It's the music that we choose

Well this week’s offerings are two golden instances of musical bricolage that achieve a special frisson by mixing not just generic but racial/cultural matter. What’s whiter than arena rock or C.S. Lewis? And yet both of these honky standbys provide the subject matter for some very intriguing rap.


“Black Elvis.”
“Black Elvis, rock star, walkin down Broadway/Chillin in the project hallway”

Admittedly, no one but Kool Keith could have pulled of the persona of Black Elvis with so much panache. Also known as Dr. Octagon, Mr. Gerbik– “the dangerous 208 year-old Uncle of Dr. Octagon . . . Half-shark, half-man, skin like alligator/ Carrying a dead walrus,” Dr. Dooom – who kills Dr. Octagon on the opening track of First Come, First Served, and most recently, Reverend Tom, this is a man with an expansive enough fantasy life to bridge the gap between the ghetto & Elvis-style white rockstardom. Best line: “Tour bus with the Motley Crue, who gon' stop who?/ Rock star don't need no tattoo.”

"Lazy Sunday"
“It’s the Chronic-/ What?/ -cles of Narnia”

I love hip hop. But you know a genre is ossifying when parody like this is possible. Sure, in employing a form born in the ghetto to celebrate white boy pastimes these guys are taking a page from the Beastie Boys. But it’s the deliberate and clever evocations of gangsta clichés – here applied to buying cupcakes and catching the Sunday matinee of a children’s *fantasy* movie – that make this piece so fine. Best line: "You can call us Aaron Burr by the way we droppin' Hamiltons!"

Everything I know about ______ I learned from ________.

Everything I know about __getting a man__ I learned from __Impromptu__ . In fact after viewing it again for the first time since the film’s original release in 1991, it’s clear that I learned all too much of my romantic technique from the 19th-century grandes artistes who are its subject. Judy Davis’ take on the fearless, cigar-smoking, breeches-wearing novelist George Sand – incidentally, also depicted here as an exemplary horsewoman, a good shot, and a loving mother – was all but irresistible to me. I could barely find it in my heart to forgive Chopin (the first in a long line of this kind of bashful suitor character from Hugh Grant) for his reluctance to surrender to such an incredible woman. The kind of impossibly direct and physically aggressive style of courtship favoured by the film’s heroine seemed like such a breath of fresh air after the Byzantine complexities of adolescent romance. But it turns out that most men, not just frail and excessively mannerly Polish composers, find this approach . . . unnerving.

Basically a romantic comedy centered on Sand’s unrelenting pursuit of the reclusive Chopin, the film does hint at two interesting questions: to what degree does art license its creators an existence apart from society’s rules, and what price did Sand pay for the liberty she gained by shunning convention in divorcing her rich, aristocratic husband, adopting male dress and writing for money? Much of the action takes place at the country estate of the obtuse Duchess D’Antan, who has gathered a coterie of geniuses – Liszt, Delacroix, de Musset, and Chopin (Sand invites herself) – for a fortnight of high culture. The tension between the provincial nobility who view the artists as either fashionable accessories or scandalous sinners, and the artists themselves (who profess high ideals but for the most part do in fact behave as parasites looking for a free meal) provides much of the comedy. Finally the artists stage a playlet mercilessly caricaturing their hopelessly gauche hosts, and the conflict between the traditional claims of wealth and power and the more radical Romantic stance of the artists is made explicit: when Chopin objects to the satire as ungracious, de Musset declares, "Art does *not* apologize!"

In his Minima Moralia, the noted 20th-century Marxist German philosopher and crotchety old man Theodor Adorno tells us "Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth." But in Impromptu art’s autonomy from mundane reality does not always transfer to its practitioners or devotees. The pressure to produce art for cash is an ever present theme in this film, as is the sad truth that the Romantic notion of artistic freedom was in fact a male privilege. In the bitter disappointment of Liszt’s aristocratic mistress, who sacrifices wealth and status to be the muse of a genius but instead ends up constantly pregnant and reduced to meddling in Sand’s affair in order to win herself some attention, we see how little impact that storied liberty has against the traditional imperatives of womanhood. Even Sand, whose prolific output is implicitly linked to her restless libido and disregard for scandal, must finally return to a more conventional femininity in order to finally conquer Chopin. Apparently success with even the most womanly man will require that one wear dresses and wait for him to make the first move.

However despite it’s ultimate – and very depressing – reinforcement of conventional sexual mores, there are moments enough in this film to reward repeat viewing. Chief among them is the early morning exchange between Sand and a drunken de Musset (her former lover), before he must face in a duel her most recent (and now unwanted) bedmate, her children’s doltish tutor. As he mawkishly reminisces over their affair, Sand impatiently declares, "Alfred, I was much too good for you. I spoiled you. I gave you money. I nursed you when you were sick." To which he quietly replies, "Yes . . . and then you fucked the doctor." I never thought I would find myself praising the inexplicably over-praised Mandy Patinkin, but I have to say that his performance here as the self-regarding, careless de Musset is so hilarious I wondered why Sand didn’t just stay with him.

Like Jonestown without the Kool-Aid

Remember when dressing up used to be fun? Remember when parties hosted by engineering students used to be fun? Ok, maybe fun in the tear down the house, puke on the lawn, and run away from the cops kind of way, but still . . . Fun.

Well no more. Actually, dressing up is still fun. But today’s engineering students are as capable of throwing a lame party as those of any other faculty. Case in point – the James Bond theme party I had the opportunity to infiltrate a couple weeks back. The premise was soooo promising: come dressed as your favorite Bond character, pay $15 at the door, and drink all the martinis you can. Engineers. Party. What more can I say? I think the whole point was to celebrate someone’s birthday, possibly not an engineer, but really – who cares? Alas . . . I’m still recovering from the traumatic disappointment this party inflicted on me; but it’s ok, I feel like I can talk about it now. And here is what I learned from this terrible experience . . .

Lesson #1: Even if it’s advertised as a costume party, there is no guarantee that anyone else will actually follow through on that.
Perhaps this is a bit of sore point because my accomplice and I spent a fair amount of energy on our costumes. My friend "Logan" – my entreé to this ‘by invitation only’ party – and I actually perceived the invitation’s stipulation of dress appropriate to the Bond theme as a worthy challenge. Admittedly, we may have been *too* into it. After a few days of soul searching he settled on Eric Kriegler, the East German biathlon killer/henchman from For Your Eyes Only (1981), while I chose Melina Havelock, the vengeful crossbow-toting, half-Greek archaeologist/Bond babe from the same film. We did research – watching the movie in order to capture the finer nuances of our characters – assembled our weapons, drank a few shots of Polish vodka and were on our way. So imagine our dismay upon arriving to discover that everyone else had either foregone costumes entirely or made a pretty lame attempt at it. (Honorable mentions are due however to the helicopter pilot dude and the party’s hostess, who actually went to the trouble of fabricating a lab pass identifying her as Dr. Christmas Jones, nuclear physicist). I did find at least one guy in a tuxedo, but I still can’t figure out who the hell those two cowboys were supposed to be. And most of the party’s attendees appear to have decided that "Bond" = dressy. Not.

Worse still, it became quickly evident that there was no music, no dancing, in fact no carousing at all to be found at this party. Just tight knots of people quietly conversing – or worse, sitting silently – with people they obviously already knew. Yes, sitting. Silently. Oh, and there was a rousing game of foosball at one point. You get the picture.

Lesson #2: Martinis ain’t what they used to be.
It was at this point we realized that for the evening to have any redeeming value we would have to make our own fun. Adopting the excessive consumption of alcohol as our strategy – we had paid our $15 apiece after all – we spent most of the early part of the night at the bar. . . which was in fact an actual bar, apparently constructed for the occasion, manned by designated bartenders and featuring a menu of several different types of pseudo-martinis, all named after Bond characters (of course). We kept drinking steadily in hopes of seeing some improvement, but just as I was reflecting that I didn’t remember martinis being so sweet or or so dominated by liqueurs, we accidentally struck upon the device that would carry us through the night: pissing off other people at the party.

It all started when we noticed the girl whose costume seemed to consist of her breasts nearly falling out of her top. Hereafter dubbed "the boob girl," we attempted to discreetly photograph the phenomenon (see Fig. 2), but she became immediately suspicious. In order to throw off the mantle of suspicion I began actively harassing one of the very uptight hosts of the party – let’s call him "Cyril" – demanding that he personally make me a drink. But this gambit was only temporarily successful, and about an hour later when Boob Girl confronted me with the question of whether I had called her "the girl whose boobs are falling out of her dress," I boldly (if foolishly) responded with a resounding "Yes!" Apparently she was so traumatized by my subsequent playful comments that she complained to everyone within earshot for the rest of the night, and the next day my friend received an online scolding for my bad behavior from the birthday girl, on behalf of her "very good friend."

Lesson #3: If you leave your laptop up and running in a public setting, expect the worse. Having nothing to lose at this point, our interventions became simultaneously more daring and more stealthy. Discovering that one of the house’s residents had left his laptop on in his basement room – which in fairness, we only entered because there was a sign that said "Washroom" on the door – I could not resist the urge to tamper with it in some harmless but obvious way. Luckily, once I hit upon the idea of replacing his desktop wallpaper with something a little more pornographic Logan knew exactly where to go to obtain just the right image. A quick scan of the room also revealed a Sharpie in mint condition, which I pocketed for further reference. Upon re-ascending the stairs to the kitchen, we found the work that destiny had clearly intended for all black, indelible markers. Some neurotic member of this household had labeled all the cabinet doors and drawers with a list of their contents. Apparently this mania had taken a gentle comic turn, because the stove and the door knob were also duly labeled. The implicit resemblance of this kitchen to the thoroughly labeled Batcave of the 1960s Batman show cried out for recognition, and I sought to repair this oversight by dutifully adding the prefix "Bat-" to each of the labels. Unfortunately, Logan turned out to be a much less stealthy scribe than I and was caught red-handed by one of the residents, who used her schoolmarmish moral authority and the tissue-thin assertion that it was "her" marker in order to confiscate it.

Lesson #4: Once the men start taking their pants off, the quality of the party improves immeasurably. This decided lack of stealth on the part of my otherwise trusty accomplice can most likely be attributed to a terrible mistake made just earlier in the evening. Inspired by the range of girly, liqueur-based martinis, he had requested from the bartenders a combination of equal parts of Goldschlager and Jagermeister (which in turn would inspire some heroic vomiting at around 2am). But it also spurred on his participation in what was probably the high point of the night, the spontaneous decision made by the two cowboys to drop their pants.

Finally, some yelling and tomfoolery! Able to recognize that no further improvement upon this moment was possible, we beat a hasty retreat, made hastier in fact by the need to evade a promise to accompany some other departing guests to their destination, rashly made by my increasingly reckless companion. I’m sorry to say that my exit from this affair came in the form of a full speed, drunken piggyback ride, necessitated by the severely sprained ankle I’d been nursing all week.

And the moral of the story: Well Cyril never did make me that drink. But I think learned some valuable lessons from this experience, namely to attend all future parties hosted by engineers with radically lowered expectations, to admit nothing when questioned, and to always travel with my own Sharpie.

This is the Modern World

Internet ephemera typically falls into one of two categories: stuff worth checking out for a laugh, and then the stuff that *begs* for commentary. Currently making the rounds among those who thought they were beyond astonishment is a trailer for “Line-Kill Spirits,” a new Japanese “upskirt fighting game” in which the damage you inflict upon your fellow schoolgirl opponent gains a lasting effect only if you photograph her panties. Aside from the immediate and obvious questions which come to mind –- “Do I hear an entire genre being born?” “What is with this Japanese fetish for schoolgirl panties?” “How do I get a copy of this?”–- come some less obvious ones, such as “Where does the player fit into the erotic economy of this game?”

This is a game which revolves around two core fantasies: watching two adorable prepubescent girls beat the crap out of each other, and the (still) illicit activity of upskirt photography. (In at least one case, it also involves a horse, but I will leave that for you to decode by yourselves). In both cases, voyeurism is at the heart of the matter. But what makes this different than a photo-essay featuring ass-kicking, camera-wielding schoolgirls is the interactive nature of the game. Sure you get to control all that girl on girl fighting action from a spectator’s perspective; but the minute you click that virtual shutter, you are rewarded with a first person look at your own handiwork: first through the viewfinder inset at the bottom left, and then over the entire screen.

So what is going on here? We’ve all heard –- ok, all of us who made the terrible mistake of taking an Arts degree –- endlessly and ad nauseum about “the gaze.” In essence, it’s the notion that all forms of prolonged looking implicitly propose an asymmetrical power relationship in which the object of the gaze can be mastered, even possessed, by the gazer. Well at least in the mind of the gazer, which is of course one of the critical distinctions between pornography and real life. Yet importantly, gazing also maintains an ironic (not to mention, sanitary) distance from the object of desire. Hence the particular erotic charge of voyeurism! Possession without the mess, emotional or otherwise, that typically accompanies actual sex.

In gaming however the connection between gazing and control over the object of the gaze is literalized: you do in fact control at least one of the characters at which you stare unblinkingly. In the case of a game which offers a third-person perspective, you are both aligned with and separated from your character in a most peculiar manner. However, the shift to a first person perspective instantly deepens the immersion. And who are you aligned with here? An all but unstoppable man of war? No, a cute but vicious little girl who destroys her opponents by dominating them through pervy photography!

Clearly this game was designed as an educational tool by feminist theorists to reveal the inherent violence of the gaze. As Adam West’s Batman was so prone to declare, “No other explanation is possible!”