do the right thing
In this age of mechanical reproduction mass consumption, the marketing tool of the “gimmick” has proliferated with varying degrees of success. Perhaps out of any of the venues in the entertainment industry, it is in the music world that one witnesses the exaggerated ebbs and flows of a talent that achieves success then demise through a gimmick. Case in point, Avril Lavigne and her rocker style neck tie atop wifebeater. While it is unclear to me if audiences grew tiresome of the tie or Avril chose to hang up her tie to be a Ford model, in either case the gimmick brought her two, maybe three if you want to include “Happy Ending,” hit singles.
By nature, gimmicks provide temporary means to attract attention. Just like KFC disposable wetnaps, they are meant to be used as much as possible, only to be thrown away seconds later. What started as a conversation about my lip gloss that was poppin’ turned into a discussion of the Jabbawookeez’s win on Randy Jackson Presents America’s Best Dance Crew.
The mixed group of Filipino, Vietnamese, and Chinese boys from San Diego performed to the top in front of JC Chasez, Lil Mama, judge from So You Think You Can Dance, and America with their synchronized moves and most importantly, their masked personas. Time and again, the members of the crew would be asked about their gimmick of featureless white masks. Each time, a member would state that wearing the masks is a means to erase individual identity and place focus on the movements of the bodies of the group. While admirable for the group to create a successful gimmick with the good intention to place focus on their dance, one begs to question the implications of white-faced Asian boys winning over non-masked Asian co-ed dance group. It also begs to question how ready Americans really are to see such faces on and how much praise America’s Best Dance Crew should be given for their diversity and their positive spotlight on the Asian American community.
In adopting the polar opposite of blackface, the Jabbawockeez used whiteface as a mechanism to attract a wider variety of viewers and voters. The dance crew certainly erased all individual identity as they intended to do. However, more so than allowing their dance moves to pop out, their white, featureless faces allowed the group to erase the facial features of race and to be less threatening to the general public, subsequently gaining enough votes to win the competition. While one can only guess how conscious the members of the Jabbawockeez were in adoption of the blank masks, I think it’s quite telling that it is only after the declaration of their win did their masks come off.
Jabbawockeez’ last performance as winners to Kanye West’s “Stronger”:
TGIFF: Volume 2
THE SCOOP: RETURNING FAVORITES
The Submarines: an indie-pop power couple now in LA, with an on-and-off-and-on backstory that makes me want to gag in a good way: “After the break-up, both Blake Hazard and John Dragonetti continued writing songs, and because Hazard still recorded her music in Dragonetti’s home studio, the pair quickly discovered the songs they had written were about each other and their sadness in having broken up. Knowing this, the duo decided to work on a few songs together and eventually got back together.”
Latest album: Honeysuckle Weeks
Think: The Stars + The Cardigans + The (insert precious-sounding noun)
The Submarines – Sub Symphonika
Best indirect cameo: Nip/Tuck’s Season 4 Finale, with all the characters doing a sing-along a la Magnolia style to “Brighter Discontent”
Tilly and the Wall: hailing from Omaha, Nebraska, this brainchild of Bright Eyes (minus Connor Oberst) practices indie pop with a neat twist: tap dancer in place of drummer. See Meg’s post on the Gimmick. However, in their case, the live performance fully encapsulates all the prerequisites of a musical number—orchestra, vocalists, and dancers must harmonize and challenge the audience to practice what they see on stage instead of nodding their shy heads or swaying their reluctant shoulders. Fred & Ginger, we can all be!
Latest album: O
Think: CSS + Nancy Sinatra + early Of Montreal
Tilly and the Wall – Pot Kettle Black
Tilly and the Wall – Cacophony
Best Contribution to Children Programming: New version of the ABC song for Sesame Street
Grace’s Anatomy
[reposted]
Last night’s season finale of Grey’s Anatomy turned over an incredible new leaf with its last 10 minutes of closure for each of its couplings. Sure, there were some wonders in the doctors’ amazing medical feats or the girl on girl action on primetime network television or, my favorite, old cute couples hooking up kind of (re: Alex and Izzie). But, the most amazing part of the episode, which Shonda Rhimes has to be given much props to, was the candle outlined house created by Meredith Grey. After weeks of sessions with the psychiatrist, Meredith reveals that as a child, she watched her mother try to kill herself by slitting her wrists. By the end of the episode, a bit of happiness and positivity emerges in Meredith when she discovers that her mother did not try to kill herself. Being a renowned surgeon, her mother cut a specific set of arteries that would not kill her so quickly. It is this discovery that pushes Meredith to have a smile on her face, stop moping, and get McDreamy back into her life and her pants.
As the means to profess her love to McDreamy, Meredith creates a blueprint of the first floor of their dream home on McDreamy’s hilltop property using candles. While quite a bit of a dangerous fire hazard (tons of open flames in a forest setting), it does not matter because Meredith is finally showing McDreamy her commitment and complete devotion to him, their relationship, and their future together. In her speech, Meredith begins to point out room by room their home, where they will eat, where they will sleep, where they will be with their children. The house of candles is not space of emptiness, but a place built on the tangible foundation of their love. Immediately upon seeing this house that Meredith built, my head went straight to Lars von Trier’s Dogville where the entire film is set in the blueprint of a town in the Rocky Mountains. Testing the audience’s limits to its suspension of belief, Dogville’s setting is a sparse black space with white outlines of a town to its audience, but a functioning town of built environment for the people that lived in it. The film illustrates how places do not exist because they are made of a set of known building materials as defined by Home Depot, but exists solely through its relationship on the people who inhabit them. People create places through imagining and defining them.
While the epic length of the episode provides another similarity to von Trier’s film, the choice of the Brechtian home of possibilities for Meredith and McDreamy is quite telling. Though one can argue that Meredith’s choice to profess her commitment through an empty house built of candles is a bit like an empty promise, with Dogville’s exploration and definition of space and place in mind, her choice is actually quite affirming. By physically creating the house and defining its spaces, Meredith made the home exist, cementing her connection to the space, thus enabling it to be a place where McDreamy can believe Meredith is going to be with him always. It is the place created by Meredith that holds ground and truly confirms her end to her wavering love for McDreamy.
