Problematic!

Glyph

Glyph is worse than some and better than others. He believes that life is just one damned thing after another, that only pop music can save us now, and that mercy is the mark of a great man (but he's just all right). Nothing he writes here should be taken as an indication that he knows anything about anything.

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34 Responses

  1. Jaybird says:

    “We have decided to cancel the N.W.A. show due to our Dean finding out what the acronym stands for.”Report

  2. Chris says:

    I remember thinking, “Shit, some veterans are not gonna be happy about this name,” when I first saw it pop up on Songza. This is not expect it to be offensive to Vietnamese people, though I suppose it might be for similar reasons to those I thought would make it piss off some vets.Report

    • Glyph in reply to Chris says:

      I’m trying to think of any analogues in recent times – like, I don’t know, naming your band “Al Qaeda” or “Mujahideen” or something.

      There was a band a few years back that was originally calling themselves “The Muslims”, but they changed it to “The Soft Pack” before they released their first full-length. Nobody really kicked too hard about Christian Death or the Jesus and Mary Chain back in the day…Report

      • Chris in reply to Glyph says:

        Yeah, I imagine in the 80s I’d have seen “Viet Cong” and thought, “No!” Of course, back then there were Vietnam vets involved in pretty much every aspect of my life. Today it just seems like an historical name, but then people in a group with that name never tried really hard to kill me.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Glyph says:

        “Blondie” was named after somebody or other’s dog…Report

      • Will Truman in reply to Glyph says:

        A few people have pointed out that naming a team “Pirates” would have, at various points, been akin to naming a team the Jihadists.Report

      • dhex in reply to Glyph says:

        “Nobody really kicked too hard about Christian Death or the Jesus and Mary Chain back in the day…”

        well, i mean, i’m about as big a fan of a few explicitly anti-religion bands as anyone and all that but, like, the ross douhat style jesus nerds aren’t wrong when they say no one cares about making fun of christianity. it’s pretty old hat at this point.Report

      • Mike Schilling in reply to Glyph says:

        There’s no one called the “Taliband”?Report

      • Will H. in reply to Glyph says:

        I can see how Hiroshima might piss off the pro-H bomb crowd, in much the same as Toronto pisses of the Miller Lite people, and Boston would piss off . . . well, … everybody.Report

    • Chris in reply to Chris says:

      That should be “I did not expect,” not “this is not exect,” whatever that would mean.Report

    • Brandon Berg in reply to Chris says:

      Aren’t a lot of Vietnamese Americans refugees or descendants therefrom?Report

  3. veronica d says:

    This seems like maybe an overreaction.

    There probably are people who will rant about Siouxsie Sioux, but I have not met them. There seems to be a general understanding that that was then and this is now.

    I wonder how many people are aware that Siouxsie covered “Strange Fruit”? (And did so rather well in my opinion.) Can you imagine the outrage!

    It’s funny about the “Dionysus” thing, as I think white folks overestimate the degree that Ancient Greece is part of our “tradition,” given that they were a Mediterranean culture broadly rejected in the Middle Ages, where their knowledge was nurtured by the Muslims far more than the Christians, but then they get gathered up and presented as the first step toward White European civilization. Seems kinda bogus to me.

    (Obviously the line is supposed to go Greece -> Rome -> Christendom -> Modernity, and sure, fine. But still. Why not Egypt -> Greece -> Persia -> Islam? Point is, we don’t own the ancient Greeks.)

    Anyway, appropriation is a real thing, and on the whole I think it is good that we talk about this, but golly do college-aged activists do a lousy job with it.Report

    • Glyph in reply to veronica d says:

      appropriation is a real thing

      I…am not totally sure about this, when it comes to art.

      Or at least, I can be convinced it’s a real thing, but not that it’s necessarily a bad thing; cultural miscegenation is just how art works. Or should.

      By all accounts, Elvis loved “black” music and took every opportunity to both give black artists credit, and give them a hand up where he could. For some reason, Mexican kids love the quintessentially-English (Irish) Morrissey beyond all reason. Who am I to tell them they can’t identify with that, or that they are doin’ it rong?

      About the only exception I will make is for Clapton, who made his money off the blues but is kinda a racist. Screw that guy.

      But I don’t like his music anyway.Report

      • Gabriel Conroy in reply to Glyph says:

        How is Clapton racist? (I really don’t like the guy or his music and really have no attachment for him whatsoever. But I had never heard that about him and am curious to know more.)Report

      • Glyph in reply to Glyph says:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Against_Racism

        Rock Against Racism was founded in 1976 by Red Saunders, Roger Huddle and others. According to Huddle, “it remained just an idea until August 1976” when Eric Clapton made a drunken declaration of support for former Conservative minister Enoch Powell (known for his anti-immigration Rivers of Blood speech) at a concert in Birmingham.[2] Clapton told the crowd that England had “become overcrowded” and that they should vote for Powell to stop Britain from becoming “a black colony”. He also told the audience that Britain should “get the foreigners out, get the wogs out, get the coons out”, and then he repeatedly shouted the National Front slogan “Keep Britain White”.

        Clapton later claimed that his remarks were made as a joke, and that he did not know anything about politics at the time[citation needed]. In a 2007 interview, however, he said he still supports Powell, and that he doesn’t view Powell as a racist.

        Report

    • LeeEsq in reply to veronica d says:

      @veronica-d The idea that Medieval Europeans rejected the Greek and Roman philosophers and the legacies of Antiquity is a myth. A lot of Western Christian theology incorporated Platonic philosophy and they were positively mad about Aristotle by the 1200s once they got a hold of his writings. The knights were very fond of comparing themselves to the heroes of mythology and references to Gods and heroes were abound in Greek poetry. Muslims did preserve and translate a lot of the writings of antiquity but so did the Byzantine, or more properly Eastern Roman Empire, which was the direct heir of the Greco-Roman tradition. The Muslim world eventually decided reject Greco-Roman thought in its entirety around the time of al-Ghazi, who originated a lot of the Islamist ideals when he held that reason and faith were incompatible. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church generally followed St. Thomas Aquinas’ doctrine that reason and faith were compatible. This eventually led to the Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment by a long, curvy, and torturous but definite road.

      Modern Western thought and society owes much more and has many more direct and indirect links to the Greeks and Romans than other places in the world. The Muslim world was generally been interested in Greco-Roman philosophy in the past but the influence of Greco-Roman thought in the Muslim world today is minimal.Report

  4. aaron david says:

    Wasn’t Souixsie originally in the London SS?Report

    • Glyph in reply to aaron david says:

      Not sure what the London SS is, but she definitely (as did many in that scene) messed around with Nazi imagery (swastikas etc.), and there was an anti-Semitic lyric early on that she claimed A.) She didn’t come up with, another band member had and B.) Didn’t mean it as anti-Semitic, claiming she understood the lyric simply to mean “skinflint”.

      When she realized that National Front types were starting to gravitate to her band she quickly gave up all that stuff, wrote “Israel”, played anti-fascist and Rock Against Racism gigs, etc.

      My personal take on it is that she started out a punk kid trying to piss people off, but realized she was screwing up and grew up, but YMMV.Report

  5. LWA says:

    I guess the Dead Kennedys weren’t available for a reunion tour.Report

  6. Damon says:

    ChumpsReport

  7. dhex says:

    the entire statement is here:

    https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fgomHGSQHEaVNrkIWmCGH1-wO61VoGhLnpr9NGCLyWY/edit?pli=1

    or not, and say you did. it’s not exactly a stunning piece of rhetoric.Report

    • Rufus F. in reply to dhex says:

      Wow! What a condescending, unaware dick that guy is!

      When you’re in a band and a gig gets cancelled last minute, it sucks. You had a contract to do a job and they’re backing out. Whoever was coming to see you is pissed. You’re pissed. It’s unprofessional. But really all Ivan Krasnov would have had to do- really the only decent thing to do- would be to contact the band and say, “look, we can’t go forward with this show because there are some people complaining and I’m between a rock and a hard place here, so I’m very sorry. This is bad for me too.” Having been in a similar situation once with my band, that totally sucks too, but at least they’re being semi-professional.

      Instead, he announces it on social media!!!! He doesn’t even talk to the fishing band! Instead, he announces on social media in this completely condescending way that he’s been reëducated and he is now disturbed by their lack of political sensitivity! When he was the one who fishing booked them in the first place!! I would be LIVID.Report

  8. Glyph says:

    Update: Gang of Four (natch)’s Andy Gill weighs in.Report