Let Us Anticipate Interpol - El Pintor 9/9/2014

it's frankly an insult to the relative effort amanda palmer puts into trolling and getting attention to suggest that sexism is the only reason she gets more attention then a far less notable figure doing a far less notable thing

I dunno; I think that ILX's hate-crush obsession with Amanda Palmer is weird and kinda unhealthy and her importance is exaggerated because ILX is obsessed with hating her.

I mean, I don't know how many records Dresden Dolls sold as opposed to Interpol (1.4 million, the latter, I think? Has Palmer sold that many?) but I think they occupy pretty similar niche habitats in terms of, well, my Mum hasn't heard of either of them.

But, I mean, I pretty much think of Amanda Palmer as a nobody that ILX is just weirdly and unduly obsessed with.

I dunno; I think that ILX's hate-crush obsession with Amanda Palmer is weird and kinda unhealthy and her importance is exaggerated because ILX is obsessed with hating her.

this is a fair statement, however the fact that ilx has joined the rest of the world in not paying attention to a short artfilm from a guy best known for a haircut and having herpes ten years ago doesn't confirm the sentiment's validity.

like yeah, ilx and the world probably care too much about courtney love, but if a hypothetical bassist from a b-level seattle band yells racist shit about obama in an unpromoted youtube and no one notices, it'd be kind of weird to claim this is revelatory evidence of anything

That's kinda my point. If Carlos D were a woman known for having haircuts and wearing racist uniforms and carrying/transmitting a sexually transmitted disease, there would be an ILX thread 5 times as long as the Amanda Palmer one, probably called something like "This just in: Carlotta D: Still Crazy" or "Carlotta D: Cash Cow or Total Bitch?" or something along those lines.

Female artists get a ton more scrutiny, and a ton more shit for their antics. Dudes get a free pass to get their shit ignored.

My point, you have just made it.

Now I'm going back to anticipating a new, herpes-free, nazi-free Interpol album. Yay.

i'm not denying that female artists get a ton more scrutiny. i simply don't think carlos d and amanda palmer are equitable in stature or activity.

we're talking about a successful singer/songwriter and a former bassist

Well, if you don't want to accept Amanda Palmer, then you know who's a really, really, seriously obscure female indie artist who sold absolute jack shit compared to Interpol, and still got like five threads dedicated to calling out their questionable behaviour?

CocoRosie member goes to "Kill Whitey" Ironic dance parties and gets called out by brainwashed.com as racist

"Kill Whitey", Cocorosie, and borrowing the Audi.

Well! what *are* we to make of CocoRosie?

Why does Europe love CocoRosie so much?

again, i am with you that women get a ton more scrutiny. however, two of those are two posts long, only one updated since 2008 despite the fact that the group charted in europe in 2013 (a year after the ex-bassist of interpol made this video). cocorosie was an active group doing questionable shit while making music people listened to. carlos d made a shitty video years after leaving a band he didn't even sing in.

that said, if you start a thread saying "carlos d is a racist" today i guarantee you'll get more than two posts.

"women get lots of scrutiny and shit for stuff men totally get a pass on" - i'm with you

"and the proof is that nobody wants to talk about carlos d as much as i do" - hold up

I mean, I have never even heard a note of that band's music. I don't think I ever saw a picture of them in a music paper or could name one of their tunes. But I sure remember that ILM had 5 threads about how racist they were.

But on the other hand, you've got arguably the most prominent American indie-rock band of the 00s (or certainly the most critically acclaimed, or "seminal" (LOL) or whatever), and their front man / most prominent / recognisable member (I mean, let's stop with this "just the bassist" shit. He was the one that everyone photographed and interviewed and treated as the star) goes and makes a blackface video and there's... *tumbleweed*

And you don't think there's any difference in the way that the public sphere (including ILM) scrutinises and problematises female versus male behaviour? really?

p.s. I don't want to talk about Carlos D. It's Kessler I always want to talk about, keep your indie-rock heartthrobs straight. I just find it *weird* that in two years, I never heard so much of a whisper about Carlos D and his blackface, while I read a ton more scrutiny of women at much lesser levels of celebrity.

And you don't think there's any difference in the way that the public sphere (including ILM) scrutinises and problematises female versus male behaviour? really?

please acknowledge what i've written - "women get lots of scrutiny and shit for stuff men totally get a pass on" - i'm with you

if you think carlos d in 2014 (or shit, 2012) is bigger than cocorosie (apparently still a charting act in europe even though i haven't heard about them in years) and amanda palmer (who had a top 10 album with her name and face on the cover in 2012), i would say you do want to talk about carlos d

i am not debating the relative scrutiny of women vs men, i debating the stature and celebrity of carlos d in the current decade

i am trying to break it to you that carlos d has not been the most prominent member of interpol for many a year

Well, I want to talk about the fact that a (now former) member of a band I thought I liked made a blackface video in 2012 and no one, not even in the *fandom* seemed like it was worth mentioning. I mean, yeah. That did give me pause. I've spent three days, basically googling to find any mention of it at all, and asking around, and going "uuuhhh, why did none of you ever see fit to mention the blackface? Is there a collective amnesia here, or was the film just so horrific you've all blocked it from your minds? (despite the fact you're posting GIFs and laughing about how he's wearing a sequinned ballgown, but still not mentioning the blackface." I mean, yeah. I kinda felt a bit like I was standing there with my mouth open, gawping, saying "am I the only person that can see this?"

But in terms of "who's bigger" Interpol or Amanda Palmer or .... I mean, honestly I had never fucking heard of them except this Cocorosie? I suppose it depends what circles you move in. If you asked me to make a chart of who's more famous, Interpol or Amanda Palmer, I would put them at about the same level. Yes.

Just so long as we are in agreement on "women get lots of scrutiny and shit for stuff men totally get a pass on" - i'm with you which is the main thrust of my argument.

i am trying to break it to you that carlos d has not been the most prominent member of interpol for many a year

You probably need to break this to Tumblr and their online fanbase, too, in that case. LOL.

i mean, take heart that this nazi in blackface has been totally ignored (outside of this tumblr cult that can't get his artfilm more than 5,000 views over 2 years), despite being such an apparent superstar in your eyes. that's a good thing!

Maybe I should make a poll for "who was more famous: Interpol or Amanda Palmer?" and then ILX would completely fucking explode.

I mean, if the only thing we disagree on is that I think Carlos D is more famous than Amanda Palmer and you think Amanda Palmer is more famous than Carlos D, then really we can go home now because this is probably a transAtlantic thing where Interpol are in the NME every fucking week and Amanda who is not.

i think it'd be awful if an ex-bassist could get attention on the level of a top 10 solo artist who does ted talks just by making a shitty artfilm

you know he's not in the band right? for four years?

It's a really terrible film. Like, it is now actually literally the worst film I have ever watched in my life. And given how many NYU film students I dated in my youth, that is really saying something.

also i think a fleeting moment in a video isn't going to get as much traction as amanda palmer's endless media presence and the material she's provided that fuel revives and responses in that thread. also i think cocorosie was very much at the center of some kind of vice mag-sponsored cultural movement, back when vice was engaging with a decent amount of racist trolling.

it seems rude to kessler & crew to keep acting like the attention they're getting is attention for the guy who bailed on them two albums ago

also i know a lot of people who owned the first cocorosie album, back when pitchfork and others were trying to make them happen. they weren't especially big or anything, but i mean everyone who bought the cocorosie album didn't start a band but rather wrote a thinkpiece about their toying with racist imagery.

Really? Carlos isn't in the band any more? He left? Who knew? My goodness this is news no one has ever told me or discussed or, why no one even mentioned that, and you know, I was *wondering* why he didn't turn up at any of the aftershows. Really? He quit or something? Hold the front page! I had ~no idea~.

p.s. one album ago. Paul's only been playing bass for one album.

he bailed before the previous album was released, didn't promote it.

honestly shocked to discover cocorosie went top 30 in france last year. i have not heard about them in so long.

He certainly played on the S/T, and was deeply involved in the writing of it.

p.s. just so you know, I am actually joking. I have ended up knowing rather a bit about Interpol these days.

I think though, that actually the defensiveness of fans being all "BUT CARLOS HASN'T BEEN IN THE BAND FOR FOUR YEARS, STOP TALKING ABOUT HIM, HE IS NOT COMING BACK" actually kinda speaks to how he was, for a long time, the most famous person to non-fans. But I also understand why people are sick of talking about him. Granted, I don't know why I would be surprised that a guy who dressed up like a Nazi for kicks might turn out to be the kind of racist who made videos in blackface, but hey. My innocence springs eternal.

wait wait are fans saying "stop talking about him" or still worshipping him on tumblr

i love totbl and some songs since but i am not of the cult

all i'm doing to is trying to stop any implication that ilx has failed to pay as much attention to carlos d as it should

I'm not saying that ILX should pay more attention to Carlos D. Heaven forbid. I'm just saying that it's kinda *UNLIKE* ILM to resist the chance for a clusterfuck about an even mildly famous indie-rocker found to be doing a massive racist thing. And wondering why.

I mean, if you think it's down to Dengler's post-Interpol (lack of) pulling power, y'know, maybe.

But I just can never fully discount the greater amount of scrutiny paid to female artists, and the greater opprobrium that women face for doing bad things.

But I guess we can carry on talking about Carlos D all night, since you seem to really want to now? This was never about Carlos D, for me, it was about wondering why Celebrity X would get opprobrium while Celebrity Y seemed to get a free pass, and what it is that makes the difference.

did someone even post about it in 2012? i don't know if you can say "got a free pass" unless a brave soul attempted to find justice when it was released and ilx just let the thread descend indifferently. for ilx to chortle, someone has to pull the info out from the wild.

also cocorosie and amanda palmer were getting acclaim and $$$ at the time ilx got giggly about them - if carlos d is actually making hay anywhere right now, i haven't heard about it

"A free pass" often entails that exact lack of scrutiny, the lack of people searching them out and "pulling info from the wild."

Amanda Palmer doesn't post to ILM. People go hate-reading her blog or her website or whatever, to my eyes, sometimes even just ~looking for things to get offended about~. Men often read "I literally cannot stop clicking on her website, staring at her, hate-reading her, I am unable to control myself from paying attention to this woman!" as "this woman is demanding my attention." It is a real thing, whether you choose to accept it, or apply it to ILM's attitude towards Palmer, or not.

Granted, I think Dengler is trolling, and also trying to garner attention for his shitty art-films (I think he has something to sell, just not as successfully, because his product is not as appealing). But he's not being hauled up for his actions, or scrutinised, or hunted in the wild. You see this as because he's no longer a Celebrity. But I see, constantly, that the freedom not to be looked at, scrutinised, gazed, is generally a male freedom.

i wish you could stop pretending i'm claiming women don't get more scrutiny just because i'm providing examples of how carlos d is nowhere as notable as you think

i think a better example would be someone like ted nugent or gene simmons, who's a big public/musical figure, and constantly spouting nonsense, and ilx mostly shrugs it off as predictable asshattery

Fair enough.

i think the difference is basically no one except complete idiots will agree w/simmons or nugent because no one takes them seriously at all, carlos d has been a joke for years so no one pays attention to him, but amanda palmer is regarded i think as some kind of futurist or groundbreaker and some people do take her seriously (cf. the TED talk), and as we all know whenever someone who is taken seriously in some quarters also tends to traffic in self-serving nonsense, they're the biggest targets for a takedown. not sure what anyone can say about carlos d at this point.

i guess the closest comparison in recent times could ***maybe*** be michelle shocked's behavior and the reaction to it, but then again unless i'm mistaken carlos d just had some brief imagery in a film no one saw as opposed to being a supposedly leftist '80s folk icon who returns from the wilderness to take a stand against gay marriage and homosexuality.

Carlos D was the guy we all joked had herpes almost a decade (!) ago, so we might've expended our store of contempt.

but people do take nugent and simmons seriously, in the sense that Kiss and Nuge get POX threads and respect for their careers, etc. commentary on palmer is almost 100% on her shenanigans, despite the fact that she's maintained a pretty strong musical career as well. you can make distinctions between nuge and palmer just as you could palmer and courtney love and anyone with anyone. we're all beautiful novel snowflakes. but i do think women are more apt to get shit of the "why do i have to tolerate this? destroy this person" variety, where people even more noxious are just written off.

where men even more noxious, i should say.

that being said, amanda palmer puts in a remarkable amount of work into keeping eyes on her - her ted talk was almost on some l ron hubbard shit - so i don't begrudge folks hate-chronicling her pathology in action. but it's good to think about why she gets so much more hate than neil gaiman and not just to rationalize the fact.

the difference also though is that nugent and kiss were genuine superstars and all over classic rock radio and palmer just doesn't have the same cultural impact with her music. have dresden dolls or AP gotten a lot of radio play? i really don't know!

I think a more apt male counterpart to Amanda Palmer is Wayne Coyne, who does get quite a lot of shit for the barrage of ridiculous bullshit he's blessed us with over the last couple of years. It's true that he should probably get quite a bit more and Amanda Palmer should get a bit less.

that these two guys have had success writing misogynist songs in a misogynist culture for years isn't really the best thing to use as an excuse for giving them less attention than amanda palmer

xpost oooh wayne is a really good one

in all these cases it's "yeah he's a dickweed but i still love that song about being a dickweed i first heard a decade ago" vs "look i dunno what she does at that piano but she needs to SHUT UP"

massive x-posts now, but...

Yeah. Her shenanigans. And her husband. (Because that's what women are judged by; who they marry.) That is very much getting more to the nub of it, leaving Dengler and his fame or lack of it aside. Women will get reduced to their Problematisements (that's not even a word) while there's a tendency to handwave away much huger and more worrying stuff coz the guy made some great records back in the 70s.

(I dunno. I often feel like, when dealing with sexism, and also racism, a lot of it is pointing out this steady drip, drip, drip that makes up this bigger pattern of behaviour. So when you point out a drip, and people go to lengths to say "no, there's not a leak, that drip is just there because (rain, condensation, the dog drooled on that spot etc) there is no leak!" but you *know* there is a leak. Every single individual drop can be explained away in some way or another, and many people will tell you you're crazy, reading a pattern into it. It's *possible* that something like Dengler is not a drip. But the damn leak is still there.)

Now I just wanna know how many herpes jokes one has to tolerate before one gets a memo saying it's OK to make blackface videos...

xp yeah with wayne i think a lot of long-term fans have taken time to come around to the fact that he's an insufferable dickhead now

well it's not an "excuse" nor is it right, they're clearly horrible people and much worse than amanda palmer, and i don't think they get less flak than amanda palmer because of their discographies. i just think they have people talking about their music more bc their music was more central to the culture at one point, as terrible as that is. they're both pretty awful.