Links & Bits: 12/2/11

s.e. smith asks, "Does Pop Culture Have Social Responsibility?"

LT from My American Melting Pot has a beef with the movie Bridesmaids.


Nicole Cunningham Zaghia from Racialicious offers an alternative t o TLC's All-American Muslim: Me, the Muslim Next Door.

Links & Bits: 9/16/11

The Crunk Feminist Collective Discusses TLC's new show, Big Sexy .

10 Listens revisits Marshall Crenshaw's criminally overlooked self-titled album.

Maybe this deserves its own post, but for now check out Julie Klausner's Spin interview with St. Vincent's Annie Clark (via bmichael ):

“I feel like there’s two kinds of girls,” I say. “Those who love Audrey Hepburn and those who love Marilyn. Who do you love more?” Even as I ask, I know I am provoking her. 

“I think that kind of gets to the core of a lot of things that I see in popular culture,” Clark says, frustrated. “It’s really destructive and doesn’t make any sense to me — the idea that if there’s an exalted female, there can be only one, and if there are more than one, then they must be in direct competition with each other.” 

I didn’t mean to scrutinize the femaleness of her fame. I could’ve just as easily asked her, “Beatles or Stones?” But I struck a nerve, and I got to see firsthand how she recoiled at the idea of being dismissed — of being chalked up to something, or as something — when her talent and her ideas and her abilities, combined with the creative metabolism of a caffeinated prodigy, could make her something so much more than this or that.

I love Clark's response to the "Audrey vs Marilyn" question, but I think Klausner kind of missed the point  in thinking Clark was responding only to being dismissed or pigeonholed as a "female artist.

Care Package to My 13-year-old Self

NPR had the right idea. Suggesting songs or albums that would help a 13-year-old get through her adolescence is a great way to connect with and guide the next generation, but I don't know many 13-year-old girls raised on a steady diet of Katy Perry and Ke$ha who could really get into King Crimson's In the Court of the Crimson King or Neil Young's After the Goldrush. Any chance one would have to drive a teenage girl away from pop music's message that she has to be thin, sexy, and available to boys, take it. But Neil Young isn't going to cut it. At 13, I would have dismissed it as "dad rock."(If you have to go the Bob/Neil/Bruce route, I'd suggesting buying her a guitar to go along with cds.)

Truth be told, I wasn't listening to much of anything at 13. My neighborhood didn't have MTV yet, and my parents kept the radio tuned to talk or country. What little music I listened to had to be so ubiquitous that it was unavoidable. The trifecta of Cyndi Lauper's She's So Unusual, Culture Club's Colour By Numbers, and Thriller made up the entirety of my record collection. I didn't really start getting into music until my late teens or early twenties. Fortunately for me, a lot of great music came out during the latter part of the 80s and into the 90s with the rise of commercial "alternative" rock. (Biggest oxymoron in the world, I know, but it did shake up the music industry for a few years, and dealt the final blow to hairspray rock.) However, by then I was a little too old to really enjoy it. I wish some of it was around when I was younger. If I could send a care package to my 13-year-old self, this is what it would include:

Queen Latifah's "Ladies First" and "U.N.I.T.Y"
My earliest taste of feminism came courtesy of hip hop, and both these songs left a huge impression on me. Hearing Queen Latifah in "U.N.I.T.Y" threaten to punch her harassers "dead in the eye" planted the seed in my head that, "Wow. I can do that?" I never had to, but I used to play that song on a loop in my brain whenever I'm walking home alone.

Patti Smith's "Gloria"
Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine... Truer words have never been spoken, especially to a budding atheist like myself. I kind of wish someone would have pointed me toward this song when, at age eleven, I asked my dad how I could become excommunicated from the church. I actually got to see Patti Smith a few years ago, and it was the closest I've ever been to a true religious experience.



Le Tigre's Feminist Sweepstakes
Going with the entire album here, as there are few artists these days calling themselves feminists, and even fewer records that make the word sound not scary or antiquated.

TLC's "No Scrubs"
What I've always loved about this song, though it was a huge pop hit, was that it was completely free of the victimization of street harassment. Many times "message" songs make me feel more powerless than I did before. This one doesn't, and puts the onus on the creepy guy "hanging out the passenger side."

So, what songs are albums would you recommend to a girl just entering her teens?