Here Is Your American Culture: In adulthood with M. Cyrus

By Dan Brooks in Here Is Your American Culture 1 Comment
Miley Cyrus, bears of varying emotions

Miley Cyrus, bears of varying emotions

Let us assume that Miley Cyrus did what she did at the Video Music Awards on purpose. Certainly, she put on a one-piece swimsuit and danced with enormous teddy bears while slapping her previously unacknowledged vagina on purpose. But let us assume that she was purposeful in the effect she created, too. Specifically, let us not proceed from the assumption that she tried to do something really sexy and failed. Instead, I propose we take it as a premise that Miley Cyrus did not believe twerking teddy bears would be unequivocally hot, nor did she think sticking her tongue out as far as possible would be a sublimely coquettish gesture. I propose that we assume artistic intent, and think about her VMA performance as if she wanted it to be really weird.

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Asiana Airlines will not sue Fox affiliate over joke pilot names

By Dan Brooks in Here Is Your American Culture 0 Comment
Screencap from KTVU's coverage of the crash of Asiana Airlines flight 214

Screencap from KTVU’s coverage of the crash of Asiana Airlines flight 214

Reuters reports this morning that Asiana Airlines has abandoned plans to sue San Francisco Fox affiliate KTVU. In its early coverage of the crash of Flight 214, the station broadcast joke names for the flight’s pilots, which it says were confirmed by the National Transportation Safety Board. The NTSB blames it on a summer intern. The whole saga makes you feel safe, doesn’t it? The unfolding of this story inspires nothing but confidence—in our news outlets, in our federal safety administrators, in our emergency personnel, and in the corporations that raise us 30,000 feet into the air and, one way or another, return us to the ground. Now please excuse me while I polish my tiara, because I am Marie of Romania. Video after the jump.

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A beautiful gift from Twitter

By Dan Brooks in Here Is Your American Culture 4 Comments
The usual gift from Twitter

The usual gift from Twitter

For ineffable reasons, Twitter has suggested that I follow this well-to-do child. I will not be following a child via Twitter or any other means, but there is something perfect about the Twitter presence of this particular 17 year-old. As a person who worked with well-to-do high school students, I find The RRP archetypal, even classic. He is cool in exactly the way that an affluent teenager is cool, e.g. his description of himself: “17. Swim. HRA.” A Twitter feed is the willful projection of a personality into the world, and adolescence is the willful projection of a personality into adulthood. These two forces in combination make The RRP’s Twitter more than a collection of country club photos and tales of lost sunglasses. It is a distillation of one type of youth. Also, his picture is priceless. You’ll find it after the jump.

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A calm and reasoned explanation of why I dislike Ke$ha

By Dan Brooks in Here Is Your American Culture 14 Comments

Kesha

Regular readers of Combat! blog know that I do not like Ke$ha. For sheer use in lists and arbitrary examples, you could make a textually-supported argument that I like Ke$ha less than virtually all other pop culture phenomena. I dislike her music. I dislike her persona. I especially dislike what she represents about the music industry and, to a lesser extent, music journalism. Last week, on Grantland, the otherwise respectable Steven Hyden remarked that he is glad pop music critics like Ke$ha’s new album, Warrior. He cited Simon Reynolds’s favorable review at the New York Times. His argument was so compelling that I listened to “Crazy Kids” from Warrior. It did not make me like Ke$ha. Instead, it focused my Ke$ha-hating into a powerful laser, which I then passed through the prism of my liberal arts education to separate into its two components:

  1. I dislike her horrible rap-singing voice.
  2. Her “garbage chic” ethos appeals to narcissism in order to draw a false equivalence between hedonism and transgression, encouraging the listener to believe that going out is an act of self-expression—one of the most pernicious lies of contemporary culture.

Item (1) is a matter of personal taste. Discussion of item (2) after the jump.

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Reviewing the memoir of a 20 year-old

By Dan Brooks in Here Is Your American Culture, Uncategorized 4 Comments

Say goodbye to these, Levi, because it's the last time you'll ever...

This morning, Mike Sebba alerted me to a looming public health crisis. It seems that Bachmania, previously believed by doctors and Combat! blog’s traffic numbers to be limited to my apartment, has reached epidemic proportions. Even Bristol Palin, normally isolated from disease by geography and her traumatic experiences with all types of human affection, suffered a Bachmaniacal episode during her interview with Rob Shuter:

I think [Bachmann] dresses a lot like my mom. But a lot, a lot of women have done that the last few years. I do think it’s odd, you know, seeing people with red blazers with their hair up with glasses. I don’t know if she’s wearing glasses but you want to be hummmm, do you think that people don’t notice you’re dressing like my mom?

It is possible that people do not notice the glasses-like absence of glasses that makes other adult women reminiscent of your own personal mom, Bristol Palin, yes. But she can be forgiven her airtight watertight bricktight logic. She has a memoir to promote. And if Stephen Lowman’s review at the Washington Post is anything to go by, it’s amazing.