The Savage Book Corner: Oscar Update

Did the “Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao” win a Pulitzer Prize today? Damn, there must have been a shortage of really good books written this year. I am tempted to cite my review of the book, but self-promotion within my own blog is a little excessive.

Where Did She Go?

Dear loyal fans 8=)

Pardon for being M.I.A. over the past month. Family duties beckoned and so I have been camping out in NYC over the past three weekends!!!

I send a warm welcome to Amanda! I look forward to your “dispatches from the 6”: social commentaries about current events, book events, political and sports scandals that emerge from my home state, etc. I am curious to learn more about what the “6” has to offer since, I have to say, it is a much nicer train than the A, 1 or 9 trains. Is it because it stops at City Hall? Huh!

The invisible detective. (Guess who?)

Side Project

In cooperation with formidable blogging talents Justin and Aaron, I'm starting another blog, stuff we hate that everyone else likes.

All the snarkiness of stuff white people like, minus the cynical opportunism. (i.e., unlike their brave venture into acknowledging their white privilege so they can revel in it, our project is not likely to lead to a book deal.)

Dispatch from New York #1: Hi!

It's no secret, I can be a little flakey.  You can ask Janet about that.  I'm practically a bad friend, but also one with a tendency to fall just short of actually being all that bad.  Rather than tease out the reasons, though (that can be dangerous, anyway), I'm writing today to say hello.  After many months of promising to be a part of this little project called the savage detectives (or The Savage Detectives or thesavagedetectives, depending on how you feel about capitalization, the blogger's tendency to ignore it, and just how literally one ought to take a name embedded in a web address), here I am!  And because I am currently unreliable-but-working-on-it, I'm going to promise you an entry a week which seems rather reasonable for me and you.

Some of you may know that tsd is based in Boston.  Lord knows I haven't earned the right no move it quite yet, but since I moved myself not too long ago, I've at least earned the right to inject a little New York sass and sophistication into this forum, no?  And really, what's a blog without its link to New York City?  Maybe this doesn't seem quite so urgent or even necessary to those of you not currently living here or, at least, engrossed in its internet culture, but then again, that's the point, isn't it?

As a sort-of-native of this place, it was easy to be away and poo-poo the idea that New York is such a bastion of possibility, opportunity, and dreams-come-true.  I won't lie: I wanted to get back here so I could ride the subway everywhere and get a job where I didn't have to work so hard.  And the New-York-by-way-of-Sex-in-the-City is still a lot of bullshit, but if you're smart and you don't spend all of your commute time with ipod plugs in your ears, there's a good deal that you can flirt with, play with, and even take home to your bed and that's a hell of a lot better than playing a good backdrop to the real movers and shakers by reading intently on the 6 train every morning.

So this'll be what happens when you pay attention -- or at least when I do... and then, of course, decide to write about it.  I've always been down on people who were down on school, but if there's one thing I learned in college, it's that intellectualizing in the classroom alone is a waste of intellectualizing.  So enjoy.

Overrated People, Documents, Seasons

The sellout game was so cathartic that I'm starting another list of personalities,  documents, seasons, etc. that I hate but everyone else likes:

The Dalai Lama: refused to take a stand against the Iraq war, saying it might be necessary to fight the terrorists with violence.  And now he's denouncing Tibetan rioters for their violence? Holiness, why not stand with oppressed people? Is it really so hard to do? 

Lance Armstrong: left his wife after she stayed with him through cancer, went biking with Bush, then left Sheryl Crow when she got cancer. And people are still wearing those bracelets!

The Constitution: can we just stop already? It's a reactionary document that's all about keeping property in the hands of a few and subjugating most of the population.

The Moynihan Report: In what I thought was a surprisingly nuanced and sort of beautiful speech this morning (you kind of have to nod to the narrative of progress if you're running for president, but he was actually doing some Marxist analysis there at the end, I'm pretty sure, AND he was explaining structural racism! Are we poised to elect a complex thinker who understands radical critiques of white supremacy and imperialism? pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease America, don't be as horrible as I think you are...) Obama reiterated the stupid story (as my student called it) about black families not being sufficiently patriarchal: "A lack of economic opportunity among men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families--a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened." 

Why, Obama? Haven't you read the same books we've read? Don't you know that creepy experts in the 50s were only able to create this idea of the normalcy of the male provider through a) massive government subsidies for white people so some of them could actually live the one-income dream, which of course made the housewives miserable b) fearmongering to keep all women contained and afraid of power and c)exploiting black labor, particularly black women's labor? Just because the media is telling you it's race v. gender, doesn't mean you have to reiterate misogynist arguments.

Also, did you have to talk about the perverse Muslims? And absolve Israel? 

Summer (the season, not the O.C. character who became an activist at Brown because she was acting out after Marisa's death). The expectations for fun, productivity, etc. are just too high. 

What else?

The Sellout Game

So my friend Melissa is looking for examples to use with her high school English students of people who started out "good" but became corrupt. I have been interested in this topic for some time now, particularly the hippie/activist to-yuppie narrative, describing that group of mainly white men who were able to cut their hair, stop standing with oppressed people, and start making tons of money. Also, Amiri Baraka read a poem where all he did was list off African American sellouts, from the Three Cs to unknown authors of MA theses on cultures of poverty, etc.

I wanted to start my list and ask you, friends of the Savage Detectives, to contribute. Who started out good (this is the hard part) and sold out? I'll start you off with some real and fictional examples:

Mugabe

Aristede

David Horowitz

Todd Gitlin

Jerry Rubin

Jane Fonda (do exercise videos count?)

Orlando Patterson

George Chauncey (from Justin)

Lorrie Moore (see Patricia's link)

Cipher from the Matrix

Keanu Reeves' character from My Own Private Idaho (not really fair because this is based on Henry IV and everyone in Shakespeare follows the basic narrative arc of the sellout. Also, I know I'm emphasizing Keanu Reeves movies here, but I also wonder if his persona is liminal in some way that fits with these sellout narratives--like, he's almost white, almost straight, etc...)

Common (the Gap ads? Do they count?)

Comparing Oppressions II: Grammy Edition

Check out this clip of CNN's Brooke Anderson interviewing Nas. Watch it all the way to the end, when Kelis jumps in.

And here is the clip of the 1972 performance of the song Kelis is citing.

I don't want to comment too much until you see it, except that the whole scene seems like synecdoche for the way the debate around oppression is working this election season, or perhaps this millennium. I'm struck by how successfully this culture suppresses the language we would need to explain how oppression and exploitation actually work--so, to explain how gender, racial, and other kinds of oppression work together differently at different times and places, whether we're thinking about liberating Iraqi women or the current primary season or pimping as our exalted national pastime. And as I was saying in my first post about this, the constant comparisons between racial and gender oppression actually foreclose the entire line of thinking that would enable us to understand anything about them. (Of course, as Amiri Baraka, Jameson, Patricia Williams, and probably lots of other people explain, this is the genius of neoliberal capitalism: how can you fight the marketplace of ideas?) So Nas and Kelis don't even theorize oppression as well as John and Yoko did (which is to be expected, given the times we're living in; and also, who knows how Kelis would've explained the reference if she'd actually been given a chance), but still, Brooke Anderson completely ignores even the connections they do attempt to make.  

The other amazing thing is how Nas and Kelis both try to interpellate Brooke Anderson (kind of a bizarre choice in and of itself), and she totally resists.

Also, speaking of Kelis, is anyone else disturbed by all the milkshake symbolism circulating through the culture these days? Why now?

An example of good analysis by 2nd-wave feminists