Stephen Shearer is a San Francisco- based artist, musician, and self-appointed critic.
By Stephen Shearer
Slender Man: Why You Should Be Afraid of The Internet Bogeyman
Godzilla Is A Monster Hit Thanks To Our Collective Guilt
Did Our Idol Worship Drive Kurt Cobain to Suicide?
Can Neil deGrasse Tyson Inherit Carl Sagan's Role as an Advocate for Environmental Change?
Pussy Riot and t.A.T.u.: Two Sides of the Same Russian Coin
Miley Abramovic: The Artist Came In Like A Wrecking Ball
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"disqusTitle": "Slender Man: Why You Should Be Afraid of The Internet Bogeyman",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12537\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/06/24/slender-man-why-you-should-be-afraid-of-the-internet-bogeyman/slender-man/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-12537\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-12537\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/06/slender-man.jpg\" alt=\"Photo: mdl70, via Flickr\" width=\"640\" height=\"365\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/06/slender-man.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/06/slender-man-400x228.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: \u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/8459320@N03/7989638060/\">mdl70\u003c/a>, via Flickr\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Modern mysteries abound online. There were the\u003ca href=\"http://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2014/may/01/truth-youtube-mysterious-videos-webdriver-torso\"> 77,000\u003c/a> videos of colored rectangles and tones which appeared on YouTube this year. BBC and others compared it to \"numbers station\" spy communications. Someone on NPR even suggested aliens (\u003ca href=\"http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27778071\">turns out it was just Google\u003c/a>). Then there was the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370\">Flight 370\u003c/a>; the world watched, rapt, as the mystery unfolded and numerous hypotheses were put forth. CNN suggested aliens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Conspiracy theories and urban legends, though different forms of storytelling, operate in similar ways, and have a specific relationship to the belief or skepticism of their audience. These days, the meeting ground for the development of these stories is the internet, the new campground we all sit around. One contemporary urban legend, \u003ca href=\"http://theslenderman.wikia.com/wiki/The_Slender_Man_Wiki\">Slender Man\u003c/a>, has lurked in the virtual realms since 2009, but finally made national headlines when life tragically imitated art. With \u003ca href=\"http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/slender-man-second-knife-attack-linked-to-online-horror-character-9519485.html\">multiple \u003c/a>violent attacks earlier this month connected to Slender Man, the mysterious bogeyman of online horror fiction is now firmly in the zeitgeist (expect imitations of him to pop up in next season's horror films and crime drama TV shows).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Folklore often presents a facade of having always existed, or originating mysteriously in some ambiguous earlier time. Yet, digging beneath the surface, one finds that bogeymen such as\u003ca href=\"http://cropseylegend.com/\"> Cropsey\u003c/a>, recently documented lurker of Staten Island, and \u003ca href=\"http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Bunnyman_Bridge\">Bunny Man\u003c/a>, the axe-wielding legend of my own hometown, have origins in actual events. Today, online haunts replace the real world, and myths are no longer localized but related to online subcultures. Folktales have jumped from the campfire to the screens of our computers and phones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The paranoia over this new threat is reminiscent of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.spectacularoptical.ca/2011/09/the-greatest-pop-cultural-parental-scares-of-the-80s/\">heavy metal, Dungeons & Dragons, slasher flick, Satanism scares\u003c/a> of the 1980s, in which a handful of fatal incidents were sensationally reported. There were over-the-top headlines, court cases, \u003ca href=\"http://io9.com/5829171/when-geraldo-rivera-took-on-satanism-and-a-very-confused-ozzy-osbourne\">TV exposés\u003c/a>; books were sold, and movies were made. It's a long road to that level of national panic, and though Slender Man has just started, he has the internet to help him. Slender Man is a pastiche of folkloric monsters, and his stories are crowd-sourced fan fiction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the problem is not just disturbed kids confusing fantasy with reality; for those looking to share extremist views, the internet becomes a great equalizer of fact and fiction. One of the Las Vegas shooting perpetrators was \u003ca href=\"http://guardianlv.com/2014/06/slender-man-now-linked-to-another-teen-attack-and-las-vegas-cop-shootings/\">apparently a fan of Slender Man\u003c/a>; neighbors claim to have occasionally seen him dressed in a Slender Man costume. Both shooters were members of the \u003ca href=\"www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-vegas-shooters-20140610-story.html\">so-called “Patriot” movement\u003c/a>, and also attended a rally at notorious racist Cliven Bundy’s ranch. So here we have a tacit connection between two prominent contemporary folklore: fan fiction and conspiracy theories, both facilitated by online subcultures before then leaking out into the real world in the worst of ways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Las Vegas incident was one of an alarming number of shootings, widely attributed to stripped regulation of guns, and fueled by the fantasy that the federal government wants to repeal the Second Amendment. These are the so-called false flag conspiracies, which purport that each mass shooting is staged by the government, and cast Obama as the bogeyman. It is storytelling in the same way Slender Man is, interpreted widely and varyingly, depending on who the story is being told by and told to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As urban legends once thrived at slumber parties and conspiracy theories at clandestine basement meetings, there is now the web with its cultures, regions and territories. Unfortunately, the darker corners provide a space for commonly unacceptable beliefs to coalesce. There has never been a tool such as the internet to provide a forum for developing and fermenting ideas among the similarly-minded. Beliefs can be more extreme, because there is no existing social fabric in those realms to hold them in place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Is truth stranger than fiction? In the online sphere, it is increasingly difficult to discern the two, if even a difference still exists. We watch events transpire in real time, and become news; those of us participating in cultural production feed back into the story. Aliens abduct our airplanes, and horror fiction characters demand blood sacrifice from our kids. Meanwhile simple facts, such as more guns means more gun deaths, are obscured as political positions, which shows how far we've shifted away from empirical reasoning, and toward superstition. If we allow superstition to lead, we will follow down a dark path. Deep in those woods lurk the ghosts of those who strayed, who were hunted and tried as witches. Or at least those will be the stories we tell.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12537\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/06/24/slender-man-why-you-should-be-afraid-of-the-internet-bogeyman/slender-man/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-12537\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-12537\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/06/slender-man.jpg\" alt=\"Photo: mdl70, via Flickr\" width=\"640\" height=\"365\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/06/slender-man.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/06/slender-man-400x228.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: \u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/8459320@N03/7989638060/\">mdl70\u003c/a>, via Flickr\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Modern mysteries abound online. There were the\u003ca href=\"http://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2014/may/01/truth-youtube-mysterious-videos-webdriver-torso\"> 77,000\u003c/a> videos of colored rectangles and tones which appeared on YouTube this year. BBC and others compared it to \"numbers station\" spy communications. Someone on NPR even suggested aliens (\u003ca href=\"http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27778071\">turns out it was just Google\u003c/a>). Then there was the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370\">Flight 370\u003c/a>; the world watched, rapt, as the mystery unfolded and numerous hypotheses were put forth. CNN suggested aliens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Conspiracy theories and urban legends, though different forms of storytelling, operate in similar ways, and have a specific relationship to the belief or skepticism of their audience. These days, the meeting ground for the development of these stories is the internet, the new campground we all sit around. One contemporary urban legend, \u003ca href=\"http://theslenderman.wikia.com/wiki/The_Slender_Man_Wiki\">Slender Man\u003c/a>, has lurked in the virtual realms since 2009, but finally made national headlines when life tragically imitated art. With \u003ca href=\"http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/slender-man-second-knife-attack-linked-to-online-horror-character-9519485.html\">multiple \u003c/a>violent attacks earlier this month connected to Slender Man, the mysterious bogeyman of online horror fiction is now firmly in the zeitgeist (expect imitations of him to pop up in next season's horror films and crime drama TV shows).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Folklore often presents a facade of having always existed, or originating mysteriously in some ambiguous earlier time. Yet, digging beneath the surface, one finds that bogeymen such as\u003ca href=\"http://cropseylegend.com/\"> Cropsey\u003c/a>, recently documented lurker of Staten Island, and \u003ca href=\"http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Bunnyman_Bridge\">Bunny Man\u003c/a>, the axe-wielding legend of my own hometown, have origins in actual events. Today, online haunts replace the real world, and myths are no longer localized but related to online subcultures. Folktales have jumped from the campfire to the screens of our computers and phones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The paranoia over this new threat is reminiscent of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.spectacularoptical.ca/2011/09/the-greatest-pop-cultural-parental-scares-of-the-80s/\">heavy metal, Dungeons & Dragons, slasher flick, Satanism scares\u003c/a> of the 1980s, in which a handful of fatal incidents were sensationally reported. There were over-the-top headlines, court cases, \u003ca href=\"http://io9.com/5829171/when-geraldo-rivera-took-on-satanism-and-a-very-confused-ozzy-osbourne\">TV exposés\u003c/a>; books were sold, and movies were made. It's a long road to that level of national panic, and though Slender Man has just started, he has the internet to help him. Slender Man is a pastiche of folkloric monsters, and his stories are crowd-sourced fan fiction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the problem is not just disturbed kids confusing fantasy with reality; for those looking to share extremist views, the internet becomes a great equalizer of fact and fiction. One of the Las Vegas shooting perpetrators was \u003ca href=\"http://guardianlv.com/2014/06/slender-man-now-linked-to-another-teen-attack-and-las-vegas-cop-shootings/\">apparently a fan of Slender Man\u003c/a>; neighbors claim to have occasionally seen him dressed in a Slender Man costume. Both shooters were members of the \u003ca href=\"www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-vegas-shooters-20140610-story.html\">so-called “Patriot” movement\u003c/a>, and also attended a rally at notorious racist Cliven Bundy’s ranch. So here we have a tacit connection between two prominent contemporary folklore: fan fiction and conspiracy theories, both facilitated by online subcultures before then leaking out into the real world in the worst of ways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Las Vegas incident was one of an alarming number of shootings, widely attributed to stripped regulation of guns, and fueled by the fantasy that the federal government wants to repeal the Second Amendment. These are the so-called false flag conspiracies, which purport that each mass shooting is staged by the government, and cast Obama as the bogeyman. It is storytelling in the same way Slender Man is, interpreted widely and varyingly, depending on who the story is being told by and told to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As urban legends once thrived at slumber parties and conspiracy theories at clandestine basement meetings, there is now the web with its cultures, regions and territories. Unfortunately, the darker corners provide a space for commonly unacceptable beliefs to coalesce. There has never been a tool such as the internet to provide a forum for developing and fermenting ideas among the similarly-minded. Beliefs can be more extreme, because there is no existing social fabric in those realms to hold them in place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Is truth stranger than fiction? In the online sphere, it is increasingly difficult to discern the two, if even a difference still exists. We watch events transpire in real time, and become news; those of us participating in cultural production feed back into the story. Aliens abduct our airplanes, and horror fiction characters demand blood sacrifice from our kids. Meanwhile simple facts, such as more guns means more gun deaths, are obscured as political positions, which shows how far we've shifted away from empirical reasoning, and toward superstition. If we allow superstition to lead, we will follow down a dark path. Deep in those woods lurk the ghosts of those who strayed, who were hunted and tried as witches. Or at least those will be the stories we tell.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Godzilla Is A Monster Hit Thanks To Our Collective Guilt",
"title": "Godzilla Is A Monster Hit Thanks To Our Collective Guilt",
"headTitle": "KQED Pop | KQED Arts",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/05/19/godzilla-is-a-monster-hit-thanks-to-our-collective-guilt/godzilla/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-12176\">\u003cimg class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12176\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/05/godzilla.jpg\" alt=\"godzilla\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/05/godzilla.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/05/godzilla-400x225.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last Friday, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIu85WQTPRc\">the latest\u003c/a> \u003ci>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIu85WQTPRc\">Godzilla\u003c/a> \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2014/05/18/godzilla-million-dollar-arm-box-office/9242945/\">crushed box offices\u003c/a> across the country. Updated for the post-9/11, tsunami-prone era, this latest reboot from \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njeofv4dr9Q\">\u003ci>Monsters\u003c/i>\u003c/a> director and relative newcomer Gareth Evans brings epic mayhem to our beloved City by the Bay. Godzilla has lurked beneath our seas for ages, surfacing now and again to wreak havoc, punishing us for our sins, reminding us that we are not the ones in charge. We keep rebooting Godzilla, inviting him back to rampage again and again, like a soured affair we can’t break off. We like it that way; we get satisfaction from feeling guilt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Victim fantasy and guilt has played a role in monster movies since the beginning. In 1954, director Ishirō Honda devised a monster to represent the dangers of the atomic age by making \"radiation visible.\" Named \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1Rm3bnFxKs\">\u003ci>Gojira\u003c/i>\u003c/a>, Honda's creation turned into a Toho Studios franchise, destroying Tokyo again and again. Honda's more generalized meaning notwithstanding, Gojira's decimation of fishing vessels and attacks on Tokyo can only be inferred as U.S. actions (intentional and unintentional) against Japan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The nuclear attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 marked the shocking start of the Atomic Age. Lesser known is that in 1954, during the U.S.' \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Mg5exGIHSo\">Operation Castle\u003c/a> program, the most powerful thermonuclear warhead to date was \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5_9Gi7w19Y\">detonated at Bikini Atoll\u003c/a> on March 1. Due to miscalculations, the bomb was bigger than expected. Significant radioactive fallout ash was blown well beyond the declared safety zone, snowing down upon nearby islands and a Japanese tuna boat, \u003ca href=\"http://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2012/03/18/general/lucky-dragons-lethal-catch/\">\u003ci>Daigo Fukuryū Maru\u003c/i>\u003c/a>, or “Lucky Dragon.” The ship's crew was morbidly contaminated, and some members died later that year. The U.S. tried to cover up involvement; Atomic Energy Commission head Lewis Strauss accused the \u003ci>Lucky Dragon \u003c/i>of spying for the Soviet Union. During this same time, in a secret hearing, Strauss was muckraking the career of J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, to ruin. Then as now, secrets were federal currency, and Evan's opening credits sequence in the new Godzilla cleverly illustrates this with a motif of redacted documents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12167\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/05/gojiraandhonda.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-12167 size-medium\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/05/gojiraandhonda-300x227.jpg\" alt=\"Toho Studios\" width=\"300\" height=\"227\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ishiro Honda with Godzilla. Photo: Toho Studios\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Toho Studios' producer read about the \u003ci>Lucky Dragon \u003c/i>incident in the news, and set out to make a monster movie. Originally octopus-like, Gojira's reptilian design was derived from the successful 1953 Hollywood flick \u003ci>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9HxCkBYum8\">The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms\u003c/a>\u003c/i>, a monster closer to the realm of the anthropomorphic. The Tyrannosaurus Rex-like Beast, imagined by Ray Bradbury and designed by Ray Harryhausen, was thawed from arctic hibernation by a nuclear blast and traveled underwater seeking vengeance along the eastern seaboard. Gojira would trade stop motion, for a man in a rubber suit, trudging with a different kind of menace. Rising from the depths of Tokyo Bay, his arms flail in the waves as if mere presence is his enemy, the cause of his anger. When asked if there is a way to kill Gojira, Professor Yamane responds, \"Instead, we should focus on why he is still alive.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientific and political events awaken Godzilla from his slumber, and he is psychically compelled to act out our fantasies of self destruction, magnetically attracted to our guilt. Do we deserve this or want this? Our desires rage inside of us, and our guilt lays waste to our psyche, destabilizing our sense of place. We raze the natural world to inhabit an edifice, and we are gratified to see that edifice subject to disaster; yet even disaster must be personified.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Godzilla is a figuration of the nuclear blast, a visible rendering of radiation, uniting all peoples against a common threat. Godzilla is exponentially reptilian, a subconscious horror escalated. By contrast, King Kong is primal instinct; he takes what he wants, kidnapping the beautiful Ann Darrow while rampaging through New York City. It is the savage world taking revenge on civilization, punishing our desire for mapping the unknown, revealing our guilt for violating virgin wilderness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12170\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 400px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/05/godzilla_1954_poster_03.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-12170\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/05/godzilla_1954_poster_03-300x142.jpg\" alt=\"Toho Studios, via Geekexchange.com\" width=\"400\" height=\"191\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: Toho Studios\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The victimized urban citizens of Japan and the U.S., repeatedly attacked by monsters, clearly \u003ca href=\"http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8oqwe_destroy-all-monsters-1968-godzilla_shortfilms\">live in a dangerous world\u003c/a>; that we are alternately attacked and defended by the same monster throughout the franchise shows us to be victims in a perverse relationship, emblematic of the struggle between desire and guilt. Darren Aronofsky's bold, if misguided, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OSaJE2rqxU\">\u003ci>Noah\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> \u003c/i>recently updated the flood parable. Through this common myth, we learn a lesson: our ancestors were bad, they soiled the Earth, and a vengeful god cleansed that which was unclean. Geologic evidence may exist for global flooding events, but the myth's persistence is explained differently. Ultimately, a major event, destructive and natural, is to be read as punishment for man's evil ways. And so our iconic cities from Tokyo to San Francisco are regularly offered up for sacrifice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003cem>Godzilla\u003c/em> franchise is fiction, but that doesn't make our memories of it less real. Neuroscientist Daniela Schiller, \u003ca href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/05/19/140519fa_fact_specter\">profiled in last week's \u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/05/19/140519fa_fact_specter\">\u003ci>New Yorker\u003c/i>\u003c/a>, explains that realized memory is \"what you are now, not what you think you were in the past. When you change the story you created, you change your life.\" Memory is changed, updated by our experience, and Hollywood strives for nothing short of creating experience. Godzilla exists in our memories, individual and shared, by tapping into an exploitable resource -- the overwhelming emotions we experienced watching the spectacles of 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and tsunamis in Asia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And what spectacles they make on-screen. All throughout Gareth Evans’ \u003ci>Godzilla, \u003c/i>\"AMERICA UNDER ATTACK\" and similar headlines emblazon across the ubiquitous flatscreens. Godzilla travels by tsunami, inundating the cities he's saving. He tail-whips a flying Muto, who crashes into a building which looks like a shorter Twin Tower. F-15s fall from the sky, while aircraft carriers rise up out of the sea. Building after building comes down; one ultimately collapses on Godzilla. But, if history is any indication, he will rise again.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Godzilla acts out our fantasies of self destruction. Do we secretly want this?",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/05/19/godzilla-is-a-monster-hit-thanks-to-our-collective-guilt/godzilla/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-12176\">\u003cimg class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12176\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/05/godzilla.jpg\" alt=\"godzilla\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/05/godzilla.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/05/godzilla-400x225.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last Friday, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIu85WQTPRc\">the latest\u003c/a> \u003ci>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIu85WQTPRc\">Godzilla\u003c/a> \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2014/05/18/godzilla-million-dollar-arm-box-office/9242945/\">crushed box offices\u003c/a> across the country. Updated for the post-9/11, tsunami-prone era, this latest reboot from \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njeofv4dr9Q\">\u003ci>Monsters\u003c/i>\u003c/a> director and relative newcomer Gareth Evans brings epic mayhem to our beloved City by the Bay. Godzilla has lurked beneath our seas for ages, surfacing now and again to wreak havoc, punishing us for our sins, reminding us that we are not the ones in charge. We keep rebooting Godzilla, inviting him back to rampage again and again, like a soured affair we can’t break off. We like it that way; we get satisfaction from feeling guilt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Victim fantasy and guilt has played a role in monster movies since the beginning. In 1954, director Ishirō Honda devised a monster to represent the dangers of the atomic age by making \"radiation visible.\" Named \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1Rm3bnFxKs\">\u003ci>Gojira\u003c/i>\u003c/a>, Honda's creation turned into a Toho Studios franchise, destroying Tokyo again and again. Honda's more generalized meaning notwithstanding, Gojira's decimation of fishing vessels and attacks on Tokyo can only be inferred as U.S. actions (intentional and unintentional) against Japan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The nuclear attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 marked the shocking start of the Atomic Age. Lesser known is that in 1954, during the U.S.' \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Mg5exGIHSo\">Operation Castle\u003c/a> program, the most powerful thermonuclear warhead to date was \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5_9Gi7w19Y\">detonated at Bikini Atoll\u003c/a> on March 1. Due to miscalculations, the bomb was bigger than expected. Significant radioactive fallout ash was blown well beyond the declared safety zone, snowing down upon nearby islands and a Japanese tuna boat, \u003ca href=\"http://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2012/03/18/general/lucky-dragons-lethal-catch/\">\u003ci>Daigo Fukuryū Maru\u003c/i>\u003c/a>, or “Lucky Dragon.” The ship's crew was morbidly contaminated, and some members died later that year. The U.S. tried to cover up involvement; Atomic Energy Commission head Lewis Strauss accused the \u003ci>Lucky Dragon \u003c/i>of spying for the Soviet Union. During this same time, in a secret hearing, Strauss was muckraking the career of J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, to ruin. Then as now, secrets were federal currency, and Evan's opening credits sequence in the new Godzilla cleverly illustrates this with a motif of redacted documents.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12167\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/05/gojiraandhonda.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-12167 size-medium\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/05/gojiraandhonda-300x227.jpg\" alt=\"Toho Studios\" width=\"300\" height=\"227\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ishiro Honda with Godzilla. Photo: Toho Studios\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Toho Studios' producer read about the \u003ci>Lucky Dragon \u003c/i>incident in the news, and set out to make a monster movie. Originally octopus-like, Gojira's reptilian design was derived from the successful 1953 Hollywood flick \u003ci>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9HxCkBYum8\">The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms\u003c/a>\u003c/i>, a monster closer to the realm of the anthropomorphic. The Tyrannosaurus Rex-like Beast, imagined by Ray Bradbury and designed by Ray Harryhausen, was thawed from arctic hibernation by a nuclear blast and traveled underwater seeking vengeance along the eastern seaboard. Gojira would trade stop motion, for a man in a rubber suit, trudging with a different kind of menace. Rising from the depths of Tokyo Bay, his arms flail in the waves as if mere presence is his enemy, the cause of his anger. When asked if there is a way to kill Gojira, Professor Yamane responds, \"Instead, we should focus on why he is still alive.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientific and political events awaken Godzilla from his slumber, and he is psychically compelled to act out our fantasies of self destruction, magnetically attracted to our guilt. Do we deserve this or want this? Our desires rage inside of us, and our guilt lays waste to our psyche, destabilizing our sense of place. We raze the natural world to inhabit an edifice, and we are gratified to see that edifice subject to disaster; yet even disaster must be personified.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Godzilla is a figuration of the nuclear blast, a visible rendering of radiation, uniting all peoples against a common threat. Godzilla is exponentially reptilian, a subconscious horror escalated. By contrast, King Kong is primal instinct; he takes what he wants, kidnapping the beautiful Ann Darrow while rampaging through New York City. It is the savage world taking revenge on civilization, punishing our desire for mapping the unknown, revealing our guilt for violating virgin wilderness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12170\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 400px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/05/godzilla_1954_poster_03.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"wp-image-12170\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/05/godzilla_1954_poster_03-300x142.jpg\" alt=\"Toho Studios, via Geekexchange.com\" width=\"400\" height=\"191\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: Toho Studios\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The victimized urban citizens of Japan and the U.S., repeatedly attacked by monsters, clearly \u003ca href=\"http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8oqwe_destroy-all-monsters-1968-godzilla_shortfilms\">live in a dangerous world\u003c/a>; that we are alternately attacked and defended by the same monster throughout the franchise shows us to be victims in a perverse relationship, emblematic of the struggle between desire and guilt. Darren Aronofsky's bold, if misguided, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OSaJE2rqxU\">\u003ci>Noah\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> \u003c/i>recently updated the flood parable. Through this common myth, we learn a lesson: our ancestors were bad, they soiled the Earth, and a vengeful god cleansed that which was unclean. Geologic evidence may exist for global flooding events, but the myth's persistence is explained differently. Ultimately, a major event, destructive and natural, is to be read as punishment for man's evil ways. And so our iconic cities from Tokyo to San Francisco are regularly offered up for sacrifice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003cem>Godzilla\u003c/em> franchise is fiction, but that doesn't make our memories of it less real. Neuroscientist Daniela Schiller, \u003ca href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/05/19/140519fa_fact_specter\">profiled in last week's \u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/05/19/140519fa_fact_specter\">\u003ci>New Yorker\u003c/i>\u003c/a>, explains that realized memory is \"what you are now, not what you think you were in the past. When you change the story you created, you change your life.\" Memory is changed, updated by our experience, and Hollywood strives for nothing short of creating experience. Godzilla exists in our memories, individual and shared, by tapping into an exploitable resource -- the overwhelming emotions we experienced watching the spectacles of 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and tsunamis in Asia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And what spectacles they make on-screen. All throughout Gareth Evans’ \u003ci>Godzilla, \u003c/i>\"AMERICA UNDER ATTACK\" and similar headlines emblazon across the ubiquitous flatscreens. Godzilla travels by tsunami, inundating the cities he's saving. He tail-whips a flying Muto, who crashes into a building which looks like a shorter Twin Tower. F-15s fall from the sky, while aircraft carriers rise up out of the sea. Building after building comes down; one ultimately collapses on Godzilla. But, if history is any indication, he will rise again.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Did Our Idol Worship Drive Kurt Cobain to Suicide?",
"title": "Did Our Idol Worship Drive Kurt Cobain to Suicide?",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11773\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/04/07/did-our-idol-worship-drive-kurt-cobain-to-suicide/kurt/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11773\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-11773\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/kurt.jpg\" alt=\"Photo: Wiki Commons\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/kurt.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/kurt-400x225.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: \u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kurt_cobain3.jpg\">Wiki Commons\u003c/a>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left\">On April 8, 1994, the body of Kurt Cobain was found. It is estimated that he died three days before on April 5. The \u003ca href=\"http://www.theguardian.com/music/from-the-archive-blog/2014/apr/05/kurt-cobain-an-icon-of-alienation\">20th anniversary\u003c/a> of his death was \u003ca href=\"http://www.guernicamag.com/features/the-chemistry-of-an-echo/\">widely\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2014/04/05/299197941/weve-never-stopped-thinking-about-kurt-cobain\"> \u003c/a>commemorated, but the important day, the day we actually remember, is the day we found out. Was Cobain our\u003ca href=\"http://www.today.com/id/4652653\"> last great rock star\u003c/a>? Or was he in the right place at the right time for us to cast him in that role?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Numerous factors converged to define that particular era. Rock had arguably run its course. Grunge and college rock were like a dose of viagra in the Autumn years. Dubiously marketed as \"alternative,\" the totalizing commodification of punk rebellion kicked into high gear. \u003cem>Nevermind\u003c/em> pushed Michael Jackson's \u003cem>Dangerous\u003c/em> out of the Billboard number one spot. Cobain was widely perceived as rock's savior, embodying the angst of the time; this is a role he rejected, and the drama of his rejection further cemented the title. Cobain hated the attention, and felt that the pressure destroyed his creative process, and ruined his passion for the music. Our adoration drove him to ruin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 8th grade, I came across a writeup of Nirvana's \u003cem>Bleach\u003c/em> in \u003cem>Thrasher\u003c/em> magazine, which the reviewer dismissed as more of the same crunchy guitar sound from Seattle. Not knowing what that was, and not knowing any better, I took the review at its word, and moved on to news of a new Anthrax album. This was the early '90s, a cultural extension of the previous decade. Number one songs of the period were diluted simulacra of important subcultures -- glam rock wannabes like \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqP76XWHQI0\">Extreme,\u003c/a> family-approved R&B from NKOTB and \u003ca href=\"http://www.spin.com/articles/milli-vanilli-lip-sync-scandal-opera/\">Milli Vanilli\u003c/a>, and something approximating rap by \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JTF0_ZfDIk\">Vanilla Ice\u003c/a>. (In this fraudulent environment, \"Smells Like Teen Spirit\" \u003ca href=\"http://www.billboard.com/artist/312336/nirvana/chart\">peaked at #6\u003c/a> on the Billboard Hot 100.) But audiences listening to college radio and MTV's 120 Minutes were growing steadily. These were the new cool kids, slumped in \u003ca href=\"http://www.billboard.com/files/styles/promo_650/public/stylus/1200109-Charles-Peterson-grunge-10-617-409.jpg\">flannel and ripped jeans\u003c/a>, instead of \u003ca href=\"http://www.thestudiotour.com/ush/tvshows/beverlyhills90210/cast1.jpg\">donning silk and pristine blue denim\u003c/a>. Underground genres like grunge and hardcore were philosophically anti-fashion, and they came into the spotlight at the very moment fashion was at its worst. Nirvana looked like alternative music scenesters, those new arbiters of cool, the recently emerged, newly labeled Generation X.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"single-video\">\u003ciframe src=\"//www.youtube.com/embed/hTWKbfoikeg\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>One morning in 10th grade, \u003cem>Smells Like Teen Spirit\u003c/em> echoed through the halls at the end of the morning announcements. The song had significant buzz since some friends had seen the video on 120 Minutes. But my family didn't have cable, so this was the first time I heard it; alternative culture officially administered by my high school. I thought the loud parts were cool. The quiet parts were kind of whatever. It was pretty good, but I didn't quite see the big deal. But in the battle between mainstream and underground music, this was the shot heard round the world. In the 2001 VH1 special \"All Access: 25 Years of Punk\", David Byrne recalled hearing \"Smells Like Teen Spirit\" and thinking the punk energy of his era had finally returned. Ian MacKaye responded in an interview that Byrne was part of a music industry that had ignored an entire decade of underground music, because those subcultures didn't want to participate in the mainstream.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A couple weeks after first hearing \"Teen Spirit\", I bought \u003cem>Nevermind\u003c/em> on cassette, and was disappointed overall. With all the talk of Nirvana as the vanguard of the Seattle grunge scene, I was definitely expecting something heavier. \u003cem>Nevermind\u003c/em> was what we called \"weak.\" It wasn't a grunge album, and the flagship track was Cobain's attempt at \u003ca href=\"http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/kurt-cobain-the-rolling-stone-interview-19940127\">writing a Pixies song\u003c/a>. But it didn't quite sound like the Pixies either; Frank Black's self-aware humor was replaced with Cobain's self-conscious performative emoting. My naive teen self began to notice the discrepancy between how music was marketed and what music actually was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heavier kinds of alternative rock, such as industrial and grunge in particular, were, for many, a doorway out of an exhausted metal scene. As my own adolescent metal stage ended, I discovered music with a more nuanced approach to angst, like \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVCMLWtVN5E\">Fugazi\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxaPj19VnRA\">Ministry,\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNfbcSBib64\">Jesus and Mary Chain\u003c/a>. I was also a huge fan the little-known Meat Puppets. The raw, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKtGiLyka5A\">primitive punk\u003c/a> of their early albums spoke volumes about what music was and could be. Cobain must have felt the same way, because shortly thereafter, the Meat Puppets received long-overdue attention when he covered three of their classics in his performance for MTV Unplugged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"single-video\">\u003ciframe src=\"//www.youtube.com/embed/LL7bvt-o5D8\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>In the winter of my senior year, I left school one day, feigning illness, and gave a truant friend a lift to another delinquent friend's house. He popped \u003cem>In Utero\u003c/em> in the tape player for the ride, and left it with me. Now this was something I could get in to; \u003cem>In Utero\u003c/em> was heavier and far more experimental than I expected. This was the sound Nirvana was after. That tape stayed with me for as long as I had a car with a tape player.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cobain was dubbed \"The Voice of a Generation.\" Many counter that \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/14/opinion/journal-far-from-nirvana.html\">he didn't want that title\u003c/a>, but it wasn't up to him. Someone had to be the figurehead of these young, angsty slackers. Ultimately, he couldn't adapt. Cobain believed he was a slave to his rockstar status; that it had drained him of his passion for music, and that performing without passion made him a sham. Like many icons, he was troubled, inconsistent, and human in his time. His suicide reinforced his legend. He played the role he played, and that made him an icon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What do we do to our icons? We drive them to death. Celebrity adoration (like idol worship) carries with it a desire for public humiliation: to see the object suffer in life, and celebrated in death. Cobain was a martyred rock star for the masses, people for whom music was background. Rock music is another celebrity realm of stars and fairy tales, and Cobain was anointed our scion. Cobain's role in capitalist culture ironically took away the individuality of fate, making his fate subject to collectivism. The next generation has come of age being taught of his greatness, and that greatness becomes codified. This year, Nirvana will be \u003ca href=\"http://www.nme.com/news/nirvana/76524\">inducted to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame\u003c/a> alongside Kiss and Hall & Oates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A couple months after receiving \u003cem>In Utero\u003c/em>, my girlfriend and I ran into those same two friends at Bob's Big Boy, an empty diner where we often spent our evenings. \"You want to see something?\" My friend pulled up a strip of caulk from the wall, stuffed it through his nostril and strung it out his mouth, and squeegeed it back and forth. Later on, he said, \"Did you hear the news? Cobain's dead. He killed himself.\" We sipped our bottomless coffee and smoked cigarettes into the night.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11773\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/04/07/did-our-idol-worship-drive-kurt-cobain-to-suicide/kurt/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11773\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-11773\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/kurt.jpg\" alt=\"Photo: Wiki Commons\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/kurt.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/04/kurt-400x225.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: \u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kurt_cobain3.jpg\">Wiki Commons\u003c/a>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: left\">On April 8, 1994, the body of Kurt Cobain was found. It is estimated that he died three days before on April 5. The \u003ca href=\"http://www.theguardian.com/music/from-the-archive-blog/2014/apr/05/kurt-cobain-an-icon-of-alienation\">20th anniversary\u003c/a> of his death was \u003ca href=\"http://www.guernicamag.com/features/the-chemistry-of-an-echo/\">widely\u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2014/04/05/299197941/weve-never-stopped-thinking-about-kurt-cobain\"> \u003c/a>commemorated, but the important day, the day we actually remember, is the day we found out. Was Cobain our\u003ca href=\"http://www.today.com/id/4652653\"> last great rock star\u003c/a>? Or was he in the right place at the right time for us to cast him in that role?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Numerous factors converged to define that particular era. Rock had arguably run its course. Grunge and college rock were like a dose of viagra in the Autumn years. Dubiously marketed as \"alternative,\" the totalizing commodification of punk rebellion kicked into high gear. \u003cem>Nevermind\u003c/em> pushed Michael Jackson's \u003cem>Dangerous\u003c/em> out of the Billboard number one spot. Cobain was widely perceived as rock's savior, embodying the angst of the time; this is a role he rejected, and the drama of his rejection further cemented the title. Cobain hated the attention, and felt that the pressure destroyed his creative process, and ruined his passion for the music. Our adoration drove him to ruin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 8th grade, I came across a writeup of Nirvana's \u003cem>Bleach\u003c/em> in \u003cem>Thrasher\u003c/em> magazine, which the reviewer dismissed as more of the same crunchy guitar sound from Seattle. Not knowing what that was, and not knowing any better, I took the review at its word, and moved on to news of a new Anthrax album. This was the early '90s, a cultural extension of the previous decade. Number one songs of the period were diluted simulacra of important subcultures -- glam rock wannabes like \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqP76XWHQI0\">Extreme,\u003c/a> family-approved R&B from NKOTB and \u003ca href=\"http://www.spin.com/articles/milli-vanilli-lip-sync-scandal-opera/\">Milli Vanilli\u003c/a>, and something approximating rap by \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JTF0_ZfDIk\">Vanilla Ice\u003c/a>. (In this fraudulent environment, \"Smells Like Teen Spirit\" \u003ca href=\"http://www.billboard.com/artist/312336/nirvana/chart\">peaked at #6\u003c/a> on the Billboard Hot 100.) But audiences listening to college radio and MTV's 120 Minutes were growing steadily. These were the new cool kids, slumped in \u003ca href=\"http://www.billboard.com/files/styles/promo_650/public/stylus/1200109-Charles-Peterson-grunge-10-617-409.jpg\">flannel and ripped jeans\u003c/a>, instead of \u003ca href=\"http://www.thestudiotour.com/ush/tvshows/beverlyhills90210/cast1.jpg\">donning silk and pristine blue denim\u003c/a>. Underground genres like grunge and hardcore were philosophically anti-fashion, and they came into the spotlight at the very moment fashion was at its worst. Nirvana looked like alternative music scenesters, those new arbiters of cool, the recently emerged, newly labeled Generation X.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"single-video\">\u003ciframe src=\"//www.youtube.com/embed/hTWKbfoikeg\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>One morning in 10th grade, \u003cem>Smells Like Teen Spirit\u003c/em> echoed through the halls at the end of the morning announcements. The song had significant buzz since some friends had seen the video on 120 Minutes. But my family didn't have cable, so this was the first time I heard it; alternative culture officially administered by my high school. I thought the loud parts were cool. The quiet parts were kind of whatever. It was pretty good, but I didn't quite see the big deal. But in the battle between mainstream and underground music, this was the shot heard round the world. In the 2001 VH1 special \"All Access: 25 Years of Punk\", David Byrne recalled hearing \"Smells Like Teen Spirit\" and thinking the punk energy of his era had finally returned. Ian MacKaye responded in an interview that Byrne was part of a music industry that had ignored an entire decade of underground music, because those subcultures didn't want to participate in the mainstream.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A couple weeks after first hearing \"Teen Spirit\", I bought \u003cem>Nevermind\u003c/em> on cassette, and was disappointed overall. With all the talk of Nirvana as the vanguard of the Seattle grunge scene, I was definitely expecting something heavier. \u003cem>Nevermind\u003c/em> was what we called \"weak.\" It wasn't a grunge album, and the flagship track was Cobain's attempt at \u003ca href=\"http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/kurt-cobain-the-rolling-stone-interview-19940127\">writing a Pixies song\u003c/a>. But it didn't quite sound like the Pixies either; Frank Black's self-aware humor was replaced with Cobain's self-conscious performative emoting. My naive teen self began to notice the discrepancy between how music was marketed and what music actually was.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heavier kinds of alternative rock, such as industrial and grunge in particular, were, for many, a doorway out of an exhausted metal scene. As my own adolescent metal stage ended, I discovered music with a more nuanced approach to angst, like \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVCMLWtVN5E\">Fugazi\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxaPj19VnRA\">Ministry,\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNfbcSBib64\">Jesus and Mary Chain\u003c/a>. I was also a huge fan the little-known Meat Puppets. The raw, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKtGiLyka5A\">primitive punk\u003c/a> of their early albums spoke volumes about what music was and could be. Cobain must have felt the same way, because shortly thereafter, the Meat Puppets received long-overdue attention when he covered three of their classics in his performance for MTV Unplugged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"single-video\">\u003ciframe src=\"//www.youtube.com/embed/LL7bvt-o5D8\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>In the winter of my senior year, I left school one day, feigning illness, and gave a truant friend a lift to another delinquent friend's house. He popped \u003cem>In Utero\u003c/em> in the tape player for the ride, and left it with me. Now this was something I could get in to; \u003cem>In Utero\u003c/em> was heavier and far more experimental than I expected. This was the sound Nirvana was after. That tape stayed with me for as long as I had a car with a tape player.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cobain was dubbed \"The Voice of a Generation.\" Many counter that \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/14/opinion/journal-far-from-nirvana.html\">he didn't want that title\u003c/a>, but it wasn't up to him. Someone had to be the figurehead of these young, angsty slackers. Ultimately, he couldn't adapt. Cobain believed he was a slave to his rockstar status; that it had drained him of his passion for music, and that performing without passion made him a sham. Like many icons, he was troubled, inconsistent, and human in his time. His suicide reinforced his legend. He played the role he played, and that made him an icon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What do we do to our icons? We drive them to death. Celebrity adoration (like idol worship) carries with it a desire for public humiliation: to see the object suffer in life, and celebrated in death. Cobain was a martyred rock star for the masses, people for whom music was background. Rock music is another celebrity realm of stars and fairy tales, and Cobain was anointed our scion. Cobain's role in capitalist culture ironically took away the individuality of fate, making his fate subject to collectivism. The next generation has come of age being taught of his greatness, and that greatness becomes codified. This year, Nirvana will be \u003ca href=\"http://www.nme.com/news/nirvana/76524\">inducted to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame\u003c/a> alongside Kiss and Hall & Oates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A couple months after receiving \u003cem>In Utero\u003c/em>, my girlfriend and I ran into those same two friends at Bob's Big Boy, an empty diner where we often spent our evenings. \"You want to see something?\" My friend pulled up a strip of caulk from the wall, stuffed it through his nostril and strung it out his mouth, and squeegeed it back and forth. Later on, he said, \"Did you hear the news? Cobain's dead. He killed himself.\" We sipped our bottomless coffee and smoked cigarettes into the night.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Can Neil deGrasse Tyson Inherit Carl Sagan's Role as an Advocate for Environmental Change?",
"title": "Can Neil deGrasse Tyson Inherit Carl Sagan's Role as an Advocate for Environmental Change?",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11676\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 480px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-11676\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/03/sagan_tyson.png\" alt=\"Photo: Attack of the 50 Foot Blog\" width=\"480\" height=\"375\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/03/sagan_tyson.png 480w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/03/sagan_tyson-400x312.png 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: \u003ca href=\"http://turbosexophonic.wordpress.com/2011/11/23/m-a-s-t-e-r-s-carl-sagan-neil-degrasse-tyson/\">Attack of the 50 Foot Blog\u003c/a>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A passenger plane disappears mysteriously. The government is caught lying to us. Religious fanaticism dominates the airwaves. \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/world/europe/foes-of-america-in-russia-crave-rupture-in-ties.html\" target=\"_blank\">Anti-Western proclamations from Soviet stalwarts fill the newspapers.\u003c/a> Russia invades a neighboring sovereign country. Approval ratings continue to plummet for the US president, a Democrat. Families across America gather on their sofas to watch the latest episode of \u003cem>Cosmos. \u003c/em>This can only mean one thing: we have arrived in 1980!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or maybe 2014. Starting a few weeks ago, \u003cem>Cosmos\u003c/em> has been airing Sunday nights on FOX (\u003ca href=\"http://www.cosmosontv.com/\" target=\"_blank\">and streaming online\u003c/a>). This is not your parent's dusty old \u003cem>Cosmos\u003c/em>. This is a shiny new reboot hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson. Soft-focus skyscapes are replaced with crisp 3D asteroids, and dramatic cartoon sequences fill in for historical reenactments. But the biggest difference may be the politics. The original series packed a peaceful message of nuclear non-proliferation. Sagan brilliantly connected the possibility of extra-terrestrial life, of communicating with it and perhaps one day meeting it, to the necessity for nuclear disarmament. Couched in meditations on extra-terrestrial contact, Sagan's simplifying, awe-inspiring description of the big picture helped make him an icon of an expanded cosmic view.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fast forward to a new generation, a new existential crisis. For the last decade, action-packed edutainment like History Channel's \u003ca href=\"http://www.history.com/shows/the-universe/videos/universe-end-of-the-earth-deep-space-threats-to-our-planet\">\u003cem>The Universe: End of Earth\u003c/em>\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSUEOXEdHIw\">\u003cem>Sex In Space\u003c/em>\u003c/a> have narrativized our dangerous and erotic existence. Tyson's \u003cem>Cosmos\u003c/em> struggles to find an identity separate from those tropes while still entertaining viewers. It's hard for me to fairly compare the awe I felt watching the original series as a very young kid, and the near-permanent state of eye rolling I experienced during the first episode. The second episode was much better. But it left me wondering: Can Neil deGrasse Tyson be the Carl Sagan for our times?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or maybe a better question is: Does anyone remember Carl Sagan? In case you don't, here's a quick run-down. Carl Sagan was an accomplished astronomer, and a professor at Cornell. He was also one of the greatest communicators of science in the modern era. Sagan pioneered the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence in a time when E.T. communication was a given; all we had to do was pick up the phone. His groundbreaking \u003cem>Cosmos\u003c/em> series, which broadcast on PBS in 1980, explained to the rest of us just how big and crazy and small and hard to fathom everything really is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Cosmos\u003c/em> arrived at the start of the cynical Reagan years, but it was a product of the previous era. Scientific progress was sill in ascent, and a New Age zeitgeist permeated our culture. Carl Sagan lived in that era of progress, believing that government policy could be influenced by reason, and that the respectability of scientific fact knew no peer. In those days, the scientific community and much of the public rallied around the greatest threat to life on Earth: \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter\" target=\"_blank\">a nuclear winter\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tyson's world is more complicated. The nuclear winter scenario persists, but the likelihood is reduced since the collapse of the Soviet Union and subsequent economic globalization. Now we face multiple connected threats of more ambiguous culpability: industrialization, rising world populations, dwindling natural resources.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The political climate is likewise more complicated. As the \u003cem>New Yorker\u003c/em> noted\u003ca href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/02/17/140217fa_fact_mead\" target=\"_blank\"> in a recent profile\u003c/a>, Tyson served on a commission under George W. Bush, proposed the militarization of Mars, and occasionally buddies up with David Koch, just to keep the funding for exploration and research alive. These are people who have a reputation of being hostile to public funding for scientific research, and any scientific consensus counter to their economic interests. \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/science/billionaires-with-big-ideas-are-privatizing-american-science.html\" target=\"_blank\">\u003cem>The\u003c/em> \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em> recently reported\u003c/a> that research funding is increasingly private, suggesting conflict of interest issues and favoring of projects designed to support economic goals, as opposed to traditional pursuits of knowledge that support public welfare. In other words, when Tyson's outside his professional demeanor -- on \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/neiltyson\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter,\u003c/a> for example -- his left-leaning politics are no secret. But in the workplace, he knows who he's talking to and where the money comes from.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Consequently, Tyson's \u003cem>Cosmos \u003c/em>reboot is less overtly political. For example, when climate change is addressed, Tyson skirts the issue of responsibility. With a sense of humor and self-awareness, Tyson is a great communicator in his own right. His lectures and writing are peppered with wit, exposing the inaccurate and skewering the absurd. That comfortable cleverness could be quite useful. He has the opportunity to convey a powerful message the way Sagan used space, and by doing so, to become the inspiring, iconic science communicator of our era. So, what could that message be?\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"single-video\">\u003ciframe src=\"//www.youtube.com/embed/CtDMuj4Iq8g\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>Around the world, humans are burning coal, gasoline, and rainforest, polluting the atmosphere, raising temperature averages and generally making things inhospitable. We are pushing the world into a new geological epoch, and life, as we know it, is now at risk. Transitions from one epoch to another are often marked by mass extinctions, and signs indicate that may happen again. Can anything be done to stop this?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many of the world's citizens are calling out for greater leadership for this cause. This could be where Tyson steps in. By taking leadership on this issue, Tyson could reframe our experience from temporary to epochal, our existential crises from solitary to collective.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout his career, Tyson has stood for the superiority of scientific inquiry, in which facts are observable and testable, over other kinds of knowledge. In our current era, science and facts have been hijacked, reframed as political positions in service to economic interests. This undermines the function of science in rational decision making. Toward the end of his 2007 book \u003cem>Death By Black Hole\u003c/em>, Tyson speculates on scientific achievement as a national endeavor. He detects a sublime but mysterious force with \"the power to drive an entire nation to focus its emotional, cultural, and intellectual capital on creating islands of excellence in that world. Those who live in such times often take for granted what they have created, on the blind assumption that things will continue forever as they are, leaving their achievements susceptible to abandonment by the very culture that created it.\" This is happening now. Tyson can use his position on the national stage to push harder for the role of science in policy making, and to remind us that our amazing scientific achievements happen with public and civic support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On our Ship of the Imagination, we travel through time just as we do through space. Our mission: to explore the future. To the north, land ho! On a distant shore rises a thriving metropolis. From the shoreside skyscrapers and bridges to the farmland and wilderness in the hills beyond, it is the monument of civilization, in harmony with the natural world. And to the east, a dark squall looms.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11676\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 480px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-11676\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/03/sagan_tyson.png\" alt=\"Photo: Attack of the 50 Foot Blog\" width=\"480\" height=\"375\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/03/sagan_tyson.png 480w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/03/sagan_tyson-400x312.png 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: \u003ca href=\"http://turbosexophonic.wordpress.com/2011/11/23/m-a-s-t-e-r-s-carl-sagan-neil-degrasse-tyson/\">Attack of the 50 Foot Blog\u003c/a>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A passenger plane disappears mysteriously. The government is caught lying to us. Religious fanaticism dominates the airwaves. \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/world/europe/foes-of-america-in-russia-crave-rupture-in-ties.html\" target=\"_blank\">Anti-Western proclamations from Soviet stalwarts fill the newspapers.\u003c/a> Russia invades a neighboring sovereign country. Approval ratings continue to plummet for the US president, a Democrat. Families across America gather on their sofas to watch the latest episode of \u003cem>Cosmos. \u003c/em>This can only mean one thing: we have arrived in 1980!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or maybe 2014. Starting a few weeks ago, \u003cem>Cosmos\u003c/em> has been airing Sunday nights on FOX (\u003ca href=\"http://www.cosmosontv.com/\" target=\"_blank\">and streaming online\u003c/a>). This is not your parent's dusty old \u003cem>Cosmos\u003c/em>. This is a shiny new reboot hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson. Soft-focus skyscapes are replaced with crisp 3D asteroids, and dramatic cartoon sequences fill in for historical reenactments. But the biggest difference may be the politics. The original series packed a peaceful message of nuclear non-proliferation. Sagan brilliantly connected the possibility of extra-terrestrial life, of communicating with it and perhaps one day meeting it, to the necessity for nuclear disarmament. Couched in meditations on extra-terrestrial contact, Sagan's simplifying, awe-inspiring description of the big picture helped make him an icon of an expanded cosmic view.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fast forward to a new generation, a new existential crisis. For the last decade, action-packed edutainment like History Channel's \u003ca href=\"http://www.history.com/shows/the-universe/videos/universe-end-of-the-earth-deep-space-threats-to-our-planet\">\u003cem>The Universe: End of Earth\u003c/em>\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSUEOXEdHIw\">\u003cem>Sex In Space\u003c/em>\u003c/a> have narrativized our dangerous and erotic existence. Tyson's \u003cem>Cosmos\u003c/em> struggles to find an identity separate from those tropes while still entertaining viewers. It's hard for me to fairly compare the awe I felt watching the original series as a very young kid, and the near-permanent state of eye rolling I experienced during the first episode. The second episode was much better. But it left me wondering: Can Neil deGrasse Tyson be the Carl Sagan for our times?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or maybe a better question is: Does anyone remember Carl Sagan? In case you don't, here's a quick run-down. Carl Sagan was an accomplished astronomer, and a professor at Cornell. He was also one of the greatest communicators of science in the modern era. Sagan pioneered the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence in a time when E.T. communication was a given; all we had to do was pick up the phone. His groundbreaking \u003cem>Cosmos\u003c/em> series, which broadcast on PBS in 1980, explained to the rest of us just how big and crazy and small and hard to fathom everything really is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Cosmos\u003c/em> arrived at the start of the cynical Reagan years, but it was a product of the previous era. Scientific progress was sill in ascent, and a New Age zeitgeist permeated our culture. Carl Sagan lived in that era of progress, believing that government policy could be influenced by reason, and that the respectability of scientific fact knew no peer. In those days, the scientific community and much of the public rallied around the greatest threat to life on Earth: \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter\" target=\"_blank\">a nuclear winter\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tyson's world is more complicated. The nuclear winter scenario persists, but the likelihood is reduced since the collapse of the Soviet Union and subsequent economic globalization. Now we face multiple connected threats of more ambiguous culpability: industrialization, rising world populations, dwindling natural resources.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The political climate is likewise more complicated. As the \u003cem>New Yorker\u003c/em> noted\u003ca href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/02/17/140217fa_fact_mead\" target=\"_blank\"> in a recent profile\u003c/a>, Tyson served on a commission under George W. Bush, proposed the militarization of Mars, and occasionally buddies up with David Koch, just to keep the funding for exploration and research alive. These are people who have a reputation of being hostile to public funding for scientific research, and any scientific consensus counter to their economic interests. \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/science/billionaires-with-big-ideas-are-privatizing-american-science.html\" target=\"_blank\">\u003cem>The\u003c/em> \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em> recently reported\u003c/a> that research funding is increasingly private, suggesting conflict of interest issues and favoring of projects designed to support economic goals, as opposed to traditional pursuits of knowledge that support public welfare. In other words, when Tyson's outside his professional demeanor -- on \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/neiltyson\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter,\u003c/a> for example -- his left-leaning politics are no secret. But in the workplace, he knows who he's talking to and where the money comes from.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Consequently, Tyson's \u003cem>Cosmos \u003c/em>reboot is less overtly political. For example, when climate change is addressed, Tyson skirts the issue of responsibility. With a sense of humor and self-awareness, Tyson is a great communicator in his own right. His lectures and writing are peppered with wit, exposing the inaccurate and skewering the absurd. That comfortable cleverness could be quite useful. He has the opportunity to convey a powerful message the way Sagan used space, and by doing so, to become the inspiring, iconic science communicator of our era. So, what could that message be?\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"single-video\">\u003ciframe src=\"//www.youtube.com/embed/CtDMuj4Iq8g\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>Around the world, humans are burning coal, gasoline, and rainforest, polluting the atmosphere, raising temperature averages and generally making things inhospitable. We are pushing the world into a new geological epoch, and life, as we know it, is now at risk. Transitions from one epoch to another are often marked by mass extinctions, and signs indicate that may happen again. Can anything be done to stop this?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many of the world's citizens are calling out for greater leadership for this cause. This could be where Tyson steps in. By taking leadership on this issue, Tyson could reframe our experience from temporary to epochal, our existential crises from solitary to collective.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout his career, Tyson has stood for the superiority of scientific inquiry, in which facts are observable and testable, over other kinds of knowledge. In our current era, science and facts have been hijacked, reframed as political positions in service to economic interests. This undermines the function of science in rational decision making. Toward the end of his 2007 book \u003cem>Death By Black Hole\u003c/em>, Tyson speculates on scientific achievement as a national endeavor. He detects a sublime but mysterious force with \"the power to drive an entire nation to focus its emotional, cultural, and intellectual capital on creating islands of excellence in that world. Those who live in such times often take for granted what they have created, on the blind assumption that things will continue forever as they are, leaving their achievements susceptible to abandonment by the very culture that created it.\" This is happening now. Tyson can use his position on the national stage to push harder for the role of science in policy making, and to remind us that our amazing scientific achievements happen with public and civic support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11212\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/02/25/making-sense-of-russia-through-pussy-riot-and-t-a-t-u-sochi-olympics/pussyriot/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11212\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-11212\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/pussyriot.jpg\" alt=\"Photo: Igor Mukhim, via Wiki Commons\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/pussyriot.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/pussyriot-400x225.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: Igor Mukhim, via \u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pussy_Riot_by_Igor_Mukhin.jpg\">Wiki Commons\u003c/a>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>During the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, the cultural spotlight was shared by two girl groups presenting two contrasting views of Modern Russia. The official view, of a world power and respectable culture, were represented by t.A.T.u. Reunited to perform at the Opening Ceremony, the pop duo are Russia's most commercially successful musical export, and signify Russia's desire for respect. This made President Vladimir Putin proud of his country, and he shone the spotlight on them brightly. Another view of Russia, that of a society dogged by outmoded conservatism and governed by a repressive totalitarian, is blazoned by Pussy Riot. The punk rock performance art group also recently reunited, and brought their tactics to Sochi, to film a protest for their new single. This view disappoints Putin, and he has gone to great lengths to hide this view from the spotlight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You may remember t.A.T.u. as the controversial pop duo who brought alternative sexuality onto the international stage by making out and feeling each other up in the video for their 2002 hit \"All the Things She Said.\" You may have even bought the album. \u003cem>Blender\u003c/em> magazine declared t.A.T.u. \"the future of rock & roll.\" Inevitably, their sapphic desires were revealed as a stunt, and the gimmick wore off. t.A.T.u.'s popularity in the West waned, although they remained popular in Russia and Eastern Europe for almost a decade until their breakup in March 2011.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Five months later, a group of feminists with anarchist connections founded a new collective. Today, Pussy Riot are likely the most famous Russian band, while operating as everything but: performance artists; political theatrics; \u003ca href=\"http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/nov/15/pussy-riot-nadezhda-tolokonnikova-slavoj-zizek\">intellectual figures\u003c/a>; human rights activists. \u003cem>Forbes\u003c/em> magazine declared Pussy Riot \"the future of civil disobedience.\" But their status as a band remains, despite barely being one. Most fans had not heard their music until last week, apart from a handful of cellphone video documentations. You can't find them on Spotify, but you definitely know who they are.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As far as Vladimir Putin is concerned, Pussy Riot is attracting unwanted attention to his policies, while generating zero capital. Putin is engaged in a meticulous campaign to present himself as a conquesting strongman and a modern myth for Modern Russia. He \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21596580-beyond-spectacle-sochi-olympics-crackdown-russias-media-dreams-about-russia\">controls the media\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/22/world/europe/moscow-court-convicts-8-for-protest-in-2012.html?_r=1\">influences the courts\u003c/a>, decides whether \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/31/opinion/russias-oligarchy-alive-and-well.html\">businesses succeed or fail\u003c/a>. And he has enacted a bizarre and horrifying law \u003ca href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/06/russia-enforcing-gay-propaganda-_n_4737521.html\">banning gay \"propaganda.\"\u003c/a> After his second consecutive term, he strongly endorsed the election of fellow United Russia party member Dmitri Medvedev, generally regarded as Putin's patsy. After Medvedev's term was up, Putin was able to run for another term since it would be non-consecutive. When citizens protested the inauguration of his controversial yet technically legal third term, \u003ca href=\"http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/06/us-russia-protests-idUSBRE8440CK20120506\">he had them arrested\u003c/a> in Bolotnaya Square.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Putin's criminalization of homosexuality and harsh treatment of protesters were the targets of Pussy Riot's infamous \"punk prayer,\" titled \"Mother of God, Drive Putin Away\" and performed February 21, 2012, at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Dressed in their signature colorful balaclavas, Pussy Riot \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN5inCayfnM\">assembled at the altar and rocked out\u003c/a>. They were eventually \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN5inCayfnM\">subdued by security personnel, with much difficulty\u003c/a>. The Orthodox community, a close supporter and important voting block of Putin's United Russia party, was predictably outraged. Blasphemous, neon-colored feminists screaming in the sacred sanctuary? Something had better be done about that. So on March 3, Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich were arrested and charged with \"hooliganism\".\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The very next day, Putin was re-elected to a third term with a suspiciously high 80% of the vote. On May 6, the eve of his inauguration, upwards of 20,000 protestors took over Bolotnaya Square; a battle against police ensued and over 500 protesters were arrested. Seven months and a trial later, Samutsevich was released on probation, but Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were sentenced to prison camps in the \"Gulag.\" The harsh sentences made headlines in the U.S., and rallied pro-speech, anti-Putin activists in the West. The reaction in Russia was less controversial (\u003ca href=\"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/09/27/a_pussy_riot_letter_from_prison\">according to one survey,\u003c/a> 55% of Russians prefer \"order\" to \"human rights\"). The day after his 60th birthday, Putin declared Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova \"got what they asked for.\" With that problem locked away, Putin was able to focus on preparations for the coming 2014 Winter Olympics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As 2013 came to a close, the heat was on. Negative press was mounting around the world. First, the ongoing incarcerations, including the temporary disappearance of Tolokonnikova. Next, the gay \"propaganda\" bill. And now, criticism of the Winter Olympics preparations in Sochi. On top of that, there was the seizure on August 11 of a Greenpeace ship and detaining of its crew, the \"Arctic 30.\" Putin had to demonstrate his benevolence to the world. Enter Putin's amnesty law, dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the Russian Constitution. Just in time for Christmas, the law granted amnesty to Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova, and some of the Bolotnaya Square protesters, as well as scapegoated oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and the \"Artic 30.\" Gratitude was not shown; Alyokhina told reporters she would have refused amnesty if given the choice, rather than being forced to participate in Putin's PR stunt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just before the Winter Olympics, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina toured through the news outlets of Western Europe and the US. The media darlings' visit to New York culminated in a benefit show on February for Amnesty International, where they were introduced by Madonna at Barclay's Center. The next day, a mysterious open letter appeared on the official (but otherwise recently inactive) Pussy Riot website. The letter announced that Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were no longer members of Pussy Riot. Hinting at an internal dispute, it was pseudonymously signed by the nicknames of the group members, including (with the whiff of disinformation) the nicknames used by Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina. Both Russian and Western media jumped on this story without verifying the letter's provenance. Initially confused, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina refuted the letter a few days later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11208\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 320px\">\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/02/25/making-sense-of-russia-through-pussy-riot-and-t-a-t-u-sochi-olympics/0597dbb5-4b9f-47dd-8ee6-02e6c0505003/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11208\">\u003cimg class=\" wp-image-11208 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/0597dbb5-4b9f-47dd-8ee6-02e6c0505003.jpg\" alt=\"Photo: Interscope Russia\" width=\"320\" height=\"320\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/0597dbb5-4b9f-47dd-8ee6-02e6c0505003.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/0597dbb5-4b9f-47dd-8ee6-02e6c0505003-32x32.jpg 32w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/0597dbb5-4b9f-47dd-8ee6-02e6c0505003-64x64.jpg 64w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/0597dbb5-4b9f-47dd-8ee6-02e6c0505003-96x96.jpg 96w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/0597dbb5-4b9f-47dd-8ee6-02e6c0505003-128x128.jpg 128w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/0597dbb5-4b9f-47dd-8ee6-02e6c0505003-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 320px) 100vw, 320px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: Interscope Russia\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>At the Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony on February 8, t.A.T.u., the crown jewel of Russian pop culture, performed their hit song \"Not Gonna Get Us\" on the world stage. Lena Katina and Julia Volkova had been on separate trajectories, developing solo careers with the the occasional performance as t.A.T.u. But they were brought together again by Opening Ceremony director Konstantin Ernst. According to the \u003cem>New Yorker\u003c/em>, Ernst is \u003ca href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/02/the-man-behind-the-opening-ceremony-for-the-sochi-games.html\">\"the premier visual stylist of the Putin era,\"\u003c/a>\u003cem> \u003c/em>and through his leadership at Russia's Channel One network, that visual style has shaped the image of one nation under Putin. I missed the Opening Ceremony, but read that the t.A.T.u. performance was edited out by NBC for \"time\" purposes. (Perhaps because t.A.T.u. sang the original Russian version of their song, \"\u003ca title=\"Nas Ne Dogonyat\" href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nas_Ne_Dogonyat\" target=\"_blank\">Nas Ne Dogonyat\u003c/a>\", and NBC knows \u003ca href=\"http://www.tvguide.com/news/returned-bridge-viewers-1074256.aspx\">American audiences don't like subtitles\u003c/a>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not far from the Olympic Park, Pussy Riot took to the streets of Sochi. They were arrested on dubious charges of theft on February 18, and released the same day. The following day, they filmed a music video for their new song \"Putin Will Teach You How To Love.\" During the public performance, the group was assaulted by whip-wielding Cossacks. The whole attack was captured on camera, and the next morning, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjI0KYl9gWs\">Pussy Riot's \"protest music video\" was up on YouTube\u003c/a>. It seems nothing can keep them silent; not the police, not the corrupt legal system, not even a militia in ornamental costume. The world is listening now, and Pussy Riot will be heard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, as quickly as they reunited, t.A.T.u. broke up again on February 18, a week and a half after the Opening Ceremony. Citing a litany of personal disputes, Lena Katina stated in a vlog that she couldn't continue working with Julia Volkova. Any suspicions that the reunion was orchestrated on a flimsy premise were confirmed. Perhaps Putin's facade of the new Russia, so meticulously constructed and ringing hollow, will be proven unworkable. But who knows -- Mussolini famously made the trains run on time. \u003ca href=\"http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/rear-window-making-italy-work-did-mussolini-really-get-the-trains-running-on-time-1367688.html\">Except that he didn't\u003c/a>, and the myth persists regardless. And despite Putin's much-ballyhooed amnesty law, last week, eight of the Bolotnaya Square protesters were convicted with dubious evidence, on charges of rioting and violence against police. Seven were sentenced to four years in prison on Monday. Outside the courtroom, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were arrested, along with dozens of protesters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The day before, t.A.T.u. premiered their final, posthumous single on Russia's Love Radio. The title, \"Love In Every Moment,\" might serve as an ironic epitaph to the duo's disbandment. The original music video for \"Not Gonna Get Us,\" the song t.A.T.u. performed at Sochi, starts with mugshots of the duo and proceeds with the story of Lena and Julia escaping capture, fleeing to Siberia in a tanker truck, even running over their manager. Lovestruck, the duo sing the whole way as they leave a trail of wreckage. Toward the end of the music video, the girls climb out of the cab onto the roof of their getaway truck, and embrace each other as they speed blindly through a blizzard in the darkness. Russia pushes on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_auto_sidebar id=\"Hav8BImhMq5GdnjI8FvaUOv4rdLwBfra\"]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11212\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/02/25/making-sense-of-russia-through-pussy-riot-and-t-a-t-u-sochi-olympics/pussyriot/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11212\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-11212\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/pussyriot.jpg\" alt=\"Photo: Igor Mukhim, via Wiki Commons\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/pussyriot.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/pussyriot-400x225.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: Igor Mukhim, via \u003ca href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pussy_Riot_by_Igor_Mukhin.jpg\">Wiki Commons\u003c/a>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>During the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, the cultural spotlight was shared by two girl groups presenting two contrasting views of Modern Russia. The official view, of a world power and respectable culture, were represented by t.A.T.u. Reunited to perform at the Opening Ceremony, the pop duo are Russia's most commercially successful musical export, and signify Russia's desire for respect. This made President Vladimir Putin proud of his country, and he shone the spotlight on them brightly. Another view of Russia, that of a society dogged by outmoded conservatism and governed by a repressive totalitarian, is blazoned by Pussy Riot. The punk rock performance art group also recently reunited, and brought their tactics to Sochi, to film a protest for their new single. This view disappoints Putin, and he has gone to great lengths to hide this view from the spotlight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You may remember t.A.T.u. as the controversial pop duo who brought alternative sexuality onto the international stage by making out and feeling each other up in the video for their 2002 hit \"All the Things She Said.\" You may have even bought the album. \u003cem>Blender\u003c/em> magazine declared t.A.T.u. \"the future of rock & roll.\" Inevitably, their sapphic desires were revealed as a stunt, and the gimmick wore off. t.A.T.u.'s popularity in the West waned, although they remained popular in Russia and Eastern Europe for almost a decade until their breakup in March 2011.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Five months later, a group of feminists with anarchist connections founded a new collective. Today, Pussy Riot are likely the most famous Russian band, while operating as everything but: performance artists; political theatrics; \u003ca href=\"http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/nov/15/pussy-riot-nadezhda-tolokonnikova-slavoj-zizek\">intellectual figures\u003c/a>; human rights activists. \u003cem>Forbes\u003c/em> magazine declared Pussy Riot \"the future of civil disobedience.\" But their status as a band remains, despite barely being one. Most fans had not heard their music until last week, apart from a handful of cellphone video documentations. You can't find them on Spotify, but you definitely know who they are.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As far as Vladimir Putin is concerned, Pussy Riot is attracting unwanted attention to his policies, while generating zero capital. Putin is engaged in a meticulous campaign to present himself as a conquesting strongman and a modern myth for Modern Russia. He \u003ca href=\"http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21596580-beyond-spectacle-sochi-olympics-crackdown-russias-media-dreams-about-russia\">controls the media\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/22/world/europe/moscow-court-convicts-8-for-protest-in-2012.html?_r=1\">influences the courts\u003c/a>, decides whether \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/31/opinion/russias-oligarchy-alive-and-well.html\">businesses succeed or fail\u003c/a>. And he has enacted a bizarre and horrifying law \u003ca href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/06/russia-enforcing-gay-propaganda-_n_4737521.html\">banning gay \"propaganda.\"\u003c/a> After his second consecutive term, he strongly endorsed the election of fellow United Russia party member Dmitri Medvedev, generally regarded as Putin's patsy. After Medvedev's term was up, Putin was able to run for another term since it would be non-consecutive. When citizens protested the inauguration of his controversial yet technically legal third term, \u003ca href=\"http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/06/us-russia-protests-idUSBRE8440CK20120506\">he had them arrested\u003c/a> in Bolotnaya Square.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Putin's criminalization of homosexuality and harsh treatment of protesters were the targets of Pussy Riot's infamous \"punk prayer,\" titled \"Mother of God, Drive Putin Away\" and performed February 21, 2012, at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Dressed in their signature colorful balaclavas, Pussy Riot \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN5inCayfnM\">assembled at the altar and rocked out\u003c/a>. They were eventually \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN5inCayfnM\">subdued by security personnel, with much difficulty\u003c/a>. The Orthodox community, a close supporter and important voting block of Putin's United Russia party, was predictably outraged. Blasphemous, neon-colored feminists screaming in the sacred sanctuary? Something had better be done about that. So on March 3, Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich were arrested and charged with \"hooliganism\".\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The very next day, Putin was re-elected to a third term with a suspiciously high 80% of the vote. On May 6, the eve of his inauguration, upwards of 20,000 protestors took over Bolotnaya Square; a battle against police ensued and over 500 protesters were arrested. Seven months and a trial later, Samutsevich was released on probation, but Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were sentenced to prison camps in the \"Gulag.\" The harsh sentences made headlines in the U.S., and rallied pro-speech, anti-Putin activists in the West. The reaction in Russia was less controversial (\u003ca href=\"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/09/27/a_pussy_riot_letter_from_prison\">according to one survey,\u003c/a> 55% of Russians prefer \"order\" to \"human rights\"). The day after his 60th birthday, Putin declared Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova \"got what they asked for.\" With that problem locked away, Putin was able to focus on preparations for the coming 2014 Winter Olympics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As 2013 came to a close, the heat was on. Negative press was mounting around the world. First, the ongoing incarcerations, including the temporary disappearance of Tolokonnikova. Next, the gay \"propaganda\" bill. And now, criticism of the Winter Olympics preparations in Sochi. On top of that, there was the seizure on August 11 of a Greenpeace ship and detaining of its crew, the \"Arctic 30.\" Putin had to demonstrate his benevolence to the world. Enter Putin's amnesty law, dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the Russian Constitution. Just in time for Christmas, the law granted amnesty to Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova, and some of the Bolotnaya Square protesters, as well as scapegoated oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and the \"Artic 30.\" Gratitude was not shown; Alyokhina told reporters she would have refused amnesty if given the choice, rather than being forced to participate in Putin's PR stunt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just before the Winter Olympics, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina toured through the news outlets of Western Europe and the US. The media darlings' visit to New York culminated in a benefit show on February for Amnesty International, where they were introduced by Madonna at Barclay's Center. The next day, a mysterious open letter appeared on the official (but otherwise recently inactive) Pussy Riot website. The letter announced that Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were no longer members of Pussy Riot. Hinting at an internal dispute, it was pseudonymously signed by the nicknames of the group members, including (with the whiff of disinformation) the nicknames used by Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina. Both Russian and Western media jumped on this story without verifying the letter's provenance. Initially confused, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina refuted the letter a few days later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11208\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 320px\">\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/02/25/making-sense-of-russia-through-pussy-riot-and-t-a-t-u-sochi-olympics/0597dbb5-4b9f-47dd-8ee6-02e6c0505003/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-11208\">\u003cimg class=\" wp-image-11208 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/0597dbb5-4b9f-47dd-8ee6-02e6c0505003.jpg\" alt=\"Photo: Interscope Russia\" width=\"320\" height=\"320\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/0597dbb5-4b9f-47dd-8ee6-02e6c0505003.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/0597dbb5-4b9f-47dd-8ee6-02e6c0505003-32x32.jpg 32w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/0597dbb5-4b9f-47dd-8ee6-02e6c0505003-64x64.jpg 64w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/0597dbb5-4b9f-47dd-8ee6-02e6c0505003-96x96.jpg 96w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/0597dbb5-4b9f-47dd-8ee6-02e6c0505003-128x128.jpg 128w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/0597dbb5-4b9f-47dd-8ee6-02e6c0505003-75x75.jpg 75w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 320px) 100vw, 320px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: Interscope Russia\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>At the Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony on February 8, t.A.T.u., the crown jewel of Russian pop culture, performed their hit song \"Not Gonna Get Us\" on the world stage. Lena Katina and Julia Volkova had been on separate trajectories, developing solo careers with the the occasional performance as t.A.T.u. But they were brought together again by Opening Ceremony director Konstantin Ernst. According to the \u003cem>New Yorker\u003c/em>, Ernst is \u003ca href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/02/the-man-behind-the-opening-ceremony-for-the-sochi-games.html\">\"the premier visual stylist of the Putin era,\"\u003c/a>\u003cem> \u003c/em>and through his leadership at Russia's Channel One network, that visual style has shaped the image of one nation under Putin. I missed the Opening Ceremony, but read that the t.A.T.u. performance was edited out by NBC for \"time\" purposes. (Perhaps because t.A.T.u. sang the original Russian version of their song, \"\u003ca title=\"Nas Ne Dogonyat\" href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nas_Ne_Dogonyat\" target=\"_blank\">Nas Ne Dogonyat\u003c/a>\", and NBC knows \u003ca href=\"http://www.tvguide.com/news/returned-bridge-viewers-1074256.aspx\">American audiences don't like subtitles\u003c/a>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not far from the Olympic Park, Pussy Riot took to the streets of Sochi. They were arrested on dubious charges of theft on February 18, and released the same day. The following day, they filmed a music video for their new song \"Putin Will Teach You How To Love.\" During the public performance, the group was assaulted by whip-wielding Cossacks. The whole attack was captured on camera, and the next morning, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjI0KYl9gWs\">Pussy Riot's \"protest music video\" was up on YouTube\u003c/a>. It seems nothing can keep them silent; not the police, not the corrupt legal system, not even a militia in ornamental costume. The world is listening now, and Pussy Riot will be heard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, as quickly as they reunited, t.A.T.u. broke up again on February 18, a week and a half after the Opening Ceremony. Citing a litany of personal disputes, Lena Katina stated in a vlog that she couldn't continue working with Julia Volkova. Any suspicions that the reunion was orchestrated on a flimsy premise were confirmed. Perhaps Putin's facade of the new Russia, so meticulously constructed and ringing hollow, will be proven unworkable. But who knows -- Mussolini famously made the trains run on time. \u003ca href=\"http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/rear-window-making-italy-work-did-mussolini-really-get-the-trains-running-on-time-1367688.html\">Except that he didn't\u003c/a>, and the myth persists regardless. And despite Putin's much-ballyhooed amnesty law, last week, eight of the Bolotnaya Square protesters were convicted with dubious evidence, on charges of rioting and violence against police. Seven were sentenced to four years in prison on Monday. Outside the courtroom, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were arrested, along with dozens of protesters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The day before, t.A.T.u. premiered their final, posthumous single on Russia's Love Radio. The title, \"Love In Every Moment,\" might serve as an ironic epitaph to the duo's disbandment. The original music video for \"Not Gonna Get Us,\" the song t.A.T.u. performed at Sochi, starts with mugshots of the duo and proceeds with the story of Lena and Julia escaping capture, fleeing to Siberia in a tanker truck, even running over their manager. Lovestruck, the duo sing the whole way as they leave a trail of wreckage. Toward the end of the music video, the girls climb out of the cab onto the roof of their getaway truck, and embrace each other as they speed blindly through a blizzard in the darkness. Russia pushes on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"disqusTitle": "Miley Abramovic: The Artist Came In Like A Wrecking Ball",
"title": "Miley Abramovic: The Artist Came In Like A Wrecking Ball",
"headTitle": "KQED Pop | KQED Arts",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10938\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 717px\">\u003cimg class=\" wp-image-10938 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/mm_leather-1024x681.jpg\" alt=\"m&m_leather\" width=\"717\" height=\"477\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: Stephen Shearer; \u003ca href=\"http://www.gotceleb.com/miley-cyrus-by-brian-bowen-smith-photoshoot-2014-01-11.html/miley-cyrus-brian-bowen-smith-photoshoot-21\">Brian Bowen Smith\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/t-magazine/28well-abramovic.html\">Jean-Baptiste Mondino\u003c/a>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>2013 was a breakout year for Pop's latest wild child Miley Cyrus, having shed her G-rated image for a new, more mature direction. Hardly a week went by without a controversy -- butchering her hair, dropping Molly and marijuana references, twerking on live TV, NSFW fashion shoots -- each one making plain that Miley is not your tween role model anymore. We may dismiss her viewer provocation, exploitation of sexuality, and self-destructive tendencies as headline-grabbing antics, but perhaps there's more going on here. Similar tactics have been used by contemporary artist Marina Abramovic, the \"grandmother of performance art.\" Marina also had a stellar 2013, founding a performance art institute, starring in an opera about her death, writing James Franco's biography, and most famously, inspiring \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMG2oNqBy-Y\">Jay-Z's recent video for \"Picasso Baby.\"\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If your reaction is \"Marina who?\" then here's a brief introduction. Marina Abramovic made a name for herself in the anarchic heyday of Performance Art in the 1970s as an ultra-serious zealot. Performances such as her seminal \u003cem>Rhythm\u003c/em> series were notorious for the dangerous circumstances she devised, and her endurance of self-imposed penances. In her legendary work \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://vimeo.com/71952791\" target=\"_blank\">Rhythm 0\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003cem> \u003c/em>(1974), Marina offered spectators the opportunity to pleasure or harm her naked body with a myriad of objects ranging from a feather to a loaded gun, which audience members proceeded to do. Fast forward to 2010: for \u003cem>The Artist is Present\u003c/em>, a work staged at the MoMA in conjunction with a career survey and \u003ca href=\"http://marinafilm.com/\" target=\"_blank\">documented by HBO\u003c/a>, Marina silently locked eyes, one at a time, with hundreds of thousands of spectators queued up over three months (736 hours total).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Marina is taking advantage of her fame while making a significant shift in her career with some high-profile celebrity collaborations. On the heels of her MoMA show, Marina has found her brand in demand by Lady Gaga, James Franco, and Jay-Z. For his \"\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMG2oNqBy-Y\" target=\"_blank\">Picasso Baby\" music video\u003c/a>, Jay-Z reinterpreted Marina's \u003cem>The Artist Is Present\u003c/em> at Pace Gallery, featuring himself as the Artist, rapping and strutting, and casting Marina as one of many reveling VIP participants. \"Picasso Baby\" is subtitled \"A Performance Art Video,\" but is it performance art, a music video, a hybrid?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Caught off guard, viewers often don't know what to make of these new hybrids. (Critic Jerry Saltz, who was in attendance, \u003ca href=\"http://www.vulture.com/2013/07/jerry-saltz-face-to-face-with-jay-z.html\" target=\"_blank\">went in skeptical and left \"elated\"\u003c/a>.) When artists long for celebrity fame and pop stars flaunt Art World cred, traditionally separate frameworks of interpretation break down and merge together. The Art World badge gives an aura of seriousness to celebrity bearers, but perhaps it's not necessary anymore, if the boundary between the two worlds is so porous. Perhaps we can stretch out this broad hybridized pop/art framework a bit further, to reevaluate work lacking that aura of seriousness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10937\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 737px\">\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/02/05/miley-abramovic-the-artist-came-in-like-a-wrecking-ball/mm_crying/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-10937\">\u003cimg class=\" wp-image-10937 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/mm_crying-1024x512.jpg\" alt=\"m&m_crying\" width=\"737\" height=\"369\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: Stephen Shearer; \u003cem>Happy Christmas\u003c/em> by Marina Abramovic and \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My2FRPA3Gf8\">still from \"Wrecking Ball,\" directed by Terry Richardson\u003c/a>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2013/sep/10/miley-cyrus-wrecking-ball\" target=\"_blank\">\"Wrecking Ball\"\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2013/sep/10/miley-cyrus-wrecking-ball\" target=\"_blank\">is the centerpiece of Miley's campaign\u003c/a> to reinvent herself. The video has been written off by some critics for its overt raunchiness, but let's ignore that bias and consider the work from a different perspective. When compared to Marina's \u003cem>Rhythm\u003c/em> series (specifically \u003cem>Rhythm 0\u003c/em>), some interesting parallels emerge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The basic elements of \"Wrecking Ball\" -- a nude female, some dangerous tools, and a set built for us to see destroyed -- comprise a \u003cem>mise-en-scène\u003c/em> reminiscent of Marina's \u003cem>Rhythm\u003c/em> series. The action takes place in a bare, minimalist cinder block room -- a kind of \"white cube\" gallery space -- decorated and atmospherically hardened by icons of hands-on demolition, a sledge hammer, a wrecking ball, and concrete detritus. Marina's \u003cem>Rhythm\u003c/em> series turned the gallery space into a variety of dangerous environments, experimenting with different kinds of threats: environmental (such as \u003ca href=\"http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/artwork/5190\" target=\"_blank\">the burning star of \u003cem>Rhythm 5\u003c/em>,\u003c/a> inside of which Marina nearly asphyxiated); social (the audience of \u003cem>Rhythm 0\u003c/em>); self-destructive (\u003ca href=\"http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2010/03/24/listening-to-marina-abramovic-rhythm-10\" target=\"_blank\">cutting herself with a knife in \u003cem>Rhythm 10\u003c/em>\u003c/a>). \u003cem>Rhythm 0\u003c/em> in particular is notable for its use of conventional tools appropriated as weapons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10970\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 765px\">\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/02/05/miley-abramovic-the-artist-came-in-like-a-wrecking-ball/mm_show3-2/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-10970\">\u003cimg class=\" wp-image-10970 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/mm_show31.jpg\" alt=\"m&m_show3\" width=\"765\" height=\"382\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/mm_show31.jpg 956w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/mm_show31-400x200.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/mm_show31-800x400.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 765px) 100vw, 765px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: Stephen Shearer; \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My2FRPA3Gf8\">still from \"Wrecking Ball,\" directed by Terry Richardson\u003c/a> and \u003cem>Rhythm 0\u003c/em> (1974) by Marina Abramovic\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Miley appears scantily dressed or completely nude in a variety of vignettes: getting friendly with a sledgehammer, bareback riding a wrecking ball, walking toward the viewer during the demolition, or writhing on the rubble. Performing nude is a familiar trope of Marina's: a challenge to perceptions of vulnerability. That same purpose is narratively served for Miley. Her nudity is part of her power over us, to whom she was previously victim.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Through the sexual innuendo of her performance, Miley spins the tale of our breakup to us, with a gaze punctuated by tears. As the wrecking ball slams into cinder block, bringing down the walls, Miley walks toward us in a seductive confrontation. We wrecked her, and now she wrecks us. In \u003cem>Rhythm 0,\u003c/em> Marina put everything on the line,\u003cem> \u003c/em>revealing the mixture of fetish, misogyny, and appetite for violence in her audience. Some pleasuring did occur at the audience's hands, but the part we remember and talk about is the\u003ca href=\"http://writingtoinform.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/rhytm-0.jpg?w=323\" target=\"_blank\"> loaded gun held to her head at the end\u003c/a>. \"Wrecking Ball\" offers us the vicarious experience of Miley's seduction, her revenge, and her self-destruction, while at the same time, we become Miley's tormentor as she sings to us; Marina's stripped-down relational aesthetics reverberating through the fourth wall. Miley put it all on the line for us, and we didn't realize how far she would go, taking us down with her in a blaze of glory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10936\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 819px\">\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/02/05/miley-abramovic-the-artist-came-in-like-a-wrecking-ball/mm_artist/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-10936\">\u003cimg class=\" wp-image-10936 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/mm_artist-1024x302.jpg\" alt=\"m&m_artist\" width=\"819\" height=\"242\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: Stephen Shearer; \u003ca href=\"http://rancinan.com/PICTURES/Pictures_-_RANCINAN/PICTURE_52_-_RANCINAN.html\">Gerard Rancinan\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My2FRPA3Gf8\">still from \"Wrecking Ball,\" directed by Terry Richardson\u003c/a>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>We may speculate that the full nudity was at director Terry Richardson's behest, but Miley's general objectification in \"Wrecking Ball\" seems like her decision, part of her new identity, and the key to realizing this is understanding that we sexualize her only when \u003cem>she \u003c/em>says so. For her follow-up interview with Barbara Walters, Miley dressed in a loose-fitting outfit of long pants and a collared and fully-buttoned blouse. While fashionable, her unrevealing and non-sexual attire is her saying \"no.\" This also echos \u003cem>Rhythm 0\u003c/em>; at the end of the performance, Marina rose and approached surrounding audience members, who scattered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Is there a direct, causal connection between Marina Abramovic and \"Wrecking Ball\"? It's doubtful. But Marina is treading deeper into Miley's territory, contaminating pop culture, and any explication of current events should take her work into account. Issues of intent and originality are typical cannon fodder and a lazy critique; we fire the gun when we don't like the work and holster it when we do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>RoseLee Goldberg, the foremost authority on performance art, points out that Marina \"recognized that the only way that she could get people to fully experience her work was to make them stop in their tracks, and to be with her in real time, one hundred percent and without distraction.\" If a top-tier contemporary artist requires such concessions from her audience, can't we approach \"Wrecking Ball\" with the same seriousness? Let Miley take us, \u003ca href=\"http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1713881/miley-cyrus-defends-wrecking-ball.jhtml\" target=\"_blank\">as she says\u003c/a>, \"into [our] imagination a little bit and see kind of what the video really means and the way it's so vulnerable.\"\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Miley Cyrus and performance artist Marina Abramovic have a lot more in common than you'd think.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10938\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 717px\">\u003cimg class=\" wp-image-10938 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/mm_leather-1024x681.jpg\" alt=\"m&m_leather\" width=\"717\" height=\"477\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: Stephen Shearer; \u003ca href=\"http://www.gotceleb.com/miley-cyrus-by-brian-bowen-smith-photoshoot-2014-01-11.html/miley-cyrus-brian-bowen-smith-photoshoot-21\">Brian Bowen Smith\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/t-magazine/28well-abramovic.html\">Jean-Baptiste Mondino\u003c/a>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>2013 was a breakout year for Pop's latest wild child Miley Cyrus, having shed her G-rated image for a new, more mature direction. Hardly a week went by without a controversy -- butchering her hair, dropping Molly and marijuana references, twerking on live TV, NSFW fashion shoots -- each one making plain that Miley is not your tween role model anymore. We may dismiss her viewer provocation, exploitation of sexuality, and self-destructive tendencies as headline-grabbing antics, but perhaps there's more going on here. Similar tactics have been used by contemporary artist Marina Abramovic, the \"grandmother of performance art.\" Marina also had a stellar 2013, founding a performance art institute, starring in an opera about her death, writing James Franco's biography, and most famously, inspiring \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMG2oNqBy-Y\">Jay-Z's recent video for \"Picasso Baby.\"\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If your reaction is \"Marina who?\" then here's a brief introduction. Marina Abramovic made a name for herself in the anarchic heyday of Performance Art in the 1970s as an ultra-serious zealot. Performances such as her seminal \u003cem>Rhythm\u003c/em> series were notorious for the dangerous circumstances she devised, and her endurance of self-imposed penances. In her legendary work \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://vimeo.com/71952791\" target=\"_blank\">Rhythm 0\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003cem> \u003c/em>(1974), Marina offered spectators the opportunity to pleasure or harm her naked body with a myriad of objects ranging from a feather to a loaded gun, which audience members proceeded to do. Fast forward to 2010: for \u003cem>The Artist is Present\u003c/em>, a work staged at the MoMA in conjunction with a career survey and \u003ca href=\"http://marinafilm.com/\" target=\"_blank\">documented by HBO\u003c/a>, Marina silently locked eyes, one at a time, with hundreds of thousands of spectators queued up over three months (736 hours total).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Marina is taking advantage of her fame while making a significant shift in her career with some high-profile celebrity collaborations. On the heels of her MoMA show, Marina has found her brand in demand by Lady Gaga, James Franco, and Jay-Z. For his \"\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMG2oNqBy-Y\" target=\"_blank\">Picasso Baby\" music video\u003c/a>, Jay-Z reinterpreted Marina's \u003cem>The Artist Is Present\u003c/em> at Pace Gallery, featuring himself as the Artist, rapping and strutting, and casting Marina as one of many reveling VIP participants. \"Picasso Baby\" is subtitled \"A Performance Art Video,\" but is it performance art, a music video, a hybrid?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Caught off guard, viewers often don't know what to make of these new hybrids. (Critic Jerry Saltz, who was in attendance, \u003ca href=\"http://www.vulture.com/2013/07/jerry-saltz-face-to-face-with-jay-z.html\" target=\"_blank\">went in skeptical and left \"elated\"\u003c/a>.) When artists long for celebrity fame and pop stars flaunt Art World cred, traditionally separate frameworks of interpretation break down and merge together. The Art World badge gives an aura of seriousness to celebrity bearers, but perhaps it's not necessary anymore, if the boundary between the two worlds is so porous. Perhaps we can stretch out this broad hybridized pop/art framework a bit further, to reevaluate work lacking that aura of seriousness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10937\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 737px\">\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/02/05/miley-abramovic-the-artist-came-in-like-a-wrecking-ball/mm_crying/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-10937\">\u003cimg class=\" wp-image-10937 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/mm_crying-1024x512.jpg\" alt=\"m&m_crying\" width=\"737\" height=\"369\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: Stephen Shearer; \u003cem>Happy Christmas\u003c/em> by Marina Abramovic and \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My2FRPA3Gf8\">still from \"Wrecking Ball,\" directed by Terry Richardson\u003c/a>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2013/sep/10/miley-cyrus-wrecking-ball\" target=\"_blank\">\"Wrecking Ball\"\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2013/sep/10/miley-cyrus-wrecking-ball\" target=\"_blank\">is the centerpiece of Miley's campaign\u003c/a> to reinvent herself. The video has been written off by some critics for its overt raunchiness, but let's ignore that bias and consider the work from a different perspective. When compared to Marina's \u003cem>Rhythm\u003c/em> series (specifically \u003cem>Rhythm 0\u003c/em>), some interesting parallels emerge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The basic elements of \"Wrecking Ball\" -- a nude female, some dangerous tools, and a set built for us to see destroyed -- comprise a \u003cem>mise-en-scène\u003c/em> reminiscent of Marina's \u003cem>Rhythm\u003c/em> series. The action takes place in a bare, minimalist cinder block room -- a kind of \"white cube\" gallery space -- decorated and atmospherically hardened by icons of hands-on demolition, a sledge hammer, a wrecking ball, and concrete detritus. Marina's \u003cem>Rhythm\u003c/em> series turned the gallery space into a variety of dangerous environments, experimenting with different kinds of threats: environmental (such as \u003ca href=\"http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/artwork/5190\" target=\"_blank\">the burning star of \u003cem>Rhythm 5\u003c/em>,\u003c/a> inside of which Marina nearly asphyxiated); social (the audience of \u003cem>Rhythm 0\u003c/em>); self-destructive (\u003ca href=\"http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2010/03/24/listening-to-marina-abramovic-rhythm-10\" target=\"_blank\">cutting herself with a knife in \u003cem>Rhythm 10\u003c/em>\u003c/a>). \u003cem>Rhythm 0\u003c/em> in particular is notable for its use of conventional tools appropriated as weapons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10970\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 765px\">\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/02/05/miley-abramovic-the-artist-came-in-like-a-wrecking-ball/mm_show3-2/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-10970\">\u003cimg class=\" wp-image-10970 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/mm_show31.jpg\" alt=\"m&m_show3\" width=\"765\" height=\"382\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/mm_show31.jpg 956w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/mm_show31-400x200.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/mm_show31-800x400.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 765px) 100vw, 765px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: Stephen Shearer; \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My2FRPA3Gf8\">still from \"Wrecking Ball,\" directed by Terry Richardson\u003c/a> and \u003cem>Rhythm 0\u003c/em> (1974) by Marina Abramovic\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Miley appears scantily dressed or completely nude in a variety of vignettes: getting friendly with a sledgehammer, bareback riding a wrecking ball, walking toward the viewer during the demolition, or writhing on the rubble. Performing nude is a familiar trope of Marina's: a challenge to perceptions of vulnerability. That same purpose is narratively served for Miley. Her nudity is part of her power over us, to whom she was previously victim.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Through the sexual innuendo of her performance, Miley spins the tale of our breakup to us, with a gaze punctuated by tears. As the wrecking ball slams into cinder block, bringing down the walls, Miley walks toward us in a seductive confrontation. We wrecked her, and now she wrecks us. In \u003cem>Rhythm 0,\u003c/em> Marina put everything on the line,\u003cem> \u003c/em>revealing the mixture of fetish, misogyny, and appetite for violence in her audience. Some pleasuring did occur at the audience's hands, but the part we remember and talk about is the\u003ca href=\"http://writingtoinform.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/rhytm-0.jpg?w=323\" target=\"_blank\"> loaded gun held to her head at the end\u003c/a>. \"Wrecking Ball\" offers us the vicarious experience of Miley's seduction, her revenge, and her self-destruction, while at the same time, we become Miley's tormentor as she sings to us; Marina's stripped-down relational aesthetics reverberating through the fourth wall. Miley put it all on the line for us, and we didn't realize how far she would go, taking us down with her in a blaze of glory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10936\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 819px\">\u003ca href=\"http://blogs.kqed.org/pop/2014/02/05/miley-abramovic-the-artist-came-in-like-a-wrecking-ball/mm_artist/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-10936\">\u003cimg class=\" wp-image-10936 \" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/pop/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2014/02/mm_artist-1024x302.jpg\" alt=\"m&m_artist\" width=\"819\" height=\"242\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: Stephen Shearer; \u003ca href=\"http://rancinan.com/PICTURES/Pictures_-_RANCINAN/PICTURE_52_-_RANCINAN.html\">Gerard Rancinan\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My2FRPA3Gf8\">still from \"Wrecking Ball,\" directed by Terry Richardson\u003c/a>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>We may speculate that the full nudity was at director Terry Richardson's behest, but Miley's general objectification in \"Wrecking Ball\" seems like her decision, part of her new identity, and the key to realizing this is understanding that we sexualize her only when \u003cem>she \u003c/em>says so. For her follow-up interview with Barbara Walters, Miley dressed in a loose-fitting outfit of long pants and a collared and fully-buttoned blouse. While fashionable, her unrevealing and non-sexual attire is her saying \"no.\" This also echos \u003cem>Rhythm 0\u003c/em>; at the end of the performance, Marina rose and approached surrounding audience members, who scattered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Is there a direct, causal connection between Marina Abramovic and \"Wrecking Ball\"? It's doubtful. But Marina is treading deeper into Miley's territory, contaminating pop culture, and any explication of current events should take her work into account. Issues of intent and originality are typical cannon fodder and a lazy critique; we fire the gun when we don't like the work and holster it when we do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>RoseLee Goldberg, the foremost authority on performance art, points out that Marina \"recognized that the only way that she could get people to fully experience her work was to make them stop in their tracks, and to be with her in real time, one hundred percent and without distraction.\" If a top-tier contemporary artist requires such concessions from her audience, can't we approach \"Wrecking Ball\" with the same seriousness? Let Miley take us, \u003ca href=\"http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1713881/miley-cyrus-defends-wrecking-ball.jhtml\" target=\"_blank\">as she says\u003c/a>, \"into [our] imagination a little bit and see kind of what the video really means and the way it's so vulnerable.\"\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareportmagazine",
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"order": 10
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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},
"city-arts": {
"id": "city-arts",
"title": "City Arts & Lectures",
"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/cityartsandlecture-300x300.jpg",
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"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
"subscribe": {
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/City-Arts-and-Lectures-p692/",
"rss": "https://www.cityarts.net/feed/"
}
},
"closealltabs": {
"id": "closealltabs",
"title": "Close All Tabs",
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"info": "Close All Tabs breaks down how digital culture shapes our world through thoughtful insights and irreverent humor.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
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"order": 1
},
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"code-switch-life-kit": {
"id": "code-switch-life-kit",
"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"meta": {
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubnByLm9yZy9yc3MvcG9kY2FzdC5waHA_aWQ9NTEwMzEy",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"meta": {
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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},
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"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"id": "freakonomics-radio",
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"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
"rss": "https://feeds.feedburner.com/freakonomicsradio"
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},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
"title": "Fresh Air",
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"link": "/radio/program/fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/381444908/podcast.xml"
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"here-and-now": {
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510051/podcast.xml"
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
"title": "Hidden Brain",
"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/series/423302056/hidden-brain",
"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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},
"how-i-built-this": {
"id": "how-i-built-this",
"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/howIBuiltThis.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this",
"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/3zxy",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510313/podcast.xml"
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},
"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
"meta": {
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"order": 15
},
"link": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/2p3Fifq96nw9BPcmFdIq0o?si=39209f7b25774f38",
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/6c3dd23c-93fb-4aab-97ba-1725fa6315f1/hyphenaci%C3%B3n",
"rss": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/KQINC2275451163"
}
},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1492194549",
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
"subscribe": {
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
}
},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "http://mastersofscale.app.link/",
"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
"subscribe": {
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/stories-teachers-share",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "On Our Watch from NPR and KQED",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1567098962",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510360/podcast.xml"
}
},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm-3pm, MON 12am-1am",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/onTheMedia.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/otm",
"meta": {
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"source": "wnyc"
},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-media/id73330715?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/On-the-Media-p69/",
"rss": "http://feeds.wnyc.org/onthemedia"
}
},
"pbs-newshour": {
"id": "pbs-newshour",
"title": "PBS NewsHour",
"info": "Analysis, background reports and updates from the PBS NewsHour putting today's news in context.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/PBS-News-Hour-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/",
"meta": {
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"source": "pbs"
},
"link": "/radio/program/pbs-newshour",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pbs-newshour-full-show/id394432287?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/PBS-NewsHour---Full-Show-p425698/",
"rss": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/feeds/rss/podcasts/show"
}
},
"perspectives": {
"id": "perspectives",
"title": "Perspectives",
"tagline": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991",
"info": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Perspectives_Tile_Final.jpg",
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