…or at least limped painfully out of the pop star equation.
Category: Music
One Direction: Cheap Shots
I’m about 104 years past the median age of One Direction’s target demographic. I think their music is shallow, mechanical pop of the lowest order, with lyrics specifically tailored to titillate and exploit the first flushes of sexual maturity in teenage girls.
Despite all this, I’m still uncomfortable with the media propagating the hysteria by reporting it, and then seeking to legitimise their coverage by pointing out how irrational and disturbing the resulting behaviour is. When a teenage girl is threatening to kill people for dating a member of the band, or herself because she can’t meet them, it should be a source of concern, not smart-arse articles describing them as ‘witless devotees‘
I’m surprised the press feel so superior. Cheap, formulaic journalism isn’t really any better than cheap, formulaic devotion, is it?
Image via standard.co.uk.
Blurred Lines? Nope, Just An Optical Illusion.
Parodies of overtly sexualised imagery are becoming more frequent in popular culture lately – their viral fecundity rooted in how hilarious blokes look whilst pulling the same ridiculous ‘erotic’ poses as their female counterparts did in the original.
The latest, a reboot of Robin Thicke’s controversial ‘Blurred Lines’ promo performed by Mod Carousel, is no exception. But when you’re done wincing, pointing and laughing as butch boys wiggle their way across your screen wearing thongs and high heels, there’s a more serious point to be made.
The poses, not the people, look ridiculous. We’re just so inured to ‘sexy’ women acting like elasticated, pneumatic, tottering automatons, we don’t really notice them anymore.
Scant comfort can be found in the fact that I’m not fourteen and primed to buy into this shit. After all, there’s millions of kids who are.
Michael Jackson: Waxing Lyrical
Image: Ian Gavan/Getty Images Europe.
Is it an accident that this Michael Jackson waxwork happens to be glaring menacingly at his childhood self? Or is Madame Tussauds making a subtle, yet sophisticated commentary on his numerous, well documented existential crises?
I do hope it’s the latter. Popular culture is so blunt these days.
Currently Residing In The ‘Where Are They Now?’ Files…
I’m loving this random post by Ben Greenman on the New Yorker website, entitled ‘Whatever Happened To Terence Trent D’Arby?’
It’s positively Bateman-esque in its scope and murderous intensity.
Because The Night: Past, Present, Future
Patti Smith. Shirley Manson. Marissa Paternoster.
Kneel at the altar of the achingly glorious and weep, people. Weep.
Grimes: Too Much To Ask?
Via tumblr. H/T JC.
I used to be in a band. Thanks to the people around me at that time – my band mates, venue staff, promoters, the selfless souls who would hump equipment up and down flights of stairs, the fans who followed us everywhere to ensure we never had to play without at least twenty people throwing crazy shapes in front of the stage – it was one of the most exciting, petrifying, weird, maddening, exhausting and ultimately thrilling experiences of my life.
Regular readers will know that I’m perpetually primed to be pissed off when I read about incidents of misogyny, but a Tumblr post from Canadian musician Grimes that popped up on my FB feed yesterday touched an especially tender nerve of the festering feminist within.
Simon Cowell: Twenty Thirteen
The ‘I’m Sorry, What?’ Files: Soft Porn Special
According to a recent survey, I am one of just twenty-seven people on the planet who use don’t the internet to look at pictures of naked people. I would have thought that a potential audience of 6,973,738,406 would be more than sufficient to sate those with an obviously urgent desire to flash their arses, but no. They continue to infiltrate my delicate sphere of consciousness with their flappy bits, to the point where I’m contemplating a return to a paper based communication system.
For now though, I’m happy just to bitch.
Continue reading “The ‘I’m Sorry, What?’ Files: Soft Porn Special”
Morrissey: Notes From A 21st Century Newsroom
Image: Mike Pont/Getty Images North America.
If I feel it, then others surely must. That’s the only thought that sustains me.
Editor: Wait. No. That’s not going to interest anyone, despite it’s hopeful simplicity and beauty. Go back to the interview and find something more provocative we can use to stir up the readers.
Footsteps recede as a weary, underpaid staffer returns to her cubicle to scroll through the interview again.
War, I thought, was the most negative aspect of male heterosexuality. If more men were homosexual, there would be no wars, because homosexual men would never kill other men, whereas heterosexual men love killing other men. They even get medals for it. Women don’t go to war to kill other women. Wars and armies and nuclear weapons are essentially heterosexual hobbies.
Editor: That’s more like it! Post away!
Kelly Welles 