The removal of cultural boundaries creates familiarity amongst people. In a world where before 9.11 cultural boundaries were closing the world’s economies became more centralized and the international language of money was required social cache; one could sit in any country with a Viacom (for example) satellite office and watch any number of the mega conglom’s subsidiaries in whatever language was needed to get people to spend. This was the model that worked in America and it would work everywhere else- NOT! The gross income for Liberian family is $114 US. That’s some American kid’s weekly allowance.
America pumps it’s market driven interests throughout the globe only to naively ask, “Why do people hate us?” and then answer their own question with “because we’re free”. Now I now one true about my life – IT AIN’T FREE.
Art ain’t free. It’s very expensive when working within the capitalist model. Working outside that model? Here in the US that’s called underground. To be an underground artist takes work and perserverance and either rich parents or a job that’ll pay a living wage. Not that it can’t be done- but we’re talking about models here. Sure the underground model can work. It builds prestige, a market base and respect among comrades. But will it support you? Probably not. And I’m sure there is somebody this has worked for but I’m talking about large monetary scale support. Any hip-hop created outside the states is underground in the US. Any art aimed at communities of color that isn’t commercially marketed is called underground.
Underground is what it is because it’s outside the radar of populust consumptionist culture. Once the underground moves into the light of success it loses the edge of it’s alleged pre capitalist roots. Finding diasporic artistic movements and contributions is an effort to Americans. To find out about different (read as non American) forms of artistic revolutions takes effort. It takes time and desire to experience something else. Why when bred in a culture that tells you that you are what everyone else on the planet either wants to be or destroy, would you look outside to find other modes of artistic expression? MTV et al barely show non mass produced music and images from within the US. When you’re told that art is either an imitation or a negation of what you believe to be art, why would you not believe that your expressions (and for this generation of “urban” youth it’s hip hop) can’t be translated into a global struggle against oppression?
Why can’t we Americans get up off of that? Because it’s a “Lovely Day” when the Gap tells us to all look alike like most proletarian/ elite models. We see through the unitarianism of our systems, not specifically governmental, but the transnational bent of American corporations the need to create a consistent market base for their products. Moving through cultural differences we see that colored artists all over the world living in “decolonized” war zones are moving in a similar rhythm.
True power comes from controlling one’s own destiny. Money is not (always) the answer to that problem. Changes in policy, educational curriculum, early cultural and media studies education are some of the steps to freeing the minds of youth of color to see the links they are in the struggle for the global destruction of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
27 September 2005
Many Contracts for Storm Work Raise Questions
September 26, 2005
Many Contracts for Storm Work Raise Questions
By ERIC LIPTON and RON NIXON
Editors' Note Appended
WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 - Topping the federal government's list of costs related to Hurricane Katrina is the $568 million in contracts for debris removal landed by a Florida company with ties to Mississippi's Republican governor. Near the bottom is an $89.95 bill for a pair of brown steel-toe shoes bought by an Environmental Protection Agency worker in Baton Rouge, La.
The first detailed tally of commitments from federal agencies since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast four weeks ago shows that more than 15 contracts exceed $100 million, including 5 of $500 million or more. Most of those were for clearing away the trees, homes and cars strewn across the region; purchasing trailers and mobile homes; or providing trucks, ships, buses and planes.
More than 80 percent of the $1.5 billion in contracts signed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency alone were awarded without bidding or with limited competition, government records show, provoking concerns among auditors and government officials about the potential for favoritism or abuse.
Already, questions have been raised about the political connections of two major contractors - the Shaw Group and Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton - that have been represented by the lobbyist Joe M. Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former leader of FEMA.
"When you do something like this, you do increase the vulnerability for fraud, plain waste, abuse and mismanagement," said Richard L. Skinner, the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, who said 60 members of his staff were examining Hurricane Katrina contracts. "We are very apprehensive about what we are seeing."
Bills have come in for deals that apparently were clinched with a handshake, with no documentation to back them up, said Mr. Skinner, who declined to provide details.
"Most, if not all, of these people down there were trying to do the right thing," he said. "They were under a lot of pressure and they took a lot of shortcuts that may have resulted in a lot of waste."
Congress appropriated $62.3 billion in emergency financing after Hurricane Katrina struck. So far, a total of $15.8 billion has been allocated from a FEMA-managed disaster relief fund, of which $11.6 billion has been committed through contracts, direct aid to individuals or work performed by government agencies.
An examination of the contracts granted to date and interviews with state and federal officials raised concerns about some of the awards.
Some industry and government officials questioned the costs of the debris-removal contracts, saying the Army Corps of Engineers had allowed a rate that was too high. And Congressional investigators are looking into the $568 million awarded to AshBritt, a Pompano Beach, Fla., company that was a client of the former lobbying firm of Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi.
The investigators are asking how much money AshBritt will collect and, in turn, what it will pay subcontractors performing the work, said a House investigator who did not want her name used because she was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
The contracts also show considerable price disparities: travel trailers costing $15,000 to $23,000, housing inspection services that documents suggest could cost $15 to $81 per home, and ferries and ships being used for temporary housing that cost $13 million to $70 million for six months.
For some smaller companies, the recovery work will be an extraordinary test. For example, Aduddell Roofing and Sheet Metal, an Oklahoma City business run by a former steer wrestler, shares with a partner a $60 million contract to install temporary roofing on houses in Mississippi. Aduddell's single biggest contract before this was for $5 million, company executives said.
Some businesses awarded large contracts have long records of performing similar work, but they also have had some problems. CH2M Hill and the Fluor Corporation, two global engineering companies awarded a total of $250 million in contracts, were previously cited by regulators for safety violations at a weapons plant cleanup.
The Bechtel Corporation, awarded a contract that could be worth $100 million, is under scrutiny for its oversight of the "Big Dig" construction project in Boston. And Kellogg, Brown & Root, which was given $60 million in contracts, was rebuked by federal auditors for unsubstantiated billing from the Iraq reconstruction and criticized for bills like $100-per-bag laundry service. All of the companies have publicly defended their performance.
Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, complained that FEMA and other federal agencies were delivering too much of the work to giant corporations with political connections, instead of local companies or minority-owned businesses.
"There is just more of the good-old-boy system, taking care of its political allies," Mr. Thompson said. "FEMA and the others have put out these contracts in such a haphazard manner, I don't know how they can come up with anything that is accountable to the taxpayers."
As of last week, the federal government was spending more than $263 million a day on the recovery effort.
"There was a crisis situation and a lot of very quick contracting was done," said Greg Rothwell, the chief procurement officer at the Department of Homeland Security. "We will be looking at every invoice we get to make sure we were not paying extraordinary prices."
While several federal agencies have approved contracts, FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers, by design, have spent the most so far, according to the list of contracts from federal government agencies assembled by The New York Times.
Much of the spending has been in large amounts, but the contracts also include entries like $80,000 from a company called Bama Jama for clothing adorned with the E.P.A. logo and $3,300 for Doc's Laundry and Linen in Baton Rouge.
Rapidly buying the goods and services needed to respond to an emergency is difficult for any government agency. Federal contracting rules allow agencies to approve deals without standard competitive bidding in "urgent and compelling circumstances."
To provide some safeguards, federal agencies can hold an open competition in advance for products routinely needed in emergencies. Such agreements are known as "indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity," or I.D.I.Q. contracts.
The Defense Department relied on that type of contract in assigning Kellogg, Brown & Root to perform more than $45 million in repairs to levees in New Orleans and military facilities in the gulf region.
Records show, however, that FEMA did not use this approach for the blue sheeting used to cover holes in roofs, a standard item in the disaster tool kit. Instead, the agency bought $6.6 million of the material from All American Poly of Piscataway, N.J., on Sept. 13, without full competitive bidding.
Before signing contracts with mobile-home and travel-trailer makers worth in excess of $1 billion, FEMA said it did solicit bids. But the awards were made without the standard open competition required for government contracts.
Mr. Rothwell, of the Homeland Security Department, said FEMA needed to expand its number of I.D.I.Q. agreements so that when disasters struck it could bring in contractors more quickly and at a competitive price.
The two most expensive services the government has signed contracts for so far are manufactured housing and debris removal, which alone have totaled $2 billion, according to contracting records.
The debris contracts have attracted the scrutiny of investigators from the House Homeland Security Committee, in part because of the price agreed to by the Army Corps of Engineers.
AshBritt, which has won the biggest share of those contracts, is being paid about $15 per cubic yard to collect and process debris, federal officials said. It is also being reimbursed for costs if it has to dispose of material in landfills.
But three communities in Mississippi, which found their own contractors rather than accept the terms offered by AshBritt, have negotiated contracts of $10.64 a cubic yard to $18.25 a cubic yard, including collection, processing and disposal.
And other experts have questioned AshBritt's fees. "Let me put it to you this way: If $15 was my best price, I would rebid it," said Mike Carroll, a municipal official in Orlando, Fla., with experience in hurricane cleanup.
AshBritt has cleaned up debris for FEMA and other government agencies after other hurricanes. Besides possessing a huge roster of subcontractors and the logistics expertise to route hundreds of trucks, the company is also politically well connected.
According to Senate filings, AshBritt paid about $40,000 in the first half of 2005 to Barbour Griffith & Rogers, the Washington lobbying firm co-founded by Governor Barbour of Mississippi, who is also a former chairman of the Republican National Committee.
AshBritt officials declined to comment on the Hurricane Katrina contracts. Jean Todd, a federal contracting officer who helps oversee the AshBritt deal for the Army Corps of Engineers, said she was determined to ensure that the price was fair.
"We have auditors that will be looking at all of this," Ms. Todd said.
FEMA has led the effort to line up contractors to install tens of thousand of temporary homes. The scale of the job is still unclear - depending on demand, FEMA may downsize its plans - but the agency has been rushing to buy as many travel trailers and mobile homes as it can. It has signed five contracts each worth more than $100 million with major manufacturers. And it has scoured the country, buying up whatever it can find on dealers' lots.
That has turned into a bonanza for businesses like Wagner's RV Center in Suamico, Wis., which sold 69 trailers to FEMA for $1.3 million.
"In a single sale, we cleared out most of our leftover inventory from the 2005 model year," said Leonard Wagner, the owner of the RV center. "That does not happen very often."
For some small businesses, what started off as big contracts have quickly grown into giant ones. Aduddell Roofing, the Oklahoma City business, was first hired with a partner on a $10 million contract. In a matter of weeks, that deal had grown into a $60 million contract.
The project is being run by Timothy Aduddell, the company's president, who until recently was on the professional rodeo circuit, said Ron Carte, the chief executive of Zenex International, the company that owns Aduddell.
"You have to be there to see it," Mr. Carte said of the hurricane work. "As Mr. Aduddell says, 'It's pretty cowboy.' "
Editors' NoteTuesday, Sept. 27, 2005
A front-page article yesterday reported on the awarding of billions of dollars in federal contracts to help rebuild the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. The article said many contracts had been awarded without bidding or with limited competition, and it cited two major contractors whose political connections have already raised questions among government officials about the potential for favoritism or abuse.
In naming these contractors - the Shaw Group and Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton - the article noted that they have been represented by the lobbyist Joe M. Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former leader of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The article should have carried a response from Mr. Allbaugh, or restated a position he expressed in an earlier article in The Times: that he does not help any of his clients secure federal contracts, and has not done so in this case for Shaw or Kellogg.
Eric Dash and Leslie Eaton contributed reporting from New York for this article.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Many Contracts for Storm Work Raise Questions
By ERIC LIPTON and RON NIXON
Editors' Note Appended
WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 - Topping the federal government's list of costs related to Hurricane Katrina is the $568 million in contracts for debris removal landed by a Florida company with ties to Mississippi's Republican governor. Near the bottom is an $89.95 bill for a pair of brown steel-toe shoes bought by an Environmental Protection Agency worker in Baton Rouge, La.
The first detailed tally of commitments from federal agencies since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast four weeks ago shows that more than 15 contracts exceed $100 million, including 5 of $500 million or more. Most of those were for clearing away the trees, homes and cars strewn across the region; purchasing trailers and mobile homes; or providing trucks, ships, buses and planes.
More than 80 percent of the $1.5 billion in contracts signed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency alone were awarded without bidding or with limited competition, government records show, provoking concerns among auditors and government officials about the potential for favoritism or abuse.
Already, questions have been raised about the political connections of two major contractors - the Shaw Group and Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton - that have been represented by the lobbyist Joe M. Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former leader of FEMA.
"When you do something like this, you do increase the vulnerability for fraud, plain waste, abuse and mismanagement," said Richard L. Skinner, the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, who said 60 members of his staff were examining Hurricane Katrina contracts. "We are very apprehensive about what we are seeing."
Bills have come in for deals that apparently were clinched with a handshake, with no documentation to back them up, said Mr. Skinner, who declined to provide details.
"Most, if not all, of these people down there were trying to do the right thing," he said. "They were under a lot of pressure and they took a lot of shortcuts that may have resulted in a lot of waste."
Congress appropriated $62.3 billion in emergency financing after Hurricane Katrina struck. So far, a total of $15.8 billion has been allocated from a FEMA-managed disaster relief fund, of which $11.6 billion has been committed through contracts, direct aid to individuals or work performed by government agencies.
An examination of the contracts granted to date and interviews with state and federal officials raised concerns about some of the awards.
Some industry and government officials questioned the costs of the debris-removal contracts, saying the Army Corps of Engineers had allowed a rate that was too high. And Congressional investigators are looking into the $568 million awarded to AshBritt, a Pompano Beach, Fla., company that was a client of the former lobbying firm of Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi.
The investigators are asking how much money AshBritt will collect and, in turn, what it will pay subcontractors performing the work, said a House investigator who did not want her name used because she was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
The contracts also show considerable price disparities: travel trailers costing $15,000 to $23,000, housing inspection services that documents suggest could cost $15 to $81 per home, and ferries and ships being used for temporary housing that cost $13 million to $70 million for six months.
For some smaller companies, the recovery work will be an extraordinary test. For example, Aduddell Roofing and Sheet Metal, an Oklahoma City business run by a former steer wrestler, shares with a partner a $60 million contract to install temporary roofing on houses in Mississippi. Aduddell's single biggest contract before this was for $5 million, company executives said.
Some businesses awarded large contracts have long records of performing similar work, but they also have had some problems. CH2M Hill and the Fluor Corporation, two global engineering companies awarded a total of $250 million in contracts, were previously cited by regulators for safety violations at a weapons plant cleanup.
The Bechtel Corporation, awarded a contract that could be worth $100 million, is under scrutiny for its oversight of the "Big Dig" construction project in Boston. And Kellogg, Brown & Root, which was given $60 million in contracts, was rebuked by federal auditors for unsubstantiated billing from the Iraq reconstruction and criticized for bills like $100-per-bag laundry service. All of the companies have publicly defended their performance.
Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, complained that FEMA and other federal agencies were delivering too much of the work to giant corporations with political connections, instead of local companies or minority-owned businesses.
"There is just more of the good-old-boy system, taking care of its political allies," Mr. Thompson said. "FEMA and the others have put out these contracts in such a haphazard manner, I don't know how they can come up with anything that is accountable to the taxpayers."
As of last week, the federal government was spending more than $263 million a day on the recovery effort.
"There was a crisis situation and a lot of very quick contracting was done," said Greg Rothwell, the chief procurement officer at the Department of Homeland Security. "We will be looking at every invoice we get to make sure we were not paying extraordinary prices."
While several federal agencies have approved contracts, FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers, by design, have spent the most so far, according to the list of contracts from federal government agencies assembled by The New York Times.
Much of the spending has been in large amounts, but the contracts also include entries like $80,000 from a company called Bama Jama for clothing adorned with the E.P.A. logo and $3,300 for Doc's Laundry and Linen in Baton Rouge.
Rapidly buying the goods and services needed to respond to an emergency is difficult for any government agency. Federal contracting rules allow agencies to approve deals without standard competitive bidding in "urgent and compelling circumstances."
To provide some safeguards, federal agencies can hold an open competition in advance for products routinely needed in emergencies. Such agreements are known as "indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity," or I.D.I.Q. contracts.
The Defense Department relied on that type of contract in assigning Kellogg, Brown & Root to perform more than $45 million in repairs to levees in New Orleans and military facilities in the gulf region.
Records show, however, that FEMA did not use this approach for the blue sheeting used to cover holes in roofs, a standard item in the disaster tool kit. Instead, the agency bought $6.6 million of the material from All American Poly of Piscataway, N.J., on Sept. 13, without full competitive bidding.
Before signing contracts with mobile-home and travel-trailer makers worth in excess of $1 billion, FEMA said it did solicit bids. But the awards were made without the standard open competition required for government contracts.
Mr. Rothwell, of the Homeland Security Department, said FEMA needed to expand its number of I.D.I.Q. agreements so that when disasters struck it could bring in contractors more quickly and at a competitive price.
The two most expensive services the government has signed contracts for so far are manufactured housing and debris removal, which alone have totaled $2 billion, according to contracting records.
The debris contracts have attracted the scrutiny of investigators from the House Homeland Security Committee, in part because of the price agreed to by the Army Corps of Engineers.
AshBritt, which has won the biggest share of those contracts, is being paid about $15 per cubic yard to collect and process debris, federal officials said. It is also being reimbursed for costs if it has to dispose of material in landfills.
But three communities in Mississippi, which found their own contractors rather than accept the terms offered by AshBritt, have negotiated contracts of $10.64 a cubic yard to $18.25 a cubic yard, including collection, processing and disposal.
And other experts have questioned AshBritt's fees. "Let me put it to you this way: If $15 was my best price, I would rebid it," said Mike Carroll, a municipal official in Orlando, Fla., with experience in hurricane cleanup.
AshBritt has cleaned up debris for FEMA and other government agencies after other hurricanes. Besides possessing a huge roster of subcontractors and the logistics expertise to route hundreds of trucks, the company is also politically well connected.
According to Senate filings, AshBritt paid about $40,000 in the first half of 2005 to Barbour Griffith & Rogers, the Washington lobbying firm co-founded by Governor Barbour of Mississippi, who is also a former chairman of the Republican National Committee.
AshBritt officials declined to comment on the Hurricane Katrina contracts. Jean Todd, a federal contracting officer who helps oversee the AshBritt deal for the Army Corps of Engineers, said she was determined to ensure that the price was fair.
"We have auditors that will be looking at all of this," Ms. Todd said.
FEMA has led the effort to line up contractors to install tens of thousand of temporary homes. The scale of the job is still unclear - depending on demand, FEMA may downsize its plans - but the agency has been rushing to buy as many travel trailers and mobile homes as it can. It has signed five contracts each worth more than $100 million with major manufacturers. And it has scoured the country, buying up whatever it can find on dealers' lots.
That has turned into a bonanza for businesses like Wagner's RV Center in Suamico, Wis., which sold 69 trailers to FEMA for $1.3 million.
"In a single sale, we cleared out most of our leftover inventory from the 2005 model year," said Leonard Wagner, the owner of the RV center. "That does not happen very often."
For some small businesses, what started off as big contracts have quickly grown into giant ones. Aduddell Roofing, the Oklahoma City business, was first hired with a partner on a $10 million contract. In a matter of weeks, that deal had grown into a $60 million contract.
The project is being run by Timothy Aduddell, the company's president, who until recently was on the professional rodeo circuit, said Ron Carte, the chief executive of Zenex International, the company that owns Aduddell.
"You have to be there to see it," Mr. Carte said of the hurricane work. "As Mr. Aduddell says, 'It's pretty cowboy.' "
Editors' NoteTuesday, Sept. 27, 2005
A front-page article yesterday reported on the awarding of billions of dollars in federal contracts to help rebuild the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. The article said many contracts had been awarded without bidding or with limited competition, and it cited two major contractors whose political connections have already raised questions among government officials about the potential for favoritism or abuse.
In naming these contractors - the Shaw Group and Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton - the article noted that they have been represented by the lobbyist Joe M. Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former leader of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The article should have carried a response from Mr. Allbaugh, or restated a position he expressed in an earlier article in The Times: that he does not help any of his clients secure federal contracts, and has not done so in this case for Shaw or Kellogg.
Eric Dash and Leslie Eaton contributed reporting from New York for this article.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
24 September 2005
ONLY A MOMENT OF YOUR TIME
ONLY A MOMENT OF YOUR TIME
There’s a funny thing about loneliness.
It’s so ever present that sometimes
you know you’re going to be consumed
by it.
It doesn’t matter who’s around
or how gay you appear to be,
it’s there lurking in your heart.
Stalking you.
Waiting for a moment when you
feel genuine joy,
loneliness pounces upon it
leaving behind only despair,
desperation and
frustration.
Constantly trying-
sincerely trying to be happy,
but it is always just out
of your reach
like an elusive lover.
Until finally one day
you forfeit your quest for joy.
You just surrender.
And at that moment you realize
what loneliness really wanted.
It just wanted you to sit with it
for a while.
To enjoy its’ company.
And once you stop fighting against it
you see it’s not so bad after all.
It just has a bad rep.
And it’s there,
in your epiphany that your elusive lover
happiness
finally falls under your spell and
you consummate your relationship.
Yet in your blissful state you forget
how you got there.
And there loneliness is...
alone again.
There’s a funny thing about loneliness.
It’s so ever present that sometimes
you know you’re going to be consumed
by it.
It doesn’t matter who’s around
or how gay you appear to be,
it’s there lurking in your heart.
Stalking you.
Waiting for a moment when you
feel genuine joy,
loneliness pounces upon it
leaving behind only despair,
desperation and
frustration.
Constantly trying-
sincerely trying to be happy,
but it is always just out
of your reach
like an elusive lover.
Until finally one day
you forfeit your quest for joy.
You just surrender.
And at that moment you realize
what loneliness really wanted.
It just wanted you to sit with it
for a while.
To enjoy its’ company.
And once you stop fighting against it
you see it’s not so bad after all.
It just has a bad rep.
And it’s there,
in your epiphany that your elusive lover
happiness
finally falls under your spell and
you consummate your relationship.
Yet in your blissful state you forget
how you got there.
And there loneliness is...
alone again.
me and my generations
as i'm reflecting on my age and the age i live in, this picture always comes to mind. it's me, my mom, my grandma, my great grandma, and my great-great grandma. these women sacrificed and lived with secrets, lies, and shames so i could exist. they gave me a sense of unconditional love that it's taken me until recently to understand isn't universal. we weren't rich but they gave me a richness in character that comes from a pride that they didn't always have. they also gave me hangups that i can now see were necessary for their existance that aren't necessary for mine. but i needed them to know what i don't want. they instilled in me a love and respect for education, but not just the book sense, for learning about the world and a belief that anything and everything is possible. they were proud of me but let me know that my excellence wasn't an anomoly, it was what was expected of me. to whom much is given much is required. this from women who picked cotton. who came north for better lives and carved them out. who loved men who, while not always physical faithful, were fiercely loyal and loved them implicitly. and they were not victims. they were these fierce creatures who loved hard, drank hard, smoked, fought and raised a strange crop of progeny.
23 September 2005
If love is not present in our imaginations, it will not be present in our lives: Black Love and the Hip-Hop Generation- Intro
Introduction-
This thesis will examine how loving black relationships are being portrayed in film, and will analyze the possible social effects of those portrayals on the marital/ committed relationship practices of the hip-hop generation . Loving relations will be defined as a sexual relationship where emotional equality, reciprocal vulnerability, and communicative intimacy are apparent and motivated independently of the sexual stigmas and stereotypes of, what cultural critic bell hooks commonly describes as, America’s “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” . Being a member of the hip-hop generation, I experience the daily assault not just on my black womanhood, but also my humanity. The images of male-female relationships that have been normalized are so pathological and hateful, creating such unloving environments, that I wanted to know where these ideas were formed. Though this thesis focuses mostly on film, the convergence of film and television (through cable, VCR’s and DVD’s) makes it necessary to mention the interrelated qualities of music videos and contemporary films. This thesis investigates how the hip-hop generation’s imaginations are fed.
This paper hypothesizes that the lack of visual representations of blacks loving each other (as opposed to simply being sexual objects), given that the media operates as powerful social educator, adds to the risk of a lack of loving in everyday life. Stories of courtship, romance and love have been storytelling fodder in some form since antiquity. The powerful yet seemingly invisible role of film and television as social educator has been greatly chronicled. Yet influence of film and television specifically on the hip-hop generation’s black sexual relationships is only recently being researched . There is still a gap in the body of research regarding black loving relations as an indicator of emotional well-being. Violence, HIV prevention and teen pregnancy are the general research catalysts to study media’s relationship to this particular age group as opposed to marriage or current interpersonal relations. This paper contributes to current studies using discursive methods regarding loving representations in order to analyze black film images. The visuals being analyzed have been chosen because of both their relevance to the body of black media images and their mainstream appeal. More obscure images, while interesting for scholarship, were omitted because of an assumptive lack of influence on the relationship practices of the hip-hop generation. I will analyze the selected films based on the romantic theme and plot in instances, as well as the driving forces of the film. The way we, the hip-hop generation, have been taught to love has such an important influence on how we will teach to love. As such, I will focus on intra-racial heterosexual, intimate/sexual romantic screen relationships, from the post-civil rights and feminist movements of the early 1970’s through the end of the century, and I will argue that they serve as a microcosm of community. I looked for some of the ways hip-hoppers have been taught to love.
Black representational media readings have historically been based in the reading of stereotypes. Stereotyping defines a way of seeing a visualized “other” outside of the flow of experience. Sexuality in relation to stereotyping blacks shall be important to this discussion.
Sexuality, particularly after the dissolution of the Hayes Code , is a major part of American film’s visual and thematic landscape. Black sexuality is peculiar because of its schizophrenic political and social history in reality and in the American imagination. D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation not only seared the American imagination with the use of innovative and groundbreaking film techniques (such as the introduction of the long narrative, the close-up, and the wide angle shot ); but also promulgated a set of Americanized racist stereotypes to a global audience, stereotypes which are still actively perpetuated and must be considered when discussing blacks in film. Descriptions of the stereotypical mammy and exotic primitive characters for black women and the brute Negro (who evolved into the thug) for black men are the most sexually charged of these still perpetuated visual images . Historically most stereotypical black portrayals evolved from literature to the stage to film and television screen. I am interested in exploring new images created by a people thinking of themselves in new ways.
Currently, loving relationships in the black community are fractured. According to M. Belinda Tucker and Claudia Mitchell-Kernan:
Between 1970 and 1990, the proportion of Black women who had married by age 24 decreased by half from 56% to 23%; while the proportion who had ever married declined from 83% to 63% …. Although there was a similar decline in early marriage in the general population (from 64% to 37%), the proportion of women in the general population who had ever married stayed the same (77%). Over the same period, Black divorce rates, as well as that of U.S. women as a whole, nearly quadrupled. However, since divorce was much higher among Blacks even in 1970, the 1990 differential is quite striking—358 divorces per 1000 women among Blacks, compared to 166 among women overall. African American women are also less likely than other groups of women to remarry after divorce or widowhood. The explosion in divorce rates is one factor in the greatly changed living arrangements of children. In 1970, just under one-third of Black children were being raised in single parent homes. By 1990, that figure had increased to 55% (compared to 25% in the general population) (“Understanding Marital Decline”).
As a result of economic, social, and political disenfranchisement, the images seen of blacks loving each other do not inspire romantic expectations and can subsequently lead to a lack of love in everyday life. I will present some examples of how fictional media images both emulate and propagate the lack of positive loving images of blacks.
Defining Black Loving Relations for the Hip-Hop Generation
I have defined loving relations as: a sexual relationship where emotional equality, reciprocal vulnerability, and communicative intimacy are apparent and motivated independently of the sexual stigmas and stereotypes of America’s “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy”.
Three separate ideas have informed this definition. I looked to bell hooks, first and foremost, for insight into blacks in media but also for insight into loving relationships in the black community. She also provided strong theoretical critiques from a cultural studies and feminist perspective. In hooks’ book Salvation the statement “If love is not present in our imaginations, it will not be there in our lives,” gave a title to this thesis and led me to further want to look into the question of filmic representation within, “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (53). “When it comes to issues of love, the mass media basically represent black people as unloving. We may be portrayed as funny, angry, sexy, dashing, beautiful, sassy and fierce but we are rarely represented as loving” (51). She goes on to mention the failure for blacks in positions of power to create “new images of blackness” that do not depend on the caring for whites – and caring for each other. This view includes the historic and economic realities of black representation in film: Black economic power and authorship means nothing if the product created only perpetuates oppressive racial stereotypes for the turning of a profit.
Secondly, Cornell West’s Race Matters provided insight into the distortion of black sexuality in the American (specifically) and colonial (generally) imagination as a method of control and propaganda of oppressed people. Sexuality is not something commonly discussed among blacks and in its most recent commodification –again- provides an easy visual. Cornel West states:
Black sexuality is a taboo subject in America principally because it is a form of black power which whites have little control- yet its visible manifestations evoke the most visceral of white responses, be it one of seductive obsession or downright disgust. On the one hand, black sexuality among blacks simply does not include whites, nor does it make them a central point of reference. It proceeds as if whites do not exist, as if whites are invisible and simply don’t matter. This form of black sexuality puts black agency center stage with no white presence at all. (125)
The current creation of images of black people in intimate sexual situations perpetuates standard racist stereotypes under the auspices of black agency. Although black sexuality has more visual accessibility due to music videos, music video production is still produced and controlled by mainstream capitalist interests. Those interests maintain the black body’s position as the same marketable commodity that has defined it since the first arrival of black Africans on these shores.
I looked finally to Anthony Giddens’ The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies for insight into the changing nature of intimacy in modern society. Giddens examines “the potentialities of the ‘pure relationship’, a relationship of sexual and emotional equality, which is explosive in its connotations for pre-existing forms of gender power” (2). The construction of gender is challenged by egalitarian sexual relations which redefine gender roles. I wanted to see how this dynamic of “pure relationship” transferred to the black community. Images of intra-racial, romantic, heterosexual relationships which move toward “pure relationships” are rare. It is easier to show sexuality -- it is tactile and more visually dynamic; and showing blacks in sexual situations is part of racism’s current subtle double entendre.
The Hip-Hop Generation
The generation of adults now 20-35 is the one most heavily influenced by hip-hop culture . Hip-hop began in the late 1970’s as a burgeoning musical art form and evolved into a “fad” that has lasted almost thirty years. The beneficiaries of the progress made during the Civil Rights Movement’s progress helped propel this grassroots urban music form into a now multi-million dollar industry. In his book The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture, Bakari Kitwana defines this demographic as:
…hip-hop generationers -- those young African Americans born between 1965 and 1984 who came of age in the eighties and nineties and who share a specific set of values and attitudes. At the core are our thoughts about family, relationships, child rearing, career, racial identity, race relations, and politics. Collectively, these views make up a complex worldview that has not been concretely defined.” (4)
The lives of hip-hop generationers (particularly those born between 1965- 1975) are not specifically marred by the same degree of racism the previous generations experienced. There are no social and legal Jim Crow laws, yet the racism they experience has more to do with class and its subtler social injustices and humiliations. At the same time, technological advances have created a mediated world driven by a global capitalism. “We live in an age where corporate mergers, particularly in media and entertainment, have redefined public space, the viewing public is constantly bombarded by visual images that have become central to the identity of an entire generation” (Kitwana 9).
Youth oriented means more television oriented. Movies are seen on television. Television remediates film, using Bolter and Gruskin’s adaptation of the word as “the way in which one medium is seen by our culture as reforming or improving upon another” (59). Coming of age with the VCR and the expansion of cable, watching films on television is normalized . It can be argued that this generation makes no real distinction between film and television. “Today, more and more Black youth are turning to rap music, music videos, designer clothing, popular Black films, and television programs for values and identity” (Kitwana 9). The batch of children born after 1965 entered a world their parents generation had created, and were learning themselves, leaving their children to either follow their parents’ baby boomer models of mating and courtship or learn it from the new media teacher- television.
Film as Social Teacher
The films discussed in this thesis present various ways that the media could be viewed as undermining black loving relations by creating black unloving images -- as well as images that can be read as loving. I believe it is not just that the same images have been recycled in newer clothes, but that the social contexts show men and women moving in such opposite directions that the space where they could express themselves lovingly is destroyed as well. In the chapter discussing relationships, the films chosen are an attempt to show sexual relationships that have shades of emotional equality, reciprocal vulnerability, and communicative intimacy.
I argue there are four interrelated points that describe how black unloving images are portrayed. The first is the distortion of black sexuality into a commodifiable transaction (such as that between pimps and whores; or masters and slaves) further legitimizing colonial mythologies. When the human body is reduced to the basics of its physical existence absent any interiority, the humanity of that body is more easily devalued. “White supremacist ideology is based first and foremost on the degradation of black bodies in order to control them. One of the best ways to instill fear in people is to terrorize them. Yet this fear is best sustained by convincing them that their bodies are ugly, their intellect is inherently underdeveloped, and their culture less civilized, their future warrants less concern than that of other peoples” (West 122-3).
Secondly, nihilism is felt throughout the black community but is acted out specifically by black males. Nihilism is defined as the “entire rejection of established beliefs, as in religion, morals, government, and laws,” and philosophically as, “the denial of all existence; rejection of objective reality or of the possibility of an objective basis for morality”. (“nihilism” def. 1 and 2) West furthers this definition of nihilism specifically in reference to the black community as “[…] the lived experience of coping with a life of horrifying meaninglessness, hopelessness, and (most important) lovelessness. The frightening result is a numbing detachment from others and a self-destructive disposition toward the world” (23).
The third point is abject materialism – as counter stance to abject poverty and as sign of middle class success. Contemporary black rappers’ celebration of possessing and obtaining material objects by any means necessary feeds not only their music video personas/performances but also informs the narrative of many films created for black audiences. Black women are often reduced to a series of body parts and are treated as objects that are easily replaced if male desire is unmet. On the other hand, black women use this as a way to gain some value from sexual transactions that they have no expectation of leading to committed relationships.
All of this contextualizes the fourth and final point: the lack of trust between black men and women. Based on history, observed behaviors and the reinforcement by the media, there is no space allotted black women and men to find a way to learn to trust each other. From music, to books, and largely the visual media of television and film, black women and men are constantly bombarded with reasons why they should not trust each other.
The chapters of this thesis are organized by the depictions of images from the point of view of black men; black women, and films that present their narrative from the dual sides, i.e. the “relationship”. In Chapter I, “Never Trust a Big Butt and a Smile” : Black Manhood, black men are represented as sexually compulsive, sexist, nihilistic thugs regardless of class. Sexuality and its performance has become the core of identity formation for the hip-hop generation. In Chapter II, “When Ya Say Ya Love Me It Doesn’t Matter- Goes Into My Head As Just Chitta Chatta” : Black Womanhood, black women are represented as sexually manipulative, emasculating and untrustworthy. Simultaneously, these same female characters are often developed in a way that supports sexist patriarchal models. In Chapter III, “Hopeless: Moving Past Postmodern Hip-Hop Adolescence”, the relationships in these films re-appropriate hip-hop’s superficial materialism and sexual manifestations. These images give examples of how the hip-hop generation is attempting to learn how to behave. The idea is to draw a line through the visuals created, discussing manhood and womanhood, and the interactions that should lead to family. In the Conclusion: “Where Do We Go From Here?”, the discussion of contemporary romantic images fuses music videos with film, highlighting the complex relationship hip-hop generationers were having with media representations of themselves.
This thesis will examine how loving black relationships are being portrayed in film, and will analyze the possible social effects of those portrayals on the marital/ committed relationship practices of the hip-hop generation . Loving relations will be defined as a sexual relationship where emotional equality, reciprocal vulnerability, and communicative intimacy are apparent and motivated independently of the sexual stigmas and stereotypes of, what cultural critic bell hooks commonly describes as, America’s “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” . Being a member of the hip-hop generation, I experience the daily assault not just on my black womanhood, but also my humanity. The images of male-female relationships that have been normalized are so pathological and hateful, creating such unloving environments, that I wanted to know where these ideas were formed. Though this thesis focuses mostly on film, the convergence of film and television (through cable, VCR’s and DVD’s) makes it necessary to mention the interrelated qualities of music videos and contemporary films. This thesis investigates how the hip-hop generation’s imaginations are fed.
This paper hypothesizes that the lack of visual representations of blacks loving each other (as opposed to simply being sexual objects), given that the media operates as powerful social educator, adds to the risk of a lack of loving in everyday life. Stories of courtship, romance and love have been storytelling fodder in some form since antiquity. The powerful yet seemingly invisible role of film and television as social educator has been greatly chronicled. Yet influence of film and television specifically on the hip-hop generation’s black sexual relationships is only recently being researched . There is still a gap in the body of research regarding black loving relations as an indicator of emotional well-being. Violence, HIV prevention and teen pregnancy are the general research catalysts to study media’s relationship to this particular age group as opposed to marriage or current interpersonal relations. This paper contributes to current studies using discursive methods regarding loving representations in order to analyze black film images. The visuals being analyzed have been chosen because of both their relevance to the body of black media images and their mainstream appeal. More obscure images, while interesting for scholarship, were omitted because of an assumptive lack of influence on the relationship practices of the hip-hop generation. I will analyze the selected films based on the romantic theme and plot in instances, as well as the driving forces of the film. The way we, the hip-hop generation, have been taught to love has such an important influence on how we will teach to love. As such, I will focus on intra-racial heterosexual, intimate/sexual romantic screen relationships, from the post-civil rights and feminist movements of the early 1970’s through the end of the century, and I will argue that they serve as a microcosm of community. I looked for some of the ways hip-hoppers have been taught to love.
Black representational media readings have historically been based in the reading of stereotypes. Stereotyping defines a way of seeing a visualized “other” outside of the flow of experience. Sexuality in relation to stereotyping blacks shall be important to this discussion.
Sexuality, particularly after the dissolution of the Hayes Code , is a major part of American film’s visual and thematic landscape. Black sexuality is peculiar because of its schizophrenic political and social history in reality and in the American imagination. D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation not only seared the American imagination with the use of innovative and groundbreaking film techniques (such as the introduction of the long narrative, the close-up, and the wide angle shot ); but also promulgated a set of Americanized racist stereotypes to a global audience, stereotypes which are still actively perpetuated and must be considered when discussing blacks in film. Descriptions of the stereotypical mammy and exotic primitive characters for black women and the brute Negro (who evolved into the thug) for black men are the most sexually charged of these still perpetuated visual images . Historically most stereotypical black portrayals evolved from literature to the stage to film and television screen. I am interested in exploring new images created by a people thinking of themselves in new ways.
Currently, loving relationships in the black community are fractured. According to M. Belinda Tucker and Claudia Mitchell-Kernan:
Between 1970 and 1990, the proportion of Black women who had married by age 24 decreased by half from 56% to 23%; while the proportion who had ever married declined from 83% to 63% …. Although there was a similar decline in early marriage in the general population (from 64% to 37%), the proportion of women in the general population who had ever married stayed the same (77%). Over the same period, Black divorce rates, as well as that of U.S. women as a whole, nearly quadrupled. However, since divorce was much higher among Blacks even in 1970, the 1990 differential is quite striking—358 divorces per 1000 women among Blacks, compared to 166 among women overall. African American women are also less likely than other groups of women to remarry after divorce or widowhood. The explosion in divorce rates is one factor in the greatly changed living arrangements of children. In 1970, just under one-third of Black children were being raised in single parent homes. By 1990, that figure had increased to 55% (compared to 25% in the general population) (“Understanding Marital Decline”).
As a result of economic, social, and political disenfranchisement, the images seen of blacks loving each other do not inspire romantic expectations and can subsequently lead to a lack of love in everyday life. I will present some examples of how fictional media images both emulate and propagate the lack of positive loving images of blacks.
Defining Black Loving Relations for the Hip-Hop Generation
I have defined loving relations as: a sexual relationship where emotional equality, reciprocal vulnerability, and communicative intimacy are apparent and motivated independently of the sexual stigmas and stereotypes of America’s “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy”.
Three separate ideas have informed this definition. I looked to bell hooks, first and foremost, for insight into blacks in media but also for insight into loving relationships in the black community. She also provided strong theoretical critiques from a cultural studies and feminist perspective. In hooks’ book Salvation the statement “If love is not present in our imaginations, it will not be there in our lives,” gave a title to this thesis and led me to further want to look into the question of filmic representation within, “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (53). “When it comes to issues of love, the mass media basically represent black people as unloving. We may be portrayed as funny, angry, sexy, dashing, beautiful, sassy and fierce but we are rarely represented as loving” (51). She goes on to mention the failure for blacks in positions of power to create “new images of blackness” that do not depend on the caring for whites – and caring for each other. This view includes the historic and economic realities of black representation in film: Black economic power and authorship means nothing if the product created only perpetuates oppressive racial stereotypes for the turning of a profit.
Secondly, Cornell West’s Race Matters provided insight into the distortion of black sexuality in the American (specifically) and colonial (generally) imagination as a method of control and propaganda of oppressed people. Sexuality is not something commonly discussed among blacks and in its most recent commodification –again- provides an easy visual. Cornel West states:
Black sexuality is a taboo subject in America principally because it is a form of black power which whites have little control- yet its visible manifestations evoke the most visceral of white responses, be it one of seductive obsession or downright disgust. On the one hand, black sexuality among blacks simply does not include whites, nor does it make them a central point of reference. It proceeds as if whites do not exist, as if whites are invisible and simply don’t matter. This form of black sexuality puts black agency center stage with no white presence at all. (125)
The current creation of images of black people in intimate sexual situations perpetuates standard racist stereotypes under the auspices of black agency. Although black sexuality has more visual accessibility due to music videos, music video production is still produced and controlled by mainstream capitalist interests. Those interests maintain the black body’s position as the same marketable commodity that has defined it since the first arrival of black Africans on these shores.
I looked finally to Anthony Giddens’ The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies for insight into the changing nature of intimacy in modern society. Giddens examines “the potentialities of the ‘pure relationship’, a relationship of sexual and emotional equality, which is explosive in its connotations for pre-existing forms of gender power” (2). The construction of gender is challenged by egalitarian sexual relations which redefine gender roles. I wanted to see how this dynamic of “pure relationship” transferred to the black community. Images of intra-racial, romantic, heterosexual relationships which move toward “pure relationships” are rare. It is easier to show sexuality -- it is tactile and more visually dynamic; and showing blacks in sexual situations is part of racism’s current subtle double entendre.
The Hip-Hop Generation
The generation of adults now 20-35 is the one most heavily influenced by hip-hop culture . Hip-hop began in the late 1970’s as a burgeoning musical art form and evolved into a “fad” that has lasted almost thirty years. The beneficiaries of the progress made during the Civil Rights Movement’s progress helped propel this grassroots urban music form into a now multi-million dollar industry. In his book The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture, Bakari Kitwana defines this demographic as:
…hip-hop generationers -- those young African Americans born between 1965 and 1984 who came of age in the eighties and nineties and who share a specific set of values and attitudes. At the core are our thoughts about family, relationships, child rearing, career, racial identity, race relations, and politics. Collectively, these views make up a complex worldview that has not been concretely defined.” (4)
The lives of hip-hop generationers (particularly those born between 1965- 1975) are not specifically marred by the same degree of racism the previous generations experienced. There are no social and legal Jim Crow laws, yet the racism they experience has more to do with class and its subtler social injustices and humiliations. At the same time, technological advances have created a mediated world driven by a global capitalism. “We live in an age where corporate mergers, particularly in media and entertainment, have redefined public space, the viewing public is constantly bombarded by visual images that have become central to the identity of an entire generation” (Kitwana 9).
Youth oriented means more television oriented. Movies are seen on television. Television remediates film, using Bolter and Gruskin’s adaptation of the word as “the way in which one medium is seen by our culture as reforming or improving upon another” (59). Coming of age with the VCR and the expansion of cable, watching films on television is normalized . It can be argued that this generation makes no real distinction between film and television. “Today, more and more Black youth are turning to rap music, music videos, designer clothing, popular Black films, and television programs for values and identity” (Kitwana 9). The batch of children born after 1965 entered a world their parents generation had created, and were learning themselves, leaving their children to either follow their parents’ baby boomer models of mating and courtship or learn it from the new media teacher- television.
Film as Social Teacher
The films discussed in this thesis present various ways that the media could be viewed as undermining black loving relations by creating black unloving images -- as well as images that can be read as loving. I believe it is not just that the same images have been recycled in newer clothes, but that the social contexts show men and women moving in such opposite directions that the space where they could express themselves lovingly is destroyed as well. In the chapter discussing relationships, the films chosen are an attempt to show sexual relationships that have shades of emotional equality, reciprocal vulnerability, and communicative intimacy.
I argue there are four interrelated points that describe how black unloving images are portrayed. The first is the distortion of black sexuality into a commodifiable transaction (such as that between pimps and whores; or masters and slaves) further legitimizing colonial mythologies. When the human body is reduced to the basics of its physical existence absent any interiority, the humanity of that body is more easily devalued. “White supremacist ideology is based first and foremost on the degradation of black bodies in order to control them. One of the best ways to instill fear in people is to terrorize them. Yet this fear is best sustained by convincing them that their bodies are ugly, their intellect is inherently underdeveloped, and their culture less civilized, their future warrants less concern than that of other peoples” (West 122-3).
Secondly, nihilism is felt throughout the black community but is acted out specifically by black males. Nihilism is defined as the “entire rejection of established beliefs, as in religion, morals, government, and laws,” and philosophically as, “the denial of all existence; rejection of objective reality or of the possibility of an objective basis for morality”. (“nihilism” def. 1 and 2) West furthers this definition of nihilism specifically in reference to the black community as “[…] the lived experience of coping with a life of horrifying meaninglessness, hopelessness, and (most important) lovelessness. The frightening result is a numbing detachment from others and a self-destructive disposition toward the world” (23).
The third point is abject materialism – as counter stance to abject poverty and as sign of middle class success. Contemporary black rappers’ celebration of possessing and obtaining material objects by any means necessary feeds not only their music video personas/performances but also informs the narrative of many films created for black audiences. Black women are often reduced to a series of body parts and are treated as objects that are easily replaced if male desire is unmet. On the other hand, black women use this as a way to gain some value from sexual transactions that they have no expectation of leading to committed relationships.
All of this contextualizes the fourth and final point: the lack of trust between black men and women. Based on history, observed behaviors and the reinforcement by the media, there is no space allotted black women and men to find a way to learn to trust each other. From music, to books, and largely the visual media of television and film, black women and men are constantly bombarded with reasons why they should not trust each other.
The chapters of this thesis are organized by the depictions of images from the point of view of black men; black women, and films that present their narrative from the dual sides, i.e. the “relationship”. In Chapter I, “Never Trust a Big Butt and a Smile” : Black Manhood, black men are represented as sexually compulsive, sexist, nihilistic thugs regardless of class. Sexuality and its performance has become the core of identity formation for the hip-hop generation. In Chapter II, “When Ya Say Ya Love Me It Doesn’t Matter- Goes Into My Head As Just Chitta Chatta” : Black Womanhood, black women are represented as sexually manipulative, emasculating and untrustworthy. Simultaneously, these same female characters are often developed in a way that supports sexist patriarchal models. In Chapter III, “Hopeless: Moving Past Postmodern Hip-Hop Adolescence”, the relationships in these films re-appropriate hip-hop’s superficial materialism and sexual manifestations. These images give examples of how the hip-hop generation is attempting to learn how to behave. The idea is to draw a line through the visuals created, discussing manhood and womanhood, and the interactions that should lead to family. In the Conclusion: “Where Do We Go From Here?”, the discussion of contemporary romantic images fuses music videos with film, highlighting the complex relationship hip-hop generationers were having with media representations of themselves.
I don't know why I didn't think of this before- Thesis Prelude
i have an entire thesis i need to have published and out there...
why not put it here. duh!! and i have to look at my friend's pictures and write stories from them. since i'm languishing in office hell, i'm trying to do something that doesn't involve eating. i'm bored gordeless and don't really understand how people do this. there is no sense of connection internally for me. i'm counting time when i have nothing else to do and this is an acceptable behavior because there's going to be times that there's nothing to do. it's inherent to the job. interesting. i learn so much about myself when i've been somewhere sitting for more than 5 days. when i'm not busy, i just want out. i can't imagine how the sitting and collecting money helps anyone and why would they want you to do it. just to be a body here? that sounds silly. worker bees must be more productive when they aren't miserable. and this place reeks of misery. sure it's one of the hippest trips in america... but my sweet lord.
why not put it here. duh!! and i have to look at my friend's pictures and write stories from them. since i'm languishing in office hell, i'm trying to do something that doesn't involve eating. i'm bored gordeless and don't really understand how people do this. there is no sense of connection internally for me. i'm counting time when i have nothing else to do and this is an acceptable behavior because there's going to be times that there's nothing to do. it's inherent to the job. interesting. i learn so much about myself when i've been somewhere sitting for more than 5 days. when i'm not busy, i just want out. i can't imagine how the sitting and collecting money helps anyone and why would they want you to do it. just to be a body here? that sounds silly. worker bees must be more productive when they aren't miserable. and this place reeks of misery. sure it's one of the hippest trips in america... but my sweet lord.
18 September 2005
Really?
i'm standing in times square, in front of 1515 broadway, watching kanye west's video for "gold digger" on a crystal clear movie theater sized screen in gorgeous HD. the video show beautiful, sexy, shiny, thin half dressed black women done up like pin-up girls. jamie foxx and kanye are just singing and the captions show the song lyrics "i'm not saying she's a gold digger, but she ain't messing with no broke niggaz"... hmmm. interesting. okay, oh, here come the girls again. so i look up and then i look at the street. these aren't the women i see walking down the street. only women coming out of 1515 even vaguely resemble these shiny, sexy, gyrating girls. the women i see are tired, overweight, run down, leaving work or on their way to work. they don't want to hear some spoiled brat pontificating the benefits of dating poor men because of the ambitious look in his eyes. but who are these women? who are these men? and why must i be subjected to this when i'm walking down the street or going to work. granted, i work at mtv this week, but i don't watch mtv in public. yet how can i complain about one of the most mediated spaces in the world being more mediated? because i can.
10 August 2005
my first time
i decided on my recent vacation that i now am looking for ways to create my own opportunities instead of "trying to figure out" what to do.
so i want to write?
well now i'm writing. and i get to write anything i want.
that's liberating.
not much, huh?
(whistle sound, rocking on heels)
uh, i can show some pictures of belize.
uh.....
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