never forget that you are not better just 'cause more people know your name.
If you don't understand what is wrong with this, I can explain it with more exclaimation marks and profanity.
It is too bad, really. I mean, I generally liked her music. And Sharpied-on eyebrows.
(It's her response to the criticism that cinches it for me, I'll be honest. There's absolutely no willingness to engage in even the most half- ( Read more... )
Well, as I was saying, it isn't the framing gimmick of itself that bothers me so much as it's the framing gimmick combined with the characters and subject matter at hand. If this were a case of the artists taking on fictional personas that made fun of privileged, conceited rock stars (like Spinal Tap), or creating fantasy narratives about things that don't exist and events that don't ever happen outside of fiction (like in the Blair Witch project, or like David Bowie pretending to be the Martian space traveller/rock star Ziggy Stardust), it wouldn't be an issue.
Also, the way Amanda Palmer chose to respond to this controversy was completely petty, arrogant, disrespectful, and immature. Whether or not Evelyn Evelyn was intended to mock or offend and whether or not it turns out to be as bad as all that, Amanda Palmer made it pretty explicit that she, as a person and a performer, has absolutely no regard whatsoever for "disabled feminists." That is why I'm really, really steamed about this, as opposed to just rolling my eyes at the general tastelessness of the concept. I don't think it's "sinister," really-- people who advocate the forced sterilization of disabled women (for example) are "sinister." This is just disappointing. And it's not like I'm going to try to stop Evelyn Evelyn performances or anything. I have waaaaaaaaaay better things to do with my time, and I'm no advocate of censorship. I just don't think I'll be listening to much Amanda Palmer anymore, because, as someone else said somewhere, there are plenty of talented female theatrical-quasi-punk musicians who aren't ableist jerks. (That we know of, at least.)
And yeah, I'm familiar with rape being the new dead parents, but being "a common narrative convention" is not the same as being a good narrative convention, or an inoffensive narrative convention, or a narrative convention that no one is allowed to criticize for being lazy and ignorant and insulting. Again, I think many people are upset less because they've somehow never seen or heard a story like this before and more because it's an artist they actually like-- and someone pretty high-profile to boot-- pulling that kind of crap. Especially since the Dresden Dolls' music treated both rape/sexual exploitation and disability (mental illness and amputeeism) in ways that were usually interesting and nuanced and inclusive and not horrible.
(And the in-character interview is problematic because it portrays E & E in a way that's very condescending and sensationalistic. Apparently, they have little autonomy and owe their success entirely to the intervention of Charitable Normal People, they speak/write like sheltered eight-year-old kids, they have no individuality and always refer to themselves in the first person plural...gah. It's skeevy.)
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Well, I didn't find her initial Twitter comments quite so condescending or dismissive, but I think that's all part of the nature of twitter as a communication form; folks bring their own context.
"i got some serious flack for that, as if i was being dismissive, waving my hand and saying “fuck em, i do not want to hear what the disabled feminists have to say”.
on the contrary, i’d been seriously distracted all morning and thinking about pretty much NOTHING ELSE for about 5 hours … and i had to finally sit down and work on something else.
i obviously DID want to hear what they had to say, otherwise i wouldn’t have been drowning in a sea of reactive blog comments, trying to figure things out.
once again, if you’re not following the whole story and you look at this out of context, it seems really awful. but that was not the way it was meant.
140 characters = subtlety sometimes lost."
If I had an explosion of 846 angry/questioning emails and countless blog comments with other obligations/work to do, it might take me a day or two to get around to it.
p.s. I didn't mean to imply that you thought it was sinister, I had just reading a lot of criticism that was much more strongly worded than you or Carrie.
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Yeah, color me unimpressed.
I think that, in that case, the prudent thing to do would have been for Amanda to refrain from trying to comment on anything via twitter and just wait a couple days until she had the time to come up with a thoughtful response. And really, I'm not sure I quite buy that the twitter message in question was intended as anything other than a potshot. The blog post isn't so much an apology* as ass-covering defensiveness, treating people who've been critical as unnecessarily squeamish/ not understanding the nature of art. I actually do respect that this project has been years in the making, and that ass-covering defensiveness is often the natural response when the art that you've dedicated huge amounts of time and skill and creativity to bringing into the world gets excoriated (for any reason, really). But, geez, I'm a not-terribly-brave-or-responsible-or-mature creative writing student who has never been published and isn't old enough to drink legally-- and even I get that it's important to overcome that initial reaction of hurt pride and listen to criticism openly, and maybe make according changes in your work if you find that the criticism has some merit. At the very least, it has to be considered seriously and (as much as possible) without your ego getting in the way. That's part of how we grow as artists. (Whether we're musicians, writers, cartoonists, actors, painters, street mimes...)
* As I think someone said in the comments, "I'm sorry if you were offended" ain't a real apology. It's a passive-aggressive way of telling someone they're oversensitive and need to calm the fuck down. "I'm sorry I was a jerk" is an apology. "I'm sorry I did/said/made something with seriously unfortunate connotations that I was completely unaware of while I was doing/saying/making it but gosh they sure seem to be there all the same and maybe I'd better educate myself on this topic a bit more so I don't make the same sort of mistake in the future" is an apology. "Whoops. My bad. I'm really sorry. " is an apology, for pete's sake. They don't even have to be elaborate .
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