Des Temps

Tag: Multicultural Markets

  • Horse Racing and Dog Fighting?

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    So. Anyone else out there see similarities between horse racing and dog fighting? At its root, both the horses and the dogs bear the burden of our desire for entertainment. And when they give their lives in the process, it’s in the name of sport. While I know that I cannot draw a straight parallel between the Michael Vick case and Eight Belles’ death at the Kentucky Derby, they look like kissing cousins. In a cloying New York Times article today, noted author and horse breeder Jim Squires says:

    Horses break their legs running across pastures with no one on their backs. Whether wild or domesticated, they race with one another and often try so hard they hurt themselves. They run through fences. They kick each other regularly, often breaking their own legs and those of others. They, too, have to be euthanized. Horses who never saw a racetrack in their lives founder regularly from mysterious causes and end up like Barbaro.

    Ain’t that just a paddock full of pony tears. Dogs fight each other too, don’t mean that we should be building pits for it. Or that we should be racing young horses well before their bones are fully formed. Makes me think of an E.T.-era Drew Barrymore on coke. And Squires then asks:

    …why can’t we can quit pushing horses into the gate on television and whipping them to make them run? If the trainer can’t train his horse to go in the gate and the gate workers can’t put it in there without force, scratch him. Usually there is a reason a horse does not want to go in there. And usually the horses that want to run don’t have to be whipped. Beating a horse during a race and having it break down under the rider and lose its life is no way to build public support and attract new owners to this sport.

    With the practice of beating ingrained in this sport, is it easy to mill about in madras yet detain dog fighting do-rags? All too easy. Read another take on the tragic death of the filly and the brutality of horse racing, penned by the eversage Start Snitching.

    I’m off to a bullfight with Hemingway and Almodovar. The bulls like dying this way, ensconced in art, roses & honor.

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    Related Links:
    NYT bit about death by jumping.
    Eight Belles/Sean Bell

  • America's Best Dance Crews….

    from the bronx to korea to bucktown
    The 2 strongest troupes from the MTV hit America’s Best Dance Crew, Jabbawockeez and Kaba Modern, help to illustrate that US BBoying is now very much ‘an Asian thing’. While Asian agency in hip-hop has been big since the late 90’s (turntablism + sneaker culture being the strongest), it’s now gonna go pop on the mass culture radar. Soon a raft of them cool brands will have ads featuring Asian breakers, a new move in representational politics for the danceform.

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    (the dad in the above McDonalds spot is not just wondering “What is my kid doing?” but “Who is this ad reaching?”)

    In addition to the MTV show, the sharp doco Planet BBoy takes this conversation onto the global level, examining different crews from around the world. Witness a clip on the recent Korean BBoy explosion:

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    In all honesty, the last thing I want to see is more hip-hop used in adverts. In the 80’s, BBoys and breaking were overexposed in pop culture, and the form went back underground. Twenty years hence, with this ‘new’ BBoy writ large, I do wonder what connections (or caricatures) will come from Madison Avenue.
    split level?
    (photog credit)
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    6/10/08 Model Minority?

  • Weak Rappers Need to Step Off

    This one is for all my XHTML/CSS heads out there:

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    I hate to sound like a broken record on this one, but umm:

    …the nerd who is possessed wholly of a black American masculinity is a specific character that enjoys a renaissance today even as the hip-hop world continues to project a cartoonishly grotesque opposite.
    …the proliferation of media voices and sources enabled by the internet has allowed a more nuanced and less gangster voice of young black America to emerge untempered by market concerns and sensationalism.

    When I originally wrote about black nerds, much of the backlash in the comments amounted to something like this: What are you talking about!? There have been black nerds forever!!; this despite the fact that I had made the same point in the piece. And while there were enough sane comments for a decent conversation to ensue, an email exchange with one of the ranters contained this gem, “I don’t think I fully read your article the first time.” SMH.

    The thrust of the piece remains vital — that because of our more democratized communication tools we are beginning to see a more accurate depiction of black america. Mainly because that media is actually being created by, ahem, black people. But all of these things are articulated more succinctly by the SEO Rapper above, whose seamless integration of the swagger required of an MC with the pedantry of the digerati is too smooth for hypertext.

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    Oh yeah, the industry’s onto his words on SEO and Social Media too.
    Original link via startsnitching.

  • Real Recognize Real

    poochy.jpgAs Eric Henderson and Agency Spy recently wrote, all cultures are rooted in unique codes and mores. If you are an outsider reaching in, be honest about your status, otherwise you’ll just get shook. One of my favorite examples of cultural missteps in the YouTube era is the P Diddy & Burger King collab.

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    On a platform whose billion dollar market value is based in egalitarian DIY, Diddy not only looks pompous, but gets all the codes wrong. BK ‘bought’ him a YouTube channel? And so this gets flipped by Lisa Nova to the tune of +1.5 million views.

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    It spawns a raft of other spoofs and poor press for both ‘Kings’. While DiddyTV is going strong, BK is MIA and Young Nov’ is keeping it real in the YouTube era.
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    read about it in this book, matey
    —
    12/10/08 Naked shows that Diddy just seems to be outta touch. It aint even that’s he’s so lux, he’s just so lame.

  • Stuff White People Like (and don't)

    aadl024larry-bird-posters.jpg Christian Lander, EIC of the blog Stuff White People Like, just inked a book deal for 325K. While the blogosphere has been ripe with race-based blogs for a while, this might be the first of its kind to go from pixel to print. I’m now curious to see the tone of future white-scribed humor blogs that touch on racial politics and poetics.

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    Of note is that SWPL, and its progenitor Black People Love Us, are both racially self-immolating. Based in the concept of white folks being goofy and absurdly unaware that ‘others’ are equals, not exotics, this brand of humor doesn’t spit fire beyond the white man in the mirror.

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    Historically, white (liberal) comic commentary has avoided other races, while on the flipside comics of color use greater narrative freedom in speaking their mind. One root of this is simply in our nation’s power structure – white people get to run the country and so everyone else can have comedy & cool. Now does this rubric change if Obama becomes president? Will white folks then feel a new sense of comic and cultural freedom, so that next time someone says “Larry Bird is overrated”, they’ll retort with ease “Yeah, well so is Antwone Fisher.”

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    (black people love this movie)

  • MSLM & The Pirate's Dilemma

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    So on the same day that I threw a rock at Vice, from Amazon arrives The Pirate’s Dilemma, a book about remix culture penned by Vice contributor Matt Mason. Love good timing. I opened the package, opened the book and was like a kid in a candy store. Here is a quick slide show that outlines his thesis:


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  • Soulja Boy's Superman Subversion

    “Crank That” content occupies 5 of the top 100 YouTube videos. Advertising and Academia have written great articles and case studies about the Soulja Boy phenomenon. Even Disney let copyrights slide to join the party. Yup, it’s a new media coup.

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    So…the line “Superman dat (h)o!” means? It aint just some nonsensical wordplay.

    Last fall there was a flurry in the blogosphere about the lyrical ‘translation’, but it didn’t go viral, so the song and the artist have not been outcast by corporate America.

    The song/dance has remixed past the point of authorial intent, so the fact that people age 6-66 are Cranking in the classroom and at halftime is not really a prob, just really funny. It’s another example of hip-hop subverting dominant linguistic paradigms while working within it. Like in 2003 how Dave Chappelle and Lil’ Jon had millions of Americans blindly saying Skeet Skeet. Or in the late 90’s when LL Cool J slipped a FUBU ad into the text of a Gap TV spot – LL says on camera “For Us, By Us, on the low”. It flew under the radar of both the client and the agency, whom I’m guessing just heard it as some cool urban lingo, not an encoded advert for their competition.