pfork grappling w misogyny aka sage francis review

Also, 50 Cent is about as scary as a really muscular blouse.

I think it's a valid question. Maybe everyone's just dimissing it because it's an old one.

about 9xpost

I think this is very OTM. I also think that the role of the emcee as a storyteller as opposed to a moralgiver is germane to this discussion.

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what are the other options?

x-post there's always the option of not liking blatantly homophobic raps, mark.

I also don't understand the Suicide Girls asides - why anyone would say the Suicide Girls site is an example of mysogny? (So it's run by self-hating women?!? wtf)

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if you believe that listening to people express misogyny, homophobia, and bloodlust is harmful and hurtful, then the vast of majority is, in fact, harmful and hurtful.

Wait, that's exactly what I'm saying I have to do in order to enjoy certain hip hop songs/artists. Listening to the Ying Yang twins just the other day, the line "Faggot you better watch your mouth" slides by and you flinch and just move on. But the finch is exactly that internal moment of thinking "this is fucked up, oh well, whatever, it's not surprising, anyway . . " and then you move on. The positives about the music outweigh its negative side, but the negatives are there. I don't think the claim is "while you are listening to homophobic rap lyrics you are temporarily endorsing them or altering your beliefs".

It's not, but it's weird that this guy's trying to make a point about misogyny, objectivication of women, and how we tune those things out when it's convenient for us, all while there's a Suicide Girls ad banner flashing right beside his review.

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That said, I wouldn't make fun of the paragraph at top; it's totally valid. We all of us kinda suspend that stuff in order to enjoy music that's just good music, but you can't suspend it entirely. And if you do suspend it entirely, you risk running into -- to borrow a phrase from Bush, which I never thought I'd have recourse to do -- the whole soft bigotry of low expectations thing. Similarly, I can rarely bring myself to completely look down on the corny-indie-fuxxor habit of getting ultra-excited about any hip-hop that goes positive or conscious and doesn't have those characteristics; you do enough of that suspension act and it's sometimes a relief to get a break.

imagine that, not always filtering life through your political beliefs!

I don't think it's inconsistent at all actually. But I also don't think that people ignore the differences between their opinions and the opinions espoused by the music they listen to (esp. when the rifts between the two are massive.) And I think Atheists listening to "Jesus Walks" or Gospel or roots reggae are hyper aware of their respective differences.

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not at the moment of listening, not if it's as powerful as "Jesus Walks". maybe at the time of thinking about it afterwards, but that's a different matter. great songs can take you there whether you believe in it or not.

I'm not sure how misogynistic I become when eg "Wait" 'takes me there' but then I don't think it's that misogynistic anyway (I explained why on the original thread).

http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/swift/english/e_swift

"If one is capable of intellectual detachment, one can perceive merit in a writer whom one deeply disagrees with, but enjoyment is a different matter. Supposing that there is such a thing as good or bad art, then the goodness or badness must reside in the work of art itself- not independently of the observer, indeed, but independently of the mood of the observer. In one sense, therefore, it cannot be true that a poem is good on Monday and bad on Tuesday. But if one judges the poem by the appreciation it arouses, then it can certainly be true, because appreciation, or enjoyment, is a subjective condition which cannot be commanded. ... And aesthetic judgement can be upset just as disastrously — more disastrously, because the cause is less readily recognized — by political or moral disagreement. If a book angers, wounds or alarms you, then you will not enjoy it, whatever its merits may be. If it seems to you a really pernicious book, likely to influence other people in some undesirable way, then you will probably construct an aesthetic theory to show that it has no merits. Current literary criticism consists quite largely of this kind of dodging to and fro between two sets of standards. And yet the opposite process can also happen: enjoyment can overwhelm disapproval, even though one clearly recognizes that one is enjoying something inimical. Swift, whose world-view is so peculiarly unacceptable, but who is nevertheless an extremely popular writer, is a good instance of this....

It is not enough to make the usual answer that of course Swift was wrong, in fact he was insane, but he was ‘a good writer’. It is true that the literary quality of a book is to some small extent separable from its subject-matter. Some people have a native gift for using words, as some people have a naturally ‘good eye’ at games.... But not all the power and simplicity of Swift's prose, nor the imaginative effort that has been able to make not one but a whole series of impossible worlds more credible than the majority of history books — none of this would enable us to enjoy Swift if his world-view were truly wounding or shocking. Millions of people, in many countries, must have enjoyed Gulliver's Travels while more or less seeing its anti-human implications.... The explanation must be that Swift's world-view is felt to be not altogether false — or it would probably be more accurate to say, not false all the time. Swift is a diseased writer. He remains permanently in a depressed mood which in most people is only intermittent, rather as though someone suffering from jaundice or the after-effects of influenza should have the energy to write books. But we all know that mood, and something in us responds to the expression of it. Take, for instance, one of his most characteristic works, The Lady's Dressing Room: one might add the kindred poem, Upon a Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed. Which is truer, the viewpoint expressed in these poems, or the viewpoint implied in Blake's phrase, ‘The naked female human form divine’? No doubt Blake is nearer the truth, and yet who can fail to feel a sort of pleasure in seeing that fraud, feminine delicacy, exploded for once? Swift falsifies his picture of the world by refusing to see anything in human life except dirt, folly and wickedness, but the part which he abstracts from the whole does exist, and it is something which we all know about while shrinking from mentioning it. Part of our minds — in any normal person it is the dominant part — believes that man is a noble animal and life is worth living: but there is also a sort of inner self which at least intermittently stands aghast at the horror of existence. In the queerest way, pleasure and disgust are linked together....

It is often argued, at least by people who admit the importance of subject-matter, that a book cannot be ‘good’ if it expresses a palpably false view of life. We are told that in our own age, for instance, any book that has genuine literary merit will also be more or less ‘progressive’ in tendency. This ignores the fact that throughout history a similar struggle between progress and reaction has been raging, and that the best books of any one age have always been written from several different viewpoints, some of them palpably more false than others. In so far as a writer is a propagandist, the most one can ask of him is that he shall genuinely believe in what he is saying, and that it shall not be something blazingly silly. To-day, for example, one can imagine a good book being written by a Catholic, a Communist, a Fascist, pacifist, an anarchist, perhaps by an old-style Liberal or an ordinary Conservative: one cannot imagine a good book being written by a spiritualist, a Buchmanite or a member of the Ku-Klux-KIan. The views that a writer holds must be compatible with sanity, in the medical sense, and with the power of continuous thought: beyond that what we ask of him is talent, which is probably another name for conviction. Swift did not possess ordinary wisdom, but he did possess a terrible intensity of vision, capable of picking out a single hidden truth and then magnifying it and distorting it. The durability of Gulliver's Travels goes to show that, if the force of belief is behind it, a world-view which only just passes the test of sanity is sufficient to produce a great work of art."

Worth pondering with regard to hip hop misogyny, esp. that second paragraph.... Anyway, this is a more aesthetic explanation of what we've been talking about in purely racial / political terms, e.g., "In the queerest way, pleasure and disgust are linked together" when you disagree with the content but enjoy the form of a work of art.

like Burzum?

Sure. Men are paid less than women, for one thing. But on the other hand, it's very rare that a video will feature men being slapped around, tied up, pissed on, etc., by women. On the other hand, I've seen videos where women were being screwed while having their heads shoved in buckets of water for almost a minute at a time. Hard not to call that exploitation, no matter the paycheck at the end.

Talking actual prices is instructive. Since I'm in the porn business, I know what the prices are. If a girl does a blowjob scene, she'll get $200-250. She'll get an additional $50 if the guy pisses in her mouth afterward. Is that exploitation (by the standards that, say, third world garment workers are exploited - i.e. they should be getting more money for what they're doing)? Would you let someone piss in your mouth for $50? Or, to go up the scale, would you let six guys fuck you in the ass, without condoms but with paperwork "assuring" that they were HIV negative (not assuring that they were free of, say, gonorrhea or chlamydia), for $1000? How about $1200? That's about the price ceiling, unless you're a big star (Jenna doesn't do boy-girl anal, under any circumstances).

But on the other hand, it's very rare that a video will feature men being slapped around, tied up, pissed on, etc., by women.

Because the business ASSUMES women don't like that sort of thing. I am sure there are women who do enjoy this. It's just that people still have the idea that only men enjoy porn. This is not the case at all. It's slowly changing but there's still this idea that women don't like "hard sex." (to put it in a simplistic way)

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If I punch you in the eye, you get a black eye. If I wait until a guy with a hand-held video camera yells "action," then give you that black eye, how is that different?

anyway, maybe i go about life the wrong way but i tend to laugh at the most misogynistic rap out there because obviously i understand that some of these things are terrible portrayals of women and totally irresponsible, but i dunno, i feel like it creates a balance in the genre. if there isn't that shit, the check will not be created in order to balance it.

can i vote necessary evil?

note: sage francis is a nice dude. after that review i wrote him, he sent me some more obscure records (joe beats 'reverse discourse', for example). good times. i've yet to hear the new album.

Alex in SF be running this misogyny in rap thread shit. So OTM.

If Swift's argument is that because millions in many countries enjoy Swift, there must in fact be something true about his worldview, is the same true about Eminem/50 Cent/controversial rapper du jour? I feel the Orwell piece is On The Money, but I don't think it's arguing what you think it is.

Maybe I'm out of the loop, but WHERE exactly is this "balance" in rap....the misogynistic stuff is everywhere...I don't see a whole lot of differing views (in the mainstream stuff that I come across, I don't really pay attention to underground rap anymore)....

and xpost re porn: if those Americans among us (although we don't exclusive rights to it) lived in a full employment economy, it might be a different matter to employ the victorian morals that everyone knows are bogus and hypocritical anyway - there would be "civilized" options outside of sex work, and then the rational choice theorists among us could sneer, or harbor jealousy, at those who felt that porn/stripping/prostitution gave them the best return for their time spent at work. if anything the argument should be made that porn should be better regulated for workers and that salaries should be raised across the board. this doesn't mean that the freaky stuff would stop, but that it would be better compensated - after all, it's estimated that it's an industry as big as Hollywood, and after all, it keeps a number of independent rental houses afloat. You didn't think Antonioni and Bruckheimer rented that well anyway, right?

http://citypages.com/databank/19/893/article4117.asp

He's right, but I guess I just don't believe in, and will never believe in, "objective" art criticism. I want to read about why someone loves or hates something. And part of that is recognizing the aesthetic merits in evil art.

See also Pauline Kael's review of Straw Dogs, which she called the first fascist work of art in movies, and rightly panned as such...

I am not joking, but I really don't understand what you are saying. Sorry, English isn't my first language. This ties in with the fact that English lyrics never *jump out* at me, I don't pay as much attention to'em and by the time I do, I have usually made my mind up about the song.

Kael also recognized the turn-on of Straw Dogs, I should add.

Where does Dumpster Juice singing about porker punks fit into all this?

http://www.tt.net/vault/discos/dumpster.html

"How many cunts does it take to screw in a lightbulb?"

"How many?"

"None!"

*laughter all around*

I thought that joke summed up what DJ is all about pretty well.

Sincerity trumps snarkiness any day.

Xgau made the argument that the Marshall Mathers LP actually unpacks the type of misogyny that was a big part of male pop-culture in the 1990s, and I agree with that - "drips" is the first time he didn't give himself the out clause, and I skip it because it is just misogynistic - something that can't be said for "Kim".

There are literally hundreds of hip hop records that either make something of thematic material that is broadly offensive in some way, or whose musical conception is so compelling that you recognise the artists as young people who you hope will learn some lessons in life and go with the music anyway. Such is life. Complacent misogyny is rarely worth pissing in the direction of, but someone tackling dangerous material, when they're up to it, can be thrilling, and holds out the possibility of staking out new political ground, meat and drink for staunch progressives.

Dont be such an angry stalker, dude