On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 7:53 AM, shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com>wrote:
> more on this later, but i found the video also interesting because, for
> those already familiar with this critique, you can see other things in the
> video someone just learning to appreciate the idea might not see.
>
> one, as the camera pans across the faces on the bus, you see a variety of
> ginger. at one point, she zeroes in on a young man who could "pass" as not
> ginger. here she's illustrating something a professor i knew used to do at
> the beginning of his social problems class: he'd line all 150 students up by
> shade such that "whites" from italian backgrounds were darker than some who
> saw themselves and were seen as african americans. such was his wedge to
> continually return to throughout the course.
>
> two, before they leave the bus the camera focuses on one member of the
> military. (this is before the halfway mark of the video). Behind the mask
> that mostly covers his face, you see the markers: very fair skin, green
> eyes, reddish eyebrows, light lashes. he's the last face of the military you
> see at the end - i think. i can't be sure about this, but i'm curious if
> others saw that too.
>
> three, the massacre. why didn't they just shoot them all and be done with
> it. instead, what they made them do was run for their lives, each an
> individual, so terrified that there's no time to focus on anything but
> survival, saving your own ass. of course, they are running into a minefield
> anyway.
>
> four, another important point, i think, is that none of the military are
> signaling that they are doing this for sport, that they are laughing as
> people blow up. i think a lot of pop culture refs to this sort of thing
> would individualize it: they get pleasure out of the sport of killing
> people, that something about what they do is unique to them, as individuals.
> thus leading people to conclude that it's just aberrant individuals.
>
> five, the other thing is that the military follow alongside them as they
> are running, tossing grenades I gather, and shooting them. they are not in a
> super-hummer, they're exposed - albeit still slightly protected, with gear,
> and knowledge of where to drive and where not. the debris and smoke from an
> exploding body enters the vehicle.
>
> curious if others saw the same things I did.
>
>
> At 03:01 AM 4/28/2010, wrobert at uci.edu wrote:
>
>> I thought it was an interesting piece. I think that it operates on
>> several levels, all of which are engaging in a kind of either
>> cognitive or emotional estrangement. The first thing that I thought
>> about when I saw it is that it clearly was in conversation with
>> representations of the Iraq occupation. It asks the question, what
>> would the occupation look like if it occurred in the U.S. The second
>> level is the one that Shag points to, a critique of the arbitrary
>> nature of racism, by taking a far less charged physical trait and
>> giving it the symbolic power of racial signification. The red hair
>> also ties into the symbolic power of 'red' that Joanna brought up,
>> and there also seemed to be a reference to the struggles in Northern
>> Ireland. That being said, I still have a certain amount of
>> ambivalence about the sort of emotional manipulation around racial
>> signification that seems to define the directors work (see the
>> Justice video he made.)
>>
>> robert wood
>>
>> P.S. I think most of what M.I.A. had to say about Lady Gaga was right, but
>> I still have a fondness for some of the songs (then again, I own a lot of
>> Pet Shop Boys albums.) I also think that the videos are really clever.
>>
>> > Shag writes
>> >
>> > "it's a video that asks the viewer to imagine the world if we were to
>> > racialize red hair. it's supposed to get the viewer to say, "oh fuckin
>> > stupid would that be?" and then use that as a wedge to get them to see
>> > how stupid it is to racialize any supposed sign of difference."
>> >
>> > I don't think it works like that. People would look at this and say,
>> > discriminating against redheads is stupid. But it would not follow that
>> > discrimination in general is a bad thing because a particular instance
>> > is stupid.
>> >
>> > That's not how prejudice works.
>> >
>> > Joanna
>> > ___________________________________
>> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>> ___________________________________
>> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>>
>
> --
> http://cleandraws.com
> Wear Clean Draws
> ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
-- ********************************************************* Alan P. Rudy Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work Central Michigan University 124 Anspach Hall Mt Pleasant, MI 48858 517-881-6319