Tag Archives: Noah

Who’s in the Four Rooms

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The 1995 anthology title Four Rooms is a roundtable; four directors each shot a short film set in the same hotel. Though the movie was critically panned, it’s actually pretty enjoyable; the segments are all enjoyably loopy, and the Robert Rodriguez section is actually laugh out loud funny, with some great slapstick and nice turns by a couple of talented child actors.

One notable aspect of the Rodriguez segment (“The Misbehavers”) is that none of the characters is white. Tim Roth the bellhop is a prominent figure in all the segments, and he’s still there — but the family in the room is composed of Antonio Banderas as the father, Tamlyn Tomita as the Wife, and two children (played by Lana McKissack and Danny Verduzco). And yes, I think that’s the only mixed Hispanic/Asian family I’ve ever seen on film. Even the corpse in the bed is played by Robert Rodriguez’s sister, Patricia Vonne.

The rest of the segments aren’t especially racially homogenous by Hollywood standards; the opening coven-of-witches one is all white, I believe, but Jessica Beals (who is African-American) is the only person besides Roth to appear in two segments, and Paul Calderon (also African-American) shows up in Tarantino’s closing scene. Still, except for Rodriguez’s section, white people predominate.

The fact that the film is an anthology roundtable, and the fact that one of the films is so different in its approach to race, shows with unusual clarity that representation isn’t an accident, or a random function of hiring the best actors — especially since Rodriguez’s segment is pretty clearly the most inspired of the collection. Casting diverse actors is a choice — and casting white actors is a choice. Rodriguez’s room is one in which whiteness is not the default. If only white people can get into the other’s hotels, that’s because, to one degree or another, they’ve closed their doors.

Utilitarian Review 8/14/15

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News

Moviepilot was excited to find out from me that Wonder Woman will bring about the kinky patriarchal utopia.

On HU
We took a break this week…and may well take off next week too, depending on if anyone decides to write! Everyone’s on vacation for the summer I guess; so we’ll see. We’ll be back at some point though!
 
Utilitarians Everywhere

At The New Republic I wrote about Electronic Fetal Monitoring, and how it doesn’t work.

At Pacific Standard I wrote about how the Golden Age of Television is built on snobbery.

At the Guardian I wrote about the Fantastic Four and why superhero origin movies are a problem.

At Playboy I wrote about why, if Superman cared about humanity, he would fight mosquitoes.

At Quartz I wrote about Ricki and the Flash and moms who rock.

At Splice Today I

—explained that Trump is an ineffectual demagogue.

—ranked all the Mission Impossible films.

—wrote about Jason Isbell, country radio, and the most authentic country music.
 
Other Links

Mistress Matisse on Amnesty’s decriminalization policy.

Released emails about the mess at UIC re: Salaita and other issues.

Nice piece on Donald Trump’s mess of a campaign.

Utilitarian Review 8/7/15

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General News

Middle of summer and no one seems to be much interested in writing…so I think we’re going to take next week off, starting Monday.

Wonder Woman News

Cia Jackson reviewed my book at the Comics Grid. Not a very helpful review, as these things go…
 
On HU

Featured Archive Post: Subdee on Django Unchained and debt.

Robert Stanley Martin with on-sale dates of comics from early 1945—including Little Lulu and Milton Caniff.

Chris Gavaler on the superheroes politicians love.

Me on Ian McEwan and why he should stick to writing romance.

Me on the greatness of fIREHOSE’s Flyin’ the Flannel.

Roy T. Cook on bad superhero math and what to make of it.

I reviewed and anthology of Chinese experimental music.
 
Utilitarians Everywhere

At Quartz I wrote about why cultural appropriation isn’t theft (but can be racist.)

At Ravishly I wrote about Little Big Town, Willie Nelson, and same sex love in country music.

At Splice Today I wrote about:

—why Rorschach would be a better President than Ted Cruz.

—Sam Harris’ anti-semitic bilge.

Other Links

Tressie McMillan Cottom on TNC’s Between the World and Me is great.

It looks like Steven Salaita’s lawsuit is in good shape.

Gita Jackson on British wizards and American blackness.

Alyssa Rosenber on the conflicted feminism of Miss Piggy.

J.A. Micheline on why she’s boycotting Marvel.

 

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Anthology of Chinese Experimental Music, 1992-2008

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This first ran at Madeloud (a site that I think may no longer be online.)
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The Anthology of Chinese Experimental Music, 1992-2008. I read that title and I think to myself, “This may be great, it may be awful, but either way it’s going to be some weird-ass shit the likes of which I have never heard before in my life.”

Just goes to show what I know. Maybe it’s because, as the liner notes indicate, China’s indigenous cultural heritage was in many ways severed by the Maoist Cultural Revolution. Or maybe it’s because, just as today country music doesn’t mean rural, and rhythm and blues doesn’t mean the blues, experimental music just isn’t especially experimental. Whatever the reason, though, little on this four CD set qualifies as startling. From the first track (Li Chin Sung’s ambient static-and-cricket-noises on “Somewhere”) to the last (Simon Ho’s echoey, ambient, static-and-plane-taking-off-noises on “5”), we’re solidly within the avant-garde laptop paradigm. Some loud feedback, some snips of sound, a little techno bleepery here, a little static there….check, check, check, and check. I should have known; if you want , you need to head for Bollywood or Japanese pop, or, hell, American pop. Anything calling itself experimental is going to be just a little too pretentious to be truly goofy.

Which isn’t to say this set is bad. Four CDs may be more droning and squeaking than I really need in my life right now, but there are definitely a decent number of worthwhile moments scattered throughout. Torturing Nurse, for example, lets loose with some truly crazed shrieking to open CD 3; the rest of the track is 14 minutes of what appears to be a free-jazz combo caught in industrial machinery. SUN Dawei’s “Crawling State”, from CD 2, combines Baaba Maal-sounding African vocals and rhythms with more jittery computerized beats. The following track, Nara’s “Dream a Little Dream,” is very Aphex Twin; frantic bleeps undergirding a melody that’s all lyrical bliss. Fathmount’s “A Yoke of Oxen,” on the other hand, suggests Sonic Youth if the band were forced to ingest a substantial amount of mellowing weed — the detuned guitars gently weave and ploink without ever getting around to the brutal feedback rock climax. I even enjoyed some of the one-liners; I don’t actually want to sit for 4:47 and listen to a crane operate, but I appreciate that someone (a performer known as Fish, specifically) has given me the opportunity.

And you know what? Listening to Tats Lau’s “Face the Antagonist” again, I realize that it actually does sound like some sort of odd computer-nerd version of Bollywood, complete with earnest, soaring vocals, industrial clanging, and an odd warped mouth-harp-like twanging throughout which may or may not be entirely synthesized. That is pretty weird, after all.
 

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Old Enough to Be Confused

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This first ran on Splice Today.
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It’s taken me somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 years to appreciate fIREHOSE. A friend taped it for me back in the early 90s, maybe a year or three after its release in 1991. I didn’t hate it or anything, and I listened to it a fair amount because my friend said I should like it and I felt like I should keep trying. But it was only when I started to listen to it again last month after that two decade hiatus that I ended up falling in love — and buying all of fIREHOSE’s other albums.

It’s appropriate that I had to wait, and wait, and wait, to really appreciate the band. Most rock at least makes some pretense at aiming for the kids, but fIREHOSE really is music for aging decadents. Bassist Mike Watt and drummer George Hurley were already punk legends when the band coalesced — they’d been two thirds of the Minutemen, before guitarist D. Boon died. The new guitarist and vocalist, Ed Crawford, substituted for Boon’s youthful political charge a jaded, wigged out irony — everything the band does sounds like it’s in quotes. One of their songs, from 1993’s Mr. Machinery Operator is even called “More Famous Quotes.” Another, from 1987’s If’n, is called “For the Singer of REM” and is a gleefully goofy skewering of Michael Stipe, with Crawford burbling about how “the door’s a symbol for/these objects in your drawer,” while Watt and Crawford somehow imitate REM’s folk-rock shimmer exactly while still sounding like their own spiky, funky selves. It’s as if they’ve contemptuously swallowed their target whole.

As that parody suggests, there’s a little Weird Al in fIREHOSE’s makeup — but it’s Weird Al as he would have been if he was more musically talented and more ambitious than any of the bands he parodied. fIREHOSE is undoubtedly joking throughout Flyin’ the Flannel, but the jokes are so fractured and bizarre and cool-as-shit that they end up slipping over into the sublime. It’s the greatest chortling grandpa music ever.

Most of the songs on Flyin’ the Flannel are only one to two minutes long, and they all seem put together out of spare pieces, shards, and novelty items. “Can’t Believe” is a joyful power-pop ode to love into which someone has inadvertently dropped a barrel-full of amphetamines and the lunatic what swallowed them. Crawford wails his Michael Nesmith lines like Rob Halford with head trauma, while Watt and Hurley burp and stutter, turning the wannabe triumphant hook into a series of strutting pratfalls. On the band’s version of Daniel Johnston’s “Walking the Cow,” Mike Watt emotes like a slowed down Elvis, while the band turns the fey original into a faux-soulful stroll, with the meaty bass insisting that there really is a cow lowing over there. “Flyin’ the Flannel” is a cock rock roar about the need for tailors, interspersed with fruity folksy interludes, as Watt’s base meditatively scuffles about in the underbrush And then there’s “Towin’ the Line,” which is maybe the album’s closest song to actual funk. Though it’s still all slowed down and spaced apart, like George Clinton leisurely bouncing around the studio on a pogo stick.

Talking about individual tracks is a little deceptive though. The songs tend to blur into each other, not because they all sound the same, but, again, because they’re each so fragmented. The whole feels less like a whole than like an assemblage, stiched together out of Hurley’s weird shifting beats, Watt’s weird shifting bass runs, and Crawford’s weird shifting riffs and wails. You end up with this tattered, limping thing, which keeps trying to rock and then gets tired and goes off to snark or fart or sit down for a rest, or bellow at the kids on the lawn. Maybe I felt like it was bellowing at me once upon a time, I don’t know. But whatever my problem was, I’m glad I finally got old enough to like my music this distracted and crotchety and glorious.
 

Utilitarian Review 8/1/15

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On HU

Featured Archive Post: I try to turn poetry into comics criticism. (Perhaps the post on the site least likely to ever find an audience.)

Robert Stanley Martin with on sale dates of comics in late 1944. Pretty covers!

Leonard Pierce on Marvel’s hip hop variant covers and their crappy history with black characters and creators.

Kim O’Connor on the problems with Scocca’s On Smarm.

I wrote an open letter to Axel Alonso about Marvel’s hip hop variants and his comments about me.

Chris Gavaler on the convergence of lit fic and pulp.

Jimmy Johnson on SVU and sex work stigma.
 
Utilitarians Everywhere

At Quartz I wrote about how inequality is behind the deaths of both black people and Cecil the Lion.

At Urban Faith I wrote about Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me and tradition as a gift.

At the Guardian I profiled science-fiction author N.K. Jemisin. We talked about race, change, and the status quo.

At Playboy I interviewed Monica Byrne about diversity in literature and criticism.

At TNR I wrote about Jack and Jack and the disturbingly bland future of independent music.

At Splice Today I wrote about

—Salon and Gawker hitting each other.

—how Harper Lee’s reputation should be tarnished.

A short blurb about SZA in the Chicago Reader’s Lollapalooza coverage.
 
Other Links

Claire Napier on why Emma Frost’s wardrobe is idiotic.

Kenny Keil parodies Marvel with way better hip hop covers than theirs.

Emily Shire on Lena Dunham and others pushing to criminalize sex work.

Robert Stanley Martin on Birth of a Nation.
 

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The author N.K. Jemisin

 
 

An Open Letter to Axel Alonso

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Mr. Alonso,

Hi. I’m Noah Berlatsky. I’m the critic who you mocked (without mentioning my name) in your interview with Albert Ching at Comic Book Resources last week.

That interview, as you know, focused on criticism of Marvel’s hip hop variant covers. Many writers have argued that Marvel has a poor history of employing creators of color, and that, therefore, its variant cover project seems to celebrate the work of black art at a company that has largely ignored black people. I made that argument myself at the Guardian. In doing so, I failed to acknowledge that Marvel had hired many people of color to do the cover variants. I apologized for that on twitter. And, as I said, you took that as an opportunity to throw some elbows my way.

I have no objection to the elbows. I screwed up. I erased people of color when I was trying to highlight the ways in which they are erased, and for that I deserve ridicule. As one injured party, whose good efforts I should have acknowledged, you’re well within your rights to pile on.

However, I was distressed to see that you used my error as a way to dismiss, not just me, but everyone who had expressed concern about this marketing initiative. You wrote,

A small but very loud contingent are high-fiving each other while making huge assumptions about our intentions, spreading misinformation about the diversity of the artists involved in this project and across our entire line, and handing out snap judgments like they just learned the term “cultural appropriation” and are dying to put it in an essay.

That may well be an apt description of me. But you have to be aware that many other writers, who did not make the same errors I did, have raised objections, both to Marvel’s failure to employ black creators and to its generally dismissive tone when confronted. Why, in short, are you responding to one white writer who screwed up, rather than engaging with the many black writers and POC writers who have discussed this issue? I’m sure all of these folks have already been drawn to your attention, but in case you missed them, people who have tried to talk to you about this problem include David Brothers, J.A. Micheline, Shawn Pryor, and Osvaldo Oyola.

Many more people have weighed in on social media. Perhaps this is just a “small” contingent compared to Marvel’s whole audience. But it is part of the “dialogue” with hip hop you claim to want Marvel to engage in. People want to know why Marvel claims to love hip hop, but won’t hire black creators to write and draw its ongoing comics. And your response is to, very deliberately, engage with a white critic who made a mistake, while ignoring all the black people and people of color who have voiced serious concerns. That doesn’t seem like you want a dialogue with hip hop, or with anyone. It seems, instead, like you want the credibility of hip hop without engaging with the community and without doing the work.

Along the same lines, it’s great that artists like de la Soul and Nas like their covers; you gave them props, and they responded enthusiastically. However, I wish you would take a moment to go back to them and explain that you are using their endorsement as a way to avoid discussing the lack of black artists on Marvel’s regular comics line. Perhaps they would be fine with that. But it seems like you should give them the opportunity to say so, rather than making assumptions.

I suspect you will never see this letter. I had hoped CBR would give me the chance to post this on their site, especially since, in my view, their interview was sycophantic and broadly unworthy of them. Unfortunately, for me, and I feel for their integrity, they decided not to give space to a reply.

But since you made your response to criticism all about me, I felt like I should try to tell you, even if only in a small voice, that it isn’t about me. Because, as I hope you’re aware, hip hop is way bigger than me. It’s bigger than you, too. And yes, it’s even bigger than Marvel. The folks criticizing you are asking you to live up to this music and art and movement that you’re claiming that you love. As it is, the only bit of hip hop you are demonstrating real affection for is industry rule #4080. If you’d like to change that, you need to maybe stop talking and start listening — though not, in the first place, to me.

Thank you for your time,

Noah Berlatsky