One thing I couldn’t mention in my last post, without breaking the meme rules, was that I’d been listening to a certain amount of funky house, too; because, obviously, I can hardly use the word “funky” without registering my disgust. Indeed, I’d previously dismissed the genre entirely just on that basis. But then I read a post on blissblog describing funky house as “like Musical Mobb and Jon E Cash if they’d tried to do broken beat,” which sounds pretty great. I haven’t actually found anything that sounds that good, though this track by DJ NG is pleasingly sinister (and it’s good to see that funky house shares bassline’s predeliction for producer names that sound like serial numbers), and Kyla’s “Do You Mind,” as mentioned on blissblog, is good, though I’m not sure the funky house version is better than the bassline original (the crossover between the two genres seems kind of interesting; a geographical division of labor?). Actually, the funky house version would be better, if it weren’t for the most obviously funky house part, the shitty drums. On which point this guy seems to be doing better.
If one takes leave of the book with a cautious reserve about everything that has so far attained honor and even worship under the name of morality, this in no way contradicts the fact that the whole book contains no negative word, no attack, no spite—that it lies in the sun, round, happy, like some sea animal basking among rocks. (Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, III IV, §1)
Infinite Thought has demanded, according to the rules of her new Dogmeme, that I write a post containing no criticism of anything; conveniently, today I have been behaving very much like a Nietzschean sea animal, sitting out on my deck (which is like a balcony but, being American, bigger) on a perfect Berkeley day, reading Etienne Balibar and listening to bassline records. Read more↴
According to IMDB, Amnesty International was “highly critical” of Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay; aside from being an amusing example of taking a film too literally, it’s an illustration of the way a certain sort of liberalism requires authoritarianism to define itself against. This is particularly a problem if you’re criticizing Harold and Kumar, as the film spends so much of its time exposing this idea of absolute authority as a fantasy, one held by liberals of the right wing (the neoconservatives) and the left wing (Amnesty). Who would have thought someone would make a film of Derrida’s Rogues in the form of a stoner comedy? Read more↴
I had no desire to see Mamma Mia! which in a way is odd as I like both Abba and musicals. But a friend prevailed on me to see it last week, and it turns out my initial instincts were correct; it’s not a very good film. Indeed, being a musical and using Abba songs are precisely where the film doesn’t work.
All the reviews I’ve seen have mentioned Pierce Brosnan’s terrible singing, but I haven’t seen much criticism of Meryl Streep’s performance, which is much worse, and also does more to explain what’s wrong with the film. Read more↴
Hipsterdom is the first “counterculture” to be born under the advertising industry’s microscope, leaving it open to constant manipulation but also forcing its participants to continually shift their interests and affiliations. Less a subculture, the hipster is a consumer group.
The boring point is that this is, obviously, false. The idea of a counterculture arises from the same mid-20th century economic and social changes that lead to consumerism and the modern advertising industry. Hipsterism’s close relationship to the advertising industry isn’t something new at all. What is interesting, though, is how this spurious account of hipsters shows Adbusters‘ characteristically paranoid relationship to consumerism. Read more↴
Two bad reviews of The Dark Knight: bad in the sense that they’re poorly executed reviews, as well as being highly critical of the film. There are a number of annoying things about John Pistelli’s review, but the politically important one is the claim that:
Batman, operating outside the law to protect the defenseless people, represents a kind of Bush/Cheney figure, doing what he has to do for the good of the homeland.
He seems to have somehow forgotten that George Bush is the president of the US, and so he can hardly be said to be “operating outside the law”; indeed, the Bush administration’s particular mode of employment of the law is one of its distinguishing features.
Lenin’s review also struck me as kind of wrong, but it took me a while to figure out why. Read more↴
