A key figure in the rise of neoliberalism, Margaret Thatcher, died just a few days ago. For many British people her policies represented the betrayal of a basic social contract devoted to social welfare in place since the 2nd World War. Here is Elvis Costello’s “Tramp the Dirt Down,” recorded live in 1989, one of many pop songs criticizing Thatcher.
Part of the assignment for Spring Break was to screen The Baader-Meinhof Complex, right? Consider the following trailers for the film. The first for European markets:
Why not. By way of contrast. Lo-fi sound. Minimalist lyrics with a bit of political rhetoric. No well-produced visual narrative. Spacemen 3′s “Revolution”:
Let’s approach this video as a totality: sound, lyrics, images. The second of these elements, lyrics, are fairly unremarkable.* Whatever power they have can be linked to the sound. (Something pop excels at: if the music is good enough you could recite the ingredients of a breakfast cereal and they’d seem profound). Sound: as my informant remarks, this is a long track, one that builds by layering. Then the layers are stripped away and begin to build again. There’s tension here, then: a slow progression and a reversal. But what about the visuals? The lyrics indicate a song about conflicted desire, which is classic pop content. Why then are what appear to be black blocaffinity groups battling LAPD SWAT? What does it mean that in the final shots the two lover-protagonists are smoking inside the subway car, their backs to each other, while a brawl between the RSA and its antagonists unfolds? Any thoughts about this? What are the politics of this morsel of pop? I’d love to hear your responses.
Elena and Aldrich both recommended this track by BigBang. Taken as a whole– audio and visuals– “Fantastic Baby” is clearly a pop provocation. But is there a narrative here? Official violence, S/M motifs, masculine eye-candy that is at once effeminate and totally butch. In one sense this is a familiar story: our right to dance shall not be infringed upon (c.f. Beastie Boys’ “you gotta fight for your right to party”). On the other hand there’s an apocalyptic flavor to this video, one complicated by what I take to be imagery specific to South Korean culture. (Are those dragons?) What do you think?
Hey, let’s put Macklemore to two uses: 1) “Wings” as a life narrative with a broader social critique (HUM470) AND 2) as a pop commentary on the commodity fetish (HUM415)
Aside from the tension between producers and consumers, K-pop has enjoyed a
long, unperturbed honeymoon with capital and state power. Since the late
1990s, when entertainment business en bloc was designated as a strategic
industry for South Korea, the K-pop enterprise has been a faithful ally to
the reign of capital, commodity, fame and nationalist ideology. More often
than not, K-pop industry would act as a cheerleader for various state and
market affairs in exchange for policy support from various state bureaus
and lavish underwritings from conglomerates like Samsung and LG, IT
behemoths seeking to cash in on the soaring value of the nation’s cultural
capital. Complicit with this state-corporate joint maneuver are ordinary
citizens, intellectuals, artists, and mainstream media, whose postcolonial
aspiration to see the nation exit from cultural obscurity hazardously
awakens nationalist urges intrinsic to the state and capital-led
Hallyu/K-pop campaign.
