That would be the hyperreal.

Could any privation possibly justify such a violent response? No. Should gangsta rappers be held to account for their misogyny and violence? Yes.

On the other hand: Do I think gangsta rap is meaningless and uninteresting? No. Do I think it's nothing but antisocial drivel? No. Do I think it's an island of violence and misogyny in an otherwise peaceful and egalitarian America? Most emphatically not.

Now I have some lyrics for you, from a song that was widely played as we geared up for the assault on Afghanistan.

To be sung to the tune of "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)":

[b]Day-O...oh Day-O,
Air force come and they flatten your home
Run Mr Taliban, we know where you're hiding,
Air force come and they flatten your home
Hey USA, USA, USA...
Air force come and they flatten you home
60ft, 70ft, 80ft craters,
Air force come and they flatten your home
Old Uncle Sam's pissed, he ain't no quitter,
Air force come and they flatten your home
When we finish you all be crying,
Air force come and they flatten your home,
Pilot is brother of New York fireman
Air force come and they flatten your home
[/b]

An occasion for humor, surely.

It's kind of an echo of 1980's "BOMB, BOMB, BOMB, BOMB, BOMB IRAN" – a parody of "Barbara Ann." These kind of sentiments are applauded when directed toward the official enemy but are unacceptable coming from black men who are expressing rage at what they see as an oppressive, racist society, or at police whom they regard as a hostile occupying force.

I have little sympathy for the gangsta lean and no ear whatsoever for the music. But what gets me is that we enlightened persons have the gall to whine: Wherever would these men get the idea that violence rules or that women are to be subjugated? Wherever in the world? Well, have a look around.

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What others say about boorite!

quote:

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That would be the hyperreal.

Could any privation possibly justify such a violent response? No. Should gangsta rappers be held to account for their misogyny and violence? Yes.

On the other hand: Do I think gangsta rap is meaningless and uninteresting? No. Do I think it's nothing but antisocial drivel?

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Yeah-- the white kids, as it happens, are major consumers of this stuff. And lots of white performers are trying to cop the lean. So it's not exclusively black or white.

Anyway, the charge we level at gangsta rappers is that their "art" is too violent and misogynistic (which is true). They will fire back that this is a reflection of society and that sugarcoating their lyrics would be lying. Also that they are trying to shake us out of bourgeois (yes, they use this word) complacency via violent imagery (much of which, you might notice, is metaphorical and has to do with ideas rather than real violence). Also that pundits from the dominant culture have a lot of damned gall criticizing rap music for promoting violence, considering the Vietnams and drug wars and so on that they have given us. Maybe we should pretty up the language and euphemize it like the White House does, eh?

I still won't listen to that shit, though. :-P

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What others say about boorite!

I also think we can agree that sub_m7's rap lyrics are ass.

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What others say about boorite!

Driving an '87 Cavalier painted like a cow and owning a TV is hardly a bourgeois life. Not nearly as bourgeois as all of the dukey rope and diamonds-in-14-karat-gold shit that gangsta rappers slather on as though it were Mardi Gras beads. I'd say that an '02 Escalade, with gold trim, shows much more bourgeois leanings than not, wouldn't you? Bourgeois is essentially: middle-class. Having a million or two in the bank still offers, all in all, a middle-class life in America. Perhaps the gangstaz out rollin' in the Benzos are more Nouveau Riche. Middle-class sensibilities aren't always anti-intellectual, though. Are they? You see, Boo, trouble is: It's horseshit. You know it's horseshit, they know it's horseshit.... but as long as they can peddle murder, hatred, rape and other forms of senseless violence under the guise of art, or some great "statement" -and buy dukey ropes and Escalades- they're gonna. And that's one thing I certainly don't blame them for. Any society that rewards artless, less-than-mediocre poison with Cadillacs and gold gets what it deserves. It doesn't mean they're making any such "meaningful social statements", though. They're just shucking Bubba. And Bubba is being told -as he sits in his '93 Chevy at the McDonald's drive through- that to pronounce this "art form" to be revolting, vile trash is to admit to being a racist and a complacent bourgeois ignoramus. Bubba aint as stupid as he looks, though, and horseshit -even if it's covered in gold and seated on leather- still stinks.

Thank you.

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I wanted my half in the middle and I wound up on the edge.

And if y'all don't stop dissin' me, I'm a hafta bus a cap in yo ass.

Surely you can't refute my violent, threatening stance towards your questioning of my ethics as I defend my sense of self-worth, can you?

*snicker*

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I wanted my half in the middle and I wound up on the edge.

In the fall of 1980, I was the whateverth caller to a radio station, so I won two tickets to a club in New Haven to see two popular Long Island club bands. The opening act was a then unknown out-of-the-region Aerosmith-like group called Twisted Sister.

We knew what we were getting into once we entered the club a while before showtime. The sound system was playing Led Zeppelin ... at ear-splitting volumes. Twisted Sister was even louder, if that was at all possible. I don't remember anything they played, with one notable exception, sung roughly to the tune of Alice's Restaurant. The lyrics provided these words of wisdom:

quote:

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I hate the Ayatollah, 'Cause the Ayatollah really sucks.
I hate the Ayatollah, 'Cause the Ayatollah really sucks.
The USA has got the power,
Let's give Iran a fucking nuclear shower!
I hate the Ayatollah, 'Cause the Ayatollah really sucks.

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Most people would call a white guy who acts like a gangster a "wigger". Not particularly a PC term, but you have to admit; when you correspond to a certain culture that isn't your own, it's like being racist against yourself. Think about it; does a white dude in his forties with a strict Irish Catholic background celebrate Kwanza or rush out to buy the new DMZ record?

I know this all doesn't right- after all, people are people. But part of your upbringing influences your tastes and people are expected to think it's weird when you turn totally abnormal from the expected. That's what punk was about.

Anyway, I've forgotten what I was talking about. I don't think there's anything wrong with white rappers or kids who try to be gangsters. I just think it's pretty stupid.

...

Oh yeah, another point I wanted to make is 20 years from now, I doubt anyone is going to remember half of the rappers that pollute(excuse my language) the airwaves today. They will remember some bands, though I can't say who. I don't think many people has done anything particularly influential in the last 10 years or so, and I don't want to name names.

Ah, Back to the Future III is over.

Gangsta rap really has run its course, it was at its high point in about 92-ish, around the time of the Rodney King riots etc where I'm sure there was a lot of ill-feeling around the ethnic minorities of the US. This probably is the cause of all the anti-police sentiment is tracks of the time by the likes of NWA, Ice T etc. You'll notice that the majority of rap nowadays is about how much money and how many hoes the rapper has. Or Eminem moaning about his mother. Again.

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The sound system was playing Led Zeppelin ... at ear-splitting volumes. Twisted Sister was even louder, if that was at all possible. We were too burnt out to stay for the second act (The Good Rats). Instead we went to a movie theater and saw Rocky Horror.

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Yeah, Bunner, more nouveau-riche than bourgeois, as you say. And more nouveau-riche really than nouveau-riche. Therefore the term "hyperreal." Confronted with a materialistic culture that's keeping them down in a world of shit, they see the bet and raise it. Same with the ultra-violence. For certain groups, it may be the only way they have (outside of drugs) to feel a sense of power or self-efficacy even close to what they imagine is felt by a CEO or hotshot politician (persons who control their life circumstances).

We could also talk about the idea of rap as a "zone of transgression" -- a place where it's ok to vent violent thoughts and impulses. It doesn't imply that it's OK to go out in society and find a lady cop and stick a gun in her pussy or whatever horrible thing you quoted. I mean, how many rap performers or consumers actually do such things? We have our zones of transgression: paintball, football, boxing, BDSM (LMNOP). It doesn't mean you're supposed to go out in the world and shoot people, or hit them, or play out B/D scenarios. There's a time and a place.

Lastly, there's the question of meaning. Call a piece of shit a piece of shit. That's fine by me. But it's a mistake to think these folks aren't trafficking in signs and meanings. Something's encoded there for anyone who wants to try and read it. Simply denouncing it don't get it, not for me anyway.

To those who observed that gangsta is over and now it's mostly gold chains and hoes-- pretty much true. Still, there's a lot to say about it.

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I suppose that there is some inherent semiotic construct pertinent to any mass-communicated form. As far as the message goes: a large and, if poorly-funded, useful system of education is available -nay, compulsory- in this country for anybody who wants to take advantage of it. One can learn a broad spectrum of useful ideas, historic fact and useful skills. I think that a lot of the "gangsta" kids who ostensibly have no hope to escape the the ghetto other than to sell drugs, or rap about selling drugs and the reprehensible acitvities that accompany that industry, could broaden their horizons handily if more credence were given to the notion that, to set one's face against ignorance is to begin to achieve. They might even learn what semiotics are. I think the codified message in most lo-fi, street-level, not-cleaned-up-by-billion-dollar-record-labels-yet gangsta rap is "Do you beleive we're getting paid for this shit?"

I would like to say, however, that:

I think that the term "hyperreal" and the Saturday morning cartoon-like intellectual notion that it implies here is a load of crap.

If their message is that they are fighting against the man and against being hassled to achieve wealth and comfort, I would say -insofar as the notion of "The Man' has an ounce of cred- that they're killing the golden goose.

Football, paintball, etc.. are obviously fraught with semiotic and other-directed constructs, but we're brought up to understand that they are games and passtimes. We can divorce ourselves from the idea that "football is life" or that "paintball is life", quite easily since we have been sufficiently educated as to their origins, place in society, rules and consequences. If your idea of a bitchin' Saturday night is to roll out in a $72,000.00 German car and kill motherfuckers for a giggle and get stoned and "rape bitchez", I think that education has been fairly lost on you.

Lastly: Supporting and reinforce-ing a culture that is so divorced from the norm and so deeply ingrained with codified hatred, abuse and apathy towards common courtesy and achievement through acceptable behaviours -in this day and age- is not a sign of abandonment. It's a sign of escalation to maintain insulation and the priviledge of the deprived. The door is open. Stop shooting holes in it, come in, sit down, and take your spot in the rat race.

Charge it to the game, my man. Charge it to the game.

May I present comic number 1542:
[ Posted comic does not exist ]
My highest rated comic ever from back when we could see our ratings, btw.

Peace out.

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I wanted my half in the middle and I wound up on the edge.

Not so much Saturday morning cartoons. More like R. Crumb-- gross exaggeration. It's a matter of seeing the bet and raising it.

The irony is that you and I agree, except for maybe one thing: Instead of dismissing culture that disagrees with me as "a load of crap," I have an urge to look into it and try to understand what's being said and the mindset behind it. Aside from the kick we get out of denouncing our moral inferiors, aren't you curious as to why that stuff was ever popular? Or how it managed to speak to so many?

It's funny-- I've had exactly the same argument about football. A friend once told me that it was nothing but a bunch of big ugly dudes smashing into each other, and at the end, someone wins and someone loses, and the whole thing is completely meaningless and stupid. That just seemed too easy and self-serving to be true.

It seems you're saying that football, paintball, and boxing are different from rap because the zone of transgression is somehow better defined-- that the violence tends not to spill over into daily life as much. I don't know if you're right. There's spillage. The question is how much.

Don't you think that most rappers and rap fans know better than to live out the lyrics? And when they don't, how is it much different from Keith Moon driving a car into a swimming pool? Another case of a performer not knowing the difference between his stage persona and real life.

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What others say about boorite!

I believe the technical term is: "In yo FACE!" *yawn*

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The irony is that you and I agree, except for maybe one thing: Instead of dismissing culture that disagrees with me as "a load of crap," I have an urge to look into it and try to understand what's being said and the mindset behind it. Aside from the kick we get out of denouncing our moral inferiors, aren't you curious as to why that stuff was ever popular? Or how it managed to speak to so many?

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Heh, when I worked for the dollar cinema, I used to ask popcorn consumers if they would like some "partially hydrogenated vegetable oil with FD&C Yellow No. 5 and dimethypolysiloxane added as an anti-foaming agent." The really stupid ones would stare at me for a second and then say no, they just wanted butter.

As long as you and I agree that civilization is in the process of collapse, that's all I care about.

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And then you'd say, "Sorry, we don't have any butter," right?

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"There's no point in beating a dead horse ... except, of course, for the pure joy of it." - A. Whitney Brown

[ Posted comic does not exist ]

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I wanted my half in the middle and I wound up on the edge.

I thought they were Marboros, not Marlboros (you know, to prevent copyright infringement and all that).

Maybe that was FF7 though.

I hated those bastards. In fact I hated all of FFX. It was very much game-as-chore.

Typo. Malboro was a typo.

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I wanted my half in the middle and I wound up on the edge.

quote:

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I thought they were Marboros, not Marlboros (you know, to prevent copyright infringement and all that).

Maybe that was FF7 though.

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Point taken.

Americans have trouble translating Japanese English. They somehow got "Atma Weapon" from "Ultima Weapon."

Point taken.

Americans have trouble translating Japanese English. They somehow got "Atma Weapon" from "Ultima Weapon."

Yep. And how they got Ultimus Bow instead of Artemis Bow. But then again, Final Fantasy Tactics is a special case alltogehter. I think the fact that in the intro scene to chapter one the phrase:

"L I T T L E M O N E Y"

is spelled out so excruciatingly slowly is a hint. :)

Cheap RPG gag:

Give Quistis low energy and the Initiative ability. Have her use Degenerator the instant a Malboro appears.

That is how to smoke Malboros.

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"Only things I approve of should exist." -some guy on the internet