J.A. Yang
“Invariably there is a tension between the assimilating force of fashion and our personal style as a signifier of self. It is the desire to belong versus the desire to be “who we are.” All of my life, I chafed against the pressure to assimilate, which I slowly, painfully came to realize was always a losing game—both as an Asian-American man and as a gay man. There would always be a gap between how I wanted others to see me and how they would actually see me, an impossible reach for a phantom ideal. I would forever be trapped in dressing room purgatory, wrestling with jeans that would never fit.”
—Alex Jung, “Come as You Are”
May 2012
April 2012
"The Big Nowhere," James Ellroy
To truly understand Ellroy’s writing, one must understand the conventions of the hardboiled noir genre. The noir protagonist is a sort of antihero. He is often a world-weary individual, disillusioned and cynical. He sees the world as corrupt, a place where no good deed goes unpunished and lives to get his kicks. At heart he may be a sentimental romantic deep at heart, but he keeps it hidden and repressed, because whenever he allows himself to be vulnerable and truly care about someone, it always backfires. He lives by a code of honor that is his own, and strictly defines himself according to it. In a world of predators, prey, and scavengers, the hardboiled hero struggles to be his own man and not to fall into any of those categories. Typically, a noir hero will come up against some sort of challenge to his code, and will either compromise it and fail, or he will succeed and triumph, only to find the reward to be not worth the cost and the victory Pyrrhic at best, empty and meaningless more often than not.
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In each case, blogging began—and in many cases, remained—as a labor of love. Like Sepia Mutiny’s contributors, the bloggers I spoke with wrote their posts before and after their demanding full-time jobs, or in between classes. While racism often drove them to blog in the first place, it also exhausted them once they were there.
“Writing about structural racism is an uphill battle,” says Peterson. “There are so many people dropping into the conversation at so many different points and with different experiences, it feels like an exercise in futility.”
” —Sepia Mutiny’s Closure Is a Reminder: Blogging While Brown Ain’t Easy
I am tired of talking about ‘whiteness’, tired... →
superqueerwonder.tumblr.com
I am tired of talking about ‘whiteness’, tired of responding to and negotiating it, being assaulted by it, being drained by it. Here’s why, literally EVERYTHING that could be said about racism and white supremacy has already been said.
People of colour have been…
“Watch the Throne—the album and the tour—was an effort to repair the damage. His stage partner, Jay-Z (né Shawn Carter), makes the star-generating machinery work for him financially, emotionally, and artistically by projecting a highly controlled persona. Kanye’s gifts lie in the opposite direction, and it was hard not to worry that he would emerge from the tour having learned to imitate some of Jay-Z’s gifts but having crippled or abandoned his own.”
—David Samuels, “American Mozart”
“Gosling is now the gold standard of personal style…. The Gosling phenomenon is curious, though, because he achieved the status without going through any transitional phase whatsoever. One day he was in a Harley- Davidson-logo tee, sporting a floppy forelock. The next he was in brocade Ferragamo with velvet lapels. He became iconic by looking iconic, and now every publicist wants her client to have a closet like Gosling’s, in hopes that a career like his will follow.”
—Molly Young, “Leading Mannequins”
“In the bowels of this concrete building, thousands of cheering fans greeted top competitors from around the world like they were rock stars. It was a sight reminiscent of a boxing match. Except the sport the crowd was here to see was StarCraft II, an online, real-time strategy game set in the 26th century, where three alien races duke it out in a war for intergalactic supremacy.”
—StarCraft II and the Rise of American Pro Gaming
“Once I got over the embarrassment of being viewer No. 3,000,000, I realized something: the song was really good. Just as good as it had been 2,999,999 viewers ago. In other words, there is no longer any honor in musical obscurity. If you can be popular on your own terms - if you can be Arcade Fire or Bon Iver and still win a Grammy - there is really no such thing as “selling out” anymore, unless you happen to sign a distribution deal with the Koch brothers.”
—Why the Old-School Music Snob Is the Least Cool Kid on Twitter
“In the last decade, however, indie rock has classed up, steadily abandoning these lower-class fans (along with the midsized cities they live in) for the young, college-educated white people who now populate America’s major cities and media centers. For these people, indie rock has offered a way to ignore the fact that part of what makes your dead-end internship or bartending job tolerable is the fact that you can leave and go to law school whenever you like.”
—n+1: 5.4 Pitchfork, 1995–present
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“One of my most frequent criticisms of the food movement and the way it frames food reform is the lack of empathy for people who are not in a position to implement some of the changes recommended. Perhaps they are parents who are trying to balance work and children with food preparation, and need to consider the needs of members of the household who may have very specific ideas about what is edible and what is not. Maybe they are people with disabilities who have limited financial resources and can’t make a big investment in sustainable food. Or they’re people living in low-income neighbourhoods with limited access to fresh foods, let alone those produced sustainably.”
—Some Empathy With Your Food Movement?
