Arguing the Web (1): Mash-Up A/V
...of songs we used to care about in his refracted, rejiggered form is, at its heart, the same exact thing, compositionally and otherwise, as listening to a brand new song...
The Real Beach Lives of Miami
...religiously since 1986, have diligently and gleefully attempted to make into a rite of passage for American children. If anyone is complicit in the rape culture of spring break, it’s...
Got No Shame, Got No Pride
...Machine Head. Rather than shy away from the rising connotations of the rainbow as a marker of gay culture and affiliation, Blackmore responded in 1979 by releasing Down to Earth,...
Where the Hell Do You Think You Are?
...History has fallen of Chaplin’s dreams. But there’s something else unnerving about this speech besides the disappointments of History. The speech begins with the very same music that played throughout...
Sunday Reading
...revolution" ReclaimUC: Stokely Carmichael, "Black power address at UC Berkeley" (1966) 2012 in review: Major higher ed trends A moment of dreaming about higher education "Armed Teacher Training Program" launches...
Personal Ads
...for bloggers”; “a harness for your body so u can walk around with your laptop as u skype”), commentary on high and low culture (“bronze pokemon”; “a taco bell for...
Guest Post: The Politics of Tibetan "Plateau Redness"
...“Tibet’s ‘Plateau Redness’ is Becoming Rarer” explained that the disappearance of plateau redness is simply a case of Tibetans coming to “understand more of scientific culture (kexue wenhua)” and “how...
#RhodesWar: Makunyiwe Macala
...culture. When you’re a student in what has been un/fondly dubbed the purple bubble, these three Rs collate into a particular shared—and often redacted—Reality. It is precisely because this Reality...
Undivided Essay
...Forget the story. What animates Bae Suah’s A Greater Music is the question of whether there are greater (and lesser) forms of art. Or perhaps “question” is the...
Straight Men Can Be Bent
...being staged at the Met. I'm no denigrator of the Met; I love traditional opera culture. But it’s unprecedented to see at the Met this kind of visceral erotic thriller—like...
Heroic tedium and anti-nostalgia
...things of this world? I put out my music with this on the cover. That's how far I have moved beyond petty commercial posturing. Fuck you, here's a rainbow." But...
How Bad Is It?
...suppression of silence” and the fact that “there is barely an empty space in our culture not already carrying commercial messages.” Idiot deans, rancid rappers, endlessly chattering sports commentators, an...
Beyond Avant-Garde
...opposite of "making it new." Since novelty is the status quo of consumer culture, the avant-garde seeks to advance from that, Groys claims; they must challenge and change the disposition...
Fun Will Find a Way
...acts from a pre-music-video era turned out slick singles about the ups and downs of the leisured life, which was represented by the culture industry as a matter of transgressing...
Everybody's Doing It
...adult world is impossible to separate from teenage life, yielding a landscape of volatility no adolescent culture of social rejection could produce. Peer pressures pale in comparison to these forces...
#stopcreating
...emerged. Similarly, in music, sampling—entire tracks constructed from other tracks—has become commonplace. From Napster to gaming, from karaoke to torrent files, the culture appears to be embracing the digital and...