July 2009
A selection of mammal eyes taken from Glass Eyes.
Armando Ianucci Interview
There’s a man named Armando Ianucci who makes brilliant TV shows. Now he’s done a great film called In the Loop, which is as close as I’ll get to an advertisement seeing as how this website is soaked in anti-Corporatism. The AV Club just did an interview with him which serves as a good introduction to the ideas in his work if you’re into that sort of thing.
Repent, Repent
From The (world famous for being the only good music writing resource†) Quietus:
We say first visibly, as of course Sioux was one of the Sex Pistols’ entourage who rocked up on Bill Grundy’s Today programme and was the source of the “dirty fucker”’s lusty comments. But this is the problem with laying into so-called hipsters. If Sioux ended her teens as a hipster, she started her adulthood as one of the best rock stars of the late 70s, the80s and beyond.In most cases the accusation of hipsterism smacks of jealousy and a tiresome obsession with authenticity or has come from a quasi-self aware ‘hipster’ journalist.
Every generation plays dress up. Though the recovery from the cyclical ironic self-awareness of the punk, or in our time hipster, culture would surely be a valuable process. Unless you never recovered and ended up doing butter advertisements. Still, you’d be in good company.
†: Of course I forgot about Wax Poetics.
What Does It Mean to be a Revolutionary Today?
Slavoj Žižek’s speech at the Marxism 2009 conference:
The Enigma of Capital
Richard Seymour at Lenin’s Tomb has a nice summary of a recent talk given by David Harvey on the limits of capital that’s worth checking out (it’s a continuation of Harvey’s argument that there ought to be a practical alternative to the necessary 3% compound annual growth rate that capitalism requires to satiate/sustain itself—a so-called “zero growth economy.”)
Mama Said Knock You Out
K-punk on the demise of hip-hop:
The stage was set for hip-hop’s embracing of the gangster. Its adherents were fixated on films such as the Godfather trilogy, Goodfellas and (a particular favourite) Scarface, because they presented a kind of anti-mythical myth. The world they projected – of generalised betrayal, distrust and exploitation – was in tune with the capitalist realism of neoliberalism, except that hip-hop’s celebration of the crime lord, its sense that there was ultimately no difference between the tycoon and the criminal, acted as an unintentional parody of neoliberal rapacity. Even so, the left was faced with the melancholy prospect that the dominant form of black popular music was now a celebration of conspicuous consumption and will to power. In hip-hop, as in neoliberalism, economics bullied politics out of the picture.
And They Say Romance Is Dead
This has something to do with the Dead Weather, but who knows.