I’ve always thought “lumpenproletariat” was a bit of a zombie term. Marx invented the term but never really theorized it, instead presenting it – on those few occasions when he used the term more than in passing – through images of heterogeneity:
Alongside decayed roués with dubious means of subsistence and of dubious origin, alongside ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie, were vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, maquereaus, brothel keepers, porters, literati, organgrinders, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers, beggars – in short, the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass, thrown hither and thither, which the French term la bohème (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte).
Indeed, this untheorizable diversity, which “endlessly proliferates categories to encompass the spectacle of the metropolis,” may be the point of the term, as Peter Stallybrass argues in a dazzling essay on Marx and heterogeneity. But “lumpenproletariat” was taken up by Marxists as if it had a secure place within Marxist theory, as if the lumpenproletariat was a definite class with a particular role or characteristics; usually, this Marxist deployment of the term has served only to give a theoretical cover for moralism. Read more↴
f(x)’s aesthetics are always top notch, but I’ve generally found their music to be pretty hit and miss. The same is true of their new album, which is largely forgettable but has two fantastic tracks. One is the title track, “4 Walls,” a great slice of garage, and the other is a piano-led house track called “Rude Love.” Read more↴
Canada’s premiere supernatural drama Lost Girl came to an end last week, more, it has to be said, with a whimper than a bang. The last episode was the resolution of a storyline involving the mysterious dark plots of Bo’s dad (who turned out to be Hades), a storyline that the show has been vaguely teasing since the end of season 2. But this kind of long-running plotline has never been the show’s strong point; it’s “worldbuilding,” for want of a better word, has always been rather incoherent and perfunctory, like a bad RPG quest where an NPC shows up and says “you’ve never heard of me before but I’m here to tell you that this random object you’ve never heard of either is VERY IMPORTANT and you need to go and fetch it.” Much better was the episode a couple of weeks ago, which was a Wizard of Oz pastiche, or a few weeks before that, a flashback set in a high school for valkyries. Or the classic second season episode in which all the characters swapped bodies, or the episode where characters swapped bodies and also were in a belle-époque alternate universe. The show was at its best, in other words, when it was embracing the tropes or formulae popular in fanfiction. Read more↴
It pains me to say that Demi Lovato’s new album is a disappointment. It starts very well indeed with the two singles, “Confident” and “Cool for the Summer,” which are both fantastic, especially “Cool for the Summer,” which I initially thought was merely very good, but has entirely won me over with its bombastic drama. After that, though, the album’s insistence on being uplifting largely gets in the way of it being any good. “For You” at least fully commits with a windswept monumentality that reminds me of some of The Saturdays better moments. Most of the rest of the album is very X Factor, by which I mean its larded with generic signifiers of “uplifting”. This, ironically, shows a lack of confidence in Lovato’s abilities. Read more↴
Blunt Talk and You’re the Worst are both shows where the premise depends on our cynicism about redemption narratives. Blunt Talk begins with Patrick Stewart’s character Walter Blunt standing on top of a police car drunkenly declaiming Shakespeare. This sets up a parody of the now-familiar PR-ed apology and public appeal for forgiveness, including a stirring avowal of the importance of journalism (which leads to a staged outside broadcast from a fake hurricane in a porn studio forced to rent out its space because of Los Angeles’s mandatory condom laws’ effect on the porn business) and attendance at alcoholics anonymous (with a last minute switch to Sex Addicts Anonymous for Walter and Gamblers Anonymous for his manservant Harry. “That’s a good idea; you love gambling,” says Walter). But when this sex-addict adventure goes south leaving Walter and Harry mournfully discussing loneliness in a suburban boat, the show reveals that it might be taking the redemption narrative more seriously. Read more↴