Starting from a conversation between Jonathan Gray and Henry Jenkins, Wayne Marshall ponders the utility of “paratext” (”all those things that surround a book that aren’t quite the ‘thing’ itself…the cover, prefaces, typeface, and afterwords, but also reviews”) for music:
…“Crank Dat”…perhaps best illustrates the problem with trying to apply a theory of para/texts to music culture in the age of YouTube. Really, re: “Crank Dat,” which is the text and which are the paratexts? Is the text itself the song that Soulja Boy recorded (relying heavily on Fruity presets)? Or is it the easily-mastered set of dance steps so crucial to its spread? Is it the initial video that made the rounds featuring SB’s friends doing the dance in their living room? Is it the white-out-on-my-sunglasses tutorial-in-a-pool that SB put out there to help people learn to do the dance (and spread the song)? Or is it the official video / release? What about the dozens, if not hundreds, of other versions of people dancing to or mashing up the song? What about the dozens of “Crank Dat” spinoffs? I realize that as I go down this list, things can get more and more para/meta, but the first few questions, to my mind, show how hard it is to locate “Crank Dat” in any singular instantiation.
Or, take, “Super Freak” & “U Can’t Touch This” (which I discussed a ways back) — whose text has merged with whose? Which is now primary and which is para? It’s not simply a matter of which came first. And who can ever say when it’s all been settled?
I’d expand on this a bit, and highlight not just cover versions or 2.0 spreadable music, but the basic way that popular music has always circulated: not based in a single text, but spread across many media. The recorded music is typically the primary commodity–it’s what the other stuff supports, from an economic perspective (though of course this too is changing; think about licensing)– but that doesn’t mean that we can’t/don’t derive meaning from a variety of locales, not just the thing we buy/download.
Think about, let’s say, Michael Jackson. Is there a fundamental “Thriller” text, around which all the other stuff circulates? If so, is it the song on the LP/cassette/CD/mp3/radio, or is it John Landis’ music video? Should be begrudge someone their right to make the argument that the definitive “Billie Jean” text is the Motown 25 performance over the single, or music video?
Pip Proud has been called the greatest Australian singer-songwriter of the ’60s. He released two weirdo folk albums for Polydor International in ‘67 and ‘69 before disappearing deep into the bush for three decades. He re-emerged in ‘98, lobbing a grenade toward the few straggling vagabonds slurping kipper snacks under the shadetree: the “Hey Gus“ single.
We were praying at the end of time / Praying for release
And we said “Hey, Gus” / He drove the bus
“Is God really made of love?” / I asked Gus, “Is God really made of love?”
In just the few short minutes, Proud re-establishes his own peculiar worldview; one which he would flesh out over the next few years in a series of new albums released by the esteemed Emperor Jones (whose impeccable roster of outsider songwriters—second only to Drag City’s in the heart of this ditch digging leftist—reigned supreme throughout the ’90s). A label press release from ‘98 nailed his vibe when it said that Proud “wasn’t reinventing the wheel, he was levitating above it, laughing and waving below to all the trappings of the earth.” Proud’s existentialist worldview—of a particularly compassionate variety—is dusted with a mystical luminescence. He’s seeking to know God. And you get the impression he’s been screaming into the abyss for a very long time, seeking acknowledgment of some sort, yet has gone unrecognized. So he turns to the wise Gus. (Continued)
The first film in history was an 1895 short by the Lumière brothers with the self-explanatory title Workers Leaving the Factory. In the years since, as if in deference to their function as a leisure activity, movies have been largely blind to the daily rituals of work and the meaning it has in our lives (unless the characters are, say, detectives or assassins). Documentaries are the exception, as are sporadic outliers like Mike Judge. There is a kind of bracing novelty when a big movie with a glamorous star so much as glances in the direction of the real working world, where people toil, lose jobs, and struggle for survival (and have done so since long before 2009).
Reitman is canny enough to understand this effect and cynical enough to exploit it vampirically by padding out his film with testimonials from actual unemployed people (obtained under false pretenses: He held casting calls for the newly terminated, claiming that he was making a documentary about unemployment, and coaxed his subjects to relive their dismissals on camera). But Up in the Air isn’t really about these authentic casualties of 21st-century American capitalism or their fictional counterparts. The jobless ranks merely form the backdrop—and, worse yet, provide the fodder—for its hero’s rogue-charm offensive and redemptive epiphany.
Yeah. I despised this film (just saw it last night), particularly its last third, when Reitman makes it abundantly clear that he has even less regard for the plight of the fired workers than their cruel overlords. I love Clooney, don’t get me wrong, but can’t help but think what a better (and wholly different, granted) film this would have been if his jawline wouldn’t have been able to caulk in the significant cracks in his character’s psyche.
So this is why Indy is so loath to sign on to the smoking ban:
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Forget New York, Los Angeles, or even Miami, Indianapolis is the most sexually satisfied city in the United States, according to a new report.
The Indiana city is followed by Columbus, Ohio, Fort Wayne, Indiana, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Salt Lake City, Utah, in the report by Men’s Health Magazine that ranked the sexual satisfaction of people in 100 cities.
Music is the discourse that passes itself off as nature; it participates in the construction of meaning, but disguises its meanings as effects. Here is the source of its singular efficacy as a hidden persuader.
Teaching a week on ads for my music video course, and thus had to assign this Nicholas Cook jawn from ‘94. He uses commercials–their tunes, specifically–as a jumping off point for a terse but brief sparring session with the “what does music mean?” question.
He ends on the idea that music alone is connotation, while what’s associated with music (ads, music videos, album art, liners, arguments, concerts, he even–as a classically-trained guy–throws lyrics in there) adds the denotative elements. There’s certainly some arguments to be made pro and con, especially once you leave the advertising realm (film and video people might quarrel with their contributions being purely literal), but it’s good stuff to think with.
I know it’s gauche to some, but I’m a sucker for a well-used tune in an arty ad. But then again music videos are themselves foundationally commercials to sell CDs and mp3s. Ads sell soap and cars and beer with the same music (and the musicians get paid more too).
Let’s not also forget that the ad realm is often a springboard for work in that other glamorous short-form world. To wit: This happens to be one of my favorite music videos of the ’90s (though truth be told, I’m a Toyota man). And that hazy teenage nostalgia was certainly a commontheme for those two.
It’s not that I don’t get jokes about students being pointy-headed and namby-pamby and whatnot. (Yes yes clever.) But ultimately, there’s a rhetorical thrust to this piece that’s just as often associated with, say, racist uncles at Thanksgiving, and that thrust is this: all your liberal impulses, multiculturalism, interest in social justice, and sensitivities are basically meaningless and silly for the reason that Big Scary Black Guys Are Going to Rob, Kill, or Rape You, and where will your namby-pamby liberal values be then, huh?
I’m sure the author of this piece believes he’s coming at it from a different direction, but in the end, the whole thing winds up pretty much indistinguishable from an email forward you might get from that tea-partying uncle — the only difference being that the uncle might believe the whole thing was true, and add a few lines at the bottom about how this is why he carries a concealed weapon, can’t believe you live in the city, and can’t stand “political correctness.”
I thought roughly the same thing as Nitsuh upon reading this, and especially given my recent engagement with someone on similar terms, feel it merits a reblog. This sort of thing shows, at the very least, that if you want a comedy bit to appeal across the ideological spectrum, it can’t help to pick on the professional eggheads.
