Tuesday, 17 November 2009
Friday, 23 October 2009
Money Talks
In the video to Dirtee Cash, Mr Rascal appears as a Dickensian ringmaster, being pushed around a carnivalesque playground in which a Guy collapses lurchingly atop a roaring bonfire. While lottery ball balloons float overhead, a series of Dark Knight clowns, Punch and Judy politicians, hen night revellers, cartoon businessmen, footballers and massive-mammaried suffragettes disdainfully chuck the following on the fire:
Das Kapital - Marx
The Communist Manifesto - Marx/Engels
All Men Are Brothers - Ghandi
Making History - Stephen Fry?
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene
The Waste Land - TS Eliot
The Holy Bible
Jerusalem - Parry/Blake
Via a potent mix of grotesque symbolic gestures, of which the book-burning is the most (ahem) incendiary, the video calls forth a pretty dense intertext of questions about identity, power, class, tradition, high art, pop culture and, ultimately, blame. The masses are satirised to the point of revulsion and 'Literature' - even the mass literature of Penguin paperbacks - falls foul of their leering hedonism; Christianity, middle class values and egalitarianism suffer a similar fate; Capitalism's absence of self-critique is invoked by the burning of Marx (amusingly, presented in the orange-and-white colour scheme of Penguin's Fiction range). The text which most openly signifies flagrant Britishness is of course Jerusalem, the "green and pleasant land" of which is here going up in flames at the hands of a lecherous state and debauched populous. But what strikes home most conspicuously (especially when the cardboard cutout of the People's Princess appears) is how ridiculous these metonymythic constructs seem when we are confronted with them in such a concentrated space, how laden they are with the pride and ideals of a misguided nation. It is a subject which seems particularly potent after the absurd question of "to whom the image of Winston Churchill rightly belongs" managed to monopolise debate on the BNP Question Time for a full quarter of the programme. Indeed, the dada-pagan setting seems to give the Guy a particularly Wicker (or Straw?) Man-esque appearance, evoking a kind of cultural potlatch.
While we might question how much of this Dizzee himself intended, the track itself by no means steers clear of such territory. Focusing on the financial crash, Dizzee is at first accusatory ("they got bad credit, living on direct debit, in debt but they still don't get it") then beseeching ("Mr Politician can you tell me the solution, what's the conclusion, is it an illusion?"), finally repentant ("this is my confession, I can't fight, I'm in the forefront living for money"). The implication seems to be a classically theistic one - that redemption comes from within rather than by throwing the first stone - but taken as a whole, Dirtee Cash more readily undermines our instinctive reactions to events that question our ideological assumptions: not that blame lies within each of us but that blame itself is a distracting, and rather naive, dead-end.
Das Kapital - Marx
The Communist Manifesto - Marx/Engels
All Men Are Brothers - Ghandi
Making History - Stephen Fry?
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene
The Waste Land - TS Eliot
The Holy Bible
Jerusalem - Parry/Blake
Via a potent mix of grotesque symbolic gestures, of which the book-burning is the most (ahem) incendiary, the video calls forth a pretty dense intertext of questions about identity, power, class, tradition, high art, pop culture and, ultimately, blame. The masses are satirised to the point of revulsion and 'Literature' - even the mass literature of Penguin paperbacks - falls foul of their leering hedonism; Christianity, middle class values and egalitarianism suffer a similar fate; Capitalism's absence of self-critique is invoked by the burning of Marx (amusingly, presented in the orange-and-white colour scheme of Penguin's Fiction range). The text which most openly signifies flagrant Britishness is of course Jerusalem, the "green and pleasant land" of which is here going up in flames at the hands of a lecherous state and debauched populous. But what strikes home most conspicuously (especially when the cardboard cutout of the People's Princess appears) is how ridiculous these metonymythic constructs seem when we are confronted with them in such a concentrated space, how laden they are with the pride and ideals of a misguided nation. It is a subject which seems particularly potent after the absurd question of "to whom the image of Winston Churchill rightly belongs" managed to monopolise debate on the BNP Question Time for a full quarter of the programme. Indeed, the dada-pagan setting seems to give the Guy a particularly Wicker (or Straw?) Man-esque appearance, evoking a kind of cultural potlatch.
While we might question how much of this Dizzee himself intended, the track itself by no means steers clear of such territory. Focusing on the financial crash, Dizzee is at first accusatory ("they got bad credit, living on direct debit, in debt but they still don't get it") then beseeching ("Mr Politician can you tell me the solution, what's the conclusion, is it an illusion?"), finally repentant ("this is my confession, I can't fight, I'm in the forefront living for money"). The implication seems to be a classically theistic one - that redemption comes from within rather than by throwing the first stone - but taken as a whole, Dirtee Cash more readily undermines our instinctive reactions to events that question our ideological assumptions: not that blame lies within each of us but that blame itself is a distracting, and rather naive, dead-end.
Monday, 12 October 2009
I will be indulging in some of my not-so-guilty pleasures tomorrow evening at the 'Rhythm Is A Prancer' 90s night some of my friends are putting on at the Legion in Old St. (check the delightfully cubist MS Paint flyer!)Catch me spinning some nuggets from my (arbitrarily distended) version of the 90s dance continuum, which begins with Pump Up The Volume and ends with the Armand Van Helden mix of Sugar is Sweeter. I haven't decided whether I should play any trance yet.
Facebook me up, bitch
Thursday, 1 October 2009
spotifyperdub
Apologies for the appalling portmanteau but it was the best I could do in my fervent state after noticing that...
...there's a shitload of hyperdub AND planet mu on spotify...
...which is very exciting. It's not complete by any means but it's a good start. Let's hope this is a good indication of things to come.
...there's a shitload of hyperdub AND planet mu on spotify...
...which is very exciting. It's not complete by any means but it's a good start. Let's hope this is a good indication of things to come.
Thursday, 24 September 2009
Parapraxis Par Excellence
Seen on the bookshelf in the Religion section in the Foyles at Westfield, Shepherds Bush the other day:
It's possible, of course, that this wasn't actually a typo...
It's possible, of course, that this wasn't actually a typo...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
