinner in an Eames chair, I know of the upper-middle class, bobo obsession with modern furniture as well as everyone.

Clander claims that “If they are able to acquire this prized furniture, they will forever refer to it only by the designers name.” Since my family actually has the iconic van der Rohe chair, the “Barcelona Chair” which is the picture for the entry, I can speak to how it’s referred to. And no one, I mean no one, calls it a “van der Rohe.” And that’s not because we want to avoid snobbery, it’s because the “Barcelona Chair” refers to the chair designed for the German Pavilion at the Barcelona World’s Fair in 1929. And all of the modern furniture devotees that clander mocks know this all too well. Just talking about van der Roe would be too easy. Eames, on the other hand, is referred to by its designers’ name.

And in case anyone was wondering, modernist furniture really is as awesome as advertised. Not only do Eames and Barcelona chairs look awesome, they’re actually the most comfortable chairs I’ve ever sat in.

Obama the Hipster

Remember when I said that “cool” — young, college educated, relatively wealthy — people liked Obama.  Well, yet another piece of evidence: Win Butler of the Arcade Fire has endorsed Obama.

via.

Gossip Girl Is Not, In Fact, An Accurate Portrayal of American Teenage Life

I’ve gone over, in detail, how Gossip Girl’s demographic fantasy (no Jews!) doesn’t really detract from the show, but this week’s episode had one egregious example of total “un-realism” and one very odd bit of plot development.  The first was a little detail at the gang’s illicit pool party: while it’s certainly true that, on occasion, teenagers gather without their parents knowledge and consume alcohol, it is highly unlikely that said alcohol is consumed in expensive glassware and prepared with silver shakers.  Even though Gossip Girl is supposedly dealing with a group of people financially and temperamentally above red plastic cups bought at the local convenience store, it’s frankly absurd that anyone would have the wherewithal or the foresight to bring such expensive crystal to an impromptu pool party.

The second complaint (spoilers follow) is Serena’s insistence that her mom can’t get together with Rufus because then she would have to end things with Dan.  Why, exactly, can’t step-siblings date?  They aren’t related, meaning no taboos would be violated, and they haven’t grown up together, meaning there would be no awkwardness.  In fact, step-sibling romance has been fairly well explored in teenage drama.  In Clueless, Cher Horowitz finds love with her “ex-stepbrother” played by Paul Rudd.  The entire conceit of Cruel Intentions was how Sebastian was attracted to his stepsister Kathryn.  While the movie clearly wanted us to think that their attraction was somehow taboo or illicit, it never struck me as particularly noteworthy.  Again, they weren’t related and didn’t grow up together.  It was implied that their parents, or as they called them, the parental unit, were both on second or even third marriages, so it wasn’t like they were an especially cohesive family anyway.  So it Lilly and Rufus were together, why would that have to negatively impact Serena and Dan?

The second minor complaint is howLilly feels like she needs to get married at all, and especially to Bart Bass.  In the episode where her mother shows up, we find out that she received the entirety of her inheritance for ditching Rufus, so we can assume that she’s financially independent, and in the show, there are no signs that she can’t manage things on her own.  The obvious reason we have this contrived marriage is so that GG can more obviously follow the OC. Notice how Bart Bass and Caleb Nichol are both overbearing, incredibly wealthy, work/money obsessed and even have the same haircut!  Come on Josh Schwartz, let’s see some originality!

Now you, fair reader, may be wondering why I find it necessary to go on at such length about a teen television drama.  And it’s a fair question, and the answer is simply that I’ve watched every episode, my friends watch it, and there’s a lot in the show to talk about.  Oh yeah, and I just wanted a good excuse to get a picture of Blake Lively on the blog.  I think the site could use more of her.

I promise, more serious blogging over the weekend.  We’re allowed to be a little frivolous on Friday, right?

The Incomplete Flynn Enthusiasm

I’m as happy as anyone that James Flynn is getting his due in the popular press and blogosphere. The Flynn Effect — the continual rise in IQ scores over the last 50 or so years — is one of the most fascinating bits of social science research that has some of the broadest implications for how we view the world. Malcolm Gladwell showed explained how the Flynn Effect helps debunk the “IQ fundamentalists” who think that race based IQ gaps can mostly be explained by genes. The problem with Flynn, at least with this full scale adoption of his environmentalist viewpoint, is that it raises questions that American liberals generally tend to avoid talking about: namely the deficiencies of black culture.

While Flynn clearly believes that IQ is largely environmental, he thinks that important environmental inputs are the cognitive environment in which children grow up in, so he puts a lot of weight on the black cognitive environment. If you watch his debate with Charles Murray at the Manhattan Institute, literally the first thing he says is “its very difficult ot give an environmental explanation…without discussing the black environment…you have to say that there are things about black subculture that mean that blacks do not have the same encouragement to develop cognity as white children are. How else are you to make an environmental case?”(emphasis added) If you watch more of the debate, Flynn explains that even black professional households are less “cognitively rich” than white homes, specifically relating to certain child rearing practices. Gladwell too, in his New Yorker Podcast, discusses how black culture is simply not as good at providing the environment in which people can fulfill and expand their cognitive potential. To make it simple, Flynn and Gladwell are making the Cosby-esque argument that it’s not all discrimination, segregation, institutional racism et al that are responsible for the black-white IQ gap, and more broadly, with the dysfunction and poor outcomes among poor blacks. This gets weird when bloggers like Amanda Marcotte or Kay Steiger, who generally don’t cotton to what is generally the “conservative” explanation for black outcomes or black-white differences, endorse Flynn, while not talking about his harsh criticisms of black culture.

Conservative Art

Rod Dreher has a very thoughtful post discussing “conservative art.” While it should be read in full, he ends it with a challenge to identify conservative art and explore what conservative art could look like. The main problem with identifying and creating “conservative art”, of course, is what you mean by conservative.

There is the political ideology of American conservatism, with its mixture of pro-business fiscal policy, hawkish foreign policy and conservative social policy. Under that rubric, most action movies, and especially those like Rambo or Red Dawn could easily be called conservative. Any movie that sends the message that the best way to deal with bad people is simply to blow them up would be comfortable within political American conservatism. There’s also American philosophical conservatism, which is anti government and individualistic. Movies like The Incredibles, which has a near Randian perspective on individual greatness and potential, are in some way conservative. But movies that are conservative purely because of their plots or very clear themes aren’t really what Dreher should be looking for. Conservative art must display and celebrate a conservative temperament, rather than be a vehicle for a political agenda. Because lets face it, Rambo and Red Dawn, while totally awesome, are just silly politically.

What movies celebrate a conservative temperament? I’m hardly original in this thought, but the films of Whit Stillman are an obvious candidate. Metropolitan wistfully documents the fall of the Manhattan WASP elite, with many of the scenes shot in apartments that were furnished to look old and seemingly celebrating a class and lifestyle that is now hopefully anachronistic. Conservatism as counter point to modernism can create some amazing art, and had done so well before Stillman. Just look at the painting of Constable, Eliot’s poetry or Waugh’s novels. These are conservatives, defending nature against the onset of industrialization or, the latter two, defending ancient privileges against the onslaught of liberal modern egalitarianism.

But would American conservatives recognize a reaction against modernism as being constitutive of their intellectual, cultural or political tradition? Of course not. A movement can’t be the public expression of corporate will and the political safeguard of skeptics of modernism. Conservative art can either be the tiresome representation of conservative politics, or an expression of conservative temperament with a a studied defense of tradition, virtue and permanence. It’s just that these two visions are almost contradictory, thus making the quest for conservative art an increasingly quixotic one.

Odd Alliances

Garance points out that Fox News uses a lot of T&A to get viewers.  As part of his increasingly Ahab like quest to destroy FNC, Robert Greenwald of Outfoxed fame has started a petition to allow for “a la carte” pricing and availability of cable — which means that cable consumers only purchase the channels they want, instead of a whole package.  For example, you would be able to just buy ESPN, CNN, MSNBC and the History Channel without having to get Fox News.

What’s odd about Greenwald and (apparantly) Garance’ support for a la carte is that there’s one group that has been pushing for this reform relentlessly — the Parents Television Council.  The PTC is a laughably conservative group that “grades” TV shows for how straight, prudeish and nonviolent they are.  For example,  American Idol gets a green light, while Family Guy and House both get redlighted.  Garance even adopts the PMC’s language, describing Fox News as “smut.”

I’m not surprised we’re opposed on this issue, or if not on the issue of a la carte specfically, the treatment of “smut” generally.  Afterall, I’m just an “adolescent libertarian.”

McMegan had a good post explaining why a la carte hasn’t taken off and isn’t likely to.

The Terror Dream And Counterfactuals

First of all, whatever the merits of The Terror Dream and Michicko Kakatuni’s scathing review, would it hurt TPM Cafe so much to invite someone to the bookclub who doesn’t write a post saying, essentially “Oh, Faludi, you’re just so right, allow me to go on for the next 1000 words celebrating your rightness”?  That’s just boring for us readers.  But let’s get on to the substance.  It’s all below the fold.

Things I Find Strange - Guy Fawkes Edition

One of the oddest cultural moments was when teens all over the country — who would probably all describe themselves as atheistic, nonconformist, freethinking etc — started posting gibberish about how awesome Guy Fawkes was.  Facebook status messages, AIM away messages and all sorts of public space in which teenagers communicate their feelings were polluted by inane tributes of a figure they barely understood.

“Remember, remember the fifth of November” I saw written everywhere.  Of course, I can blame V for Vendetta, which while arguing against religious fascism, decided to glorify Guy f***ing Fawkes. For those who don’t know, Guy Fawkes, was a Catholic extremist and wannabe terrorist who, in 1605, thought it would be swell to blow up the Houses of Parliament on its opening day - killing King James I and a good portion of the Protestant aristocracy.  He was arrested, however, and the bombing never happened.

And yet, V for Vendetta tried to paint Fawkes as some kind of brave freedom fighter, when he instead he was a forerunner of trash like Yigal Amir or Muhammad Atta. In England, on the other hand, they’ve always had it right in regards to commerating this scoundrel: massive bonfires and tons of fireworks.

Gossip Girls Confusion

Yglesias links to this Deborah Solomon interview with Gossip Girls creator Josh Schwartz, wondering where all the Jews are:

Why are the characters uniformly white, with old-money names like Blair Waldorf and Serena van der Woodsen that hark back to a time when high society was not integrated? Why are there no Jewish characters? It’s interesting, because on “The O.C.” I went out of my way to make those characters Jewish, not what you would expect to find in Orange County. But in New York, weirdly, I failed. I was working off of the source material.

This is confused for a few reasons. There are plenty of Jews in Orange County, especially in the wealthier Laguna/Newport areas. So Schwartz may have been going for “diversity for diversity sake” but it wasn’t all that inaccurate.

Yglesias notes that the source material is clearly wrong when it depicts a world of exclusive New York City day schools without Jews, and he’s right — the Upper East Side is plenty Jewish. But Cecily von Ziegesar, who actually attended Nightingale-Bamford, the school that Constance Ballard is based on, surely knows that the Upper East Side isn’t the WASP enclave she depicts. She isn’t trying to create an accurate representation of the Upper East Side that Yglesias or people like him will recognize. She is instead creating a fantasy world that American teenagers can aspire to. This means fantasy New York, with silly waspy names and a lack of Jews and minorities. To America, Jewish New Yorkers are intellectual and/or neurotic , in the model of Woody Allen or Jerry Seinfeld, hardly the fodder for an American fairy tale aimed at teen girls.

Seth Cohen, who took the classic Jewish traits of neuroticism and intelligence and put them into a clever, good looking package, was an aspirational character for Jewish teens as well as a familiar archetype for the TV watching audience. The Gossip Girls characters — Waldorf, Archibald, van der Woodsen — are too familiar archetypes that won’t disturb the book and TV audience’s perceptions of their imaginary Upper East Side. Throw in a smart, bespectacled Jew named Yglesias and everyone would just get confused.