Madonna, “Give Me All Your Luvin,” and Postmillennial Hipness: Or, 18 years later and bell hooks is still right

You’ve gotta give Madonna credit: she always keeps up with the trends, and has her finger on the hot new thing. As her new song and video, “Give Me All Your Luvin,” shows, Madge knows the new, postmillennial language of…

Beyoncé, Gaga, Race, and Sexuality, or, 1+1 Doesn’t Always Equal 2

[This week I’m going to attempt a few “year-end” type posts. Being on semester break, now’s a god time for me to collect some thoughts that have been rattling around in my head all term, but I haven’t had time…

“Countdown”: Beyoncé’s Feminist Reversal of the “Catalog Song”

In this post I argue that Beyonce’s “Countdown”—both as a song and as a video—critiques a canonical, but quite misogynist, style of song. The “catalog song” is a centuries-old format: a dude ticks off a list of all the women…

Girls do run the world, but patriarchy keeps that fact quietly bracketed: Listening to Beyonce’s “Run the World (Girls)”

Feminist bloggers all over the political and aesthetic spectrum have been criticizing Beyonce’s “Run The World (Girls)” for proffering post-feminist falsehoods, for objectifying/sexualizing women in the video, and for limiting women’s “accomplishments” to traditional roles (like behind every “great man”)….

I miss bell hooks, too.

You should check out Gina Ulysse’s post in the Ms. Magazine blog, “Why I miss bell hooks”. A short excerpt: “Where was the feminist response to this incident? I don’t doubt for a minute that Black feminists talked about it…

Taking women seriously as artists

So, it is often the case that women’s accomplishments (in art, research, business, politics, whatever) are often overlooked for, read in terms of, seen as dependent on, or otherwise secondary to their appearance. Adrian Piper has commented on the tendency…

Whatever Philosophy Is, It’s Most Certainly Not About Girls: Or, why people hate Nancy Bauer’s NYTimes column on Beauvoir and Gaga

Readers of this blog have probably safely assumed that I totally endorse Nancy Bauer’s recent contribution to the New York Times philosophy blog, “The Stone”. Her reading of Lady Gaga through Beauvoir (mainly through The Ethics of Ambiguity’s first few…

Some Initial Thoughts on Beyonce’s New “Why Don’t You Love Me?” Video

Beyonce recently released a new video for her funkspolitation-style track “Why Don’t You Love Me?”. While everyone seems to be focusing on her continued use of the pinup aesthetic, I’m going to argue that this is, like “Single Ladies” a…

On Gender and Misogyny in Mark Dery’s Anti-Gaga Argument

Recently, Mark Dery published a piece in “True/Slant” arguing against Lady Gaga’s intellect, artistry, and cultural value: http://trueslant.com/markdery/2010/04/20/aladdin-sane-called-he-wants-his-lightning-bolt-back-on-lady-gaga/ First, I’ll put my cards on the table (and some of you may already be quite familiar with these cards): I’m adamantly…

Kelis does some posthumanist feminism

So, I’ll probably have more to say about this track/video later, but, because this song is so awesome, here are some initial thoughts: 1. The totally minimal nature of the track, the super-clean production, the “restrained” or even “tasteful” vibe…