Matthew Wrather hosts with Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and John Perich to overthink Valentine’s Day, the definite article, the artistic and political mission of Lady Gaga, the Grammys, and their own immaturity.
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Haven’t listened yet, but I’ve been on a Lady Gaga kick for a day or two and am excited to hear your thoughts.
So I just watched the Grammy performance after listening to the podcast. My thoughts were (when Lee described the performance at first): Why is she singing “born this way” and then climbs out of an egg? Isn’t hatching out of an egg very different from being born as a mammal? Using the egg metaphor is kinda taking the sexuality out of birth, as in you don’t need a vagina for that. Seems kind of odd for someone like Lady Gaga to choose that form of talking about being born, doesn’t it?
Then I watched the thing on YoutTube, and thought, it does sort of look like an egg, but it could also be an incubator, or even like one of the things that the Matrix keeps the humans in. Even more different from a regular human birth.
So, what do you guys make of that?
Being born from an egg is still being born and laid eggs still come from sexual organs and sexual reproduction.
Though I did hear one reporter say it looked more like a womb.
Personally, I wasn’t a huge fan of the performance or the song the first time I heard it. It sounds like a mediocre sort of older Madonna song. The egg seemed fairly meaningless. Lots of performers come out of various objects to start their numbers. I think because it’s Gaga, there’s an effort to interpret it but sometimes there’s nothing too deep to discover.
I think I might admire her more if I thought her songs were better, or she sang better, or she actually took a significant role in designing her sets, costumes, etc. She seems just as packaged as anyone else to me. So my answer? Sometimes an egg is just an egg. And her best song is “Speechless”.
I think the song itself impressed me if only because it seems like a departure from her previous material. It comes across as more of an activist stance as opposed to a deliberately discomforting one. I’m not, however, interested enough to look up the egg performance. I have a feeling you’re right about that aspect. Or I’ll just be lazy and ditto you, how’s that?
Missionaries: My undergrad’s mascot was the Missionaries. Our mock fight chant was, “Missionaries, Missionaries, we’re on top!” ;p
Identity Politics: I’d just emphasize that identity isn’t always a choice, yes, but that lack of choice isn’t necessarily a biological one. Identity is, in some branches of theory, completely socially constructed, and, as such, can be placed upon a person by someone else against their own will, preferences, etc. This can be a means of inclusion just as much as it can be a means of exclusion. This doesn’t mean a person doesn’t form their own identity, but rather identity has two faces: that which we ascribe to ourselves, and that which others ascribe to us. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but they aren’t necessarily the exact same thing, either.
Mumford and Sons are somewhat depressing (or maybe haunting is a better word), but lovely. I still think some genre labels are useful, even if not necessarily 100% accurate or exclusive. You can actually relate this to identity politics in the sense that a lot of bands can be cross-classified and serve as “successful examples” of more than one genre at a time. A cynical way to view this is that the more genres a group is cross-listed as, the more hits they’d get if the genres are being searched, thus, theoretically, raising their $$$ intake. But I think of it more as this gives artists more chances to be discovered period, as in people that may not have heard of them otherwise do and like what they hear.
I wonder what an Iliad-inspired theme album by Kanye West would end up like.
What I gather from your conversations about Mubarak:
He could have stopped all of this civil unrest by converting some of his workers to entertainers.
I hope every person who reads this site and was at some point addicted to the game “Civilization” got a serious kick out of the above comment.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go destroy this pathetic archer guy with my tank.
ARCHER WINS??? WHAAAT???
Instead they opted for Revolution to upgrade to Democracy. Luckily, as they have the Pyramids, they will only have 1 turn of Anarchy, so this is good all around.
Civilization was an amazing game. All world leaders should be forced to play it before assuming command, and all international conflict should be resolved by a game of Civ (which might last longer than the actual war).
This comment is full of win.
I hate to “well actually” Wrather on something as trivial as an article, but when the opportunity comes to “well actually” a “well actually”, you just have to take it.
WELL ACTUALLY, a quick jaunt over to IMDb reveals that the title of the movie is, in fact, “THE Men Who Stare At Goats”. (Emphasis mine) The movie is specifically about the branch of the US military whose job it is to stare at goats for the purpose of telepathically killing them, not simply a random selection of characters who decide it would be pretty cool to stare at some goats.
I gave up on the Grammys last night after about an hour, during which there were three or four performances but only one actual award given out. Was the rest of the telecast backloaded with awards presentations, or were there mostly performances for the remaining two hours?
Thank you — I stand corrected. Or, I should say, I continue to stare at goats…corrected.
As normal, an awesome podcast! I do have a thoguht about Lady GaGa’s re-Gagafication. She has been “Re-inventing” herself for the 3-odd years she has been in the spotlight and I feel that what you said about descending in a jetpack to the Grammy’s is almost an understatement. I don’t keep up with Popular Culture except for articles on this site, but I do know that Gaga’s most profound and amazing spectacle, for me anyways, was the infamous meat dress. Do you think she’ll ever put that on again? (I like to imagine her showing up to a High profile Cocktail party in the meat dress.) Any costume she has will probably never be donned again.(Correct me if I’m wrong) Local theatre would die for her designers. In a small town theatre group, costumes are salvaged from materials found in the theatre’s stock and I’ve heard people say “Oh, I remember wearing this for”… whatever role it happened to be. Costumes are put together and reused multiple times. Back to GaGa’s self imposeed stupidity. My main point I’m trying to make in a very awkward an rant fueled manner is that GaGa’s claim to fame in the beginning was her stage name, and the mystery that you don’t actually know her real name. (Which is Stephanie something or other). GaGa could have easily rode this horse into the sunset and back without fail. She decided that she felt the need to get a new claim to already exorbitant fame. She decided to get into crazy outfits and write shitty music. This delicate balance has carried her this far, but she has already re-onvented herself without really knowing it. She went from mystery bombshell, to costumed lunatic. GaGa then kept reapplying the same re-inventions and tried desperatly to keep new when there was absolutley no reason to. If she put half the effort into her music as she did her public appearances I might be convinced that she has half a brain. My point in simple terms is: GaGa cannot re-invent herself because she already has. She can still change, she just has to do something other than elaborate costumes. She seems to think that she can re-invent herself the same way over and over again.
PS: My analysis is probably full of holes and I welcome any changes and corrections other Overthinkers may bring. I also welcome agreement. Very much so.
She went from mystery bombshell, to costumed lunatic.
Heart, and not just because it’s February 14th. Thank you, that totally made my night.
Am I the only one who thought Mark was going to say Arnold Schwarzenegger?
Anyway, the quantum concept of being indistinguishable is a little different. It applies to multiple particles that have the same properties, not two copies of the same particle. Say you have an electron – how can you tell it apart from all the other electrons in the universe? You can’t, really. You can’t mark it or anything like that. You can tell them apart based on their surroundings, but when you bring them close together, you lose that ability too. So when you write down the wavefunction describing where the two electrons are, you have to take that into account. Electrons are fermions, which means you can’t have two of them in the same state. Protons, on the other hand, are bosons, meaning they want to be in the same state.
Hey, speaking of Ahnuld, look’s like He’ll Be Back…to movies, soon, hopefully:
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/schwarzenegger-tells-twitter-fans-hell-act-again/
I read a piece about this yesterday and thought of bringing it up, but then I was afraid of opening old wounds… ;p
Bring up Ahnuld isn’t like opening up old wounds. It’s more like applying a soothing, healing, Austrian-accented creme onto old wounds.
Wow…
Best podcast yet.
I feel that re-invention of identity stems from a similar place as the desire for optimization discussed a few weeks back.
Really entertaining podcast!
Fenzel: Could you point me towards some litterature on the explanations (choice or genetics) for otherness?
I have a lot of discussion with friends about music and genres, mostly because what we listen to gets ever more sub-genred – I was thinking it would be interesting to create a species tree of genres and subgenres, so when you get down to something like ‘poetic post-rock’ one of my favourite niches (pronounced neeshiss!) you could see the descent. I know that http://sixdegrees.hu/last.fm/interactive_map.html has a map of music genres derived from the map of last.fm.
Also, you might be tickled by collated reaction to the Grammy’s provided by http://whoisarcadefire.tumblr.com/
Oh and on the whole Born This Way thing, I wonder how society is going to cope with various Epigenetic and Gene-Environment interactions when they become more common knowledge – especially as the former gets a lot of links to sexuality.
See, I don’t really think music is developing more genres/subgenres, but that people are throwing around the word with impunity. I go the other way with it. I don’t classify music beyond the basic genres. To me, rock music is rock music, pop music is pop music, and so on. It doesn’t need to be divided down beyond that. Obviously, musical acts within those genres have different sounds, but that’s what descriptions are for. I think that genre is also sort of becoming an issue for movies. A kind of movie is not necessarily a genre. Sort of related plots does not a genre or subgenre make. In short, I think people are trying to create classifications out of vague descriptions, and it is unnecessary and convoluted.
See, that’s what left me with a huge chunk of ‘Alternative’ in my genre list that did not all sound of a type. I’m all for tags, unifying features that aren’t hierarchical etc. but mostly I think I hierarchy might work. Except, of course, that the classification should be fuzzy (as with object classification). There’s clearly a borderland between rock and pop…
But Rock and Pop are just as made up as Country, Pirate Rap, Crunk, Darkwave, Viking Metal and all other genre names. None of them are doled out by some central authority, they are all accepted (or not accepted) by consensus. A lot of people rejected the term Grunge as applied to certain alternative hard rock bands because it was being force fed by media and Seattle public relations.
And specific genre titles are even more important now in the age of the internet because you can have extremely targeted Internet Radio, blogs and other music outlets using specific keyword search terms.
To most people, the differences between Black Metal and Death Metal are pointless, but to the people that listen to the bands the differences are distinct and important. In a record store, yes they would be both listed in the Metal section, but if you were doing a Black Metal podcast or blog and included Suffocation who are Death Metal that would be considered by some to be a serious breach.
Well, there obviously needs to be different genres for music, but I just feel the breakdowns go further than needed, and sometimes the microgenres manages to be both too restrictive and too vague at the same time. Or, rather too poorly defined, as in defined in a fashion that does not really differentiate itself from another, pretty much exactly the same microgenre.
Some of the subgenres aren’t necessarily egregious, though I still don’t bother using them. What really gets my goat, however, are terms like “alternative” and “indie,” which mean nothing in terms of actually grouping music based on similar sounds. A band can’t be “indie rock,” in terms of a sound. That’s just nonsense.
I think what the bands says can indeed be unhelpful – most do try and deny their genre even if they sound very similar to bands that don’t contest the description, are on the same labels, discussed by the same blogs and liked by the same fans.
I guess the musical DNA project might have some insight in the components that are found in common sufficiently to count as one genre – i.e. the form of the rock, rather than the variations in earthly Rock Bands.
When you mentioned ‘the stuff’ at the beginning of the show I thought you meant The Stuff, the 80’s horror movie about the dessert product that eats you.
I worked for a music magazine for 10 years doing reviews and editorials and I can affirm that most music genre labels are applied after the fact by fans and the media, rarely by the artists themselves. Most bands that try to affix a label to themselves (especially a brand new one) are generally seen as pretentious.
This is why it is sometimes difficult to track music history by genre accurately because the genres and influential bands are identified after the fact, and you have to go back and sort it all out. I doubt many people hanging out at Max’s Kansas City or CBGB’s in the 70’s realized they were witnessing music history so they weren’t exactly taking notes.
Sometimes genre labels are simply off the cuff remarks that stick. Legend has it that the term Goth was an off hand remark by a music reviewer for the band Joy Division and started getting applied to any band with that particular sound, from Bauhaus on.