Daft Punk on the mask

I’m really fascinated by any artist who performs in a mask.  Daft Punk point out a few good ideas in this profile in Pitchfork.  One of the most interesting ideas is their reference to the wage-serf people under the theme park costumes.  Ryan Dombal:

THE PYRAMID BLOWOUT WAS AKIN to your typical rock star extravaganza in scale and scope, but also laced with the more inclusive and diffusive aspects of traditional DJ gigs, where everyone’s the star. It put Daft Punk in a unique position within contemporary music’s personality-driven ecosystem: legitimately famous and faceless. To this point, Bangalter compares their situation to Batman (“we feel that the pyramid was like our Batmobile”), Cinderella (“after the show is over, we go back to anonymity and normality”), the Wizard of Oz (“we’re just guys behind a curtain pushing the knobs and creating the spectacle”), and a dude in a Mickey Mouse costume at Disney World (“if you have 100 kids around you all day long, are you not becoming big-headed?”). Their mechanized identities also act as a buffer for the out-of-control egomania that could result from a sea of people losing their shit in your general direction as you stand over them from the apex of a million-watt triangle.

via Cover Story: Daft Punk | Features | Pitchfork.

I remember getting a series of photos with oversized plush Shaggy and Scooby characters in some upstate New York theme park. Upon reflection, it was one of the most one-directional emotional exchanges I’ve ever had in a commercial setting.

I gushed to these paid actors.  I talked about how many days after school I had scrambled home to watch  Scooby Doo during the days of three channels. I’m sure I wasn’t alone — in essence these workers accepted adoration while cooking in the suits.

Here is Peter Mandel in a witty overview of what it is like inside the suit.  He  volunteers to wear a plush costume (Patrick from Spongebob Squarepants) for a day in a theme park.

1:35 p.m. I step into giant fuzzy leg pods and pull up my mesh-style underwear and suspenders. Next come a pair of massive pea-green pantaloons.

Patrick’s head and body unit is heavy — under the pink fuzz there’s a structural shell. I need help from Vest and an assistant to hoist it over my head and get my arms through the knapsack-style harness inside.

SpongeBob’s suit, I’m told, is equipped with a personal fan. Nothing fancy like that in mine. It’s like a tropical evening in here: dim, roughly the color of sunset, scraps of thread and duct tape hanging limp in the humid air.

As a final touch, I attach some Velcro straps and slide my arms into the arm pods, which I try to flap using subway-style fabric straps. Voila.

2:25 p.m. Vest and her assistant explain the rules. No talking in the suit. No food. No gum. No running. No signing autographs (how could you grip a pen with a flipper?). And no embellishing the costume.

“Once SpongeBob came out with a bracelet on,” explains Vest, “that’s supposed to go with Dino from the Flintstones. Someone was like, ‘Hey, look, SpongeBob has bling!’ I had him back in the shack in two seconds.”

via Peter Mandel: A Day In The Life Of A Theme Park Character.

 

Digital direct action: accountability for rape

From the Mother Jones article.

Josh Harkinson has written an excellent essay on the digital direct action involved in the documentation of the Steubenville rapes and a Canadian instance of sexual assault and cyber-bullying which resulted in death of Rehtaeh Parsons. 

I didn’t know that Anonymous had helped to document the evidence about the Steubenville Ohio assault (much of it drawn from social media).

About two weeks later, the Anonymous subgroup KnightSec hacked RollRedRoll.com. The hackers posted the incriminating tweets, Saltsman’s Instagram photo, and the names of 11 bystanders. “This is a warning shot,” said a video communiqué featuring a computer-generated voice and the group’s trademark Guy Fawkes figure. The video (watch below) warned that KnightSec would release the phone numbers and Social Security numbers of the entire football team unless “all accused parties come forward by New Year’s Day and issue a public apology to the girl and her family.”

via Exclusive: Meet the Woman Who Kicked Off Anonymous’ Anti-Rape Operations | Mother Jones.

One result of the increased focus was the visibility of community support for the rapists.   In some ways the hacking made community accountability in Steubenville possible.  And after the evidence had been released, Anonymous hosted at least nine protests to force police action against the perpetrators. After one significant video was released the numbers swelled to what might be described as critical mass and in front of thousands of angry protesters, the women of Steubenville spoke about other rapes.

And vent they did. For four hours, there was a catharsis of personal pain and grief that nobody in the small town could have imagined. Women who had been raped stood in front of the crowd, clad in Guy Fawkes masks, to share their stories. Some of them unmasked at the end of their testimonies as they burst into tears. Rapes at parties, date rapes, rapes by friends and relatives—their pent-up secrets came pouring out. “It turned into this women’s liberation movement, in a way,” MC recalls. “And it just changed everything. There was nothing anybody could do against us at that point because it was so real and so true.”

via Exclusive: Meet the Woman Who Kicked Off Anonymous’ Anti-Rape Operations | Mother Jones.

The audio clips are available on the Mother Jones site.

Killer Mike exposed

Killer Mike is a grown up hip hop artist, thinking about serious stuff.  He and El-P ran through the Combat Jack show and came off with this nice little exchange. 

1. Notice the fundamentals, Dallas Penn sets this off.  I don’t love his consumerist Polo identity, but there is no discounting how smart and insightful that guy really is.  If you aren’t reading and donating to Dallas Penn’s web site, you aren’t living right.

2. Good interviewers.  Ask the question and get out of the way.  Combat Jack is serious, Dallas Penn is serious.  That means listening when ideas are flowing.

3. How about two grown men getting honest with each other?  El-P telling Killer Mike he is just starting his career.  Killer Mike talking about having to expose parts of his vulnerabilities and fears to work with El.

***

Updated a few days later . . . May 9, 2013.  Part 3 is out.

El-P, Killer Mike, Combat Jack, and Dallas Penn.  The third clip is a conversation about race.  Nice discussion.

1. For those educators out there looking for an example of a “race pass” check out Dallas Penn saying to El-P: “I don’t call you a white rapper.”

Absolutely on point, El-P rejects the offer of the card.  ”I’m a white guy, I rap. There’s no question about it.” Just because you are cool doesn’t mean that you don’t have privilege.  And leave it to Killer Mike to remind us of that.  When asked about white-identified rap fans Killer Mike responds:

“I’m not saying their experience isn’t worthy, I’m not saying it isn’t valuable. I’m saying it’s not special.  Because every human being experiences love and pain and let down.  Your thing is no more special.  And a lot of times, as Americans, and in this country, we feel like our suffering makes us special. You are special because you are a human being.”  - Killer Mike

3.  This argument is a dumb prompt from Combat Jack.  I think it might be a kind of policing — because of Killer Mike’s reference in segment one to his increasing vulnerability.   I appreciate all the examples of great black emcees who recorded some vulnerable verses that are quickly volunteered by the panelists.

Ten Frisk Commandments: Jasiri X

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes (of course sometimes you gotta run). Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Stay free y’all.

Salute to Jasiri X!

Not everyone has access to the same technology

Jen Schradie on the digital divide.  Thanks to Cyborgology via the Society Pages.

6. But aren’t people from marginalized communities “leapfrogging” over desktops, laptops and even tablets by using their mobile phones?

As Sociologist Sheila Cotton put it, “Could you type a 10 page paper on your phone?” However smart it might be, newer, smaller, sleeker gadgets, such as the iPad mini, are designed more for consumption, rather than producing and engaging with online content. Certainly, many people are tweeting and posting status updates with their smart phones, but class divisions are stark both domestically and worldwide for smart phone, rather than mobile phone access. And mobile devices are not always “smart.” As I have argued, having online access at a variety of locations (i.e. home and work) and owning a lot of gadgets allows people to control the means of digital production and have the autonomy for high levels of Internet use. One cell phone doesn’t cut it.

Flex! University articulation of labor as duty

The Feminist Wire comes through with a nice write up about academic labor.  Here Paul Seltzer, a GW Women’s Studies major, articulates the painful implications of the academic culture which insists on students and faculty suffering in order to retain connection to the school.

Flexible instructors and flexible students, dependent upon the corporate university for a wage and a future, are those whose labors and bodies stretch to satisfy the requirements that would make them valued members of the university’s community, less at-risk to a budget cut here or a rise in tuition there.  Flexibility means that when the corporate university applies such pressures, instructors and students will bend as much as they can so that they will not snap.  Sure, I can teach another class for minimal pay.  Sure, I will work freshman orientation in return for free housing.  Sure, I will go into debt.

I observe in my own academic life that the credibility of the institution is used to help justify these kinds of decisions.

 

Kites

Parafoils in Malaysia photo by Amirul Lazan, via Flickr

It is a stunning beautiful day in Humboldt.  Psyched about this article on kites.  I’d quote the cool section about fighting kites in India if I wasn’t going to go outside and fly a kite.

Involves Oklahoma pizza chains, globe traveling kite aficionados, a kite called the ‘skynasaur,’ and more.  Don’t sleep on Lisa Hix’s nice write-up.

Dean Spade on the expansion of criminal justice system in the name of civil rights

Dean Spade has great succinct answers in this four-question profile. One answer is about trans and hate crimes and becomes a lesson in pro-active intersectional feminism. As quoted in the McGill Reporter:

Hate crime laws that provide more resources to law enforcement and/or enhance criminal penalties have been critiqued by many trans organizations and activists because they do nothing to prevent attacks against trans people but they expand the criminal punishment system which is the most significant source of violence against trans people in the U.S. They build that system in our names, and that system has been growing rapidly for several decades, such that now the US is the most imprisoning country in the world, with five per cent of the world’s population and 25 per cent of the world’s prisoners. A trans movement that is really about reducing harm and violence to trans people has to be an anti-criminalization movement, and a movement that doesn’t just try to get the law to say something our lives are meaningful, but instead seeks to dismantle legal systems that are killing us.

Thanks to Feministing’s Daily Feminist Cheat Sheet for the link!

Bikers against child abuse

Nice profile of Bikers Against Child Abuse in AZCentral.com.  The author, Karina Bland, spent a few months traveling with a chapter of Bikers Against Child Abuse.  Potent, emotional prose.

The girl chewing on her lip was abused by a relative, according to police reports – someone she should have been able to trust. He’s not in the state any longer, but the criminal case is progressing slowly, so he’s not in jail, either.

He still terrorizes her at night, even though he’s nowhere near. She wakes, heart pounding. The nightmare feels real again. She never feels safe, even with her parents just downstairs.

The unruly-looking mob in her driveway is there to help her feel safe again. They are members of the Arizona chapter of Bikers Against Child Abuse International, and they wear their motto on their black leather vests and T-shirts: “No child deserves to live in fear.”

Kid President and Obama

Power of the internets x 1,000,000,000.