On HU
Featured Archive Post: Andrea Tang on Iron Man 3, Olympus Has Fallen, and the new yellow peril.
Paul Nudd with Love-Chutney drawings for the Gay Utopia.
Alexander Hamilton was an authoritarian thug.
Ng Suat Tong with a lengthy consideration of Nijigahara Holograph.
Chris Gavaler on Phillip Pullman and Spring-heeled Jack.
I talk about Octavia Butler’s Fledglin, Lacan, and amnesia.
Michael A. Johnson talks about the ethical implications of covering war via photograph and comic (from PPP.)
Sean Michael Robinson on Rhinestone Cowboys, Deacon Blues, and small dreams.
Utilitarians Everywhere
At Salon I
— Lised the 10 most overrated albums of the 1990s.
—wrote about how there are basically no women in the original Star Wars.
At the Dissolve I reviewed the documentary Documented about Jose Antonio Vargas’ experience as an undocumented immigrant.
At Splice Today I wrote about
— Esme Patterson asking Elvis Costello what the hell is wrong with him.
— how Batman, Sarah Palin and everybody else loves torture.
Other Links
Amazon is deleting the wish lists of sex workers because Amazon is run by arbitrary puritanical assholes.
Relatedly, Spike on trying to publish porn comics.
Also relatedly, the DOJ is closing porn star’s bank accounts because our government is run by arbitrary puritanical assholes.
Dana Schwartz on gender in Star Wars.
Isaac Butler on why your Star Wars books still count.
Mary McCarthy on jeans drama.
What you said about Lucinda Williams was just really unnecessarily cruel. You may not like her music but she is a person.
Oh for pity’s sake. She’s a really famous public figure who almost certainly is not reading random salon music lists. Her album is a pretentious piece of crap, and I said so. Also I made fun of her drummmer. I am not sorry for any of that.
I’m at least as mean to Eddie Vedder, damn it.
No, you didn’t say the album was pretentious. I just re-read it. You barely said anything about the album. You weren’t just as mean to Eddie Vedder either. You called him a petulant herbivore who wants to be Howlin’ Wolf. All of that is true and only the petulant part is actually even negative.
I think calling him a petulant herbivore who wants to be Howlin’ Wolf is pretty mean. Pearl Jam fans seemed to think so anyway.
What did I say about Lucinda Williams? That her singing is laughable and she wants to be Bob Dylan, right? That seems along the same lines.
I didn’t call her a baby killer or anything. I said her singing and her music sucked. I’ll stand by that.
I don’t agree with Noah’s take on Lucinda Williams at all, at all; but if I’ve learned one thing from Noah, it’s that discourse and discussion of differences is better than getting angry about an opinion you don’t like. We’re all likely to get more value from a spirited defense of Williams.
I think her singing sounds like someone sawing drunkenly at a taut piano wire with a razor; from me that’s a complement.
It’ sreally the phraing that gets me as much as anything. She really seems to emphasize words almost at random.
I can occasionally enjoy her, and other artists covering her songs can work. Patty Loveless does a version of She Loves the Night that I rather like.
Your article about Esme Patterson got me to listen to several of the songs she was answering and then her answer songs. It’s an interesting idea, she’s very talented, and I thought the answer to Caroline, No was especially good. But her answer to Eleanor Rigby (which you didn’t mention but she performed on her Ted Talk at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luiz913mWM8) really bugged me.
Patterson’s answer song is about Eleanor appreciating nature and happily facing death, and she prefaces it by saying, “These young men, Lennon and McCartney, look at her life and say she’s lonely, but I thought maybe she’s at peace.” Yeah, maybe she’s at peace, and maybe she’s lonely, like a lot of people (especially old people) in real life. Patterson’s implication seems to be that the second possibility is somehow wrong to write about, at least when the writer is male and the character is female (she doesn’t say anything about Father McKenzie). Maybe I’m making a mistaken assumption, but she seems to think that men shouldn’t write about female characters unless those characters are bastions of strength, independence, and inner complexity. But as pathetic as the title character may be, I actually think that Eleanor Rigby is a credit to Paul McCartney’s empathy. I’m impressed that one of the world’s most beloved entertainers, as a young man at the peak of his career, would so be concerned with “all the lonely people.”
Which gets me thinking–maybe this kind of “answering” art only works best if the answerer is a better artist than the original. Anyone who’s skimmed sections of Lo’s Diary, Pia Pera’s supposedly feminist retelling of Lolita from the title character’s perspective, will recognize that it’s almost unbelievably awful. My impression is that outside of his fiction, Nabokov was kind of sexist. Nevertheless, his artistic genius allowed him to paint a way more complex and sympathetic portrait of Lolita–while writing from her brilliantly manipulative rapist’s perspective–than Petra could manage while writing from Lolita’s perspective.
This is only tangentially related and might be evidence of misogyny on my part, but I might as well throw it in… My reaction to the pop song According to You, by a singer named Orianthi (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu1aQvm5MrU&feature=kp), kind of mirrors Patterson’s reactions to the songs she answers. According to You contrasts the views of the narrator’s awful former boyfriend with those of her wonderful current boyfriend (“According to you, I’m boring, I’m moody, you can’t take me any place… I suck at telling jokes cause I always give it away. But according to him, I’m funny, irresistible, everything he ever wanted!” etc.). Every time I hear that song, I think, “Yeah, but what if the first guy was right?”
Noah’s opinion is perfectly reasonable. I am not angry about the opinion itself, only the gratuitous cruelty with which it was expressed.
I really don’t particularly get how it’s cruel, especially since she didn’t read it, and I can’t imagine she’d care about my opinion if she did.
Seriously, Lucinda Williams needs to be defended from a random guy on the internet saying her singing sucks? That just seems ridiculous. You’re not defending her; she doesn’t give a poop.
I think certain kinds of attacks are out of bounds, but I’m really just mocking her singing and performance because they suck. Aesthetic responses, bad or good, are part of what you expect when you make a piece of mass art for public consumption.
I was meaner to the RHCP too. I actually insulted their fans in that one.
Jack, I don’t like Eleanor Rigby very much; McCartney’s quasi-classical impulses mostly make me just wish he’d stop. I didn’t have much of a response to Patterson’s reply either…so I guess that’s why I didn’t talk about it.
That gravel road song by Lucinda Williams is pretty bad but Noah’s review made me expect some pinnacle of musical torment. In the end it was just lousy. The horse tranquilizer suggestion is probably true though.
Look, Noah, your piece was obviously intended to piss people off and it pissed me off. Good for you.
No I’m not defending her. Who said I was? I’m expressing my honest reaction, which is the exact reaction you were going for. Why are you complaining about it?
Nah; I’m not actually trying to piss people off. I guess my ideal reader would be amused and/or relieved to realize that other folks hate this thing too.