FOLLOW US ON:
GET THE NEWSLETTER
CONTACT US
Sexbot, Victim, One of the Girls: Charlotte Church’s talk on music industry misogyny
11.18.2013
01:20 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
I don’t know what kind of profile Charlotte Church has in the US any more, if she has any. Five million Americans have bought Church’s albums in the past, but, if I had to guess, I’d imagine those sales were mostly during her “little girl with a big voice” stage back in the late 1990s, a period that saw the Welsh singer perform for Bill Clinton at the White House while still a teenager.

In the UK, Church has never really gone away though, morphing from choir girl to pop vixen to alt-rock chick, and trying her hand at acting and television presenting. Not to mention being a tabloid staple for everything from her love life to her consumption of alcohol and even *wrings hands* cigarettes. She may only be a sprightly 27, but she has been an internationally successful recording artist since the age of 11, so it’s safe to say she has seen and done her fair share.

All of which makes her very recent talk for BBC Radio 6’s The John Peel Lecture so very interesting, and even inspiring. I’m not much of a fan of her music, but this presentation is excellent. In it, Church takes aim fairly and squarely at the very limited roles available for women within the music industry, and particularly the hyper-sexualised pop market. As someone who literally grew up in front of a lens, and who was subject to an overload of “ooh, she’s of age now, look at her tits”-type of attention from the tabloid press, she surely knows what she is talking about.

Here are some extracts from her talk, via Digital Music News:

I’d like you to imagine a world in which male musicians are routinely expected to act as submissive sex objects.  Picture Beyonce’s husband Jay-Z stripped down to a T-back bikini thong, sex kittin’ his way through a boulevard of suited-and-booted women for their pleasure. Or Britney Spears’ ex, Justin Timberlake, in buttocks-clenching hot pants writhing on top of a pink Chevy, explaining to an audience how he’d like to be their ‘Teenage Dream.’

Before we all get a little too hot beneath the gusset, of course these scenarios are not likely to become reality, unless for comedy’s sake.  The reason for this is that these are roles the music industry has carved out specifically for women. It is a male-dominated industry, with a juvenile perspective on gender and sexuality.

From what I can see, there are three main roles that women are allowed to fill in modern pop music. Each of them restrictive for both artists and audience. They are mainly portrayed through the medium of the music video, you’ll find them very familiar.  I call them One of the Girls’ Girls, the Victim/Torch Singer, and the Unattainable Sexbot.

The One of the Girls’ Girls role is a painfully thin reduction of feminism that generally seems to point to a world where, ‘so long as you can hang out with your girls it’s possible to sort of wave away the evils that men do.’  This denigrates women and men equally, and yet is commonly lauded for being empowering.

The Victim/Torch Singer can be divided into the sexy victim (ie, Natalie Imbruglia in the ‘Torn’ video) and the not-so-sexy victim.  One female artist who does not use her sexuality to sell records is Adele.  However, lyrically, her songs are almost without exception written from the perspective of the wronged woman, an archetype as old as time.  Someone who has been let down by the men around her, and is subsequently in a perpetual state of despair.

But to me, the Unattainable Sexbot is most commonly employed and most damaging, a role that is also claimed to be an empowering one.  The irony behind this is that the women filling these roles are often very young, often previous child stars or Disney tweens, who are simply trying to get along in an industry glamorized to be the most desirable career for young women.  They are encouraged to present themselves as hyper-sexualized, unrealistic, cartoonish, as objects, reducing female sexuality to a prize you can win.

You can hear the talk, in its entirety, below, and it is highly recommended.
 

 
H/T to Paul Rokk.

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
|
11.18.2013
01:20 pm
|
A quick way to get rid of pesky Jehovah’s Witnesses
11.18.2013
12:18 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
I don’t want to ruin to this video for you (it’s only one-minute and 37 seconds long), but stay tuned for the belly laugh at the end. It’s contagious!

According to YouTuber hitmn92 it was house cleaning day. And, yes, that is indeed his voice you hear in the background singing along to his favorite 80s powerhouse jams. 

 
Via Nerdcore

Posted by Tara McGinley
|
11.18.2013
12:18 pm
|
‘Twin Peaks’-themed clothing
11.18.2013
10:36 am
Topics:
Tags:


Fire Walk With Me - Dress

Suckers Apparel has a Twin Peaks-themed clothing line. A wee bit expensive for my tastes, but kind of fun nonetheless. There’s also “Who Killed Laura,” “8Bit Lodge,” and “Log Lady” leggings available for purchase.
 

Laura - Dress
 

Welcome To Twin Peaks - Dress
 

Smoking In The Girls Room - Cape
 

Posted by Tara McGinley
|
11.18.2013
10:36 am
|
Yearbook photos of Rock and Heavy Metal icons
11.18.2013
09:41 am
Topics:
Tags:

rocknerds.jpg
 
The high school portrait is more for the benefit of the parents than the sitter. It presents an image of the little darlings as bright-eyed and winsome—beacons of success to parental concern. They rarely reveal much about who these young people are, or how they might end-up. The photos mislead, in the same way that manners and politeness are often misread as a sign of weakness, when in fact the opposite is true.

Take a look at these yearbook portraits of Rock and Heavy Metal icons, there’s hardly a hint of rock ‘n’ roll rebellion, or future excess, just the appearance of wannabe Wal-Mart employees of the month.

Top row: Chester Bennington (Linkin Park), Tom Morello (RATM), Tom Araya (Slayer), Alice Cooper, Axl Rose (Guns ‘n’ Roses), Corey Taylor (Slipknot).

Middle row: Daron Malakian (SOAD), Dimebag Darrell (Pantera), Eddie Van Halen (Van Halen), Gene Simmons (Kiss), James Hetfield (Metallica), Jonathan Davis (Korn).

Bottom row: Kirk Hammett (Metallica), Kurt Cobain (Nirvana), Marilyn Manson, Slash (Guns ‘n’ Roses), Steve Tyler (Aerosmith), Zakk Wylde (BLS).
 
H/T Jonny Geller, via History in Pictures
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
|
11.18.2013
09:41 am
|
Surrealist animated gifs of people’s heads
11.18.2013
09:01 am
Topics:
Tags:

Sholim
 
I cannot get enough of these gyrating and bobbing mechanical heads. Aren’t they simply fantastic? I know absolutely nothing about the artist, Milos Rajkovic of Belgrade, Serbia, who goes by the name “Sholim,” but I wish him a long and fruitful artistic career.
 
Sholim
 
I’d love to see a ten-minute film by Sholim…....

 
Sholim
 
Sholim
 
Sholim
 
Eight more of these incredible images after the jump….

READ ON
Posted by Martin Schneider
|
11.18.2013
09:01 am
|
NBC journalist says live on air: ‘Someone should sh*t in Sarah Palin’s mouth’
11.17.2013
04:23 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
As the editor of a blog that used to generate a lot of traffic with virtually any item, however small, that mocked Sarah Palin, believe me when I tell you that five years after her debut on the world stage, no one really cares that much about the snowbilly grifter anymore.

Not like they used to. Not even close.

Nope, an item on Sarah Palin will bring in a negligible amount of traffic, so little, in fact that it’s not even worth the effort anymore. “Sarah Palin does something stupid AGAIN” has stopped being effective as “click bait,” in the same way that “Glenn Beck says something outrageous AGAIN” has. Or “The 25 greatest moments from Murphy Brown” (as actually seen on Yahoo! earlier this week, I didn’t make that one up). Or whatever idiocy Ted Nugent is into. Who gives a shit about these assholes? No one does. At least our readers don’t. You let us know loud and clear how disinterested you are in these people and we see the evidence of this on Google Analytics, ChartBeat, and in Twitter, Facebook and Google+ shares.

Which brings up the question: Does a Sarah Palin appearance on The Today Show, or even Fox News, really bring in ANY extra eyeballs? Based on my own (admittedly left-leaning, but very large as these things go) control group, I’d have to wager that the answer is a definite “NO.” Going on what I’ve seen, she’s a total bust these days. Doesn’t move the needle on the traffic dial. Flatline. Nothing. Why do we still see her all the time saying “words” in the “lamestream media”? I honestly couldn’t tell you, but given that every newsgathering or content aggregating entity has access to the very same traffic measurement tools that I have, I don’t expect that she’s got much left cultural currency after this current round of “war against Christmas” media appearances to promote her new book that someone else wrote, for people who don’t read…

Having said all that, I certainly would have thought there would have been a terrific amount of interest in an NBC correspondent suggesting that Sarah Palin should have someone shit in her mouth and piss in her eyes, and this is exactly what Martin Bashir did in an MSNBC commentary segment on Friday that is, for the most part, only being discussed on the right.

How did this escape wider notice?

If you will hit play, you will see one of the most incendiary things I have ever seen someone say on a cable news channel about another person… ever.

Incendiary, sure, but I’d have to say… he’s right. Without further ado, here’s Martin Bashir saying what a lot of people think about Sarah Palin:
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
|
11.17.2013
04:23 pm
|
Is Berlin going to name a street after Edward Snowden?
11.17.2013
01:32 pm
Topics:
Tags:

Snowden Strasse
 
In early July, a citizen of Berlin named Jörg Janzer went to the trouble to “rename” Schwedter Strasse and Kastanienallee, respectively, “Snowden Street” and “Snowden Alley.” He did this simply by pasting his own printed versions of the street names over the street signs at that intersection. His intention was to protest the mistreatment of Edward Snowden, the former NSA employee who in May of this year was obliged to leave the United States after having instigated several leaks about the full extent of the NSA’s PRISM program of Internet data acquisition. In the United States, Snowden is officially a wanted criminal; many people around the world (as well as a good many people in the U.S.) don’t see it the same way.

The crazy thing is, Janzer’s action may result in an actual Berlin street getting its name changed to “Snowden Strasse.” If Berlin ends up doing this, one suspects it won’t be the last city to do this.

Janzer was identified in the Berliner Kurier as a “Spaß-Guerilla,” which translates to something like “Prank-Guerrilla”—like Abbie Hoffman or Banksy. The police removed the sign before even a day had passed.
 
Snowden Street
 
The gesture by Janzer has sparked a legislative initiative to give Berlin’s Behrenstrasse between Wilhelmstrasse and Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse, which corresponds exactly to the block where the United States Embassy is, the name Edward Snowden Strasse. Given the vagaries of high-stakes geopolitics, it’s difficult to imagine any municipality in Germany snubbing the United States to that extent, so I wouldn’t hold my breath. However, just as New York or Los Angeles isn’t under the personal control of Barack Obama, it’s possible that Berlin can do what it wants. We’ll have to wait and see.
 
Behrenstrasse
The purple line is the section of street that would be renamed “Snowden Street” if the measure passes. On the map, the U.S. Embassy is the area above it.
 
Here’s a video Janzer shot of his nighttime provocation. At the end of the video he says a few words—what he’s saying is: “This is most likely the first ‘Snowden Street’ and ‘Snowden Alley’ in the world. This should serve as an inspiration to do this anywhere in the world as an expression of protest against the fact that we are bugged so mercilessly and that Snowden is being punished because he revealed it to us.”
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Who is Edward Snowden: Whistle-blower hero, enemy of the state or covert ops shapeshifter?

Posted by Martin Schneider
|
11.17.2013
01:32 pm
|
100 years ago, some people were REALLY hostile to the introduction of the automobile
11.17.2013
01:07 pm
Topics:
Tags:

1902 Oldsmobile Model R Curved Dash Runabout
1902 Oldsmobile Model R Curved Dash Runabout
 
As with any transformative new technology, automobiles encountered considerable resistance when they arrived on the American scene in larger numbers between 1900 and 1910. There’s no doubt that they were popular—one of the features of American life back then was the birth of dozens of automobile enthusiasts’ “clubs,” a network that quickly coalesced into the American Automobile Association, which was founded in 1902.

That decade featured a fair number of cross-country automotive adventures, all of which occurred, let’s remember, with a near-total absence of paved roads, gas stations, road signs, road maps, streetlights, and traffic signals as well as vehicles lacking multiple gears that were capable of a whopping 30 mph and that broke down frequently (with no easy way to obtain replacement parts). In 1903 Horatio Jackson and Sewall Crocker and a goggles-wearing pit bull named “Bud” were the first to drive an automobile coast to coast (San Francisco to New York). The group became local celebrities at nearly every point of their journey, as most people had never even seen a car before.
 
Bud the automotive pit bull
“Bud,” the automotive pit bull
 
As mentioned, not everyone was equally entranced. Many people disliked the noise and clouds of dust that automobiles produced, not to mention the physical threat they posed to pedestrians, bicyclists, and horses. According to Horatio’s Drive, a 2003 PBS documentary by Ken Burns about the cross-country trip described above, Vermont passed a law requiring a person to walk in front of the car waving a red flag, which rather defeated the purpose of using the car in the first place. In Glencoe, Illinois, someone stretched a length of steel cable across a road in an effort to stop “the devil wagons.” Some cities banned automobiles outright.

But the most amusing (from today’s perspective) anti-automobile efforts happened in the Keystone State. At some point before 1910 (I can’t pin down the exact year), a group calling itself the Farmers’ Anti-Automobile Society of Pennsylvania proposed the following not-so-subtle additions to state law (emphasis added):
 

1. Automobiles traveling on country roads at night must send up a rocket every mile, then wait ten minutes for the road to clear. The driver may then proceed, with caution, blowing his horn and shooting off Roman candles, as before.

2. If the driver of an automobile sees a team of horses approaching, he is to stop, pulling over to one side of the road, and cover his machine with a blanket or dust cover which is painted or colored to blend into the scenery, and thus render the machine less noticeable.

3. In case a horse is unwilling to pass an automobile on the road, the driver of the car must take the machine apart as rapidly as possible and conceal the parts in the bushes.

 
Everybody cool with this? Remember: always make sure you have your rockets and camouflage tarpaulins in the trunk before you go out for a drive!

Here’s a short section from Horatio’s Drive about early hostility towards automobiles:

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Riding along in my automobile’: Photos of Los Angelenos driving their cars by Andrew Bush
Running on Empty: imagining an LA without cars

Posted by Martin Schneider
|
11.17.2013
01:07 pm
|
If pot is legal in Colorado, then why do Denver police need robotic noses to sniff out stinky weed?
11.17.2013
01:01 pm
Topics:
Tags:

robot nose
 
Recreational cannabis is legal in Denver, Colorado, but folks are still feeling a little bit iffy about its sudden visible, and potentially sniffable, presence. The Denver police are now using an instrument called the “Nasal Ranger” (yes, that’s really what it is called), to measure and track the scent of pot in order to better enforce laws regarding smell complaints. They began using the tool fairly recently, purportedly after pot-related odor complaints more than doubled. Doubling sounds like a lot, right?

Oh wait, except that the numbers were pretty negligible to begin with.

In a city of around 634,000 people, there were 98 smell complaints in 2010, seven involved weed. In 2012, there were 288 complaints, with sixteen having to do with marihuana. While that’s an increase overall, complaints about pot actually decreased by about 1.5%, and this was all prior to the legalization of pot for recreational use. In 2013 (up until September 20th), they recorded 85 complaints, eleven of which were attributed to marijuana, a slight increase since 2010, but the city isn’t exactly being hot-boxed. And let’s be honest, at least some of those complaints were made by anti-pot tattle-tales and buttinskies. I only know a few Denverites, but none I’ve spoken to have complained of a sudden pervasive skunky smog enveloping the Mile-High City.

I looked up the Nasal Ranger, attempting to find a price, but apparently you have to request a quote, which is far too much work for an (cough) groggy young woman like myself. It sounds to me like the police department bought an expensive-ass toy in order to assuage some stuffy reactionaries. In all fairness, the Nasal Ranger actually seems like a pretty tame measure when you learn there are people in Denver attempting to pass laws making the very smell of pot punishable by up to $999 or up to a year in jail.

And at least the Nasal Ranger uses measurable data. That way, they can punish only the truly egregious odor levels—smells most likely produced by a dispensary or farm, not personal use. And at most, it’s a $2,000 fine, nothing completely outrageous. The more potentially unjust part is the provision declaring that five household complaints in a 12 hour period constitutes a violation. That could so easily abused by a few vindictive, lying, busybody neighbors.

On some level, I sympathize with a fear of overpowering smells. I grew up next to a donut factory that ran the ovens at 5 am, right when I was driving to my awful job as a hotel maid. I used love the smell of donuts, but after living in a cloying corn syrup fog for a year, I can now only stand the aroma when the odd donut craving hits me. Of course, now I live in a West Indian neighborhood, so guess what my street smells like in the summer heat? Barbecue, you racists! (Seriously, 95 degrees and a smoker full of jerk chicken in front of every brownstone.)
 

 
Via NPR

Posted by Amber Frost
|
11.17.2013
01:01 pm
|
He raises the dead and whitens teeth with his supernatural powers: The miraculous Minister Mills
11.17.2013
12:47 pm
Topics:
Tags:


 
Why not? Jesus turned water into wine and stones into loaves of bread.

This odd fellow is Minister Joshua Mills and, according to his website, he’s no stranger to miracles:

During his services signs and wonders are commonplace with manifestations of supernatural oil and gold dust, creative healings, supernatural weight-loss, financial miracles, Angelic visitation and heavenly encounters.

During his visits to indigenous people of Canada, Mills really pulled out all the stops and managed to shift his miracle-making powers into high gear.

God began to move upon the Inuit people with signs and miracles – saving the lost, healing the sick, raising the dead, mending broken hearts and performing unusual wonders.

What? No teeth whitened? No fragrance of toothpaste? Watch the video!

Mills’ take on humanity is pretty dire and you’ve got to wonder why he gives a shit about people’s teeth. Among his list of seven things he believes in, here’s an upbeat nugget:

The utter depravity of human nature, the necessity of repentance and regeneration and the eternal doom of the final impenitent.

Somehow he manages to smile through it all as he goes about raising the dead only to condemn them to eternal doom. He’s kind of like Jesus with a cruel streak.

And ladies, in case you’re wondering, unfortunately, Minister Mills is married.
 

 
Now for the musical side of Minister Mills. For close to two hours, Mills vamps over the jazz/rock noodlings of his back-up band. Nothing quite coalesces into actual song. But at the 11:15 mark, Mills starts singing in tongues and giving up the funk.

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:

Silly evangelists expect followers to believe in the lamest ‘miracle’ of all time!

Posted by Marc Campbell
|
11.17.2013
12:47 pm
|
Page 930 of 2338 ‹ First  < 928 929 930 931 932 >  Last ›