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…

The Beautiful People: Gaga as Post-Goth

The Beautiful People: Gaga as Post-Goth

So, the Gaga-Madonna connection is a totally overworn topic. Gaga encourages some of the comparisons, but I think that Madge is NOT the artist we need to see as Gaga’s immediate aesthetic ancestor and interlocutor. It’s Marilyn Manson. Yep, Gaga…

“The joy of repetition really is in you”: Lee Edelman and Hot Chip’s “Over and Over”

I’m going to argue that Hot Chip’s “Over and Over” (mainly the song, but also somewhat the video) evinces/endorses what Lee Edelman calls “sinthmosexuality.” Queer theorist Lee Edelman argues that, in the West, “queerness” has come to represent the “death…

Synth Britania – a BBC Doc about [white dudes in] 70s/80s British Electronica

Synth Britania is available in full on YouTube, and it’s an interesting and informative enough documentary filled with a lot of good music. Some of the info is going to be redundant for a lot of serious fans of this…

Jacques Lu Cont, best (if unintentional) living interpreter of Nietzsche?

“I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more than to be a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his art, and finally also his only piety” (Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 381,…

“This is why events unnerve me”: Teaching Neitzsche through Joy Division/New Order/Kylie Minogue

My Existentialism class is in the midst of reading Nietzsche’s The Gay Science. The GS deals with a lot of the themes and ideas in Zarathustra, which is what people usually assign in Existentialism classes, but the GS treats them…

“This is a song about faking orgasms!”

The title of this post comes from the introduction to the Au Pairs song “Come Again”. So, I’ve been thinking recently about Gaga’s relationship to post-punk — With all her homage to “The New York Scene,” the connection isn’t too…

Does a mid-sized city like Charlotte even NEED a professional Symphony Orchestra?

No. As this Observer article explains, the Charlotte Symphony is in serious financial trouble:http://www.charlotteobserver.com/breaking/story/909093.html Clearly the community cannot financially sustain a professional symphony orchestra. Does it need to? Ought it? Nope. Certainly we need to save the great institutions –…