evilentity

Let me add ageism and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation to the list. I'm actually alarmed by the number of people who liked your last comment, implicitly endorsing the principle that it is OK to discriminate on the basis of race, age, or sexual orientation. I encourage all of those people to rethink this. It should never be OK to discriminate on the basis of race, age, or sexual orientation. Period. I'm very, very hesitant to use my own mod powers to police disputes I'm involved with, but if you made an issue of anybody else's race, age, or sexual orientation in a dispute in this manner, I'd think strongly about exercising them. That is not what a discussion forum should be about. I encourage you to rethink what you're doing. I also encourage everyone to actually read and try to understand the points I've made. If you don't understand them, ask me to explain. If you disagree with them, explain why they are wrong rather than leveling cheap ad hominem attacks. Yeah, I hope he was being sarcastic too. Or trolling. Otherwise... Please feel free to move such discussions to my blog post so we don't have to pollute the Charli thread with it anymore.

Normally I leave the Charli thread to the XCX-philes (Charli's Angels is such a lame fanbase name), and I hate to resurrect an old argument, but I was too busy to respond properly earlier, and I just couldn't let this go unaddressed. I'm also posting this on my blog which is probably a more appropriate venue for further discussion since the issue at hand has little to do with the thread topic. Apparently it's become fashionable to redefine "racism" narrowly such that only systemic racism is racism: that it must include some dynamic of power or oppression or it is not racism. I've seen this idea and various forms of it (its supposed corollaries that only white people can be racist and that POC cannot be) recurring on this forum leading to contentious arguments. This problem is not unique to our forum. I highly recommend reading this academic paper in Social Work magazine about conflicts over defining "racism", which lays out the histories of the original definition of the word and the revisionist one and conflicts over the definitions, examines the arguments on each side, and makes recommendations: https://www.andover.edu/About/Newsroom/TheMagazine/Documents/8-PedOfRacismSWJournal.pdf In addition to the arguments against the revisionist definition explored in the article, I'd also like to offer my own. I find this notion problematic (and even pernicious) for reasons linguistic, logical, practical, and pedagogical: It is not intellectually rigorous. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that proponents of the redefinition do not apply it consistently or in an intellectually rigorous way. Even if one accepts the definition that racism is prejudice plus power (R=P+P), and exclusively that, it does not follow that POC cannot be racist or that only white people can be racist. White people may have substantially more power in most contexts, but it is simply untrue (and in fact infantilizing) to suggest that POC have no power or that there is no context in which POC have sufficient power to enforce whatever prejudices they might have. Considered in a vacuum, even the appeal to authority via invocation of victim status employed to enforce this definition ironically creates what proponents of this definition insist does not exist: a sphere in which the oppressed do have a kind of power over the privileged, the power to judge the ideas of the privileged based not on their merits or content, but the color of their skin or privileged status. Of course, this does not happen in a vacuum, and one could argue that this is a comparatively minor injustice and perhaps a justifiable counterbalance. But a principled argument for fairness or equality it is not. Two wrongs do not make a right. The R=P+P formulation also does not address racism between similarly situated groups. Racism can exist between two minority groups or between two privileged groups. An Asian-American calling an African-American ":)" is racist. An African-American calling an Asian-American a "chink" or a "gook" is racist. Similarly, the area I grew up in was heavily populated by Dutch Protestant and Polish Catholic immigrants, two white privileged groups. It was commonplace for each group to tell jokes about the other (often the same jokes with ethnicities reversed, usually about how dumb the other group was). Though relatively harmless, these jokes were properly considered racist and reflected real divisions and tensions. (When my grandfather kicked my aunt out of the house he was as upset that she was knocked up by and would have to shotgun marry a Polish Catholic as he was upset about the fact that she was knocked up.) More serious examples of racism between similarly situated groups exist or have existed around the world. It removes a perfectly good term from a useful context. People have used the word "racism" in the attitudinal sense since the word was coined decades ago and it rather neatly describes that, more specifically than "prejudice" and more succintly than "racial prejudice". There is nothing inherently problematic about using the word "racism" this way. Why should people who have used the word this way all their life suddenly have to stop using it that way? It distances the word from its etymological roots. Etymologically, "racism" clearly falls into a category of -ism words (like nationalism, tribalism, regionalism, sexism, heterosexism, ageism, ableism, etc.) coined to describe prejudicial ideologies that discriminate on the basis of their root word. While many of these words can also refer to systems than enforce these ideologies, they all are used to describe the attitudes and beliefs underpinning them. Narrowly redefining any of these terms (similar efforts are underway with "sexism") to only mean the systems or power structures that enforce these ideologies distances them from their etymological roots. It's unnecessary to describe the phenomena it seeks to describe. The English language is a rich language. It's not as if it is so impoverished that revisionist proponents must "steal" a word in order to have a term to describe systemic racism or racial oppression or racist power structures. See? I just used three different phrases that describe this concept quite adequately. It's unnecessary to highlight systemic racism by whites against POC or to distinguish it from non-systemic racism against whites by blacks. Redefinition of words is not required to make people understand that systemic racism by whites against POC exists and is a much bigger deal than racist attitudes by POC against whites and take it seriously. Some people may be privileged or lack experiential knowledge of systemic racism, but that doesn't mean they're dense. It smacks of downplaying or excusing racism against other people by POC. Racism, like torture, is a taboo word. Redefining racism in this way is literally lifting a taboo on POC's own racial prejudices. It creates a semantic argument where no argument exists about the underlying phenomena. No reasonable person on either side of this issue disagrees that all people are capable of racial prejudice and that it is really bad, and that there is systemic racism that primarily affects POC and is far, far worse. We all agree. Yet here we are having an argument about it nonetheless. It creates a situation in which one side dismisses the other if it does not accept its definitions. This does nothing to promote dialogue, understanding, or good will. I couldn't care less if someone else employs the word "racism" exclusively in the systemic sense in their own writing or speech. But don't start an argument with someone if they use the word in the more general attitudinal sense or insist that they are using it wrong and that they must only use it in the systemic sense. If it causes you that much of a problem, just mentally replace "racism" with "racial prejudice" in what they're saying and carry on. At a very minimum, those who wield this narrow definition of racism should at least be intellectually honest about it and acknowledge the fact that their definition is a revisionist one and act with humility towards those who do not accept their redefinition rather than seeking to bully or shame them into accepting it or labeling them or dismissing them if they do not. It alienates many people from a position of support. That isn't to say we shouldn't tell hard truths to people because they might not want to hear it. But this isn't about truth, it's about semantics. We can describe the truth of race relations without this redefinition, a redefinition that obscures truth, in my view. Insisting that people must dogmatically accept your vocabulary isn't going to make people very receptive to your message. Telling white people that racism should be redefined such that only white people can be racist and that non-white people can't be is going to turn many of them off. As Chris Rock said in a recent interview, racial progress is "not black progress. That's white progress." "White people were crazy. Now they're not as crazy." If you want white people to understand how they're still "crazy" or the system is still "crazy", alienating them unnecessarily is not helpful. It is propagandistic dogma. We should be very skeptical of any de facto attempt to define-- and especially to redefine-- an action X such that it is only X if committed by Y people (e.g. terrorism and Muslims) or that it is not X if committed by Z people (e.g. torture and Americans). Orwell warned of the dangers of revisionism in 1984 and the abuse of language for political purposes in his essay "Politics and the English Language. In Animal Farm he illustrated the tendency of movements to corrupt and begin to emulate that which they were originally opposed to and to justify "[t]hings... which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties". Movements, even those generally on the right side of an issue, have a tendency towards the masturbatory, to become insular, to crawl so far up their own asshole with their own jargon and dogma that they become unable to communicate with those outside their in-group-- to express their ideas in a way that others can understand or to listen to criticism from others. Finally, some responses to specific comments: I agree wholeheartedly with all of this except the first sentence. "Racism" is the best word to use because avoiding a commonly understood definition of racism is to cede the argument to the revisionists which is pernicious for the reasons I outlined above. No, don't be bullied into this revisionism. Racism is precisely the word you're looking for. Systemic racism or racial oppression or some such phrase are the words revisionists should be looking for rather than seeking to redefine a word and impose acceptance of that redefinition upon others. Perhaps this is because racism can just mean hating someone because of their skin color yet you insisted they accept an extremely problematic and unnecessary redefinition of the word to exclusively mean systemic racism. Big surprise this turned into a shouting match. What if, as is the case, many oppressed people agree with many white people on one definition, and many other oppressed people and many other white people agree on another? As an oppressed person, you're entitled to define your experience of systemic racism and are able to do so in a way a privileged person cannot. But you're not entitled to your own facts. Or in this case, your own definitions. Oppressed people obviously have a better experiential understanding of racism. But they do not have a monopoly on understanding any issue ethically, philosophically, or conceptually, which is precisely what defining words or categorizing behavior is concerned with. I don't think even someone's status as an oppressed person should allow them to dictate terms of a debate or put their idea or actions beyond questioning. Frankly, we should be very wary of attempts to do that in any context. Also, to posit that only victims of racism can define racism is a classic case of circular reasoning and a Catch-22: We can't define racism without defining who is and isn't a victim or racism, but how can we define who is or is not a victim of racism without first defining what is and is not racism? This is actually a textbook example of racism (or racial prejudice for those that insist upon the revisionist definition): That someone's ideas can be dismissed regardless of their merits on account of the color of their skin.

I was given a copy of "Gangsta Boy" about two months before it leaked and it came to me as "Gangsta Boy". With tracks like these that leaked without any information about where they originally came from (hacking?) it's really impossible to know if they were intentionally misspelled by Lana or altered somewhere along the way by traders. I personally feel it's generally safest to go with proper spellings of words unless there's good evidence to do otherwise.

A nod to her formerly going by Ella & the Lion?

Yes! I'm glad "Two" won't be completely lost to history. Maybe there's even a chance "Time" is "This Time".

Yes, actually it does. None of these statements follow logically. It doesn't follow that because something is wrong it should not be depicted in art. That's absurd on its face. It also doesn't follow that someone's intention in doing something (or even their responsibility for doing something) can be ascertained by another's reaction to it. That's taking the whole "perception is reality" thing to absurd lengths. As others sarcastically suggested: There's plenty of things in what little footage we've seen that suggest it might be problematic, but we just can't know for sure without more context. We don't have enough information yet.

Finally he's saying something that sounds closer to the truth.

Yellow Flicker Beat > Big Eyes

@@effr But were any of them their teachers? (And I disagree that it's appropriate for 20-somethings to date 15-year-olds.) Yeah, I had originally assumed he was older too, but what information I've been able to find certainly fits with her accounts in interviews that he'd only recently finished his undergrad when he was her teacher: It looks like he taught at her boarding school through the end of the 2004-2005 academic year and was listed as having only a B.A. from Georgetown on their faculty listing pages. It appears he has been working at a D.C.-based all boys Christian school since the 2005-2006 academic year and is now listed as having a M.A. from a Vermont college (interestingly much closer to Lake Placid than Kent) that he presumably completed while teaching in Connecticut. But I disagree completely disagree that just because the age difference between Lana and her teacher isn't as far apart as Lolita and Humbert's or because there's no evidence that their relationship was ever physical that it wasn't Lolita-esque and inappropriate. I think it's hard to read her lyrics and comments about this in interviews and not come to the conclusion that she viewed it through that lens, at least not without being in extreme denial. It may just be her spin on things, but the activities she describes sound extremely inappropriate for a teacher to be doing alone with a teenage student of the opposite sex, unsupervised: (Also, note how defensive she is about this, taking pains to say she wasn't that young and that he wasn't that old. Another time she lied about it being a male teacher. What's that about?) And I mean, fuck, he was the very teacher that introduced her to Nabokov and Lolita specifically: I'm usually an advocate of teaching challenging material and opposed to classroom censorship, but a male teacher has absolutely no business teaching Lolita to high school aged girls or younger. The likelihood of a lovesick female student projecting it onto her relationship with her teacher is just too great, to say nothing of the teacher's propensity. Ignore former teacher Sting's warning in "Don't Stand So Close to Me" and you'll be answering to more than just the musical Police. (And let's not forget the case of Lana stan Megan Stammers and her teacher who found a little too much inspiration in Lana's lyrics.) On another subject: I'm not necessarily endorsing the "cult=AG" theory, but this doesn't undercut it at all. The theory still makes sense if you assume she became disillusioned with AG at some point post-BTD. I haven't seen any AG shoutouts recently.

inb4 a Courtney/Lana "He Hit Me (and It Felt Like a Kiss)" duet

...CONTINUED The tinsel, streamers, and assorted DIY video decorations. The infamous fishtank. The trailer. The sparkle jumprope. This is like candy for fans for whom her early years are like the stuff of legend. inb4 she had a persona called Golden Compact Mirror Princess. Checking MySpace archives now. Jesus. Namedropping Steven Mertens yet again. This feels more personal than half of Lanalysis. Speaking of which, I get the feeling that unless K is a real person, Mertens is the real guy she has in mind most in her songs. She certainly has had him in mind most in her interviews. Oh, I bet he gave you the fuzz. It really runs in the family, doesn't it? Wait... are they watching TV while driving?

Didn't another interviewer just debunk this? Say what? Put The Radio On.mp3 Oh, I bet you took the D train a lot. BTW InfoSec Taylor Swift would tell you sharing even former addresses is bad opsec. TO BE CONTINUED... (fucking quote limits)

Why so cynical? I'm sure she'll play something off Paradise too. If she doesn't cancel due to an unspecified illness.

Two more Ella songs probably lost down the memory hole, "Wannabe" and "But I Do": http://www.buzzinunlimited.com/2012/08/british-talent-ella-mcmahon-ella-lion.html I tried contacting Leanne Joseph, Jake Tench, and M.o.D about them, to no avail. Interestingly, she apparently went by the name Ella & the Lion for awhile.

She got her OWN network. Oh, I never said this article was good or even close to accurate. I completely agree with you that it's shoddy and they get her wrong. I just don't think it's all that negative. I think this is jumping to conclusions. Maybe this is why, maybe not. But if we're going to read that much into tweets, then Daddy Grant apparently didn't have a problem with it. The Robster tweeted a link to it and hasn't deleted it.

I really don't think it's that negative of an article. (Though there is perhaps a subtle undercurrent in asides like this one.) Again, I think this interview was quite tame (boring even). But what exactly do you think the role of a journalist should be? A stenographer? If she expects a softball interview, she should go on Oprah. Occam's razor Also, this interview and everyone's reaction to it, including mine and my reaction to everyone's reactions, can be summed up in one gif:

Posted 1 month ago on Eli Roth's tumblr: C'mon Manson camp, don't try to deny it.

Being associated with Manson and all, the German name Sturmgruppe sounded kinda vaguely Nazi to me. Not surprisingly I was right. Sturmgruppe means something like "assault group". Divisions of a battalion of Luftwaffe paratroopers were called "sturmgruppen". #HeavyHitler

Love that a caption in the video says "Bedtime Stories". Continuing that ultraviolence theme with the video title "First Person Shooter", eh Lana?

I feel like if Lana died you'd use the occasion to plug your own music.

And we'll never be raaaaaapists (raaaapists)... Wow. Ben and the PR teams of everyone else involved are working overtime on this. They're trying to bury this thing hard. (Will they ever learn? C'mon, it's the internet. ) First Sturmgruppe took down the stills and video of this, now they've taken down all their content. Manson's camp is denying this hard. The last line is completely laughable: "It must be a fan video splicing up old Manson video footage with someone else's Lana Del Rey footage." Do we have proof of this? What do we know about Sturmgruppe? Otherwise the rest of the Manson denial (aside from the silly "fan video" bit) could be true. If we can link Manson to Sturmgruppe (and I mean more than just producing his videos, like ownership or more direct involvement) we can still link Sturmgruppe to posting the video. (I have a screenshot if the cached link expires.) Funny to see Manson actually wanting to distance himself from controversy though.

Based on the reactions I was prepared for something much more shocking than this. Frankly, I've been expecting something much more shocking all along than the little we've now seen based on Eli Roth's comments about the project. I think it's way too early to start making judgments about this without the full context. But I couldn't resist: I'm going to hell.

I didn't get to see/rip it before it was taken down. Did anyone rip the original HQ video directly from Vimeo? (I'm kinda anal about having things in their original quality without conversion.)

Oh, I just remember their early coverage (like fall 2011) was pretty positive which the hipsterrunoffs of the world criticized.

Nope, that's what I hear too. I don't hear "golden" at all. I hear something more like "I like to re-record in heels and underwear". (Side note: fantastic mental image.) #DirtyOldManPost Didn't she say in at least one interview that she can't rap?