If it was not clear before, it is crystal now: David Stern, NBA commissioner, is a fuckface who is determined to deprive us all of great playoff basketball so that he can maintain the racist marketing code of the NBA. In fact, he has managed to shortchange his own league for the sake of abiding by his own demented credo.
What are the terms of this code? The NBA is the site in which some of the greatest African-American athletes on the planet are permitted to showcase their skills-- but only on the condition of absolute obedience to arbitrary and at times absurd rules. The most absurd of these is the one related to "altercations"-- that players who are on the bench must somehow magically not leave the bench area to help their own teammates if a fight breaks out.
Nevermind that in other sports such fights are merely part of that sports' appeal, among them hockey, football, and baseball. In these other sports that include more white players, the fact that we can occasionally see our physical role models scrapping with one another is gravy on top of their displays of skill.
But in pro basketball, this is not allowed to be the case. No, in pro basketball, a fight is indicative of national degeneration, moral bankruptcy.
Why? Because the NBA is a black league, and always has been. And thus the job of a fuckface white commissioner like David Stern is to SHOWCASE his control over his players. It's not some minor dimension of what he does-- it's his ROLE. It's part of the market share of the NBA-- you get to see blacks demonstrate their physical superiority, and then they are forced to obey bizarre bullshit rules, to show that no matter how great they are, they still have to cowtow to a higher authority.
I am of course not arguing here for an essentialism in which African-Americans are physically superior to whites. I am merely pointing out the ideological coding of NBA marketing; this is part of what is being sold.
Mainstream hip-hop, sometimes mis-termed "gangsta rap," is like the NBA without the control aspect. Thus it is a representation of power without authoritative check-- or, more accurately, the white authority, the label and management, is deliberately obfuscated to promote the image of total autonomy.
So, David Stern. Fuck you.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Diss-er-fucking-tation
Writing a dissertation places oneself at war-- with oneself. Almost the entire time, it feels like no one else cares about what you're doing. Only you. And maybe only half of you. Procrastination is your own fear of failure trumping your dedication to the project. It's a fucking pain in the ass.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Friday, February 9, 2007
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Best play ever man.
In happier news...
Movie rec of the week:
Johnny Guitar, dir. Nicholas Ray. Marvelous pulp. Joan Crawford at her melodramatic best. Sterling Hayden charming/menacing. Flipped gender roles (notice the positioning of the gun). My personal favorite: the jerky, bird-like performance of badguy Mercedes McCambridge as Emma. Sort of a cowboy critter.
Movie rec of the week:
Johnny Guitar, dir. Nicholas Ray. Marvelous pulp. Joan Crawford at her melodramatic best. Sterling Hayden charming/menacing. Flipped gender roles (notice the positioning of the gun). My personal favorite: the jerky, bird-like performance of badguy Mercedes McCambridge as Emma. Sort of a cowboy critter.
Monday, February 5, 2007
I feel unusual. I think we should go outside.
In honor of M.I.A.'s absurdly badass new song, I offer my essay about bird flu written in Nov. '05...
Xenophobia Airborne: The Bird Flu
Why has the bird flu virus only in the last month become the terrifying specter that we now know it to be, daily prophesied in the news? After all, the virus, along with the possibility that it could become transmissible from person to person and thus spark a catastrophic epidemic, has been around for several years. One possible explanation for the sudden jolt of interest in this disease might be found in a recent paradigm shift in Western paranoia in from culture to nature, a transformation that began with the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia and recently solidified as a phenomenon with several devastating Caribbean hurricanes and the Kashmir earthquake. It is a change in focus that has supplanted our obsession with global terrorism in favor of more imposing weapons of mass destruction: the various nightmarish potentialities of what the natural world is capable of dishing out. Yet it is only in the bird flu pandemic scenario that the hidden cultural anxieties buried within this explicit fear of nature are fully played out.
Who do disasters happen to? Naturally the answer to this question depends on who you are; for many, the answer is “me.” For most Americans, however, disasters happen to other people. They happen “over there.” But, the natural objection goes, what about New Orleans? Surely this disaster happened to people “just like you and I,” i.e. other developed-world citizens, those most “innocent” of victims. But then again, who really suffered in New Orleans? Was it not in fact an underclass who otherwise go unnoticed, denied, invisible, in the developing world—the Other within the Us? The developing world’s subaltern class, only visible as either victims or perpetrators of destruction and violence (as is currently on vivid display in France and Belgium)? Whether Americans want to admit it or not, even the tragic events of Hurricane Katrina were distant enough for them to remain alien, far enough away. What was too close to home, however, was the obvious incompetence of the government in helping the most needy victims of the disaster. The anxiety produced by this display of outrageous ineptitude remained free-floating, waiting for some future possibility to attach itself to. Terrorism would have been a logical destination, but after four years of countless alerts and little domestic action, Americans have been completely desensitized to the threat of terrorist attacks, particularly large-scale actions such as 9/11. The next act of terrorism on American soil is likely to be in a city, and likely to be a localized attack on easily accessible transportation—trains, buses and the like. While this remains of grave concern to those who live in major cities, it has nothing on the bird flu.
The bird flu means no escape. Nowhere will be safe. In almost no time, the “over there” would be over here. Like the 1918 virus, it could spread to every corner of the globe. Quarantines would likely prove ineffective; no more safety in not living in a city, no more gawking at urban catastrophe from a comfortable distance. Now, even more so than during Katrina, the "Other" would locate itself literally, physically within "Us"—we and those poor third-world victims would be one and the same. In addition, the hopelessness of our contemporary state would be exposed (at the current moment we are embarrassingly unprepared for such a disaster)—“their” state, the seemingly dysfunctional governments and services, “their” corruption, “their” neglect for their citizens, would be finally and utterly revealed as our own (as it has already been revealed with Katrina). Terror at the prospect of the bird flu is terror at the rapidly collapsing distance between there and here; it is the blurring of categories, a world without definition or boundary (as the disease would in fact use the very capitalist flows of the globalized world to spread). In such a way, we witness the eclipse of the developed by the developing world—it is already here, whether the bird flu comes or not; the media has already mirrored our fears back to us. Nature thus triumphs over culture, indeed over cultural difference proper. With our biological safety goes our the safety of our categories, our identity; there is no more pride, no more relief in being “here” where all is so much better. At last, everywhere is simply the world: equal and unending catastrophe.
Xenophobia Airborne: The Bird Flu
Why has the bird flu virus only in the last month become the terrifying specter that we now know it to be, daily prophesied in the news? After all, the virus, along with the possibility that it could become transmissible from person to person and thus spark a catastrophic epidemic, has been around for several years. One possible explanation for the sudden jolt of interest in this disease might be found in a recent paradigm shift in Western paranoia in from culture to nature, a transformation that began with the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia and recently solidified as a phenomenon with several devastating Caribbean hurricanes and the Kashmir earthquake. It is a change in focus that has supplanted our obsession with global terrorism in favor of more imposing weapons of mass destruction: the various nightmarish potentialities of what the natural world is capable of dishing out. Yet it is only in the bird flu pandemic scenario that the hidden cultural anxieties buried within this explicit fear of nature are fully played out.
Who do disasters happen to? Naturally the answer to this question depends on who you are; for many, the answer is “me.” For most Americans, however, disasters happen to other people. They happen “over there.” But, the natural objection goes, what about New Orleans? Surely this disaster happened to people “just like you and I,” i.e. other developed-world citizens, those most “innocent” of victims. But then again, who really suffered in New Orleans? Was it not in fact an underclass who otherwise go unnoticed, denied, invisible, in the developing world—the Other within the Us? The developing world’s subaltern class, only visible as either victims or perpetrators of destruction and violence (as is currently on vivid display in France and Belgium)? Whether Americans want to admit it or not, even the tragic events of Hurricane Katrina were distant enough for them to remain alien, far enough away. What was too close to home, however, was the obvious incompetence of the government in helping the most needy victims of the disaster. The anxiety produced by this display of outrageous ineptitude remained free-floating, waiting for some future possibility to attach itself to. Terrorism would have been a logical destination, but after four years of countless alerts and little domestic action, Americans have been completely desensitized to the threat of terrorist attacks, particularly large-scale actions such as 9/11. The next act of terrorism on American soil is likely to be in a city, and likely to be a localized attack on easily accessible transportation—trains, buses and the like. While this remains of grave concern to those who live in major cities, it has nothing on the bird flu.
The bird flu means no escape. Nowhere will be safe. In almost no time, the “over there” would be over here. Like the 1918 virus, it could spread to every corner of the globe. Quarantines would likely prove ineffective; no more safety in not living in a city, no more gawking at urban catastrophe from a comfortable distance. Now, even more so than during Katrina, the "Other" would locate itself literally, physically within "Us"—we and those poor third-world victims would be one and the same. In addition, the hopelessness of our contemporary state would be exposed (at the current moment we are embarrassingly unprepared for such a disaster)—“their” state, the seemingly dysfunctional governments and services, “their” corruption, “their” neglect for their citizens, would be finally and utterly revealed as our own (as it has already been revealed with Katrina). Terror at the prospect of the bird flu is terror at the rapidly collapsing distance between there and here; it is the blurring of categories, a world without definition or boundary (as the disease would in fact use the very capitalist flows of the globalized world to spread). In such a way, we witness the eclipse of the developed by the developing world—it is already here, whether the bird flu comes or not; the media has already mirrored our fears back to us. Nature thus triumphs over culture, indeed over cultural difference proper. With our biological safety goes our the safety of our categories, our identity; there is no more pride, no more relief in being “here” where all is so much better. At last, everywhere is simply the world: equal and unending catastrophe.
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