See mattresslessness his post is a more accurate example of "disingenuousness" since ur looking
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Sunday, 13 December 2015 06:14 (eight years ago) link
Sorry bro I don't think you've earned any more explanations! You're not arguing with what I said but w what you think I said and I have no interest in holding your hand for this
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Sunday, 13 December 2015 06:15 (eight years ago) link
Good thing my dad doesn't work in Chicago city government! You'd be saying I was in rahm's pocket too
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Sunday, 13 December 2015 06:25 (eight years ago) link
deej it's a really bad look, when a guy repeatedly proves you wrong, to just tell that guy to lick your asshole. it's the sort of thing that gets you banned, and then you whine and pick an all-caps display name, etc.
I had a longer thing but your thesis about when national news media began reporting on the increase in Chicago gang violence is just wrong, it's been proven wrong whether you moved to Chicago after college or not.
― tremendous crime wave and killing wave (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Sunday, 13 December 2015 12:32 (eight years ago) link
Deej: Lol @ citing the Christian Science monitor lmao
Bam: Deej, do you know what the Christian Science Monitor is? Are you aware of its reputation? I ask because I don't understand your implication that it's not a noteworthy publication.
Deej: You have significant reading comprehension issues
Me: what exactly is there about "LOL... LMAO" that evades Bam's comprehension? If you express yourself like a 12-year-old, or Lagoon, then you've got to expect people struggling to comprehend you.
― I don't have the time or energy to make a counterargument (stevie), Sunday, 13 December 2015 18:49 (eight years ago) link
Maybe by "last post" you meant that Sears Tower of text? I haven't read all of that yet. Skimmed it a bit. Trying to pace myself. Yesterday was chore day and go see a movie day and visit my girlfriend day. Let me catch up and then I'll toss your salad.
― bamcquern, Sunday, 13 December 2015 19:04 (eight years ago) link
Chicago violence has been endemic/epidemic for years, obviously, as it is with just about any major city, with peaks and valleys of fretting on a national and local level. But I agree that it's only been in the past couple of years that Chicago has earned a more alarmist/sensationalized murder city sort of rep.
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 13 December 2015 20:08 (eight years ago) link
or Lagoon
thread now emitting shrapnel
― denies the existence of dark matter (difficult listening hour), Sunday, 13 December 2015 20:13 (eight years ago) link
He didn't prove me "wrong" you idiot! He's not even in the same argument
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Sunday, 13 December 2015 20:19 (eight years ago) link
If I express myself like a twelve year old it's bc when I "write a Sears tower of text" I'm taking it on good faith that the person I'm talking to is going to engage with it instead of...well I can't tell if bam is trolling because he's actually stupid or if it's a more disingenuous kind of trolling, but fuck you if you expect me to explain to you how bibby is talking about the Atlanta *music industry* when he talks about how violence isn't as present there, or how using the Christian Science monitor as a barometer of the degree to which Chicago violence became a national story makes no sense. I answered genuinely and straightforwardly what I was talking about but clearly this is more about some perverse kind of point scoring in a game of captain save a revered east coast filmmaker
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Sunday, 13 December 2015 20:32 (eight years ago) link
Josh in Chicago otm
Fwiw the whole point of saying that it reached a saturation point a couple of years ago was to say that it doesn't actually do anything just to bring awareness. Like in part I'm talking about the inefficacy of I.e. Rappers (and filmmakers) "raising the alarm" to create some kind of sustained change. If it didn't happen in 2012 it's not going to happen with a movie that (confusingly) bamcquern is now minimizing as an art house concern
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Sunday, 13 December 2015 20:39 (eight years ago) link
It's Willis Tower guys.
― Jeff, Sunday, 13 December 2015 20:54 (eight years ago) link
http://cdn.ebaumsworld.com/thumbs/video/2227974/83008008.jpg
― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 13 December 2015 22:25 (eight years ago) link
deej you're being either disingenuous or really thick - I used the CSM link, I would have thought obviously to anybody whose reading comprehension was up to speed, to point out that even publications as square and non-cutting edge as the Christian Science Monitor were writing about the rise in Chicago gang violence -- specifically about the rise, specifically about the same trends you are talking about and the same causes you and I and everybody else is aware of: not generally about violence, not any of the mischaracterization of the articles you're doing without checking the sources -- long before your posited point-of-origin-in-the-national-consciousness.
on the actual point, no, I don't imagine this film "raises awareness" really, specifically because people have been aware of this for years, even the squarest most mainstream publications knew no later than 2009, and were reporting on it. if it were hugely successful, there might be some "people with large amounts of money become aware and try to help," that's always the possibility with big mainstream exposure, but a version of Lysistrata in verse is not gonna be that movie no matter what.
― tremendous crime wave and killing wave (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Sunday, 13 December 2015 22:32 (eight years ago) link
but feel free to just sail the Pequod right back into the seas of ad hom, who can blame you, your actual point didn't hold up so it's what you've got left
― tremendous crime wave and killing wave (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Sunday, 13 December 2015 22:44 (eight years ago) link
C-. Spike's heart is in the right place, but I'll never watch this again and can't bring myself to direct anyone to it. Somehow this might translate better to theatre in a way, though that's impossible for a billion reasons.
― RAP GAME SHANI DAVIS (Raymond Cummings), Sunday, 13 December 2015 22:55 (eight years ago) link
In what universe is "squareness" of a publication a measure of the depth of media penetration in a story about urban blight? Academic sociology journals must be super out of touch
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Sunday, 13 December 2015 23:24 (eight years ago) link
And the ad homs didn't enter this conversation until ppl started bringing my career into it u disingenuous sanctimonious motherfucker
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Sunday, 13 December 2015 23:25 (eight years ago) link
Does Josh's post affirming what I said mean nothing to you? Do you only accept information that affirms your constant bias that I'm probably wrong about everything ?
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Sunday, 13 December 2015 23:27 (eight years ago) link
Like I feel like I'm trying to chip away at a huge block of ice around your head to get you to understand my point it's very bizarre. Your argument has gone in circles so many times you're trying to argue the point I was making: people already knew about this problem so defending spike's film on "raising awareness" grounds is a flawed argument
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Sunday, 13 December 2015 23:29 (eight years ago) link
have you seen it yet?
― I don't have the time or energy to make a counterargument (stevie), Monday, 14 December 2015 08:54 (eight years ago) link
The thing about the 'raising awareness' argument is that afaict, Spike Lee never really expressed an interest in doing that?So saying "This movie is bad at raising awareness of this problem!" at this point, seems to serve as a lazy stand-in for "This movie is exploitative!" -- perhaps because the latter would require a substantial engagement with it as a work of art, while the former thesis can be 'proved' by 1001 facts about things that are not Spike Lee's Chi-Raq
― bernard snowy, Monday, 14 December 2015 14:20 (eight years ago) link
also: lol at accusing Spike Lee of 'getting it wrong' by making his movie be about two big old rival gangs (what is this, West Side Story???) instead of a bunch of decentralized nodes of corner violence... only to promptly turn around and shit on everyone outside of Chicago as 'outsiders' who can't possibly understand that this city has a unique and historically unprecedented culture of violence, & why it would not be susceptible to a thousand-year-old riff on male psychology (SPOILER ALERT: part of the 'meaning' of a work like Lysistrata is that macho cultures like this go extinct)
― bernard snowy, Monday, 14 December 2015 14:24 (eight years ago) link
― bernard snowy, Monday, December 14, 2015 8:20 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
i dont know if you didn't follow this argument or what (lol) but—(although I'm pretty sure he did explicitly say this movie was about raising awareness?)—I was responding to someone in this thread who claimed that criticism of the film was unwarranted bc it was raising alarm bells
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Monday, 14 December 2015 18:19 (eight years ago) link
an example of the kinds of articles that did not exist in the onion prior to 2012 http://www.theonion.com/article/chicago-introduces-new-citywide-gun-sharing-statio-37797
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Monday, 14 December 2015 18:20 (eight years ago) link
in august 2012 the onion even PARODIED the rise in coverage of chicago violence/its associated music in this article http://www.theonion.com/article/hot-new-murder-craze-sweeps-chicago-29349
― bernard snowy, Monday, December 14, 2015 8:24 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
your isolation of this particular macho culture from the macho american culture writ large seems like not the kind of thing spike lee would agree with
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Monday, 14 December 2015 18:26 (eight years ago) link
I really have no interest in the headless ouroboros of attacking your right to criticize someone else's right to criticize the critics of a movie that, as far as I know, neither of us have seen.
But given your responses throughout this thread, both to other posters and to "the thing itself" (in the rare cases when you seem to be engaging with it), it seems fair to say that you have a lot invested in this narrative of "the media" suddenly getting hip to Chicago violence in the last ~5 years, turning their cameras on it, & exploiting it for their own gain.
Even if we accept this oversimplification as true -- & I do think you're onto something when you talk about e.g. Fox News treating Chicago as a punching bag to be wheeled out regularly in service of the black-on-black-crime 'issue' -- But why not assume that Spike Lee's film is ALSO aware of, and addressed to, the whole fucked-up national media conversation in the background, to which you seem intent on reducing it? Why are you so unwilling to give this particular work the benefit of the doubt? Do you react similarly when a 'controversial' mixtape comes out of Chicago? Or do you listen to it first?
This is an honest question. I know from things you've posted upthread that you are not blind to the ethical issues involving artistic treatment of urban crime, but I think you are being (wait for it) oversensitive here, in your inability to move beyond the knee-jerk defensive posturing of "This movie should have never been made!"
And now, just so you know that all of the above written in good faith, untainted by personal antipathy towards you, I will give that antipathy free rein in this last paragraph, by suggesting that this post upthread:
it's certainly not weird that a white chicagoan who has made a career policing and criticising what is and isn't real black culture might not be interested in seeing a movie that places some of the blame for the violence in chicago on white gentrifiers― balls, Tuesday, December 8, 2015 10:42 PM (6 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― balls, Tuesday, December 8, 2015 10:42 PM (6 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― bernard snowy, Monday, 14 December 2015 18:56 (eight years ago) link
eh, that last part was unnecessary and I already regret it -- also forgot to mention that in your last post, you are 100% right, and I had no intention to isolate the 'culture' either geographically (it's a Chicago problem!!) or demographically (it's a black youth problem!!) -- as Spike Lee said in the interview where he responded to Chance, it's an American film, a film about guns... which is of course why it could be, and originally was, set in a 'nondescript urban environment'
― bernard snowy, Monday, 14 December 2015 18:59 (eight years ago) link
the last part wasn't as much out of line as it is off the mark, balls has zero idea what hes talking abt
i dont disagree with what you're saying but in my defense the context of this argument was ppl who were—despite not having seen the movie themselves—out of hand dismissive of the film's critics, as if it was impossible that the film could have been a bad idea bc art...i just wanted to set the scale to zero, and suggest that its possible the film could be bad from a political pov, and not just an artistic one
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Monday, 14 December 2015 19:03 (eight years ago) link
http://pitchfork.com/news/62564-chance-the-rapper-further-slams-spike-lees-chi-raq-sings-donny-hathaways-this-christmas/
During the chat with WGCI's Chicago Morning Takeover, Chance responded to Lee's claims that Chance is biased because his father works for the city's mayor."I mean, Spike Lee is saying that 'cause he's promoting a movie. He's trying to make more money," Chance said. "He got his little 15 million from Amazon and his other little bread from Lionsgate and made a movie that was not about Chicago but, you know what I'm saying, manipulated and used Chicago actors and Chicago scenery to push this movie."He added, "It was an oversimplification of a bigger problem. He wasn't really focusing on the issues of Chicago, it wasn't really about Chicago. To me, it was about this age-old conversation of black on black violence, which is to me some Bill Cosby 'pull up your pants' stuff. I’m just not for it."He also said, "I was trying to explain to people outside of Chicago that it was marketed to that this isn't a representation of us and we're not rockin' with it."In the movie, Nick Cannon and Wesley Snipes play two rival gang leaders, whose competition guides a lot of the drama. "The reason why we’re dying isn’t because there's two head gangbangers that are into it," Chance said. "We’re dying because we all have PTSD, you know, post-traumatic stress disorder. Kids as young as seven, and younger than that, have seen people murdered in front of them. So that starts a paranoia in your mind that you're walking around with. When you're walking around and you feel like people are trying to kill you, you shoot when you get scared. That's a problem that even I have. That's a problem that a lot of people suffer. And I feel like he didn't address that. He made it seem like we’re doing it because of gang life, and because our male ego is being compromised when we don't fight. But that’s the smallest form of it."
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Wednesday, 16 December 2015 23:20 (eight years ago) link
ppl who were—despite not having seen the movie themselves—
an interesting demographic to consider in light of this thread, eh
― tremendous crime wave and killing wave (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Wednesday, 16 December 2015 23:53 (eight years ago) link
Deej, I got around to finishing your post upthread. I respect what you say re contemporary gangsta rap's troubled relationships with the communities it comes from, although I didn't understand the fruits of their labor bit, because I'm not sure what the labor is you're speaking of and why it's sacrosanct.
I also get "Bobby Brady's hero" vibes from talk of teenage grassroots support of gangsta rappers. Like my students think El Chapo Guzman is a wonderfully rakish and wily robber baron who exudes romantic nihilism and buys houses for the poor, in addition to being an astute political thinker and borderline genius engineer, so I've seen enough reality-starved minds, at least in relation to pop culture heroes, to be unsure exactly what teenage support of popular culture really means.
I do agree that criticizing the politics of the movie is fair game; I just don't think a clear distinction has been made between Spike Lee's responsibility and e.g. Mozzy's responsibility, especially when you take into account the style, audience, and personas of the artists.
I still disagree with the Chicago/drill zeitgeist argument, though. 2012 was Chicago's peak for homicide victims (not murder rate). I think it's far more likely that news organizations chased the story of 500 victims in a year rather than the story of violent lyrical content in music. As in the heyday of golden era gangsta rap, violent lyrics make a nice distracting anti-puff piece to hang on real murder trends, but the story of drill is an old story.
― bamcquern, Thursday, 17 December 2015 01:57 (eight years ago) link
NYC-bred friend who is a huge fan of Spike's early-mid period thought this horrible, all complaints on aesthetic grounds: shallow treatment of women, juvenile humor etc.
I wil lse it if NY ever stops clotting my life with unmissable revivals.
― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 17 December 2015 03:20 (eight years ago) link
*will see
― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 17 December 2015 03:21 (eight years ago) link
If I were to clumsily work yr notable ilx interest in the various papacies into a pun about unrevivable missals youd no doubt feel picked on so I shall refrain
― MONKEY had been BUMMED by the GHOST of the late prancing paedophile (darraghmac), Thursday, 17 December 2015 03:25 (eight years ago) link
no idea what you're talking about, sorry
I'm a lapsed Catholic who would like to kill God if he exists, btw
― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 17 December 2015 03:34 (eight years ago) link
ok missals i get it, you irish and yr humor
― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 17 December 2015 03:35 (eight years ago) link
That's all, rly
― MONKEY had been BUMMED by the GHOST of the late prancing paedophile (darraghmac), Thursday, 17 December 2015 03:37 (eight years ago) link
Tbc I don't think a populist vote is sacrosanct, I mean ppl still think South Park Mexican the kid fiddler is a political prisoner, and more locally Chicago t33ns are really into this derivative gimmick rapper famous dex who IMO is rotting their brains like junk food---I nonetheless believe gangster rap is a source of good art drawing attention to things in new ways and communicating ideas that do not have a space in or more traditional mediums & art forms...perspectives which are not being expressed in other avenues. Etc
as far as the labor question that's a much bigger q than I'm prepared to answer during a commercial break on my phone on the couch at 11pm
As far as media attention in 2012, agree to disagree. There had been a Chicago murder peak a few years before that and I lived here then too; the noise level wasn't even comparable, IMO.
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Thursday, 17 December 2015 04:45 (eight years ago) link
has anyone actually seen this yet
― metro slothrop want some more (slothroprhymes), Thursday, 17 December 2015 04:52 (eight years ago) link
i'm not sure if it actually exists except as thinkpiece fuel
― wizzz! (amateurist), Thursday, 17 December 2015 04:52 (eight years ago) link
the mythical fandango tells me it is in fact at theaters in downtown boston but they could be in on the elaborate prank tbh
― metro slothrop want some more (slothroprhymes), Thursday, 17 December 2015 04:55 (eight years ago) link
you show up and it's just 50 bloggers with pens and pads of paper staring at one another
― wizzz! (amateurist), Thursday, 17 December 2015 04:57 (eight years ago) link
just saw it. i might have weird taste, but i think it's fantastic as just a piece of entertainment, and really a return to form, vis a vis school daze and the early period. bright, colourful, outrageous, ridiculous, joyful. also a total mess, with no characterization of anyone, politics that aren't even facile so much as just incoherent from moment to moment and scene to scene. agree with that review that describes it as the spikiest of spike lee movies. if you have any hope that it could or should be a movie that actually has anything at all to say about the actual conditions in chicago, yeah, you have every right to be angry. it's completely worthless in that regard. even the throwaway bits people say could point to actual conditions (the preacher bit, which was excruciating, and the low-point for me) don't really make sense. but just as like a... thing... and a legit adaption of aristophanes in a major motion picture, its pretty great on its own terms imho. and in a sense, all the cacophonies of different wrong contradictory takes on chicago do sort of give a kaleidoscopic view of what the _conversation_ about it genuinely sounds like.
― big WHOIS aka the nameserver (s.clover), Sunday, 3 January 2016 06:05 (eight years ago) link
The part right before the preacher gives his sermon was so super dark comedy that it may have been my favorite part of the movie - just sorta over the top and ultra-grand and ridiculous but also moving or something. Kind of like this in a way (but not really)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBZR-KvKso4
― Crazy Eddie & Jesus the Kid (Raymond Cummings), Sunday, 3 January 2016 17:38 (eight years ago) link
John Cusack chair-dancing in during the performance was o_O
― Crazy Eddie & Jesus the Kid (Raymond Cummings), Sunday, 3 January 2016 17:40 (eight years ago) link
This movie reminded me of Christian Marquand's "Candy", another rough literary adaptation about a beautiful woman's sexual agency.
I loved Wesley Snipes. He used to be such a reliable comedic actor. It's too bad he got bogged down with action movies/tax jail.
― polyphonic, Monday, 4 January 2016 21:59 (eight years ago) link
Two other movies that came to mind were The Great Beauty and, of course, Romeo + Juliet.
― polyphonic, Monday, 4 January 2016 22:07 (eight years ago) link
even though it made it even more unrealistic, i liked the theater-set-like staging of some of the scenes, and thought it sort of helped half-keep it in a musical tradition.
― big WHOIS aka the nameserver (s.clover), Monday, 4 January 2016 22:46 (eight years ago) link