Monday, May 23, 2011

Losing the plot

Watch this first:



I saw the video first in a Vulture update. the first time I watched it I was mostly apathetic. I was confused by the fact that only one of them was rapping.

Then I watched it again after reading this great Hairpin article about Kreayshawn, dubbing her a member of "basically that whole crop of young people who look and act like cartoons, and where you can't tell how much of the joke they're in on and how much of the joke you just don't get because you're old, or if everything is just stupider but funner-looking now." I think that's incredibly apt. But that conclusion made me start to hate it. The older I get the less patience I have for music that makes me think too hard or refer to the linguistic theories of Lacan. Kreayshawn wasn't coming to me: she was making me meet her halfway by insisting that I apply the patina of irony over fucking everything just to watch her wearing those GODDAMN MINNIE MOUSE EARS? And she can't even make her name easy to spell? I don't need another thing to look up obsessively like that damn Icelandic volcano!

Then I made Devon watch it. This started us on a long conversation about how annoying rat-tails are. As a hairstyle. Then I realized that Kreayshawn's friend didn't actually have a rat-tail but was imitating the look of one by installing a feather extension at the nape of her neck. Fuuuuuuck! Irony again? Or are we post-irony now?

So now I've listened to this song like six or seven times and I actually might be starting to like it. The Hairpin made a good point when they said that "One big room, full of bad bitches" was a rad hook. Am I getting the joke now or am I the joke? Or is this something more like Stockholm Syndrome? The thought occurs to me know that all participation or partaking in the "myth of cool" is a symptom of Stockholm Syndrome with an entirely different captor.

They tell you the first step in winning a war is knowing your enemy. But who is the enemy? The Illuminati or something?

Oh god, I just went and watched this fucking thing:



And now I have to go SLIT MY GODDAMN WRISTS for thinking this hard about someone so thoroughly moronic that she would say that Shakespeare "had swag". SHAKESPEARE DID NOT HAVE SWAG. HE HAD MOTHERFUCKING DIGNITY. I was just poised to make some crack about Shakespeare being an artist, but I realized that it's not Kreayshawn's fault if she isn't, like, booksmart in historical shit. It doesn't make her less of an artist in practice if she's ignorant of theory (not that I'm saying this qualifies as Outsider Art). But still. Shakespeare did not have fucking swag. He just didn't. Dumas had swag. Milton had some fucking SWAG. But not Shakespeare. Fuck you.

And take off that fucking hat!

2 comments:

No one said...

Shakespeare had a lil swag.

Priya said...

Okay, he had swag insomuch as he was, like, politically subversive, so subversive that he managed to make sweeping points about society and humanity by using fart jokes and super-veiled references to the vagina. For that I give him props. BUT MILTON! COME ON!