Monday, August 30, 2010
"Telephone"
I just watched the "Telephone" video again for the first time in a while, and I was struck by how well it schematizes the difference between Gaga and Beyonce. To wit: Beyonce just wants to kill her boyfriend; Gaga wants to kill everyone.
Brendan James
More mainstream hipsterdom: skinny jeans, skinny tie, plaid flannel, stubble, discreet tattoo, army jacket, hat with brim, horizontal stripes, etc.
Why People Like Katy Perry
The people who like Katy Perry like her because she reminds them of them. To wit, she is the poster girl for popular kids who dress like hipsters.
Look at the video for the piece-of-shit song "Teenage Dream," the second single and title track off Perry's new album.
We begin with Katy Perry sitting in the passenger's seat of a beat-up BMW drop-top, with her flowing black bangs falling over her Ray-Bans. She's wearing a bunch of mildly exotic-looking jewelery; her tank top is full of strategically-placed holes; she has something in Sanskrit tattooed on the underside of her arm. The guy driving is wearing a faded white t-shirt, old leather boots and a trucker hat, possibly from Urban Outfitters, with something written on the front. Their jeans are both fashionably ripped. Speeding down the highway, they pass other similarly cool and offbeat-looking "emerging adults," who point and wave excitedly: two guys in a rusty red pickup, one wearing big glasses and black-and-blue plaid; and a whole little quirky posse, yellow shades and Indian headdresses and all, in a white convertible. In the remainder of the video, we see lots of horizontal-striped t-shirts, more ripped pants, shaggy long hair, leather jackets, and so on. The party at the end is full of hot white people pairing off, along with one slightly dark-skinned guy and one quirky-looking fat girl to set the mood.
American Apparel has become the new Abercrombie & Fitch. Which is to say, hipsterdom is living out its pathetic final years--its "Vegas years," if you will--among the kids in high school who throw parties every weekend and don't invite you. All they do is look at each other on Facebook all day, and look at themselves, and you want to be one of them.
Look at the video for the piece-of-shit song "Teenage Dream," the second single and title track off Perry's new album.
We begin with Katy Perry sitting in the passenger's seat of a beat-up BMW drop-top, with her flowing black bangs falling over her Ray-Bans. She's wearing a bunch of mildly exotic-looking jewelery; her tank top is full of strategically-placed holes; she has something in Sanskrit tattooed on the underside of her arm. The guy driving is wearing a faded white t-shirt, old leather boots and a trucker hat, possibly from Urban Outfitters, with something written on the front. Their jeans are both fashionably ripped. Speeding down the highway, they pass other similarly cool and offbeat-looking "emerging adults," who point and wave excitedly: two guys in a rusty red pickup, one wearing big glasses and black-and-blue plaid; and a whole little quirky posse, yellow shades and Indian headdresses and all, in a white convertible. In the remainder of the video, we see lots of horizontal-striped t-shirts, more ripped pants, shaggy long hair, leather jackets, and so on. The party at the end is full of hot white people pairing off, along with one slightly dark-skinned guy and one quirky-looking fat girl to set the mood.
American Apparel has become the new Abercrombie & Fitch. Which is to say, hipsterdom is living out its pathetic final years--its "Vegas years," if you will--among the kids in high school who throw parties every weekend and don't invite you. All they do is look at each other on Facebook all day, and look at themselves, and you want to be one of them.
Jessie James
Sunday, August 29, 2010
The Band Perry
(No relation to Katy Perry.) They sound like Taylor Swift; they look like a cross between Interpol and the Decemberists; they write lyrics like Evanescence; they are shaped like Cripple Creek. They are a girl singing and her two brothers playing guitar or bass or mandolin or accordion.
You do realize, of course, that "If I Die Young" means "If I Die A Virgin." If you disagree, you clearly haven't listened to the lyrics: "I've never felt the love of a man/but it sure felt nice when he was holdin' my hand." And this is right after "I'll be wearin' white/when I come into Your kingdom."
Maybe you should read the previous paragraph again, and spend some time thinking about how fucked-up this song is. The song is about dying a virgin. This is a song for girls who would rather die than have sex, or maybe for parents and brothers who would rather see their little girl dead than in the carnal embrace of a man, as long as she dies quietly and leaves behind a peaceful-looking corpse. No one even seems that upset. They're just relieved that she never had to lose her virginity. "I had just enough time," she says. Maybe you should read that lyric again.
You might read the end as a reenactment of the Resurrection, but this band is Christian in rhetoric only, and the miraculous reversal at the end is just a typical Hollywood ending. The lyrics express nothing more than a desperate reluctance to relinquish childhood innocence. Christian kids these days seem especially slow to put away childish things, maybe because they get their Christianity from C.S. Lewis instead of St. Paul.
Note as well that, when her loyal brothers send her pretend-dead body Boromir-style into the river, instead of a sword she is clasping to her bosom book whose cover reads: "POETRY: TENNYSON." This is the band for quiet, literary, Christian girls. That demographic was previously only tapped indirectly by Taylor Swift, who clearly paid good attention in 9th grade English class; now it has been colonized.
(addendum: At first I said Taylor Swift, but I actually think they sound more like Alison Krauss.)
Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook is about to be mythologized in a big way. Mark Zuckerberg is being groomed as a generational hero. We are entering the age of megalomania, which is better than an age of narcissism. But narcissism often follows in the footsteps of megalomania, destroying in time all we have built. Praise leads to narcissism, the most pernicious of all destroyers of talent. Megalomaniacs ought to cultivate, from an early age, a distaste for praise.
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