#like i can't speak about the particular experience of black americans because that's not my place

[daeluin]

30mins onwards...... dear god i miss old yeezy

[tangibletechnomancy]

The (Personal) Is (Political)

~7 hours, Dall-E 3 via Bing Image Creator, generated under the Code of Ethics of Are We Art Yet?

Or, Dear Microsoft and OpenAI: Your Filters Can't Stop Me From Saying Things: An interactive exercise in why all art is political and game of Spot The Symbols

A rare piece I consider Fully Finished simply as a jpeg, though I may do something physical with it regardless. "Director commentary" below, but I strongly encourage you to go over this and analyze it yourself before clicking through, then see how much your reading aligns with my intent.

Elements I told the model to add and a brief (...or at least inexhaustive) overview of why:

Anime style and character figures - Frequently associated with commercial "low" art and consumer culture, in East Asia and the English-speaking world alike, albeit in different ways - justly or otherwise. There is frequently an element of racism to the denigration of anime styles in the west; nearly any American artist who has taken formal illustration classes can tell you a story of being told that anime style will only hinder them, that no one will hire them if they see anime, or even being graded more harshly and scrutinized for potential anime-esque elements if they like anime or imply that they may like anime - including just by being Asian and young. On the other hand, it is true that there is a commercial strategy of "slap an anime girl on it and it will sell". The passion fans feel for these characters is genuine - and it is very, very exploitable. In fact, this commercialization puts anime styles in particular in a very contentious position when it comes to AI discussions!

Dark-skinned boy with platinum and pink [and blue] hair - Racism and colorism! They're a thing, no matter how much the worst people in the world want you to think they're long over and "critical race theory" is the work of evil anti-American terrorists! I chose his appearance because I knew that unless I was incredibly lucky, I would have to fight with this model for multiple hours to get satisfactory results on this point in particular - and indeed I did. It was an interesting experience - what didn't surprise me was how much work it took me to get a skin color darker than medium-dark tan; what did surprise me was that the hair color was very difficult to get right. In anime art, for dark skin to be matched with light hair and eyes is common enough to be...pretty problematic. Bing Image Creator/Dall-E, on the other hand, swings completely in the opposite direction and struggles with the concept of giving dark-skinned characters any hair color OTHER than black, demanding pretty specific phrasing to get it right even 70% of the time. (I might cynically call this yet another illustration against the pervasive copy-paste myth...) There is also much to say about the hair texture and facial features - while I was pleased to see that more results than I expected gave me textured hair and/or box braids without me asking for it, those were still very much in the minority, and I never saw any deviation from the typical anime facial structures meant to illustrate Asian and white characters. Not even once!

Pink and blue color palette - Our subject is transgender. Bias self-check time: did you make that association as quickly as you would with a light-skinned character, or even Sylveon?

Long hair, cute clothes, lots of accessories - Styling while transmasc is a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation, doubly so if you're not white. In many locations, the medical establishment and mainstream attitude demands total conformity to the dominant culture's standard conventional masculinity, or else "revoking your man card" isn't just a joke meant to uphold the idea that men are "better" than women, but a very real threat. In many queer communities, especially online, transmascs are expected to always be cute femboys who love pink (while transfems are frequently degraded and seen as threats for being butch), and being Just Some Guy is viewed as inherently a sign of assimilationism at best and abusiveness at worst. It is an eternal tug-of-war where "cuteness" and ornamentation are both demanded and banned at the same time. Black and brown people are often hypermasculinized and denied the opportunity to even be "cute" in the first place, regardless of gender. Long hair and how gender is read into it is extremely culture-dependent; no matter what it means to you, if anything, the dominant culture wherever you are will read it as it likes.

Trophies and medals - For one, the trans sports Disk Horse has set feminism back by nearly 50 years; I'm barely a Real History-Remembering Adult and yet I clearly remember a time when the feminist claim about gender in sports was predominantly "hey, it's pretty fucked up that sports are segregated by sex rather than weight class or similar measures, especially when women's sports are usually paid much less and given weirdly oversexualized uniforms," but then a few loud living embodiments of turds in the punch bowl realized that might mean treating trans people fairly and now it's super common for self-proclaimed feminists - mostly white ones - to claim that the strongest woman will still never measure up to the weakest man and this is totally a feminist statement because they totally want to PROTECT women (with invasive medical screenings on girls as young as 12 to prove they're Really Women if they perform too well, of course). For two, Black and brown people are stereotyped as being innately more sporty, physically strong, and, again, Masculine(TM) than others, which frequently intersects with item 1...and if you think it only affects trans women, I am sorry my friend but it is so much worse and more extensive than you think.

Hearts - They mean many things. Love. Happiness. Cuteness. Social media engagement?

TikTok - A platform widely known and hated around these parts for its arcane and deeply regressive algorithm; I felt it deserved to be name/layout/logodropped for reasons that, if they're not clear already, should become so in the final paragraph.

Computers, cameras and cell phones - My initial specification was that one of the phones should be on Instagram and another on TikTok, which the model instead chose to interpret as putting a TikTok sticker on the laptop, but sure, okay. They're ubiquitous in the modern day, for better and for worse. For all the debate over whether phones and social media are Good For Us or Bad For Us, the fact of the matter is, they seem to be a net positive-to-neutral, whose impacts depend on the person - but they do still have major drawbacks. The internet is a platform for conspiracy theories and pseudoscience and dangerous hoaxes to spread farther than ever before. Social media culture leaves many people feeling like we're always being watched and every waking moment of our lives must be Perfect - and in some senses, we are always being watched these days. Digital privacy is eroding by the day, already being used to enforce all the most unjust laws on the books, which leads to-

Pigs - I wrote the prompt with the intention that it would just be a sticker on the laptop, but instead it chose to put them everywhere, and given that I wanted to make a somewhat stealthy statement about surveillance, especially of the marginalized...thanks for that, Dall-E! ;)

Alligators - A counter to the pigs; a short-lived antifascist symbol after...this.

Details I did not intend but love anyway:

The blue in the hair - I only prompted for platinum and pink in the hair, but the overall color palette description "bled" over here anyway, completing the trans flag, making it even more blatant, and thus even more effective as a bias self-check.

The Macbook - I only specified a laptop. Hilariously ironic, to me, that a service provided through Bing interpreted "laptop" as "Macbook" nearly every time. In my recent history, 22 out of 24 attempts show, specifically, a Macbook. Microsoft v. OpenAI divorce arc when? ;) But also, let us not forget Apple's role in the ever-worsening sanitization of the internet. A Macbook with a TikTok sticker (or, well, a Tiikok sticker - recognizable enough) - I can think of little more emblematic of one of the main things I was complaining about, and it was a happy accident. Or perhaps an unhappy one, considering what it may imply about Apple's grip on culture and communications.

Which brings me to my process:

Generated over ~7 hours with Dall-E 3 through Bing Image Creator - The most powerful free tool out there for txt2img these days, as well as a nightmare of filters and what may be the most disgustingly, cloyingly impersonal toxic positivity I've ever witnessed from a tool. It wants to be Art(TM), yet it wants to ban Politics(TM); two things which are very much incompatible - and so, I wanted to make A Controversial Statement using only the most unflaggable, innocuous elements imaginable, no matter how long it took.

All art is political. All life is political. All our "defaults" are cultural, and therefore political. Anything whatsoever can be a symbol.

If you want all art to be a substance-free "look at the pretty picture :)" - it doesn't matter how much you filter, buddy, you've got a big storm coming.

[thedreadvampy]

I do not understand subcultural politics discourse and at this point I don't know how much is differences in the national scenes and how much is that we just have very different ideas of what these scenes are.

cause like. Punk I get. Punk is not always left wing (there has always been a Nazi punk problem) but punk IS always inherently and actively political as a definitional factor. Punk is foundationally anarchist, counter-hierarchical, and centred on anger and community cohesion. If you approach punk as apolitical or centrist you are Doing It Wrong. Nazis and right libertarians have always made up a small but vocal chunk of the community, and that's a problem punk has to address in its own ways (ideally with steel toecaps). Punk is definitionally political and has a couple of extremely foundational sets of political beliefs.

Or like, hip-hop. More complicated case cause there's even more corporate cooption involved in shaping the modern genre but hip-hop has a foundational political position. Hip-hop is focused on Black pride and power, and on addressing African-American trauma and injustice, and so it's historically working-class, anti-racist and anti-cop. It means something politically as a genre.

But some stuff people say just Does Not Jam with my experience of subculture. Like people KEEP saying 'you can't be a right-wing goth, goth is radically left wing' and all I'm saying is a) we have spoken to some VERY different elder goths bc as much as I was lucky enough to grow up in the scene, going to the goth weekends, etc, my god did some of those 60 year olds vote Tory or BNP with their whole chest. and b) as far as I'm aware the main thing that goth stands for politically is countercultural provocation and a kind of nihilistic disengagement. like Siouxie Sioux habitually used swastikas and Nazi paraphernalia to demonstrate distance from her parent's generation. a lot of the foundational Goth musicians are either right-wing or prefer to keep their politics private because they consider them separate.

like most of the goths I know are left-leaning, because there are foundational philosophical beliefs attached to goth culture and a lot of those, like fluidity of expression, resistance to established power, and celebrating marginalisation, appeal to a lot of lefties. But frankly I've known a lot of goths who are reactionary right-wingers or full on Nazis because, well, other precepts of goth culture can include stuff like nihilistic individualism and glorification of death. Plus the Nazi iconography thing, plus the widespread racism in the community. and those weren't like 'i found goth on TikTok' goths, these are like 'committed to the lifestyle since 1979' goths.

Like goth is not particularly a RIGHT-WING movement, but I have never experienced it as an explicitly political musical/subcultural movement at all? Certainly not the way that punk or reggae or outlaw country or something is.

(and speaking of reggae. I was watching Anthony Fantano and FD Signifier talking about this whole idea and FD said something as a 'isn't this a silly example' about a white nationalist looking for white nationalist reggae. and they were both laughing about what a silly idea that was

and I'm sitting there like...But that's literally exactly what happened with ska in the UK? like ska is obviously an afrocaribbean genre made by and for Black communities and uhhhh by the late 60s in Britain ska was the white nationalist sound. like skinheads love ska and in particular there are a bunch of neonazi/white nationalist ska acts. not all skinheads are far right but if skinheads have a dominant political identity it is probably more far right than far left.

and that did raise the question of differences in national scenes. like I know that behind the Iron Curtain a lot of punks were using UK and American flags the way Western punks were using Soviet iconography, and Caribbean music has a very different cultural association in the UK than in the US, and British rap has a different political outlook than American rap.

and so maybe American goth is a lot more political than British goth? but I kind of think of goth as a European subculture tbh like I think goth I think England and Germany, and the European goth music and goth scenes I've been in are......not explicitly political?)

[kakarorin]

Defending "The Road to El Dorado" from a couple racist claims, or how I, being so cheeky, like to call it: Covering myself in sugar in order to attract some nasty little bugs🐞

For some reason, 2024 seems to be the year when I can't tolerate "The Road to El Dorado is packed with racism" discourse anymore. A couple days ago, I stumbled across a very colourful gifset which encapsulated perfectly all the objectively wrong arguments (save for half... one... one and a half... It depends) I've ever seen people give out to explain why they don't like the movie (@/neechees: If by some unlikely chance you're reading this, I wish we could have talked about it calmly. I'm a very open-minded person, unlike you seem to be). I've seen them SO many times that I think I hit my limit. Long story short, I got defensive, which I regret, shame on me, told the op they were wrong, as they are, op responded, and I got blocked before I could respond back. I honestly don't know why they blocked me after responding. I don't know if they sensed I know much more about the Aztec Conquest than they do, but well... Occam's razor.

After I calmed down, tried to reach to them because I genuinely wanted to talk about it, and failed, I decided I was going to break their post down as minutely as I could, even if just to get it off my shoulders and toss it into the void, and polished what I told one of the people who reblogged op's post saying they were right into this lengthy post. Purely because I love debating about movies I love. And boy, do I LOVE this movie.

Before starting, I'm letting you know that, as far as I know, I'm 100% white. And I'm also from Spain (Europe. Clarifying this for the Americans), which understandably gives me the advantage of having lived (and living) through the subtle remnants of the wretched Spanish Black Legend. Yet none of these two things stopped me from looking up historical papers, podcasts and documentaries (further than YouTube's video essays, I mean) so I could understand that this sort of... slander was indeed, part of that concept. I don't see how being of a particular race or ethnicity gives you the right to speak about recorded history as objective facts without doing your research and applying your critical thinking to it, either. Does op think that just because they're Native-American, as they say (just in case, can't believe anything you read on the internet these days), a person who has spent hours, days, months educating themselves about Hernán Cortés, poor Malinche and the Aztec Conquest from serious sources can't have more knowledge than them? Smh, op, smh. It does give you right over feelings, and obviously, your own experiences, though. Hope you still understand that factual knowledge is an entirely different thing.

That being said, at the end of the day, save for the very easy-to-check historical facts (which I will provide sources for if asked, although I believe you can very easily research it yourself), this is my opinion about why "The Road to El Dorado" is regarded as much more racist than it actually is. If you want to give me yours or respond to it, please, by all means, do it. Respectfully and with clear and valid reasons, of course. Otherwise, I'll have to ignore you. Understand that what you read below is the limit of my thinking and reading. Enjoy, or hate. Call me a racist. Send a WHITE meme my way. Up to you.

I'd link you to the post, but I don't feel like it. They blocked me, after all. You can search my blog for it. It's tagged as "neechees". And be sure to read their tags on the post as well, for context. Anyway, here go their "objective truths". Debunking time starts... now:

(EDIT: This is filled with edits. See how my opinion can change and I can clarify or rectify? Anyway, stating the obvious, but I believe Spanish colonization is bad. In any part of the world. I won't give you a single good aspect of it, except for that at least it was based on a different mindset than British colonization. Maybe there are fairly good aspects. After all, they say Romans gave us Spaniards roads and sewage systems. We'd have to take a look at an alternative reality where it didn't happen to make an objective claim. But, believe me, if it had been for me, I'd have pushed Cortés off the ship a good bunch of nautical miles before he reached what is now known as Veracruz, whatever good things he ended up doing. Bear that in mind.)

1. The cultures are mashed up in one city, that is true. But there is no explicit racist (implying prejudice, discrimination or antagonism, as I understand racism, or as racism is actually defined) motive behind it. I don't think it's done out of unthoughtfulness, either. I'm pretty sure it's just done to leave the place ambiguous, because (tell you more later), with Cortés involved and what went down with him historically, that place is much more meant to be Tenochtitlán than the legendary city of El Dorado. They didn't want to make that so explicit because this is a retelling, after all (tell you more later). I honestly don't see how anyone could think that the resulting city and culture are portrayed in a negative way. Sometimes, I'm not even sure these people were paying attention when watching the movie (if they ever did). In fact, if it weren't for the title of their post, I wouldn't even understand the point in this.

2. Oh boy, this is exactly what triggered me to say something instead of just putting it on my blog silently. This is how I know the op has ZERO knowledge about the historical event behind it, because they wouldn't say this is right if they did. There is no such thing as a (EDIT:) sufficiently collective "Spanish lie that Native-American (NA) people believed they were gods" (NEVER listen to a Spaniard who claims this. EDIT: Like López de Gómara. They're delulu), this has never had any kind of historical relevance (in the outcome and influence of history, I mean), and the NA people in the movie are not worshipping the white guys because they're white. The whole plot, arriving in a city and being mistaken for a god because your arrival coincided with an ancient premonition in such a precise way that it is fascinating, is exactly what happened to Cortés when he reached the capital of the Aztec Empire, Tenochtitlán. He was believed to be the reincarnation of Quetzalcóatl, and that's why he could enter the city peacefully and live in it for a short amount of time. The concept of the movie seems to be "What if this, instead of happening to a conquistador (in which is implicit the catholic element) who quickly said he was no god when he realised what was happening (because of the sin of idolatry), happened instead to two atheist looters who are ultimately good-hearted (NOT colonizers, because they didn't try to claim the land or control it) who weren't stopped by the fear to sin and took advantage of the situation?" That's it. The premonition happened to fall on a white man hundreds of years ago (who also came from the east, same place Quetzalcóatl left to and said he'd return from) and so does in the movie story because it mirrors real history, and, again, I fail to see the negative portrayal in all of this because it's certainly NOT because they're white. I think the op also took it salty that I said they had zero knowledge about "the very people they're trying to defend", which I still believe, but this is complex and I'll only explain this if asked. What I meant by that, on the surface, is that NA people also enslaved NA people. I seriously hope op doesn't think NA slavery is more acceptable if it comes from other NA people than white people. Who knows, at this point.

3. This is essentially right. It's the only thing I think is mostly right, actually. It's no problem for me, though. I love Chel, she's beautiful and aesthetically pleasing to me. But I can understand why it may put someone off. All good. However, I still wanna say that the Aila test is just a way of assessing indigenous women representation as positive and negative, and not the work in itself as problematic if it doesn't pass it. The Lord of the Rings doesn't pass the Bechdel test and I have never seen anyone calling it problematic because of that, nor do I need positive representation (I'm a woman. Sort of. It fluctuates) on it to enjoy it. Although I figure I'd feel the same if I were NA, I can't and won't speak for one. So I still give you that.

4.1. This is wrong in three ways. First, Tzekel-kan is not "demonized as evil". He is evil. He's not evil because he's NA, he is evil because he killed, he lied, and he abused his power. There are NA people in the movie who are kind and good (everyone but him, I believe), and then there's him. In every race and ethnicity, there are good, neutral and bad people. And people who are sometimes good, and sometimes bad. If all the NA people were painted in a morally white and good way, that special treatment would come off as positive discrimination to me. Why can't he be a sociopathic genocider AND indigenous at the same time without being considered as racist? Does that mean all indigenous people have to be/are morally white? If all the other NA characters were demonized, I'd understand it, but it's the opposite. Also, Tzekel-kan is loosely based off Moctezuma, the (redundant) emperor of an Empire who enslaved other NA people. And, surprise, just like Cortés, I don't think the guy was evil. I think this is probably another reason why they didn't want to make clear the specific culture. I could see the racism if they had tried to directly compare Tzekel-kan with Moctezuma, I would perfectly be able to see the claim that Moctezuma was a sociopathic genocider, and I'd recognise that as racist. But in this case, it's just loose inspiration. Not a parody.

4.2. There was NO genocide in the Spanish NA colonies. There was NO legal slavery, save for a few unfortunate loopholes (tell you more later). (EDIT: careful, I'm NOT defending his monumental fuck-ups or justifying him in any way, just so you know. In my opinion, he was a fair lot more bad than good, but not 100% bad. If you get me) Hernán Cortés did a lot of undeniably wrong things, but he did good things too. I don't think you can say he was a good person, no person who'd say that would be a friend of mine, but I don't think he was a 100% evil person. Just a person, sometimes good and sometimes bad. Still, when he was bad, he was bad. And what op said about that they didn't care enough about him to write his name properly, BOY how that ticked me off. People, for all you hold dear, you have to CARE to know about such important historical figures in order to understand the history behind them and the outcomes of their actions. Especially within such a sensitive topic. It's when stories like this are ignored or forgotten, that history tends to repeat itself. The fact that I care to spell Hernán Cortés well has not the respectful positive connotation they think, either. And despite what you may believe, we Spaniards do NOT think he did everything right and much less that he was a hero. I think some Mexicans think we all do, but I don't know why. Only the most idiotic "fachas" (ultraright people) do.

4.3. One, he was not enslaved (tell you more later). Two, well, since he tried to mass-murder the inhabitants of the city, I... I do reckon putting him away was a good ending. Jesus, he tried to purge the city of citizens HE deemed unworthy in the name of a divine power (=on a religious basis) with the clear intention to wipe them out. It's clearly stated more than once throughout the movie. If you didn't know, by objective definition, the name of that starts with 'G' and ends with 'ENOCIDE'. And when that failed, he actively tried to drive the colonizers to them. Only because of that, he was technically much more of a genocider than the historical Cortés ever was. Are his actions really justified just because he's indigenous? Doesn't he deserve a punishment just because of it? I see "slavery" (if it were. Since enslaving NA in Spanish colonies was illegal at the time, I'd say he was kidnapped, in the strict sense of the word. Bit funny to word it like that) as a punishment more than fitting for his crimes. I think you all should drill this into your head: ANY abusive leader involved in (I can't believe I'm going to say this, but socially unacceptable) murder deserves to be punished in some way independently of his race, ethnicity or religion. This is something I believe firmly, so you have very little room to debate with me on this one. Do try, if you want.

By the way, I LOVE Tzekel-kan to death. Just the way he is. A charismatic, fanatical, sociopathic fictional high priest who tried to cleanse his city in the name of his gods through murder and human sacrifice, a practice that the other NA inhabitants very obviously did NOT enjoy (well, that definitely rings a historical bell). If you hadn't noticed, or perhaps thought it was impossible, let me tell you this: you can actually love evil characters without justifying their actions. It's legal. 100%. Unlike slavery in NA Spanish colonies at the time.

5. I don't see exactly how spirituality is portrayed as evil. More specifically, I don't see how the movie's actual magic is considered Aztec spirituality. Not a fan nor a hater of Hazbin Hotel, but I've seen one of the demon characters around Twitter using literal voodoo in a very unthoughtfully wrong way. That's a big no-no, in my opinion. And I see a clear difference with this because there is nothing in the stone jaguar magic that single-handedly resembles what Aztec religion actually was. I'm not saying this can't be done in a wrong way with indigenous NA spirituality, nor that they didn't take elements from it (they did), I just think that with all the context behind the movie, here it's just magic that serves a plot function. Aesthetic Aztec/Maya patterns appear here and there, arguably because those are the "places" where it's geographically based (and because Tzekel-kan is loosely based off Moctezuma, who was the religious spiritual leader who received the Quetzalcóatl premonition), but at the end of the day, I don't think it's much more than the fantasy you typically find in a kids' movie. No specific religion was portrayed as evil, no specific gods were portrayed as evil, the magic in itself wasn't portrayed as evil. In the movie, it was black magic because Tzekel-kan, who was evil, used it for evil. Who says that a giant stone cat can ONLY serve evil purposes? I'd use it for good, personally. Maybe transportation. Maybe architecture. Decoration. Festivities. (CW: 26-year-old making a boomer joke) Maybe to instill cordial fear among my neighbours.

EDIT: I've been thinking about this these days and I realised that in the specific stone jaguar "spell", Tzekel-kan needs to toss his poor aide into the mix for it to "activate". That is much more evil than neutral, so maybe I can kind of see this point now. And human sacrifice was part of some of these religions, after all, so maybe it does point towards Aztec spirituality. Still, as it didn't come off as evil to me until I've THOROUGHLY thought about it, I feel like questioning things. Does the "spell" need a human body, or an animal body would have served? The "recipe" doesn't state anything. It's Tzekel-kan who pushes him in. Do ALL the "spells" need a body to "activate"? Maybe not. I feel like maybe I can give you a part of this argument. But still... Hmm. I don't know. We were stuck with an evil religious high priest, but that doesn't necessarily mean ONLY he could use magic. Nor that ALL the magic was evil. But yeah, alright. I can sort of see this now... a bit.

6. I can give you this... for the most part. Knowing it mirrors history, and that historically, it was white men who rid the NA people enslaved by the Aztec Empire (which I believe is what the people of El Dorado ended up portraying, somehow oppressed by Tzekel-kan's sacrifices) of the Aztec Empire (even if woefully just to take their place), I'm not sure it's so simple. I still don't fully see it as plain white saviour narrative with that background info. In any case, I think my mind can be changed about this with the right argumentation. Surely not by a person who has no knowledge about history. Sorry, op.

7.1. For my next trick, I'll blow your mind: Cortés was no big bad evil genocider. He wasn't a golden-hearted saint or saviour either. Frankly, I believe most people think he was similar to Christopher Columbus (of whom I don't know as much, but sounds pretty 100% evil to me with what I have) by default. I'm also very certain they watched the movie and took that version of him as a faithful representation, but in reality he was very different. He was short, he was slender, he was way more charismatic, way less solemn and serious, and he had the reputation of a womanizer. He committed atrocities, like torturing and murdering the last Huey Tlatoani for rumours (Jesus, the Cholula massacre), but he also treated most indigenous people with respect (when he wasn't pathologically obsessed with gold), he talked with Moctezuma as if he were his kin, he always tried to negotiate before grabbing his arms, he listened to and followed the advice of an indigenous woman (Malinche). And once he had done the deed, his reputation was sunk, he was stripped of most of his titles and compensation for what he had done (karma? Possibly), and he had practically no say in the new territories. He went there for the gold above all, and all the crimes he committed were in its name. But unlike Miguel and Tulio (this is the reason why they're not colonizers, only looters), he ALSO wanted to seize control of the land for the Spanish Empire. As an anti-colonialist Spaniard, I can't help boiling up in anger every time I see someone call Miguel and Tulio colonizers. They are NOT coloziners, just like we are NOT colonizers. Our country was, hundreds of years ago. The people who claimed that land as theirs and believed that gave them the right to exploit it for centuries were. And believe me, if we're still here and have descended from humble families for more than 5 centuries, none of our ancestors saw a single piece of gold.

7.2. This is part of a broader topic but Cortés acted in the name of the Spanish Empire, who, thanks to Queen Isabella the Catholic and the laws she passed, considered NA people as citizens of the Crown and therefore could not be enslaved (legally), not to mention genocided. Physically genocided, I mean, because the cultural genocide is undeniable. And still, while so many parts of so many different cultures disappeared, some things like the Maya and Nahua languages were kept. Even if little, that means something. I find some comfort in that, especially when you take a look at what happened to indigenous people in British colonies. In relation to this, there's this something that's been haunting Spain since a thousand years ago that gains relevance when talking about this, called the Spanish Black Legend. Basically anti-Spain propaganda coming from other European countries demonizing everything the country had done/does. It started out of rivalry and envy. Nowadays, it's hard to say. This is why Hernán Cortés is always seen as an evil genocider, but not other colonizers like Julius Caesar from the Roman Empire. It also makes my blood curdle because it sticks with us in the most annoying ways possible. While American people tend to think Spain is part of Latin America, European people tend to think we're dumb, don't know other languages apart from Spanish and only like partying, and our collective international sentiment, especially facing other Europeans, is often shame. Ashamed to say you're from Spain, because there's only so many "España mucho fiesta and siesta" a sane person can take from people who only come to your country to raise the living costs, drink, sunbathe and throw themselves off balconies to jump in hotel pools. Look "balconing" up. God I HATE British people. In any case, to wrap this up, this Black Legend is also why everyone believes the Spanish colonization was the same as the British colonization. By norm, the British predated, but the Spanish generated (in America, because the Spanish DID enslave African people), despite all the horrible things it did. Because it did them.

Lastly, and just because it was also part of op's response, I want to say that I have no opinion about what negative impact this movie could have in terms of being a version of the Colombian legend of El Dorado. I don't know anything about that. I don't understand it, either. If someone wants to explain to me in which specific ways making a movie like this about it could be harmful to anyone (not the legend in itself, I think you can see I know as much), please tell me so I can think critically about it and contrast it. But please, specify the harm and consequences so I can understand them.

Jesus, I'm tired, but I want to say you CAN dislike the movie. I don't give two floating specks of dust whether you do or don't. What I do care about is that most arguments people use to say so are wrong, or rather, lack historical knowledge to support them. Or rather, there is historical knowledge which flat-out cancels them out. There IS negative portrayal on the basis of unthoughtfulness (like Chel and the Aila test), but NEVER in a mean way. On the whole, it's not the unsalvageable blatantly racist skeleton that has to be kept in the closet under lock and key that some people think it is. And, by the way, I'm very curious about why I have yet to see the same discourse about Inca portrayal in "The Emperor's New Groove". Feel free to toss it my way in case it exists and it's just I haven't seen it yet.

If you've reached this point, congratulations. Here's a disturbing little fact about me as a reward: this whole fixation that I have started because in 2020 I had a dream about this Hernán Cortés and Tzekel-kan having sex.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

We should be honest. Liberal democracy is an experiment. And a very recent one, and a very recent one.

So, like all new ideas, it can go off the rails very easily, if the core of what made it what it is is not maintained. And I think the reason that many of us have been speaking up about this for some time now, and the reason I wrote my book, and many other people have been talking about this, is I think we are abandoning the things that made us who we are, and we're abandoning some of the things which we ultimately, after centuries of struggle and bloodshed and violence and disagreement, we actually were starting to reach a place where we were identifying some of the memes, as you like to call them, that work in the type of society that we want to create.

The idea that people should be treated on the content of their character was a meme that was developed through a lot of pain and a lot of suffering and a lot of violence and a lot of discrimination and a lot of awful treatment of, in that particular case black people, but if you go to other parts of the West, there would have been other ways of conceptualizing that that still exist, right, and we eventually came to the idea that actually, that ancient thing that is so hard-wired into us - the tribalism, the, you know, call it racism, call it xenophobia, whatever it's, just ingroup-outgroup, right - that thing that is hardwired into us, we have an intellectual idea that can sit on top of that, that can mitigate a lot of that.

That's incredible. It's an incredible-- I mean, this idea doesn't exist in China. The idea that all ethnic groups are to be treated equally does not exist in Russia. Not even remotely. Russia is, to a large extent, a multi-ethnic country. It has large Muslim populations, it has large ethnic minority populations. The idea that they are the same as everybody else would seem absurd to anybody. Most parts of the world, the idea that gay people should be treated the same as straight people? You would be laughed out of the room. People don't like hearing this in the west because they can't process that reality.

But it's like, you know, this endlessly joked about "Queers for Palestine" thing. They will throw you off a fucking roof. That's what they're going to do to you, right. And from that extreme, you can work your way down. Most of the rest of the world, they're not going to throw you off a roof, but you're not going to be treated equally.

So, we struggled, and we fall, and we went through a lot of horror to get to that place. And the symptom of that unraveling that I'm deeply troubled by, is that we are doing the exact opposite.

DEI is the exact opposite of that idea. And it's embedded in every institution now. The idea that you can pick people, you can say this group is got better outcomes than that group, that means-- and we need to treat these people better than these other people, right. It doesn't matter which way you play that dynamic, it's irrelevant. It doesn't matter if you if you put black people at the top, white people at the bottom, brown people at the top black people-- it doesn't matter how you play that game, it always leads to bad outcomes.

And the reason that anti-Semitism now is becoming much more prominent is it's a natural reflection of that worldview. It's a reflection of the worldview in which successful people are successful by virtue of privilege or corruption or abuse of others. And unsuccessful groups, or groups that don't do as well in certain fields, are there because they have been abused, because they've been taken advantage of.

Once you implement that, every successful minority is going to be in the firing line, whether that's Jews, whether that's Asian-Americans, whether that's African-Americans who are first generation from Africa, right - they're incredibly successful in America - you're going to see all these groups being attacked in some way whether that's in words or other ways, because we are breaking the thing that made us who we are.

[ Full episode: https://youtu.be/x4Ha8yeXuU8 ]

[logicalabsurdity]

[rubs hands down face] You're still going on about this? (Context: here.)

Okay. Okay. Here's the thing. Here's my understanding of why using Maori words, specifically, was a dick move on Lego's part, and why it's cultural appropriation. (Disclaimer: I'm a white Canadian; I've done my reading, but that's not the same as being a New Zealander and certainly not the same as being any kind of indigenous person with cultural experience of the problem.)

The Maori are an indigenous culture whose language was suppressed by European colonials. Maori schoolchildren were, for a while during the middle of the 20th century, punished for speaking Maori, including with corporal punishment. (Read: being beaten with various implements.) For a European company to come in and go "oh, we like the sound of this language, let's borrow some words to name our exotic robots with only passing reference to the actual meaning of the words", when the Maori themselves were struggling to be allowed to use their language? That's cruel.

Because the problem with appropriation is, the marginalized group is punished, socially or legally, for doing the same things the appropriating group is doing. Another example of indigenous people having their culture stolen out from under them: white people getting to dress up as ""Indians"" for Halloween, while Native Americans have been struggling for centuries to be allowed to wear their traditional apparel instead of being culturally genocided into assimilation into the European hegemony.

Or! Or! Since we're talking about "woke" anyway: how about the use and misuse of African-American Vernacular English by non-Black people? AAVE is often called "bad English", when what it really is is a distinct dialect with its own grammatical rules and its own distinct slang and word choice. To be "woke", from AAVE, is to be awake and alert to (racial) prejudice and discrimination. What you are doing, in redefining woke in your post? Is mocking that original meaning of the word.

Is it possible to be over-alert? Sure. Usually it's due to having been burned so many times that the overly-jumpy person is on a hair trigger about the possibility of getting screwed over again, in which case I can't really blame them. Is the case of Lego using the Maori language and the Maori needing to sue about this cultural appropriation a case of being over-alert to racial prejudice and discrimination? Uh, NO.

Look. Bionicle in fact kept naming characters words in non-English languages. They just stopped using Maori. The problem is not mining languages; the problem is mining languages when the native speakers of those languages aren't permitted to speak it. Dead languages? That's fine, that's why Latin and Ancient Greek get used everywhere, for everything. Living languages that don't have a recent history of being suppressed? Also fine.

As for the meaning of "appropriation", and whether it's inherently negative, I'll just let Wiktionary speak for me on that:

Verb appropriate (third-person singular simple present appropriates, present participle appropriating, simple past and past participle appropriated) 1. (transitive) To take to oneself; to claim or use, especially as by an exclusive right. Let no man appropriate the use of a common benefit. 2. (transitive) To set apart for, or assign to, a particular person or use, especially in exclusion of all others; with to or for. A spot of ground is appropriated for a garden. to appropriate money for the increase of the navy

No, I think. I think the meaning of "appropriate" as in "take for oneself exclusively", in the context of cultural artifacts, is bad. It's not called cultural sharing! It's called cultural appropriation, and that's for a reason.

it’s sad knowing that the reason why Lego won’t be doing bionicle again is because their afraid of zoomers trying to cancel them for bionicle being “cultural appropriation” when all of the stuff that is currently in bionicle, they were allowed to keep after the lawsuit.

Those canceling maniacs will never see the true beauty of bionicle.

I don’t usually like using the word “woke” to describe people like this because people might think I’m some sort of bigot who doesn’t appreciate progressiveness, but the bigots usually describe the “woke” stuff as “thing that has progressive messaging in it” or “person who supports progressiveness”.

I categorize “woke” as “leftist who only relies on reactionary instincts and who doesn’t logically look at things or look into things more than the surface level “oh, this looks bad to the paranoid onlooker!””

trust me, I’m more of a “disband the team and never let them have a team again” than a “change the mascot” kind of girl, but when I look at 2001 bionicle, I don’t see anything that offensive. They just misused a couple words and when they were told by Māori individuals to fix their mistakes, they did. The mistakes were probably made in the first place because the Māori dictionary they used didn’t give them detailed enough information on the spiritual context of words and even misdefined the word “tohunga”.

I have an idea… find a dictionary that accidentally misdefines the word tohunga and send a photo of link to it to me, so we can see the dictionary they used for bionicle!

remember “appropriation” is not necessarily a negative word. In recent years it has taken on a negative meaning, but it really just means “taking inspiration from another culture or borrowing something from it”. The bathrobe could be considered appropriation because it was inspired by the kimono, but you don’t have any negative feelings towards the bathrobe, do you?

(Also, yes, I know that using words from a real language to name fictional characters is lazy.)

[baeddel]

what are your criticisms of privilege theory?

fuzzy. misplace of focus. excites the wrong moods in the listener. and lacks explanatory power for the most pressing questions. in order,

it's fuzzy when it fails to distinguish abstract from particular. you'll say this: all white people benefit from white supremacy. back when these apologetics were common you'd put a lot of emphasis on the all, the way all of us are equally implicated and therefore bear a like responsibility. but the other guy will say, how do all white people benefit from white supremacy? and you'll start to talk about odds and averages, about 16th century legal codes (and their vague legacy), and so on, and you're still hovering around in the abstract, the disparity between how likely you are to encounter some kind of event, for example, incarceration, or about general features of society, like certain laws, which may never come up for an individual person. so you're staying on this level of abstract reason and you can't explain why those statistical regularities matter, what conditions white people's actions qua their whiteness, or even, how any given situation in a white person's life can be explained by their whiteness. the invisible knapsack can never be opened and its contents can never be examined. this is an old problem. [the following anecdote is so misremembered it might as well be a parable i came up with; i correct myself here]  there's this recording of a 'struggle session' with the Black Panthers and a group of white American organizers, as i remember from poor rural backgrounds, and an argument breaks out between one Panther and one of the white men when the Panther remarks that the police 'exist to protect you' (or something similar), and the white man gets offended and says they sure aren't protecting him, because he's out there getting beaten by them and so on. the Panther is speaking abstractly, about an abstract white man, and this white man is talking about his own experience as a particular white man, so they will always talk past one another and that's what they did the rest of the session.

i am still 'on' this problem. you know how it is with me; i was tormented enough by internet arguments ten years ago to turn them into lifelong research priorities. early last year i made the above argument at length (in a long, demented, unpublished response to another anon, which was supposed to gradually transform into t4t smut, but it was abandoned in the second act due to theroetical blunders). i attempted to make my own account in 2019 here (pg 6-13; a similarly long, rambunctuous and abandoned piece of writing), engaing mainly with Maria Lugones, Nick Land and Achille Mbembe. since then i’ve read a lot of Marx and a bit of Hegel and now when i talk about it i tend to go on and on about ‘reflection’ and ‘grounding’ (eg. last december’s futapost, pg 2). i’m currently reading that book on the early modern causation debate for related reasons. something that was an influence on me was the discussion in Barnor Hesse’s preface to Conceptual Aphasia in Black (2016) about Alain Locke’s definition of race as a “social inheritance.”

it has a misplace of focus because it starts by trying to explain the benefits a white, male or cis subject can count on, which limits its scope to directly productive relations of exploitation, which in many cases either don’t exist or are not central to the oppressive relations under discussion. i make this point at length in this early 2021 post with respect to transmisogyny. Wilderson makes the point with respect to antiblackness in Gramsci’s Black Marx (2003). but so does Frére Dupont, Giorgio Agamben, Moishe Postone, Orlando Patterson, Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, Jacques Camatte, Georges Bataille . . . in other words, privilege theory can’t interact with very much serious work on oppression and marginalization because they usually will proceed from an incompatible premise, that being, not all coercive social relations worth talking about are directly productive ones. a lot of the time privilege theory will count as privileges things like ‘i will never be followed around in a grocery store by a white person who thinks i’m going to shoplift’ (hastening to add for being black incase it does happen for some contingent reason, like being a stranger in a small-minded one horse town, which is ofcourse concretely possible if abstractly unlikely), such that a privilege can amount to a privation of oppression, which is an extremely unusual way to talk about any subject and is obviously an artefact of having an inexact premise.

it excites the wrong moods in the listener because it makes them feel ashamed, defensive, apologetic, self-conscious, ultimately self-centered and narcissistic, and it rewards race faking. your intersubjective task is to escape self-alienating consciousness, and, failing that, comfort, empower, inspire and mobilize. you should proceed from the knowledge that all men are ruled by rackets, “the rackets of clerics, of the royal court, of the propertied, of the race, of men, of adults, of families, of the police, of crime” (Max Horkheimer, Die Rackets und der Geist), and as a revolutionary your task is to make them feel safe, comfortable and articulate enough to escape theirs. to move their insular, sectional, beseiged subjectivity to something intersectoral, intersectional, and autonomous. no one needs to learn to sit down and listen, but to stand up and shout.

and finally it lacks explanatory power for the most pressing questions. that is to say, it cannot tell you what to do when your beloved comrades in the army of the oppressed defect to the Portugese side in exchange for promises of wealth and property, as did Amilcar Cabral’s, before he was assassinated and the revolution in Guinea defeated.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Hello! I just saw your post about how ppl wearing/displaying their flag if they’re American/Australian/English probably means they’re a racist and I 100% agree. I really appreciate your takes, so I wanted to get your opinion on how this applies to a country like Wales where the legacy is different? Do you still think these implications would apply, or how might they be change?

Ooh, good question! I'm slightly Christmas Drunk answering so let's find out together how coherent this is.

So the big thing with what I'm going to call "flag culture" for the purposes of this conversation (the social application of Your Flag TM to clothing, products, or general display) is that the flag itself obviously means nothing - it's just colours and shapes, even if you're Welsh and lucky and one of those shapes is a fucken sick dragon. But a flag is a symbol, and that's the crux of the issue.

What is it symbolising?

And, therefore, why are you choosing to display that symbol?

In fact, I don't automatically think it's a Bad Thing, per se. I think nationality is not actually a bad thing inherently. Human beings are social. We're designed to live socially, and communally, and to be enriched by shared experiences. On a large scale, that's what culture is, really, when you get right down to it - the official definition might be "a shared set of norms and values", but in real terms it's "do we have this shit in common?" And nationality is just a big version of that. It gives people a sense of belonging, and community, and therefore safety, because we're hard-wired to want that.

Flag culture is an extention of that. It's an expression of community, and belonging. So far, so benign.

Here's the problem: what is the community? What actually is the shared culture of that community? What is being celebrated? Why are the adherents celebrating it?

In the case of that particular post, we were talking about how seeing Americans plastering the US flag about is a sure-fire sign of a racist, and ditto Australia and England/Britain. I'm none of those, really, but I can make a claim to being British I guess, if not English, so that's the one I'm going to zero in on here.

Britain suffers from a lack of clear culture of its own, because England conquered almost the entire world and took whichever parts it wanted. When the dust settled, not only did they have a sort of jigsaw of cultural things that were blatantly taken from elsewhere, but they'd also spread even that about so it was no longer unique to them. Mainstream English culture has very little now to hold up as their own. In Wales, I can gleefully talk about the Mari Lwyd, and Eisteddfods, and calennig, and the Mabinogi, and the Royal Welsh Show, and a whole bunch of other things. But England doesn't really have that, and they can't see Mainstream Western Culture as theirs or as special because... it's everywhere. They live in it. It's not unique to them. They can't show off about it, and they can't feel any sense of belonging and identity from it.

(Side note: the tragedy is that there's actually plenty they *could* use, that's English and Not Blatantly Stolen. Off the top of my head: Morris dancing, folklore like black dogs, football (without the cunts), customs like First Footing, Robin Hood, NOT FUCKING ARTHUR HE'S WELSH AND HE'S OURS HANDS OFF etc)

So, what do you fall back on instead?

Nothing good. "We conquered everyone!!! YEAH!!! ENG-GER-LAND, ENG-GER-LAND, ENG-GER-LAND!!!"

Community becomes about anything you can. "You look wrong. You have the wrong God. You dress the wrong way. You speak the wrong language. You don't belong in our gang."

And so, the racists! The flag becomes a symbol of both imperialist conquest AND thundering bastards with no personal hygiene.

But, if your country has its own visible and identifiable culture AND a history of being actively oppressed, then the sense of belonging, the urge to be a community, the need to have a shared culture and feeling of safety is a bit different.

Under those circumstances, plastering your flag on a shirt is not an act of oppression, or rejection. It's an act of defiance against an outside force that wants to erase you. "You want my culture to vanish? Not so fucking easy, sunshine, it is right here."

That is absolutely not to say that a small oppressed minority is incapable of using flag culture to be a big old pack of racists, nor that every use of large Western nations' flags is automatically racist, of course. We're talking about overall trends here, that's all.

Ha, okay, I reckon the difference could arguably be pared down to "This is who I am" vs "This is who you aren't". If I see someone wearing a dragon they're telling me who they are. If I see someone in a St George's Cross they're telling me that I don't belong, and also, that they have superiority.

Anyway I'm, like, eight Baileys deep, so I hope that made sense.

[obtusemedia]

Ranking Lady Gaga's albums, from worst to best

Being a Lady Gaga fan can be an exercise in frustration.

Gaga is far more ambitious than most popstars — I doubt we’ll ever see Ariana Grande or Ed Sheeran make an album as left-field as Born This Way or ARTPOP. But she's also far less consistent, with numerous misbegotten projects.

Gaga's undeniably successful, with five #1 hits, an Oscar and multiple iconic music videos to her name. But her messy album rollouts and tradition of underperforming lead singles make her feel like an underdog compared to the more polished, precise careers of her contemporaries like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé or Bruno Mars.

Gaga is kind of a mess. But she's our mess. This album ranking will cover some records I can't stand — albums that make me constantly hit the fast-forward button, or albums I ignore altogether. But there isn't a single record on here that wasn't a bold move. Even the "back to basics" albums made strong aesthetic choices.

So let's dive into the career of the most fascinating Millennial popstar.

#8: Cheek To Cheek (2014)

This really shouldn't count. It's a Lady Gaga album in name only. But, technically it's a Gaga album, so here we are.

I've got nothing against Gaga having fun playing Rat Pack-era dress-up with Tony Bennett. She's a theatre kid at heart, and I'm sure every theatre kid would kill to make a Great American Songbook covers record like this. It sounds like she and Tony enjoyed themselves, so I'm happy for them!

...but I'm sorry. I can't be objective about Cheek To Cheek, it's the opposite of my taste. There's only so many bland lounge ballads I can take.

BEST SONGS: I have to pick one? "Anything Goes" is cute, I guess.

WORST SONG: "Sophisticated Lady"

#7: A Star Is Born (2018)

Let me first make this clear — A Star Is Born, the movie starring Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga? It's a masterpiece. It's electrifying and tragic and I'm still upset it didn't sweep the Oscars that year. There's even a cute dog! You won't hear me say a bad word about it.

But A Star Is Born, the accompanying soundtrack? It's extremely hit-and-miss.

Yes, it includes arguably Gaga's best-ever song and one of the greatest movie hits ever written, "Shallow." And there's plenty of other great tunes in the tracklist too — "Always Remember Us This Way," "I'll Never Love Again," the "La Vie En Rose" cover.

Even the country-rock songs from Bradley Cooper (who, reminder, is not a professional singer) are mostly good! "Black Eyes" RIPS, and "Maybe It's Time" feels like a long-lost classic.

But sadly, there are so many mediocre filler tracks on this thing. The second half of A Star Is Born's hour-plus runtime (Gaga's longest!) is padded with generic songs like "Look What I've Found," "Heal Me" and "I Don't Know What Love Is." The only good one out of the bunch is the silly, intentionally-bad "Why Did You Do That?"

In the movie, these filler tracks serve a point – they're meant to show Gaga's character selling out. They work in the movie when you hear them for a few seconds and see Cooper make a drunkly disappointed scowl. But I don't want to listen to them, and sadly, they make up half the album.

In other words — A Star Is Born would've made an incredible six or seven-song EP. But as an 63-minute-long record? It's a slog.

BEST SONGS: "Shallow", "Always Remember Us This Way," "Maybe It's Time"

WORST SONG: "Heal Me"

#6: Joanne (2016)

After Born This Way and ARTPOP, I get why Gaga needed to make a more lowkey, back-to-basics album. I also understand that many of these songs have extremely personal lyrics for her.

But is a down-to-earth album what I really want from our most outré popstar? Not really.

Luckily, Joanne is better than that description suggests. Yes, there are some bland acoustic ballads and awkward hippie-era throwbacks (two styles that are really not in Gaga's wheelhouse), but there's also some Springsteen-style heartland rockers! And those go hard in the paint.

Joanne works best when Gaga works the record's dusty aesthetics into her brand of weirdo pop, like on the sizzling "John Wayne," the winking "A-YO" or the delightfully extra Florence Welch duet "Hey Girl."

The record also has "Perfect Illusion" — a glorious red herring of a lead single that sounds nothing like anything else on Joanne. It's a roided-up mixture of woozy Tame Impala production and hair metal histrionics, and it rules. It might be Gaga's best-ever lead single! (at the very least, it's her most underrated.)

And there is one slow tune that's unambiguously great: "Million Reasons," another solid Gaga lighters-in-the-air power ballad pastiche.

Despite what some Little Monsters may tell you, Joanne isn't a disaster. There's some great stuff in there, and even the worst songs are just forgettable. But it's still far from her best.

BEST SONGS: "Perfect Illusion," "Diamond Heart," "Million Reasons"

WORST SONG: "Come To Mama"

#5: Chromatica (2020)

When Chromatica was released near the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, it had been seven years since Gaga had released music in her classic gonzo-synthpop vein. I can easily picture the record serving as an "ugh fine, I'll give you what you want" response to the many Little Monsters annoyed with Gaga's half-decade of folksy ballads and Julie Andrews cosplay.

I'll say this about Chromatica — outside of The Fame Monster, it's her most consistent record. There's not a single track that's a glaring mistake. And the three singles — "Stupid Love," "911" and the triumphant Ariana Grande duet "Rain On Me" — easily stand among her best tracks.

But although "all bangers, no ballads" album sounds rad in theory, it doesn't really succeed in practice. Chromatica is solid, but it's also a very same-y record. It feels like Gaga had one really great idea for the album ('90s club music with super-depressing lyrics) and repeated it over and over and over again to diminishing results.

There are some songs that are able to separate themselves: the three singles, of course, as well as the goofy "Babylon" and "Sine From Above," the Elton John duet that's the closest Chromatica gets to a ballad. But by the end of the album, you feel more worn out than electrified.

Also — and this is probably unfair, but still — Chromatica came out just a couple months after another retro-dance blockbuster pop album: Dua Lipa's magnum opus, Future Nostalgia. That's not a flattering comparison.

BEST SONGS: "Rain On Me," "Stupid Love," "911"

WORST SONG: "1000 Doves"

#4: The Fame (2008)

Out of all of Gaga's records, The Fame is most like a time capsule. It REEKS of late '00s/early '10s pop — which isn't an entirely fair criticism, seeing as Gaga popularized that era's sleazy, synthy aesthetic. It's also not a bad thing! I don't mind a little nostalgia!

As you already know, The Fame's singles are masterworks. "Just Dance," "Poker Face," "Paparazzi" — these tracks have titanic legacies for good reason. And although it's probably the least-beloved of this album's hits, despite being a total banger, "LoveGame" should still be commended for having arguably the most Gaga lyric ever (you know, the "disco stick" line).

And even though those tracks are front-loaded on The Fame, there are some gems deeper in the tracklist. "Summerboy" is basically Gwen Stefani covering The Strokes (so obviously, it's great). "Eh, Eh" is adorable. "Starstruck" is the most 2008 song ever recorded, with aggressive Auto-Tune and Flo Rida showing up to make Starbucks jokes.

Sadly, The Fame still feels like Gaga before she became fully-formed at certain points. The back half has a number of songs that feel like generic club tracks forced by the label, and "Paper Gangsta" is one of the clunkiest songs in Gaga's catalogue.

But at the very least, the bad songs on The Fame at least serve as little nostalgia bombs for that era of pop. And the best songs are untouchable classics.

BEST SONGS: "Paparazzi," "Just Dance," "Summerboy"

WORST SONG: "Paper Gangsta"

#3: ARTPOP (2013)

For much of Gaga's career, she's been ahead of the curve. She tries something, and a year or a few years later, other popstars try something similar to diminishing results.

That doesn't just apply to the successful stuff, like Gaga's extravagant music videos inspiring many copycats from 2010-2013. It also applies to the mid-late '10s trend of legacy popstars making a controversial record with risky aesthetic or lyrical choices that backfired: reputation. Witness. Man of The Woods.

Gaga did this first, with ARTPOP — arguably the most abrasive, and bizzare major label album released by a major modern popstar. And she did it better, because unlike Swift, Perry and Timberlake, Gaga's weirdness was for real. And it was in service of some prime, hyper-aggressive bangers.

ARTPOP isn't Gaga's best work — some of her experiments on it are major misfires, from the obnoxious "Mary Jane Holland" to the bland Born This Way leftover (and Romani slur-utilizing) "Gypsy."

But when ARTPOP is on, it's ON. The opening stretch in particular, from "Aura" to "Venus" to "G.U.Y." to "Sexxx Dreams," is chaotic synthpop at its finest. Those songs took Gaga's classic sound to an apocalyptic, demented extreme, and they're fantastic.

"MANiCURE" is a great glam-rock banger, "Dope" is another classic Gaga piano ballad, the title track is some sikly-smooth dreampop; even the misguided, clunky trap anthem "Jewels N' Drugs" is bad in a hilarious, charming way!

Trust me: ARTPOP will go down in history not as a flop, but as a gutsy, underrated record from a legend. Less Witness, more In Utero.

BEST SONGS: "G.U.Y.," "Venus," "Sexxx Dreams"

WORST SONG: "Gypsy"

#2: The Fame Monster (2009)

Objectively speaking, this is probably the best Gaga album.

It's her one record with no fluff, no filler — only 34 minutes and 8 tracks, all of them stellar.

It's the record that took Gaga from "wow, this new woman is a fresh new face in pop!" to "this woman IS pop."

It's the record with her signature track, "Bad Romance," which was accompanied by arguably the greatest music video of the 21st Century. (It also has my absolute favorite Gaga track, the relentlessly catchy "Telephone.")

I don't think I need to explain what makes mega-smashes "Bad Romance" and "Telephone" and "Alejandro" great, nor the accompanying legendary deep cuts "Speechless" and "Dance In The Dark." They speak for themselves.

However — the sleek, calculated perfection of The Fame Monster, while incredible, isn't something I return to often. It's just not the side of Gaga that's my favorite. That honor would have to go to...

BEST SONGS: "Telephone," "Dance In The Dark," "Bad Romance"

WORST SONG: "So Happy I Could Die" (but it's still pretty solid)

#1: Born This Way (2011)

One of my favorite podcasts is Blank Check. The concept of the show is to analyze each movie by a famous director — in particular, those who had big success early on and then got a blank check to make whatever crazy passion project they wanted. Here's a great example: because Batman was a massive hit, Tim Burton got to make whatever Hot Topic-core movies he wanted to for decades, from Edward Scissorhands to a creepy Willy Wonka remake.

That long-winded tangent is just to say: Born This Way was Lady Gaga's blank check. By early 2011, she had conquered the pop universe, notching hit after hit after hit. Every other pop star was copying her quirky music videos. So the label let Gaga do whatever she wanted — and she didn't waste that opportunity.

Born This Way is wildly overproduced. It's both extremely trend-chasing (those synths were cutting edge at the time but charmingly dated now), but also deeply uncaring about what the teens want (I don't think Springsteen and Queen homages were big at the time). And I love every messy, overblown second of it.

From the hair-metal/synthpop hybrid opener "Marry The Night" to the majestic '80s power ballad "The Edge of Glory," Born This Way starts at an 11. And Gaga never takes her foot off the pedal for the album's entire hour-plus run time. Clanging electric guitars, thunderous synths and Clarence Clemons (!!!) sax solos collide into each other as Gaga champions every misfit and loser in the world. It's gloriously corny in the best way possible.

Born This Way is also the perfect middle ground of pop-savvy Gaga and gonzo Gaga. It doesn't go quite as hard as ARTPOP, but the hooks are stronger. And the oddball moments are tons of fun, from the sci-fi biker anthem "Highway Unicorn" to the goofy presidential-sex banger "Government Hooker" ("Put your hands on me/John F. Kennedy" might be the greatest line in pop history).

Born This Way will always be my favorite Gaga album. It's armed with nuclear-grade hooks, slamming beats, and soaring anthems. Although it's not as untouchably pristine as the Mt. Rushmore of '10s pop classics (for the record, that's 1989, EMOTION, Lemonade and, of course, Melodrama), Gaga isn't best served by meticulousness. She's proudly tacky and histrionic, and so that's what makes Born This Way an utter joy.

BEST SONGS: "The Edge of Glory," "You and I," "Marry The Night"

WORST SONG: "Bloody Mary"

[diamondlovestoshine]

Mini Research Paper

Colored People Grid Portfolio by Carrie Mae Weems

Carrie Mae Weems Number 9 (1989-1990)

Carrie Mae Weems Number 10 (1989-1990)

Mini Research Paper

From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried Portfolio by Carrie Mae Weems

Carrie Mae Weems Number 13 (1995–1996)

Carrie Mae Weems Number 22 (1995–1996)

Carrie Mae Weems was born in 1953 in Portland Oregon, Carrie later became an American photographer in 1978. She is known for creating installations that combine photography, audio, and text to examine many contemporary American life facets. She worked in a variety of media and expanded her practice to include community outreach. Weems was influenced by earlier African American photographers who documented the Black experience; as her work developed, Weems became more explicitly political, continuing to explore themes of racism and the African American experience. The following are two bodies of work that spoke to me on a divergent level-From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried (1995–1996) and Colored People Grid (1989–1990).

From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried, and Colored People Grid are both two amazing bodies of work. Both of these pieces of work are very similar but different in numerous ways. These two pieces of artwork represent African American people and their struggle throughout the years but yet want the audience to capture their beauty and grace at the same time. Both Bodies of work are very vibrant with color, and the message behind them being the focus of African American people's hardship and emotion. However, some of the techniques Weem's used for From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried and Colored People Grid are slightly different. Carrie's technique for Colored People Grid was the advantage of the reflection of the sun off the model's skin, which created a glow in their face in some of the pictures; she also incorporated using shadows and blur images. On the other hand, From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried, she uses words in her pictures to give a bit more understanding, and all of the images are red printed in circular mattes. Both of these pieces of work are outstanding and make me feel connected to my ancestors, and it makes me feel heard being an African American Woman in our society today.

The first Body of work created by Carrie Mae Weems that captured my interest was From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried, published in (1995–1996). These photos display the catastrophic times of slavery in the South in the 19th and 20th centuries; Joseph T. Zealy took them in 1850 to support the racist theories about the inferiority of Black People; thus, Weem's elevated them into something more profounding. The choice of color with the words had such a deeper meaning to what they appear; Weems stated, "I'm trying to heighten a kind of critical awareness around how these photographs were intended." Weem hopes her strategy "gives the subject another level of humanity and another level of dignity that was originally missing in the photograph." Looking at these photographs, Weem's wanted us to see how "White American's" relationship to Black people were, as she states, "we're looking at the ways in which Anglo America—white America—saw itself in relationship to the Black subject." Weem's choice of adding text to the picture was a way to shine the light on the historical injustices that African Americans faced. She wanted to "give a voice to a subject that historically had no voice." I loved this Body of work; the choice of red adds a feeling of pain and anger, how the pictures are framed in circular mattes to suggest a camera lens. I thought it was brilliant to turn these photographs that seem so similar but tell different stories around. I also loved how the Body of work was constructed as a timeline making the women who says, "from here I saw what happened," looking at all the events, and at the end, she was there and said, "and I cried," I thought that was a brilliant concept.

The Second Body of work that I found scintillating was Colored People Grid, published in (1989-1990). She composed tinted portraits of African American youths in their everyday lives as a means of parodying the simplistic construct of implementing a color term to any human being, no one of whom is white or black. Weems photographed her models at a range of ages, as she describes, "when issues of race really begin to affect you, at the point of an innocence beginning to be disrupted." Uses of the term colored to describe people go back to the 19th century. Weem's explored these terms by adding labels to each group of images, such as "Blue Black Boy" and "Golden Yella Girl." The Colored People Grid series Probe's the beauty found in the range of skin colors enclosed within the term black while also critiquing the hierarchy of social values assigned to skin tones within the African American community itself. I admire The beautiful overlapping tones of yellow, burnt orange, magenta, brown, blue, and purple. The brightness and shadows of the pictures add to the simplicity and beauty of the raw emotions that these youth kids are portraying.

One particular photograph from From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried, that I thought touched me the most was the 13th PicturePicture which stated, "BLACK AND TANNED YOUR WHIPPED WIND OF CHANGE HOWLED LOW BLOWING ITSELF - HA - SMACK INTO THE MIDDLE OF ELLINGTON'S ORCHESTRA BILLIE HEARD IT TOO & CRIED STRANGE FRUIT TEARS," This picture makes me feel devastated for what African Americans had to go through, and the text in the picture has such a deep meaning of the abuse that Black people went through, having their brethren cry for the suffering that they endured is mournful, and the way the red makes the scars on his back pop out makes me even feel more upset because it's in the center giving me no choice but to pay attention to it. Another Photograph that stood out to me was number 22 that states, "YOU BECAME THE JOKER'S JOKE," with 3 African American Women sitting down in front of white people, and their lips were stretched out. This photograph makes me feel enraged as to how a human being with morals and a functional conscience forces another human being, regardless of skin color, to cause such uncomfort and pain. Even though this photo makes me irritable, I like it because it shows society how African Americans were treated with such cruel and unjust actions. I believe Weem wanted to dig into people's feelings and get them to understand the pain and unjust history that Black people went through and still go through.

The 9th and 10th pictures of Colored People Grid struck me with the reality of this is precisely what young Black kids feel every day. The 9th photograph shows a young girl who is sitting down outside her doorstep. The color and the shadows used in this picture give me a sense of sadness, and I couldn't help think of what the little girl was thinking about. When I look at this picture, it makes me think about all the little girls who have lost their fathers due to Police brutality. Kids should just be kids and not have to worry about being stereotyped because of their skin. However, they can't due to the ongoing hate in society, which I think Weem's was trying to reveal. The 10th picture captures a young Black boy who looks frightened, which makes me feel that he is frightened because he fears being targeted. I love how the color of the brown and the glimpse of the light help capture his emotions. This picture says a thousand words just by looking at it and knowing what society is like today.

Carrie Mae Weem is one of the most magnificent photographers that I have come across personally. Her work is splendid, showcasing the beauty, pain, and story of African American people and turning it into her own. "Her work speaks to human experience and of the multiple aspects of individual identity, arriving at a deeper understanding of humanity." Mary Jane Jacobs, "Ritual and Revolution" Weem's is a highly spoken of artist, and I genuinely wish to see more beautiful pieces by her if she wishes to continue photographing.

Work Cited

bodninson, sara. “MoMA Learning.” MoMA, 2010, www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/carrie-mae-weems-from-here-i-saw-what-happened-and-i-cried-1995/.

Weems, Carrie Mae. “Carrie Mae Weems. From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried. 1995-96: MoMA.” The Museum of Modern Art, 2020, www.moma.org/collection/works/45579.

Designed and developed by Lisa Goodlin Design, carrie. “Carrie Mae Weems.” Carrie Mae Weems : Colored People, 1989-1990, 2020, carriemaeweems.net/galleries/colored-people.html.