cos it's not me and you, it's the fucking banks
New music video from M.I.A. for "Bring The Noize" - explicit lyrics (err, as clear from the subject line).
***
The Bling Ring is apparently the kind of movie that gets under your skin when you're not paying attention, and then stirs you up every once in a while for WEEKS after the fact. No spoilers here (if there could be spoilers for a plot line closely based on actual events) but: there's definitely an echo of its impact in tangential topics, political moments never touched upon directly in the movie itself - like the looting riots throughout Europe, for example, or violations of public personae's privacy by the media, paps, fans. Sofia Coppola is not a didactic kind of writer/director, but the connection doesn't have to be shown to be present. I also remember waiting for the word "entitled" to be spoken in the movie - because after all, the emotional setting of the story is the sense of one's life being incomplete without owning the symbols of celebrity, culturally fetishized into a sort of casual yet toxic desire. Aren't kids entitled to have the things they're taught to want/to be?
The more vacuous those things, of course, the more tragic their drive... but that's an old narrative. What's kinda new, at least to me, is the sense of intimacy in this fetish pursuit: the looters in the streets of London - or Belgrade - are furious that a dream of a certain identity is repeatedly offered to them "on sale" when they can't even begin to try to afford it. But the kids in the Bling Ring lust for identification with the objects of their desire, crossing the line between public and private as if it doesn't actually exist in specific, physical terms. (Rachel Bilson's house scene is pure poetry, btw, with its 90% of walls made of glass.) The spectrum, from destructive to possessive, is rooted in the same sense of lack, but the latter feels familiar in a different way - a product of the fame machine, technology/media/what have you, widespread in our social consciousness but no less disturbing for it. Along those lines, perhaps the most poignant comparison the movie makes is between the victims of the robberies and the young thieves - and how much they have in common, value system included.
The performances are great, by the way. I especially loved Emma Watson, who played her character as obviously still a child performing adult ambition, and not growing (since there isn't much room for growth in that direction, regardless of age).
Bottom line: don't read the reviews, because most of them are idiotic. Go see the movie - it's an important one in this stage of global capitalism.
***
Three things make a post... Am very tempted to try and see the entire series of Watch That Man: David Bowie, Movie Star at the Lincoln Center. Very, VERY tempted. Um. Any locals interested?
*mimes being trapped in a glass box a la Ziggy*
Click to view***
The Bling Ring is apparently the kind of movie that gets under your skin when you're not paying attention, and then stirs you up every once in a while for WEEKS after the fact. No spoilers here (if there could be spoilers for a plot line closely based on actual events) but: there's definitely an echo of its impact in tangential topics, political moments never touched upon directly in the movie itself - like the looting riots throughout Europe, for example, or violations of public personae's privacy by the media, paps, fans. Sofia Coppola is not a didactic kind of writer/director, but the connection doesn't have to be shown to be present. I also remember waiting for the word "entitled" to be spoken in the movie - because after all, the emotional setting of the story is the sense of one's life being incomplete without owning the symbols of celebrity, culturally fetishized into a sort of casual yet toxic desire. Aren't kids entitled to have the things they're taught to want/to be?
The more vacuous those things, of course, the more tragic their drive... but that's an old narrative. What's kinda new, at least to me, is the sense of intimacy in this fetish pursuit: the looters in the streets of London - or Belgrade - are furious that a dream of a certain identity is repeatedly offered to them "on sale" when they can't even begin to try to afford it. But the kids in the Bling Ring lust for identification with the objects of their desire, crossing the line between public and private as if it doesn't actually exist in specific, physical terms. (Rachel Bilson's house scene is pure poetry, btw, with its 90% of walls made of glass.) The spectrum, from destructive to possessive, is rooted in the same sense of lack, but the latter feels familiar in a different way - a product of the fame machine, technology/media/what have you, widespread in our social consciousness but no less disturbing for it. Along those lines, perhaps the most poignant comparison the movie makes is between the victims of the robberies and the young thieves - and how much they have in common, value system included.
The performances are great, by the way. I especially loved Emma Watson, who played her character as obviously still a child performing adult ambition, and not growing (since there isn't much room for growth in that direction, regardless of age).
Bottom line: don't read the reviews, because most of them are idiotic. Go see the movie - it's an important one in this stage of global capitalism.
***
Three things make a post... Am very tempted to try and see the entire series of Watch That Man: David Bowie, Movie Star at the Lincoln Center. Very, VERY tempted. Um. Any locals interested?
*mimes being trapped in a glass box a la Ziggy*