All posts by MattK

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Children are the enemy of free speech

Pals, Politics, , , , ,

It’s all words, until it’s words that hurt children.  I was not following the Racist Tintin debate until China Miéville weighed in. I’ll read anything he writes, so I was happy to read this.

It seems like this is an argument that the government of Belgium should put a sticker in a racist Tintin book. The book seems racist. The author did some rework of the book. We need fewer racist things on the planet. And hey, think of the kids. The kids get hurt when they see a racist world full of racist things with no explanation that this is a historical item from back when people did this particular awful thing more than they do now.

He must, by this logic, wish to live in a world where any black child – any child – excited to see Fantasia must be shocked by (no warning allowed!) & suffer through Sunflower, must wander into bookshops to be faced with mass-selling books calling them N****r in the title.

It is a strange, depraved morality that chooses relentless fidelity to racist texts over consideration of the day-to-day lives of children & others. Or to put it another way, ‘fuck you people, we care about our little n****r dolls more than we care about you’.

Me, I don’t know.  I just think that even if the world would be better with a sticker in the book and a refiling of the book, this doesn’t rise to the level of something a government should work on.  Governments always seem to me to be a way we can refer to the guys who have the most guns locally.  Bring them into issues in a very limited way.

Why do we need the government to intervene? This seems like a matter of fashion and culture. These are areas where I hate to see the government tread. I would rather see a grass roots effort.  I would rather see a few kids get hurt. I don’t want the government deciding what speech is acceptable – I want the culture doing that.

Since I’m not a black woman, but I’ve watched Good Hair, I feel fully qualified to make statements about what black women should do with their hair. They should go natural and rock what they got.  I’m proud of the Curly Girl Collective and my friend Tracey in it (SHE’S BLACK YALL) and the way they kick ass.  Even though I think it’s lame for black women to straighten their hair and probably not great for the self esteem of little black girls, I don’t think the government should do a damn thing about it. Black folks have to sort that fashion and culture out.  Black folks doing it will be a damn site better than whatever benefits arise from government legislating it.

That isn’t a very analogous situation, but I did want to link to Tracey’s group.  Racist literature is a culture’s responsibility.  The racism has to get pushed out and that comes from the people, not a law.

I agree with China that this Tintin book is bad.  I agree that it probably hurts kids.  I don’t agree that a government should do anything about it.  Keep them out of issues of what is correct speech or ideas.  It is too dangerous to let them in these issues.  I don’t like the idea of a government then making laws about the speech of other dangerous elements like  socialists who write about collective action.  There are many people in governments who dislike radicals and anarchists much more than they dislike racists – it is best not to let the guys with the guns get involved in speech at all.

Movie Review: Copyright Criminals

Movie, Music, Pals, Reviews, , , , , ,

Copyright Criminals Boxed Set CoverSaw Copyright Criminals on Netflix Monday night while cooking up a mushroom risotto. Isn’t that the best time to watch a documentary, while you are waiting for something to boil or stirring occaisionally? Anyway, it’s a great great hip hop history, looking at the ways that copyright and remix culture intersect. You get interviews with all sorts of great turntabilists and producers like Public Enemy, De La Soul, and EL-P, but then you also get the side of guys who made the beats in the beginning like George Clinton and Clyde “Funky Drummer” Stubbelfield.

It turns out that if you cover a song, you are in the clear. Just don’t change any lyrics, you’re legally ok. However, if you lift a guitar riff, distort it and change the tempo or stutter it, then you’re a copyright criminal and you can’t make any cash off your music. There is a really good bit where the head of Tommy Boy and De La Soul are interviewed, discussing how the legal implications of sampling definitely changed the music they were making. Samples became more distorted to hide their origins, some songs are abandoned just because you can’t hope to clear the rights to a popular track. It’s strange to think of all the ghost songs floating out there that were smothered in their cradles before they could be heard or developed.

One last bit of the movie I really loved were the visual breakdowns of remix and mashup songs. Nothing makes it clearer how much actual artistry is happening than seeing the interleaving, distortions and tweaks in all the clips visually.

Podcasts of Note

Pals, , , ,

I always assume people already know these things before I do, but a friend just told me about Deadmau5 and so I’m sheepishly realizing I haven’t been telling about the treasures I’ve discovered.

Podcasts are great.  You can subscribe to them in many ways.  I use the google listen app on my android phone because that lets me listen on the subway.

I’m assuming you already know about A Prairie Home Companion, right?  The show so popular they don’t even bother to have a podcast, not for them. You are getting to hang out with America’s grandpa, Garrison Keillor every Sunday, telling the same old jokes over and over and loving it each time.  Good.  I’m glad you are.

So now I also guess you’ve heard of This American Life.  It’s so mainstream that they had a few seasons of a television show on Showtime.  It was good! But this is such an institution that it has become almost it’s own style.  I can recognize their favorite musical bits by now, because they use them over and over to back all sorts of stories. I think the Fiasco episode, just the intro to it, is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. I cried.

But because of This American Life, I found Planet Money.  See, there was an episode of This American Life called The Giant Pool of Money and it was such a good explanation of the financial collapse of 2008 that the individual reporters for that show got their own series.  This is a look at economics through an understandable lens.  The reporters have covered things like where did China’s economic rocket get lit ( a farmhouse, with a secret document hidden in bamboo), how and what happens when you buy a mortgage backed security ( you lose your money), what if you take what you’ve got left and buy gold, etc. etc.  It’s a personable look into the actual workings of the global economy making it understandable for those folks who don’t work with derivatives and reverse repos every day.  Subscribe, understand the water that you swim in every day, my little fish friend.

Another thing I found because of This American Life is Radiolab. It’s a beautifully scored exploration of the best questions in the world.  Like “Where Am I”, “Who are you?”,Memory and Forgetting, Animal Minds, and what happens after life. It is my favorite. Jad and Robert, the hosts, are so good and wonderful and they look at the best most interesting things the world has. The sound style and storytelling of radiolab is so good that it is infecting the rest of public radio, and for the better. Really, you can start with just about ANY episode. Try “Talking to Machines”

From Radiolab I was introduced to a new winner – 99% Invisible, a melange of architecture and design. I know, those are visual things, this is audio – but stay with me. The stories are what matter, and Roman Mars takes the time to calmly walk you through the implications of moving a capital city, of how the design of a fountain can affect the homeless, and how the design of a studio got a band to release it’s first album in years. It’s a winner.

What am I missing out on? Any great podcasts that I should be listening too? Some hidden gem of a specialty where just the right person is explaining the emergency value of ultrasounds in a podcast?