A couple of weeks ago, I found this review of a movie I'll never see, if I can help it. I'm not that interested in the film 300 and I don't think this particular article says anything above and beyond what every other critic has said about it: it's a lame, uber-violent, and yet still boring, extravaganza of homoerotica. I don't get the appeal, but then, I don't think I really have my finger on the pulse of money-making Hollywood anyway.
What I find interesting about this article, though, is the fact that Scott is talking about the movie-going public relishes fictionalized fascism-- a topic that isn't really dirty at all--but she relentlessly peppers the article with the spewages of her potty-mouth. In the first paragraph alone, we've got metaphorical circle jerks, tarted-up showgirls, and The Clap.
Now, I know I'm just a big ol' black pot here, trying to call out Scott for her black kettleness, but I really find her relentless sexualizing of her review language to be sensationalistic and distracting. I may engage in more than my fair share of gratuitous fellatio allusions, but at least I TRY to employ them in the service of discussing subjects about which sex actually pertains. So please tell me that what she does and what I do are not the same thing? That my explorations engage in something beyond cheap, attention-getting tactics in a misbegotten attempt to wow a readership with trying-too-hard brazenness ( or rather, the type of prudery that masquerades as self-conscious, scantily-clad brazenness?)
So, then, this morning, I found this article in n+1, which is, in general, a very smart magazine. Now I'm no critic of music at all--and though this article is basically about its author's disenfranchisement with rock and roll music--I think the sheer quality of this writing is able to bear the weight of so much sexual innuendo without seeming flashy and juvenile. Indeed, it is arousing both in terms of directional bloodflow AND synaptic response.
Daniels' writing is lyrical and associative, spastic and specific. He's talking about how rock and roll, through it's mechanized attempts to replicate the rhythms of sex, merely regulates them. And how this, ultimately, pisses him right the hell off. And so he is impassioned-- and disillusioned, as he points out he's paid his musician dues several times over. His, of course, is not a new sentiment-- I've been to two different Saul Williams performances (*swoon*), and in each, he did the bit about how the body's natural gesture in response to hip-hip is the rhythmic head-bob. A vehement nodding "yes," no matter the sentiment of the song. ("kill the sheriff" (yes! yes!) "slap the bitches" (yes! yes!) ) You get the picture. And how the imperative of the back beat can assimilate even the more rebellious of minds and bodies. This article swerves off the road and talks about more than just this back beat/copulation analogy, and I would argue that Daniels' employment of sexual language is effective beyond titillation-- and that his point is well-taken.
But moreover, he's a good writer, whereas Scott is more of a verbal pantyflasher and not in a good way. With luck, my own bloggish stylings will approach the former, leaving the latter gasping for breath in her dirty dust.
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