my good deed of the day
i'm making this public cos why the fuck not.
i've never been a fan of anything amanda palmer's done, and this only solidifies that. jason webley, i've loved for the last 5 years or so, and it's sad to see him fall in with a bad crowd; i'm giving him the benefit of the doubt until/unless he pulls more fuckedupshit.
anyway, amanda pulled some ableist wankery on the internet, and is refusing to actually apologize because she's an artist and therefore untouchable. my comment, which might not get approved because it's pretty clear how she feels about people with actual disabilities and actual sexual abuse survivors who don't find cutesy irony to be empowering:
hi. i'm disabled, an abuse survivor, have a b.f.a in fine arts (drawing and performance art) from a prestigious university, and am currently a fairly successful street performer. i liked evelyn evelyn when it was just you and jason playing cute songs with an occasionally too silly to be believable backstory, but i refuse to support the current direction you're taking with it.
"here’s what i consider hiding: producing inoffensive, corporate-penned, vanilla-bean love-story family-friendly made-for-mainstream-radio music that won’t offend a single person. and won’t make anybody laugh, won’t make anybody think, won’t make anybody wonder, won’t make anybody talk, and won’t change anybody’s life."
amanda - that is exactly what you are doing with the evelyn evelyn project. trivializing abuse, glamorizing poverty, exotifying/objectifying disabled bodies, using 'freaks' for entertainment, generally turning real, fucked up things that real people experience into a, as you put it, 'lighthearted and joyful project', is exactly what the mainstream does. it's the same old cliche oppressive storyline. to add insult to injury, it is not your (or, presumably, jason's) story (surviving child porn is not the same as surviving rape as an adult, though both are horrific), and to pretend it is, is in fact exploitative. not empowering, advocating, sympathetic, or edgy - it's exactly the same as every other circus freak sob story the mainstream has been pumping out for generations. y'all can take off the costume at the end of the day and go back to your happy glamorous lives. many people do not have this option. there's no empathy in what you're doing, it's for the lulz, and that's fucked up. it's not that we don't get it. it's that you're saying something else, something other that what you were trying to express, that many people are tired of hearing.
communication is the response you get. if you wanted to communicate something positive with this project and instead communicate something oppressive, you have made a mistake, and as an artist it is your responsibility to improve it - unless you're content with mediocrity and inflammation, which is your choice. but it is naive to think that your artistic choices are above commentary, or have no consequences. just as you have a right to make the kind of art you see fit, those who experience your art have a right to react to it as they see fit. feel free to continue with evelyn evelyn as is if that's what you want to do, but understand that in doing so, your fanbase may be limited to the currently able-bodied and people who haven't experienced sexual abuse/prostitution. that excludes a lot of people. again, your choice as an artist as to who you want to cater to. just don't make like your 'intention was not to piss people off, make fun of, or belittle anybody' when that's exactly what your artistic choices look like to people who have been made fun of and belittled because of their disabilities and abuse histories.
life's pretty good otherwise. quiet, but no real complaints, and is bound to pick up soon :)
i've never been a fan of anything amanda palmer's done, and this only solidifies that. jason webley, i've loved for the last 5 years or so, and it's sad to see him fall in with a bad crowd; i'm giving him the benefit of the doubt until/unless he pulls more fuckedupshit.
anyway, amanda pulled some ableist wankery on the internet, and is refusing to actually apologize because she's an artist and therefore untouchable. my comment, which might not get approved because it's pretty clear how she feels about people with actual disabilities and actual sexual abuse survivors who don't find cutesy irony to be empowering:
hi. i'm disabled, an abuse survivor, have a b.f.a in fine arts (drawing and performance art) from a prestigious university, and am currently a fairly successful street performer. i liked evelyn evelyn when it was just you and jason playing cute songs with an occasionally too silly to be believable backstory, but i refuse to support the current direction you're taking with it.
"here’s what i consider hiding: producing inoffensive, corporate-penned, vanilla-bean love-story family-friendly made-for-mainstream-radio music that won’t offend a single person. and won’t make anybody laugh, won’t make anybody think, won’t make anybody wonder, won’t make anybody talk, and won’t change anybody’s life."
amanda - that is exactly what you are doing with the evelyn evelyn project. trivializing abuse, glamorizing poverty, exotifying/objectifying disabled bodies, using 'freaks' for entertainment, generally turning real, fucked up things that real people experience into a, as you put it, 'lighthearted and joyful project', is exactly what the mainstream does. it's the same old cliche oppressive storyline. to add insult to injury, it is not your (or, presumably, jason's) story (surviving child porn is not the same as surviving rape as an adult, though both are horrific), and to pretend it is, is in fact exploitative. not empowering, advocating, sympathetic, or edgy - it's exactly the same as every other circus freak sob story the mainstream has been pumping out for generations. y'all can take off the costume at the end of the day and go back to your happy glamorous lives. many people do not have this option. there's no empathy in what you're doing, it's for the lulz, and that's fucked up. it's not that we don't get it. it's that you're saying something else, something other that what you were trying to express, that many people are tired of hearing.
communication is the response you get. if you wanted to communicate something positive with this project and instead communicate something oppressive, you have made a mistake, and as an artist it is your responsibility to improve it - unless you're content with mediocrity and inflammation, which is your choice. but it is naive to think that your artistic choices are above commentary, or have no consequences. just as you have a right to make the kind of art you see fit, those who experience your art have a right to react to it as they see fit. feel free to continue with evelyn evelyn as is if that's what you want to do, but understand that in doing so, your fanbase may be limited to the currently able-bodied and people who haven't experienced sexual abuse/prostitution. that excludes a lot of people. again, your choice as an artist as to who you want to cater to. just don't make like your 'intention was not to piss people off, make fun of, or belittle anybody' when that's exactly what your artistic choices look like to people who have been made fun of and belittled because of their disabilities and abuse histories.
life's pretty good otherwise. quiet, but no real complaints, and is bound to pick up soon :)