that girl is actually my sister. she didn't ask to be in this picture with one of any number of ridiculous actors attending NYU - she was simply excited to graduate college, the first generation since our parents came over from iran during the revolution. i'm sorry if you "simply do NOT like" her face, but you kind of sound like an asshole.
real talk, everybody.
scott, i've been reading for a long time - since around 2005 or so - and this kind of counterintuitive gesture for the site is exactly what made stereogum feel so much more engaging than the other blogs that emerged at the time. bold move, but genuinely a smart one.
What's hilarious about these comments is that all of them figure themselves as the "unpopular opinion" in digging the album, when in fact only two or so people here have suggested it might not be so great. All I was trying to say is that there is a huge difference between musical progression and inappropriate arrangements: the melodies and progressions don't necessarily lend themselves to "slappin da bass mon," and come off as "c'mon, let's add this and this - we've got the money for it!" and to reiterate above, i don't see anything mainstream pop about the record. only in bizarro indie world does the stuff that gets called pop here even make sense.
super articulate write-up. spot on. i've hesitated to come out and say that it's overproduced, if only because i think the material has a right to be embellished and nuanced beyond the intimacy of OEND or CDTC. But I had a sneaking suspicion with the last album, confirmed here, that sometimes embellishment doesn't enrich, but rather obscures. it's a tough claim to make, because i think i've grown out of the "they're old lo-fi stuff was so much better" argument across the board, but again, i think production and arrangement obscures the songwriting development which is happening between early and later material.
i actually appreciated what you had to say initially quite a bit. and maybe he will get a chance because of this intervention, but you're spot on to note how demeaning the whole thing is, starting with the camera in the guy's face, etc.
Let's try that again:
I definitely read Mans’s initial reply sympathetically – it’s been something I’ve also thought about when the discussion arises here on vgum about the limitations of “comedy” – and felt like it was an articulate moment for calling out something potentially in poor taste.
I know I'm quite late in responding here, but I do have to say that reading through this thread was both super frustrating and, well, kind of cathartic (?). I definitely read Mans's initial reply sympathetically - it's been something I've thought about when the discussion about the limitations of "comedy" which continue to appear periodically on this site - and felt like it was an articulate moment for calling out something potentially in poor taste.
I think there's a sort of limitation to the fallout - silentkit's explanation revealed that she would actually be on the "other side" of this joke, the kind of person it would likely offend the most, and so that sort of threw the angry replies in the air. Here's the contradiction - no, it doesn't matter who makes the joke, because members of a group don't get to stand in for the whole group. At the same time, it _does_ matter who makes the joke, because there are totally different politics for someone who does have to deal with a very real fear about male predators.
The way in which both continued the conversation, though, makes me feel like maybe there is a place for thoughtful discussion in a public forum. Not that anything was "solved" (what does that even mean?), but I really appreciated the fact that Mans and silentkit approached the conversation with an open mind. Thank you both for keepin it real.
If this is too long to read or boring, sorry. The username for the comment below me is "the hammer is my penis"....?
whoa. ok, here's the thing. stories like this (HELLO COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATIVE IDEOLOGY) often elide the invisible factors that make them look like, "well, anyone can do it. i did. just pull yourself up by those bootstraps!" i've been "below the poverty line" and had to use social services, particularly for health care (HI AGAIN C.C.I.). but i came from a comfortable middle class background, i knew that i had a support system, etc., etc. obesity in low-income neighborhoods is way more complicated than this. race and class privilege - which affects every facet of one's life - is almost entirely invisible to those who have always grown up in said privilege.
this is the equivalent of the haughty elitism that lets someone like Christine O'Donnell say, "I'm You." Every privileged conservative white person hears that and goes, "We are all the same, aren't we?"
Just don't forget how much of a privileged boys club this community is, whether it wants to admit it or not. I'm surprised (to echo/plagiarize some of Sr. Winwood's points on this issue, or to echo/plagiarize the conversation about the last Caption This) that somehow films like this get a "pass," because they're so "funny." When, in fact, The Hangover is just a "cool" version of all those films that this site critiques.
Also, is it surprising that despite what Heigl has said in critique of her experiences, all of a sudden she developed this media narrative as Big Bitch.
If ever there was a movie that has as backwards and hateful a politics as this site generally claims to be critical of, this is it.
Also, see any Judd Apatow related film that somehow gets read as progressively minded.
"100 years ago, when I was your age, I played Magic the Gathering and did nothing popular. And we counted our scores with an abacus."
-Gabe D., pictured in center
I also think the Ariel Levy text is a good read. I mean, the feminist sex wars in the 80s have always been interesting for this reason, because they've become these polemical politicized positions that only result in a lose-lose situation. The anti-porn activists somehow got aligned with the crazy evangelical Right, and lefties were like "take it off!!" Both seemed still within this fishbowl where nothing got better for the ladies on this front, and readers of Maxim everywhere um don't care.
I suppose it would be wrong to vilify McKellar for her decision (she can make decisions for herself), but there is something that you lose as a role model for those middle-school girls for whom you've written books saying "Girls can be great at math, and don't need to fit into this box that tells you what values/interests you should or shouldn't have."I also think the Ariel Levy text is a good read. I mean, the feminist sex wars in the 80s have always been interesting for this reason, because they've become these polemical politicized positions that only result in a lose-lose situation. The anti-porn activists somehow got aligned with the crazy evangelical Right, and lefties were like "take it off!!" Both seemed still within this fishbowl where nothing got better for the ladies on this front, and readers of Maxim everywhere um don't care.
I suppose it would be wrong to vilify McKellar for her decision (she can make decisions for herself), but there is something that you lose as a role model for those middle-school girls for whom you've written books saying "Girls can be great at math, and don't need to fit into this box that tells you what values/interests you should or shouldn't have."
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