All of the lights

[rockmarooned]

After the Mountain Goats extravaganza on Friday, Marisa and I spent Saturday in Philadelphia with Bayard and Alex. We hit the Philadelphia Book Festival, which as a science-fiction-friendly and science-fact-averse English major I'm surprised to report was sort of upstaged by the Philadelphia Science Festival. Maybe some people dropped out due to

Comments

[freakjaw]

Re: Lady Gaga - I don't have much to say about her musically, since I don't really know her stuff outside of what I've heard on TV or at the movie theater (or what those kids at the movie theater were singing when I saw Despicable Me) and I tend to defer to your judgment anyway on what makes a Good Pop Song. But I bristled a bit at that drive-by shot about her being "faintly condescending". Not entirely sure what you mean there but isn't she pretty consistently on message about that kind of thing? She certainly seems to practice what she preaches, with her Madonna/Frank N. Furter/Great Gonzo persona that seems constructed less to appeal to drooling dudes than to give her pleasure/actualization or celebrate an LGBTWhatever audience. Condescending or not, I get the impression (some of it definitely second or third hand from Tom) that she really has struck an empowering chord with (at least some of) her audience.

Re: Britney - I don't remember if you or Marisa are the reason I read this in the first place, but Marisa's assessment

[freakjaw]

Re: Scream 4 (Don't Read This, I'm Going To Talk About The Ending!) - I thought the movie was a real mixed bag, with some ideas I was excited by and some characters I liked, and a busload of other characters and a screenplay that could have used a lot more refining. They didn't do a particularly good job of integrating the returning characters and the high school storyline, the cast was enormous and the demands of the whodunit narrative meant that we didn't get to know some of the new characters as much as I would have liked, and it got a little creaky when so many characters have to leave wander off-screen just to make sure they were still credible red herrings. But while there were missed opportunities, sloppiness, and maybe even an excess of ambition in this new movie, I did feel like it was trying (struggling! sometimes failing!) to engage in the trends/tropes/rules of horror movies more than either of the other two sequels (correct me if I'm wrong, since I haven't seen either sequel since shortly after they came out on video

MORE SPOILERS

[rockmarooned]

There is some rumbling online about whether the hospital sequence at the end was the "original" ending in the script or as originally shot (they did some reshoots earlier this year), or if maybe Kevin Williamson's earlier "sketched out new trilogy" would've taken off from slightly earlier in Scream 4... but that may just be typical movie-fan "I know the real/better ending" BS. I really liked the ending (and the silly but fun crazy opening) as it was, though I think it would've had more power if the movie hadn't scrambled so much on its way there, more concerned with, yeah, red herrings than the actual characters. To that end -- the scrambling nature of it, I mean, which, don't get me wrong, resulted in many enjoyable bits -- I don't know that they were really engaging in trends/tropes/rules of horror (and you're right, Scream 3 was already stretching to talk about the "rules of trilogies" which barely exist at all) so much as bringing all of it up so no one could accuse them of overlooking anything

Re: MORE SPOILERS

[freakjaw]

Seriously, stop reading if you don't want to know the ending
Yeah, there was a definite running-through-a-checklist-vibe to some of the references this time around ("here's what's wrong with torture horror and J-horror...there, we mentioned them"), and I'd be genuinely curious to find out whether this was Williamson's original ending. I too liked the ending, in part because it violently and explicitly made it clear that they were ultimately more interested in making a slasher movie about middle-aged (or almost middle-aged?) people than they were in the younger characters, but it did leave me kind of baffled regarding the "second trilogy" talk. (Also, I thought it was weirdly not suspenseful, since at that point I figured if they hadn't killed Sidney in the kitchen, they weren't going to do it in the hospital.) It's interesting that if the hospital sequence was a late addition, I think it radically changes the film from being almost a Star Trek-style reboot where we'd follow the murderous-Emma-Roberts/new-evil-Sidney-substitute in

[rockmarooned]

Maybe it's more on-the-nose than condescending... or maybe sort of pandering. And hey, it's nice that she's pandering in a more progressive positive way, flattering an audience that doesn't get much mainstream attention, sure. But everything about her strikes me as less than meets the eye: less transgressive, less daring, less complex, all while implying her audience is truly special for getting it. It's hard for me not to see the calculation, maybe because there doesn't seem to be anything remotely personal or detailed about her songs -- I hear a lot of sloganeering. And, yes, it's kind of cool that this empowers a LGBT audience. But her (or her fans) calling herself a progressive art project doesn't make her music sound less like boring, generic club music. As a call to arms, "don't be a drag, just be a queen" to me only comes off as slightly more exciting than "please continue to buy my records!" There's nothing wrong with that but I wouldn't say she's exactly doing charity work, either.

[freakjaw]

Like I said, I definitely defer to you about whether her music is boring, generic, or even not remotely personal or detailed. I assume that your criticisms of her music as music are well-considered (and I certainly always like reading what you have to say about music even if I haven't heard it). And maybe "on-the-nose" or "pandering" are more fair, but while us slick urban types might find her "less transgressive than meets the eye" I suspect pretty strongly that Apache Junction types' sole reaction to her antics would not be a yawn. I don't have anything really invested in her being the most transgressive or authentic or even progressive force in popular culture since whoever, but I still don't understand at all how the slogan "don't be a drag, just be a queen" is at all comparable to "please continue to buy my records". Is her message less authentic because she's made a lot of money with it? Ultimately I guess it doesn't matter much whether it resonates with you or me. We aren't closeted gay teenagers or people who have to

[rockmarooned]

So we've been talking about this and I didn't realize some people have even proclaimed premature backlash against Gaga for representing gay culture or representing it too stereotypically or representing it accidentally but annoyingly or whatever, which I found interesting on both sides, because I honestly thought most music-interested people were pretty much on board with her regardless

[freakjaw]

I was just coming back here to mention that Weird Al thing! Not cool, Gaga

[slightlyoffaxis]

I really shouldn't just jump in at the end of this, and I should probably keep my mouth shut because I really don't care about Lady Gaga, but isn't it kind of mean to call the opposite of the "queens" the "drags?" Sorry, all you closeted, self-loathing, or suicidal people...you're all just such a drag! Just snap out of it already.

[freakjaw]

Sure, maybe. I could understand if somebody said it was indelicate or insensitive. If somebody called me a drag in conversation it'd bum me out. But this isn't conversation, it's a riff on the phrase "drag queen" in a song that seems otherwise quite affectionate and supportive, by a person who very publicly identifies with the people she's singing to/about. So while I assume the LGBT community is varied enough that there have been plenty of different reactions, and this is an instance where mine actually isn't as valuable as theirs, my read is that the line isn't telling the "drags" that there is something wrong with them, but that there isn't and don't let anybody tell you different.