aw, purse! the house is on far!
So Amanda Palmer's big mouth has gotten her into trouble again; while shit-talking the product placement in Lady Gaga videos, she made the comment that "ironic product placement is only ok if you take no money & beyond that give all the income to something ironic. like the Klan." There's a screencap of this, just in case she deletes that particular Twitter post. Her fans are collectively shitting a brick, as one might expect, and her response to them hasn't done much to build a dialogue. A shitstorm, it is brewing.
Now, I broke down Palmer's comment this way: by assuming the product placement is ironic, she assumes that Lady Gaga/the various entities who represent and make decisions for Lady Gaga do not really use, endorse, or even like the products in her video. Hence the irony. By Palmer's logic, the only way to justify taking money from the companies who make said products is to donate said money to a cause that, befitting the ironic nature of the product placement, she does not support. The Klan, we are all led to assume, is just such a cause.
Problem is, none of us know that Lady Gaga's product placement was meant ironically - for all I know, she really does love Wonder Bread and Miracle Whip. Maybe her cell phone service provider IS Verizon (ninja edit: Verizon is sponsoring her tour). References to products or trendy nostalgia items are not ironic by default, and besides there's really no way to know for sure without prior knowledge of Lady Gaga's consumer preferences. Not that anyone besides Lady Gaga and maybe her mom should even care about those.
So what we're left with is Palmer cobbling together a bunch of halfwit assumptions about Lady Gaga that suggest a typical hipster misunderstanding* of what irony is, and then a really lame "edgy" Klan punchline that fell flat because Klan jokes always do.** And to top that off, she blames the audience, which is a rather pissant excuse for a joke not getting over with people.
I wasn't horribly put out or offended by what she said, because a) I've said a lot of dumb shit in public and it would be hypocritical of me come down on her for it, and b) I'm used to every musician I've ever respected being an incredibly flawed human being (or just a piece of shit who coasts on reputation), and thus have no illusions about people and their fallibility. But I do recognize that her statement was pretty stupid, and that it says nothing good about what she finds funny, clever, or relevant. Bad form, AP. Bad form.
* hipster irony not only relies on the bearer of said irony knowing that he/she is being ironic, but that all third-party observers know his/her personal tastes well enough to understand the irony on display. This is problematic because, uh, psionics don't exist and ESP is debatable, and thus we can't instantly separate someone's real preferences from their displayed preferences at first glance. The extremely clever fellow wearing a wolf shirt and dorky glasses at the bar could very well be a snappy dresser most of the time, but to me, at that moment, he's another guy in a wolf shirt and dorky glasses.
** Klan imagery doesn't have the same assigned camp value as Nazi imagery because the Nazis were, in terms of overall American historical perception, soundly defeated in WWII. Game over. No continues. In defeat, their ideology is found hollow and inferior and is assigned a harmlessness that frees it up for use as hyperbolic comic relief. There was no KO moment for the Klan, no one inarguable public moment of defeat; they're irrelevant thanks to the FBI, but they're still around and their horrible attacks against minorities in this country are still in living memory. Ergo, they aren't as funny.
Now, I broke down Palmer's comment this way: by assuming the product placement is ironic, she assumes that Lady Gaga/the various entities who represent and make decisions for Lady Gaga do not really use, endorse, or even like the products in her video. Hence the irony. By Palmer's logic, the only way to justify taking money from the companies who make said products is to donate said money to a cause that, befitting the ironic nature of the product placement, she does not support. The Klan, we are all led to assume, is just such a cause.
Problem is, none of us know that Lady Gaga's product placement was meant ironically - for all I know, she really does love Wonder Bread and Miracle Whip. Maybe her cell phone service provider IS Verizon (ninja edit: Verizon is sponsoring her tour). References to products or trendy nostalgia items are not ironic by default, and besides there's really no way to know for sure without prior knowledge of Lady Gaga's consumer preferences. Not that anyone besides Lady Gaga and maybe her mom should even care about those.
So what we're left with is Palmer cobbling together a bunch of halfwit assumptions about Lady Gaga that suggest a typical hipster misunderstanding* of what irony is, and then a really lame "edgy" Klan punchline that fell flat because Klan jokes always do.** And to top that off, she blames the audience, which is a rather pissant excuse for a joke not getting over with people.
I wasn't horribly put out or offended by what she said, because a) I've said a lot of dumb shit in public and it would be hypocritical of me come down on her for it, and b) I'm used to every musician I've ever respected being an incredibly flawed human being (or just a piece of shit who coasts on reputation), and thus have no illusions about people and their fallibility. But I do recognize that her statement was pretty stupid, and that it says nothing good about what she finds funny, clever, or relevant. Bad form, AP. Bad form.
* hipster irony not only relies on the bearer of said irony knowing that he/she is being ironic, but that all third-party observers know his/her personal tastes well enough to understand the irony on display. This is problematic because, uh, psionics don't exist and ESP is debatable, and thus we can't instantly separate someone's real preferences from their displayed preferences at first glance. The extremely clever fellow wearing a wolf shirt and dorky glasses at the bar could very well be a snappy dresser most of the time, but to me, at that moment, he's another guy in a wolf shirt and dorky glasses.
** Klan imagery doesn't have the same assigned camp value as Nazi imagery because the Nazis were, in terms of overall American historical perception, soundly defeated in WWII. Game over. No continues. In defeat, their ideology is found hollow and inferior and is assigned a harmlessness that frees it up for use as hyperbolic comic relief. There was no KO moment for the Klan, no one inarguable public moment of defeat; they're irrelevant thanks to the FBI, but they're still around and their horrible attacks against minorities in this country are still in living memory. Ergo, they aren't as funny.