[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Rihanna feat. Chris Brown- “Birthday Cake (Remix)”
As you probably know, before the 2009 Grammy Awards, Chris Brown physically abused his then-girlfriend Rihanna. In the intervening years, people have divided themselves into two camps. My self-selected Tumblr and twitter universe (what I suspect is a vocal minority) has sided with Rihanna and spewed vitriol at Brown. These people suggest that beating up a woman is an unforgivable act, not to mention an act for which Brown has not even attempted to atone.
The other group will admit (I hope) that there’s no excuse for such violence, but they “love” Chris Brown enough to overlook, excuse, or forgive his actions. They claim that, while Brown was wrong, he does seem repentant and has suffered in his own way, even if he didn’t suffer as much as Rihanna. Time heals all wounds. Some of these people are idiots, but they can’t all be. #TeamBreezy is less morally defensible but probably more realistic in their view of human nature.
The debate intensified in the past week after Brown won a Grammy, which seemed like a public validation and embrace of him. He went on to wish Ri-Ri a happy birthday on twitter. (Insert comment on what counts as news in our Information Age.) To top it all off, the erstwhile couple collaborated on and released not one, but two, songs together, the better of which is posted above. The Brown haters have more fuel for their fire, and the Brown apologists can point to Rihanna’s reconciliation with Brown as a sign that we should forgive him as well.
Here’s why all of those people are wrong.
As his fans would note, Chris Brown has completed all of his court-ordered community service and counseling, and he issued several apologies* in the wake of the beating. It’s also true that he undoes any goodwill he earns by being, by all accounts, an egotistical jerk. He threw a tantrum on Good Morning America when they brought up the incident, and he pissed on the opportunity presented by the recent Grammy with a tweet that it was “the ultimate FUCK OFF.”
So while the letter of Chris Brown’s rehabilitation has been met, the spirit of it definitely hasn’t. His opponents would argue that he isn’t really sorry for what he did, which seems true. People who are torn up with guilt don’t look like this on a jetski a few days later. He also never really stopped releasing music or trying to gain people’s sympathy. In fact, most of his language repurposes himself as the victim.
Brown’s supporters might then argue that his music should be evaluated on its own merits, that Chris Brown the singer should be separated from Chris Brown the guy who sent a young woman to the hospital. What I would say to them is that it is impossible to do that in 2012: The public lives of pop stars are always already part of their artistic personas. That’s the game they agree to and often profit from. For example, it is impossible to listen to Rihanna’s revenge-tinged, aggrieved Rated R album without the context that it was made as a response to the beating. For his part, Chris Brown keeps trying to stage every public event as a comeback, and he wants the benefit of that narrative without an acknowledgment of what caused it in the first place.
Actually, the very fact that people care about this issue shows how much the public and private cannot be separated. I’d like to think people would be this outraged if Chris Brown had beaten up some nondescript hoodrat, but I know they’re outraged because he beat up America’s Sweetheart. Sadly, it’s not as if Chris Brown is the first male singer to assault a woman; he is, however, the first male singer to assault one of the most famous women in the world.
But the Brown haters aren’t off the hook. At the same time, believing that Chris Brown “isn’t sorry enough” is a childish and ridiculous stance with no endgame. Someone’s repentance for a crime is always subjective, which is why we have an objective court system in the first place. It’s not up to you. And, even if it bothers you, can you really blame him for wanting to put the biggest mistake of his life behind him? Can you blame him for having trouble adjusting to being loved by everyone in the media (except people against lip-syncing) to being hated by everyone in the media overnight? Even if you deserve it, that has to be weird, right?
There’s also a whiff of “the lady doth protest too much” with the most vocal of the Brown haters. There’s something incredibly self-serving about posts like this one that attempt to define how everyone should respond to traumatic events. Most of these posts also condemn the collaborations as a cynical cash-grab (Again, you don’t know that.) and end up slut-shaming Rihanna by pointing out how sexually-aggressive the collaborations are, when that’s the kind of music each artist has always made. What were they going to remix? A nursery rhyme?
In the end, Browns’ supporters and detractors both suffer from sketching a caricature from a complex portrait.
Brown’s supporters want to divorce his despicable actions from who he is, which is always a dangerous game. A condition of his fame and fortune is his status as a role model, and he proved to be a terrible example to impressionable fans everywhere. Sure, no one’s perfect, but no one’s quite as wrong as a man who beats up women.
Brown’s opponents believe that he should have known better, even though he was, at the time, a nineteen-year-old without a high school diploma, who had been a victim of domestic violence himself. Rather than asking why this violence happened and how acts like it might be prevented, they have simplified it to a degree that no one can learn from.
Worse, by implying that his actions are unforgivable, they are taking agency away from the real victim. Whether or not Rihanna forgives Brown is her choice, and every victim of a traumatic event responds to it in a different way. How do you know singing “I’mma make you my bitch” to Chris Brown isn’t her way of reasserting her dominance and seizing power back? You have the right to document if Rihanna embraces Chris Brown or not, but you don’t have the right to shame her into never doing so. By stamping your own values on this story, you have backed her into a corner and ensured that she can’t dictate how or when a reconciliation could happen. After all, people have forgiven their exes for much worse in the real world.
And maybe that’s the real lesson to take away: that they are in the real world. These people aren’t talking points or totems for twitter teams. They are growing up in a real world that is messy, complicated, and difficult to navigate. They are living in public with consequences they can’t predict.
Right after the abuse was reported, Brown was fond of insisting that only two people were there and knew the whole story. He claimed that the police report and all subsequent news reports got important details wrong. That might be true, and it might be a cowardly way of excusing his actions. I don’t know. But what I do know is that, if we can’t be sure how this whole story began, then we certainly have to stop pretending to have all the answers to how it will end.
*- My favorite, although it’s weird to have a favorite apology for domestic violence, was one from what appears to be Bow Wow’s home bowling alley. It totally reminded me of the last scene of There Will Be Blood.
"Embarrassment Rock"- Nitsuh Abebe- Why We Fight- Pitchfork
“One of the more subtle casualties of rockism is the ability to articulate what’s actually good about a piece of rock music. So when a few exciting new rock bands come around the corner, like they did 10 years ago, they’re immediately bathed in clichés: This is what rock’n’roll is all about! Now that’s real rock’n’roll attitude! Rock is back! These guys are its saviors! And so on until the end of time. You could spend 24 hours straight reading praise for the White Stripes without ever coming across much talk about what made them valuable— just appeals to the existence of rock itself. The idea is always that rock is self-evidently good and true, in ways we all understand and value highly and would probably be a little bit embarrassed to try and explain to one another (explaining rock’n’roll is totally not rock’n’roll, right?), and so all that is really needed is to identify it: Here it is, firing on all cylinders, valiantly trouncing everything in its path. The weirdest aspect of this muteness was that you’d consistently see rock bands praised in the negative: At least they’re not Britney Spears (who, recall the tragedy, isn’t a composer), at least they’re not dance music, at least they’re not hip-hop, at least they’re not pop. But, you know… what are they, specifically?”
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Meek Mill feat. Young Chris- “House Party”
From his mixtape Dreamchaser
Oh. I get it. I guess everyone’s going to know who Meek Mill is now.
permalink
"Phasing Out the Skit: How Hip-Hop Outgrew One of Its Most Frustrating Traditions"- Evan Rytlewski- A.V. Club
![Back by popular demand:THE QUEST FOR THE MOST ’90s FILM OF ALL TIMEMallratsThe film world has largely turned on Kevin Smith. Legend—his own preening, self-aggrandizing legend—has it that he’s shooting his final film, then taking his ball and going home, where he will lead a podcast network that preaches to the converted. He finds that preferable to facing the critics who question him and resent the wasting of his promise. Before the circus surrounding Red State’s Sundance premiere, the biggest news he had made in a decade was related to getting kicked off a plane for being fat. So it’s hard to flash back to 1995, when major publications mentioned him in the same sentence as Woody Allen. But it did happen.Smith enjoys painting himself as the youngest son of Miramax, a pioneer of the ’90s independent cinema boom. And, granted, he did make a black-and-white movie with lots of talking and no conflict for $30,000. But as soon as he could, he jumped ship to Universal, who gave him $6 million to make a movie with lots of talking and no conflict—this time in color. That movie is Mallrats, and, to a thirteen-year-old who wanted the cachet of independent film but wasn’t quite ready for actual experimental art, it seemed like a welcome compromise.STARS/PERFORMANCES- Actors Who Are Unquestionably Tied to the Decade- Shannen Doherty [+10]Although she’s the third lead, Doherty was prominently featured in the advertising and, hot off Beverly Hills 90210, was probably the reason the movie got made. Again, hard to believe.The whole movie takes place in one day, but Doherty’s character changes clothes four or five times. Judging from her reputation as “difficult,” I’m guessing there was a clause in her contract that said she got to keep her wardrobe from the film, and she pushed for as many Silverstone boots as she could. What can I say though? I was always more of a Jennie Garth fan.*- Other Notable Actors- Michael Rooker, Jason Lee, Jeremy London, Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, Jason Mewes, Ethan Suplee [+15- Max]Mallrats is a true ensemble. Lee and London are two spurned lovers who spend a day at the mall trying to arrange for a reconciliation with their girls. But it’s way more convoluted than that sounds.Here’s an example: The butt-cutted [+1] London plays T.S.—named such so that Kevin Smith can prove he knows about books and stuff. T.S.’s girlfriend broke up with him because her dad didn’t like him. Her dad didn’t like him because T.S. messed up the dating TV show he produces. (And it was a very special live episode shot at the mall!) T.S. messed up the dating TV show because the girl who was going to be a contestant died because she exercised too much. She exercised too much because T.S. implied she was fat. All of this information is conveyed in the first two minutes of the film, and it’s as exhausting as it sounds. Mallrats is one of those films in which a lot happens…but really nothing happens.To keep down on costs, none of the stores are name-brand [+5]. As you can see, Smith tries to have a lot of fun with this. (Homosexual panic points: [+5])True to form, lots of characters and hijinx keep our star-crossed lovers from being together. The mall is crowded because of a Stan Lee signing at the comic book shop [+3]. Mall security is breathing down T.S. and Brodie’s necks, knowing that they plan on crashing the dating show. Shannen Doherty seems to be hooking up with the manager of Fashionable Male, played by a brilliant, oily, straight-out-of-Boston Ben Affleck. Claire Forlani is struggling with an American accent. One character’s entire subplot revolves around HIS INABILITY TO SEE THE IMAGE IN A MAGIC-EYE POSTER [+10,000].And, when we talk about Kevin Smith, we have to talk about his casting of people who are not actors. Sometimes it works. This is Jason Lee’s first speaking part, and he’s a natural. All of Brodie’s lines require shouting, but, as something like a proto-Charlie Day, Lee makes it work. Sometimes, as with Jay and Silent Bob, however, Smith’s instincts fail him. It’s always a power move to cast yourself, but casting yourself in a non-speaking but featured role? That’s kind of like e.e. cummings lower-casing his name and paradoxically drawing more attention to it. But there I go again, proving I know about books and stuff. Jay and Silent Bob are there for catch-phrase mongering purposes [+5] and not much more.Stop trying to make “snootchie bootchies” happen. “Snootchie bootchies” is never going to happen.TECHNOLOGY/CULTURAL RELICS- Could the Plot Reasonably Occur with Current Technology?I suppose [-10], but these characters would be even more insufferable if they were documenting their loitering on twitter.- Hacking/ComputersNo, but in Brodie’s first scene, he is playing with the Hartford Whalers on a Sega NHL game. That’s not only an outmoded game console, but a team that is now defunct [+5].- Other Technological NotesA few mentions of VHS and video stores [+2]. Other than that, there aren’t many cultural artifacts to speak of. If you want to count wood-paneled station wagons and air guitar, I’ll go along with it [+2]. I’d also like to mention the soundtrack, which includes Silverchair, Bush, and sweet Weezer B-side “Suzanne” [+3]. The soundtrack album cover? You guessed it: a Magic Eye poster [+5].“Stay away from her…or else.” [+3]FASHIONNow we’re talking. Every character in Mallrats seems to occupy a different subset of ’90s Jersey couture. Doherty has the Silverstone boots and babydoll t’s. Silent Bob pairs snapbacks and Doc Martens with shorts. Jeremy London is usually wearing more than one pattern at once, sometimes with deep flannel tied around his waist. Affleck wears baggy suits with henley-collar shirts. Even extras have lady blazers and double-breasted suits. [+15- Max]’90s FILM CONVENTIONSWording Unfunny Things in a Joke Structure [+1]People Getting Hit in the Nuts [+1]The “Where Are They Now” Coda Lifted from Fast Times at Ridgemont High [+5]Men and Women Can Be Just Friends [+10]- The relationship between T.S. and the Joey Lauren Adams character is the best thing the movie has going for it. (Other than the brief shot of Joey Lauren Adams’ breasts.) They used to be an item, and now they have a rich friendship without any lingering bullshit. This is a revelatory concept that the ’90s loved to expound upon, but it’s handled pretty gracefully here.OTHERI didn’t hate Mallrats, but it’s not the same movie now that it was when I owned it on video. It’s a bit contrived and forced. Parts of it (stink-hands?) feel like a first draft. But it does have an undeniable energy and captures a weird man-child period of your early twenties—a period that Smith, sadly, has never really moved on from.Really, it’s just hard to believe that a studio would make this movie and assume it would be a success. It’s clearly a case of some executive going, “The kids love him!”Mallrats scored a robust 96. If you have a suggestion for the next movie in The Quest, leave it in the comments. *- In a joke, true. In real life, false. I liked Garth’s paleness, but I’m generally not a fan of blondes.](http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzit78k4Yx1qb6l8oo1_500.jpg)
Back by popular demand:
THE QUEST FOR THE MOST ’90s FILM OF ALL TIME
Mallrats
The film world has largely turned on Kevin Smith. Legend—his own preening, self-aggrandizing legend—has it that he’s shooting his final film, then taking his ball and going home, where he will lead a podcast network that preaches to the converted. He finds that preferable to facing the critics who question him and resent the wasting of his promise. Before the circus surrounding Red State’s Sundance premiere, the biggest news he had made in a decade was related to getting kicked off a plane for being fat. So it’s hard to flash back to 1995, when major publications mentioned him in the same sentence as Woody Allen. But it did happen.
Smith enjoys painting himself as the youngest son of Miramax, a pioneer of the ’90s independent cinema boom. And, granted, he did make a black-and-white movie with lots of talking and no conflict for $30,000. But as soon as he could, he jumped ship to Universal, who gave him $6 million to make a movie with lots of talking and no conflict—this time in color. That movie is Mallrats, and, to a thirteen-year-old who wanted the cachet of independent film but wasn’t quite ready for actual experimental art, it seemed like a welcome compromise.
STARS/PERFORMANCES
- Actors Who Are Unquestionably Tied to the Decade- Shannen Doherty [+10]
Although she’s the third lead, Doherty was prominently featured in the advertising and, hot off Beverly Hills 90210, was probably the reason the movie got made. Again, hard to believe.
The whole movie takes place in one day, but Doherty’s character changes clothes four or five times. Judging from her reputation as “difficult,” I’m guessing there was a clause in her contract that said she got to keep her wardrobe from the film, and she pushed for as many Silverstone boots as she could. What can I say though? I was always more of a Jennie Garth fan.*
- Other Notable Actors- Michael Rooker, Jason Lee, Jeremy London, Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, Jason Mewes, Ethan Suplee [+15- Max]
Mallrats is a true ensemble. Lee and London are two spurned lovers who spend a day at the mall trying to arrange for a reconciliation with their girls. But it’s way more convoluted than that sounds.
Here’s an example: The butt-cutted [+1] London plays T.S.—named such so that Kevin Smith can prove he knows about books and stuff. T.S.’s girlfriend broke up with him because her dad didn’t like him. Her dad didn’t like him because T.S. messed up the dating TV show he produces. (And it was a very special live episode shot at the mall!) T.S. messed up the dating TV show because the girl who was going to be a contestant died because she exercised too much. She exercised too much because T.S. implied she was fat. All of this information is conveyed in the first two minutes of the film, and it’s as exhausting as it sounds. Mallrats is one of those films in which a lot happens…but really nothing happens.
To keep down on costs, none of the stores are name-brand [+5]. As you can see, Smith tries to have a lot of fun with this. (Homosexual panic points: [+5])
True to form, lots of characters and hijinx keep our star-crossed lovers from being together. The mall is crowded because of a Stan Lee signing at the comic book shop [+3]. Mall security is breathing down T.S. and Brodie’s necks, knowing that they plan on crashing the dating show. Shannen Doherty seems to be hooking up with the manager of Fashionable Male, played by a brilliant, oily, straight-out-of-Boston Ben Affleck. Claire Forlani is struggling with an American accent. One character’s entire subplot revolves around HIS INABILITY TO SEE THE IMAGE IN A MAGIC-EYE POSTER [+10,000].
And, when we talk about Kevin Smith, we have to talk about his casting of people who are not actors. Sometimes it works. This is Jason Lee’s first speaking part, and he’s a natural. All of Brodie’s lines require shouting, but, as something like a proto-Charlie Day, Lee makes it work. Sometimes, as with Jay and Silent Bob, however, Smith’s instincts fail him. It’s always a power move to cast yourself, but casting yourself in a non-speaking but featured role? That’s kind of like e.e. cummings lower-casing his name and paradoxically drawing more attention to it. But there I go again, proving I know about books and stuff. Jay and Silent Bob are there for catch-phrase mongering purposes [+5] and not much more.
Stop trying to make “snootchie bootchies” happen. “Snootchie bootchies” is never going to happen.
TECHNOLOGY/CULTURAL RELICS
- Could the Plot Reasonably Occur with Current Technology?
I suppose [-10], but these characters would be even more insufferable if they were documenting their loitering on twitter.
- Hacking/Computers
No, but in Brodie’s first scene, he is playing with the Hartford Whalers on a Sega NHL game. That’s not only an outmoded game console, but a team that is now defunct [+5].
- Other Technological Notes
A few mentions of VHS and video stores [+2]. Other than that, there aren’t many cultural artifacts to speak of. If you want to count wood-paneled station wagons and air guitar, I’ll go along with it [+2]. I’d also like to mention the soundtrack, which includes Silverchair, Bush, and sweet Weezer B-side “Suzanne” [+3]. The soundtrack album cover? You guessed it: a Magic Eye poster [+5].
“Stay away from her…or else.” [+3]
FASHION
Now we’re talking. Every character in Mallrats seems to occupy a different subset of ’90s Jersey couture. Doherty has the Silverstone boots and babydoll t’s. Silent Bob pairs snapbacks and Doc Martens with shorts. Jeremy London is usually wearing more than one pattern at once, sometimes with deep flannel tied around his waist. Affleck wears baggy suits with henley-collar shirts. Even extras have lady blazers and double-breasted suits. [+15- Max]
’90s FILM CONVENTIONS
Wording Unfunny Things in a Joke Structure [+1]
People Getting Hit in the Nuts [+1]
The “Where Are They Now” Coda Lifted from Fast Times at Ridgemont High [+5]
Men and Women Can Be Just Friends [+10]- The relationship between T.S. and the Joey Lauren Adams character is the best thing the movie has going for it. (Other than the brief shot of Joey Lauren Adams’ breasts.) They used to be an item, and now they have a rich friendship without any lingering bullshit. This is a revelatory concept that the ’90s loved to expound upon, but it’s handled pretty gracefully here.
OTHER
I didn’t hate Mallrats, but it’s not the same movie now that it was when I owned it on video. It’s a bit contrived and forced. Parts of it (stink-hands?) feel like a first draft. But it does have an undeniable energy and captures a weird man-child period of your early twenties—a period that Smith, sadly, has never really moved on from.
Really, it’s just hard to believe that a studio would make this movie and assume it would be a success. It’s clearly a case of some executive going, “The kids love him!”
Mallrats scored a robust 96. If you have a suggestion for the next movie in The Quest, leave it in the comments.
*- In a joke, true. In real life, false. I liked Garth’s paleness, but I’m generally not a fan of blondes.
The long-awaited fourth and final installment in Kirby Ferguson’s fascinating series on how “everything is a remix.” In the last chapter, Ferguson looks at the failure of the law system to “acknowledge the derivative nature of creativity.” By the way, Ferguson is already hard at work on his next project, This is Not a Conspiracy Theory. Learn more here. [e.i.a.r.] Earlier: Part 1; Part 2; Part 2: One Last Thing; Part 3. [thedailywhat]
Watch them all in order. Fantastic stuff.
permalink
I was a scared kid. Although I loved my grandmother’s house,* it was haunted with unforgiving horrors at every turn. In the kitchen, the wood of the cabinets was stained so that it reminded me of a snarling elf. A lamp in her guest room put off a shadow that recalled Freddy Krueger’s outstretched hand. When the door to Ma-Maw’s room was half-closed, it looked like the silhouette of Anjelica Huston in The Witches, a film whose trailer so irrationally scared me that my mother almost put me into therapy. And in my mind, the air vents of my grandma’s house housed an entire network of toothy Gremlins waiting for me to go to sleep.
No one seemed to understand this. I was seven. Couldn’t I differentiate between fact and fiction? Didn’t I know that none of this was real? When we went to the mall, why wouldn’t I leave my parents’ side? How could I possibly remember that snatch of news footage about a shooting there?
How could I be so well-adjusted in other ways, only to collapse into tears when the next-door neighbor dressed like Pumpkinhead for Halloween? I had a preternatural memory (still do, apparently), I read way beyond my grade level, I could “talk like an adult.” So why was I so paranoid and afraid? What was wrong with me?
I went to a summer camp that same year, and I spent most of the week dreading an event titled: “VIDEO- GREMLINS.” I broached the subject with the only person I knew there, a boy called Casper whom I introduced to my mom as “my Black friend.” He had already seen it and told me there was nothing to be afraid of. There were even some Gremlins who were good guys. But I was unconvinced.
Part of me knew that a summer camp for kids wouldn’t program inappropriate entertainment. After all, they had already showed both Return of the Jedi and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which, at the time, I saw as the epitome of all artistic progress. I should have just trusted them. I should have played Tecmo Bowl on coach mode for as long as they would let me, then bravely sit in front of the video and close my eyes if I had to.
But, knowing that, to an imaginative kid, closed eyes are the Gremlins’ playground, I chickened out. The camp was split into Group A and Group B. When Group A was swimming, Group B was ushered into the movie room, and vice-versa. Hatching an unassailable plot, I convinced a camp counselor to let me go swimming twice. Perhaps he knew that, rather than wanting to enjoy a beautiful day, I was really just scared of the Gremlins. Either way, I put my ability to talk like an adult to good use. To this day, whenever I get sunburned, I’m reminded of 1984 Joe Dante holiday action-comedies.
Eventually, I grew out of a fear of Gremlins and moved on to a crippling fear of failure and death. It happened naturally. But no one seemed to understand where those fears came from, especially after I had been raised in such a sheltered existence. They didn’t understand that what helps a child to entertain himself is what also helps to terrify him. When people are adults, we talk about their difficulties as “their demons,” personifying the things that keep them up at night. We dramatize the same “overactive imaginations” we patronize children for having. We easily forget that intelligence is a two-way street toward light and darkness.
*- When my parents came to pick me up, I would often hide from them in hopes of staying at Ma-Maw’s.
"A Voice of Triumph, the Queen of Pain"- Jon Caramanica- New York Times
“Whitney Houston died a cautionary tale, but all cautionary tales were heroes once.
That is how she arrived in the mid-1980s, a flawless vocalist singing impeccable songs and singlehandedly inserting gospel and classic-soul theatrics into mainstream pop. She was a sunbeam—radiant, perspective-altering, impossible to touch.
After her greatest years were behind her, she remained in the public eye as something thornier—a drug addict, and a casualty of the tabloid and reality-TV era, ill-equipped for ever-increasing levels of scrutiny. Ms. Houston’s fall attracted so much notice because she had so far to go, down from the clouds into an abyss.”
