“Fan Fiction and Genderfuck” OR “Why I was never a fan of Slash Fiction”

Now I wouldn’t call myself an internet troll, but I wouldn’t call myself a n00b either. I’ve been around the net and I’ve seen most of the sights and sites of interest. I even bought a cell phone that lets me surf. My last cell phone bill registered 31+ megabytes, keep in mind that I can’t download files like mp3s or pr0n. That 31+ megabytes are all jpeg and text. Needless to say, I like the internet.

I’ve seen fan fiction and slash fiction before taking Cultures of Sampling, and I’ve even read a few pieces. For the most part I find the writing is satisfactory and the plots questionable. Worse though are the tired, played-out notions of homoerotic sub-textual readings of male protagonists in, as the scene calls them, “precedent” texts. I’m tired of seeing that dim light bulb go off above some peoples’ heads when they think they see that such and such are or could possibly be seen as gay. It was funny when I was a teen, but it just looks and feels like something bordering on homophobia without that harsh edged hatred.

Noy Thrupkaew writes, “Writing male characters as lovers allows a richer sense of possibility than duplicating the well-worn boy/girl romances coughed up by most TV shows.” Nah, I don’t see it that way. I do agree with the statement that the boy/girl romances presented in most dramas aimed at the early-teen to late-twenties demographic are played out, in fact just last week I was musing about how I was becoming extremely irritated at one of my favorite shows, Smallville. I’m tired of the dynamics of Lana Lang and Clark Kent’s relationship. She’s always crying, he’s always asking for forgiveness. Why can’t he just say, “You’re crying? Why are you crying? There’s no crying here, if you want to cry, crying happens across the street.” And why can’t Lana just say, “Clark, look. You’re hiding shit from me, I know it. I don’t fucking appreciate it, dawg. Either you tell me what’s up or I’m going to bone Lex. Bald men are sexier anyway.” Why don’t slash fiction writers write this instead of writing clichéd passages of homosexual love?

I realize that Thrupkaew does not speak for the whole of the slash/fan fiction community, but she does set up an opening to share her understanding of slash/fan fiction by posing the question, “Why do slash writers, who are predominantly straight women writing for other women, create fiction that focuses on male/male romantic relationships?” and responding with “Although theories abound—male relationships are truly egalitarian, women characters are too boring to write about—slash has become so diverse that it easily thwarts anyone trying to find one generalizing principle.” The idea that male relationships are “truly egalitarian” and the idea that “women characters are too boring to write about” is problematic for me. It’s problematic in that while the source material might suggest more depth for male characters in most instances, why is it then that these female slash/fan fiction writers allow this secondary status of female character to exist ignored and untouched? Why are they more inclined to write about homosexual relationships rather than writing re-writes of female characters? Is it a way to subvert the paradigms set up by the creators and writers of the television shows and books that are presented to the slash/fan fiction writers? Isn’t that offensive? If I were gay I think that would offend me in that my sexual alignment becomes the punch line of a joke. Also, gay guys are not just women with penises that know how to dress and whose homes are nicely decorated. It’s much more complicated than that. Not that I get it, that fact that I don’t shows me that it’s more complicated. Whatever.

Going over the stuff I highlighted in Thrupkaew I don’t know if I’m actually getting pissed or if I’m just irritated by the little dog yapping at my door. No. Wait. I’m actually getting pissed. When Thrukaew writes, “Much of early slash follows this ‘first-time love’ schema, in which two men who have always identified as straight fall in love with each other. Why would slash writers dwell on such a theme? A lot of the good first-time pieces read like rapturous coming-of-age stories, with equal parts lust and self-discovery—a first time, too, perhaps, for many of the writers, who, being women, have likely never had boy-on-boy sex.” that really gets my goat. It’s like voice appropriation of the native peoples that you see in all of those black and white westerns. It’s exactly the same thing! “Being women, having likely never had boy-on-boy sex” if you change some nouns can read “Being European, having likely never experienced Native Indigenous People’s way of life” But yet these women appropriate the voices of gay men and boil down their life experiences and first sexual encounters to a formula: “fevered words that can barely mask the slowly creeping awareness, the flush across the face at the other’s nearness. Stammered confession, blissful reciprocation, ecstatic consummation! A delicious formula.” That pisses me off. I’m sure this is not how all gay men come to the realization or how their “first time” plays out. Granted, these were examples of early slash, but at the same time that’s still ass.

Further down in the article I started to cool down a bit, only to be engulfed in pre-spontaneous-combustion-like anger when I read, “Penley argues that female slash authors focus on male/male relationships because they’re the most egalitarian. Basing her theories on Kirk/Spock (K/S) slash, Penley critiques the flat characterization of female TV characters and the limitations of what TV and media culture depict as male/female relationships. But in real life, she also argues, women’s bodies are too often layered with negative meanings—and therefore become the site for political, social, and moral struggle. K/S slash is a rejection of those problematic bodies and of TV’s flat female characters, serving instead as a subversive rewriting of the script in which lovers can share love and work and still be equal.” That’s bullshit though, it does nothing to subvert the male/female relationships, in fact it ignores the problems of the flat portrayal of male/female relationships given us by television all together. Why don’t slash writers write female characters that actually subvert rather than omitting female/male love all together? Is it too hard? Is it so much easier to just make Kirk and Spock gay? That’s a cop-out in my books.

Thrupkaew while starting to write her own piece of slash comes to the realization of why women write man-on-man slash. I’ll provide parenthetical directory-style commentary for this quote: “The relationships between male characters allow a writer to strike a harmonious balance between working within the framework of a show and spinning a tale of her own imagination. [I can’t understand how it might more difficult to rewrite a female and male character, as well as their relationships, as opposed to making two male characters homosexual. Subverting the gender/sexuality norms is one thing, but for straight women to write about gay male relationships seems problematic and fraught with opportunities for stereotypical portrayals of gay relationships. Also, this ease at which male heterosexual characters can be transformed into gay lovers is revelatory of how simplistic some slash writer’s views of what it means to be gay is.] The best slash I’ve read captures the rhythm of the characters’ speech, probes their psychology, and shows a mastery of complicated plots, all while taking the characters in new directions. [Yes, that would be a feat to emulate another persons creations.] And although a similar sense of possibility could await a writer delving into unexpected male/female pairings (Scully and Skinner, for instance) or trysts between two female characters (say, Buffy and Willow on Buffy the Vampire Slayer), male/male pairings add an extra dimension—the opportunity to recraft masculinity itself. [Masculinity can be recrafted without changing sexual affinity. Assuming otherwise makes you an asshole.] And for women—straight or queer—who write slash fiction, this certainly seems to add an extra-enticing challenge, a sense of going where no woman has gone before. [An extra-enticing challenge for me would be to work within the dynamics of a heterosexual relationship, rather than tossing it all in the garbage and erasing heterosexuality all together.]”

I could go on an on about slash and how it seems to be so cyclical in the reasons for why people write slash, but in the end I would just be saying the same thing over and over. This is what I have to say about slash: While the writers of slash say that they are subverting gender norms and subverting the TV portrayals of false and/or played out male/female relationships, the fact that these slash writers base their writing on these TV shows limits them to degrees that are beyond the reach of the subversive powers they are attempting to harness. By sticking to what they called “precedence” they can’t fully subvert what TV puts out there. By merely making male protagonists homosexual they are merely providing self-gratifying titillation, rather than the subversion they taut as being their reason for writing slash fiction in the first place.

"Sexual Mimicry & Mutation" OR "Trans Woman Lesbian = Mobius Strip"

Issues of gender are difficult enough as they are. Imagine trying to teach a child that their identity is based upon a construction of society that has no basis in fact, and is a product of power structures created and maintained by patriarchal privilege. Is the most direct way to go about this to present transsexual and transgendered people? It is a way that we can come to understand that there are challenges to the gender systems currently enforced by society, but it is not the most direct way. Are transgendered and transsexual people examples of how gender is socially constructed and enforced? Or are these people an example of how the gender types are solid, yet not merely dependant upon biology? Who knows.

Reading Serano’s “Skirt Chaser: Why the media depicts the trans revolution in lipstick & heels” really pissed me off. There was something in her tone that just ate at me, the fact that she kept interchanging the words and phrases “Female”, “Feminine”, “Femininity”, and “Female sexuality” really set a fire under me. You can’t just go saying that female and feminine are the same, you can’t because they aren’t. Here’s a chart:

Female = Biology
Femininity = Gendered views of attributes attributed to females
Feminine = Gendered, often stereotyped view of how women act but can also be applied to men who are effeminate.
Female Sexuality = A biological woman and all topics surrounding sexuality of that biological woman.

Maybe this is where I find where I’m bigoted. I see myself as being very open minded, but when it comes to transgendered/transsexual women and men, I just don’t see it. Femaleness is biology and a trans woman can’t change that even with surgery and hormone therapy, the appearance changes but not the physiology. Dressing up though, the gendered female’s garments, is something a trans woman can do something about, but as Serano writes, “Despite the reality that there are as many types of trans women as there are women in general, most people believe that trans women are all on a quest to make ourselves as pretty, pink, and passive as possible. While there are certainly some trans women who buy into mainstream dogma about beauty and femininity…” In other words, femininity does not equal the look, the clothes, the make-up. But then what is it that a trans woman wants? Can we say what it is to be a woman without sliding down the rabbit hole of gender?

Thinking about it again, no, I don’t think this is where I am bigoted. I haven’t a clear understanding of the issue issue. When Serano says, “In virtually all depictions of trans women, whether real or fictional, deceptive or pathetic, the underlying assumption is that the trans woman wants to achieve a stereotypically feminine appearance and gender role.” What then is a non-stereotypically feminine appearance? What is a non-stereotypical female? I don’t mean to be a smart ass, but what is it that trans women want? Why does there have to be an extrinsic counterpart to their intrinsic identifying as female? This is what I don’t get.

This stuff is very confusing.

I have a friend who is 75-years old. She believes that inside of us are these animalistic tendencies that are shades of our primitive selves. These are the parts of us responsible for fearing otherness, these are the parts of us that as civilized people we have to fight against lest we be taken back to our primitive thoughts. There is a part of me that wants to lash out and say, “All this transgendered transsexual stuff is bullshit.” There is a part of me that wants to say, “Janice Raymond is right. Trans women are merely transsexually constructed lesbian-feminists” and that that too is bullshit and self-glorifying by way of adding additional polysyllabic words to a persons idea of concerning their identity. But I know, I know that these are ugly things to say. I want to accept, but I can’t without understanding. And I can’t seem to understand how this work. If you’re born a man and identify as female, why is it then that the rest of us who identify with what our biology suggests have to question gender? I already question why little girls can play with dump trucks, but little boys can’t play with dolls. A man who identifies as female but doesn’t dress female and is simply, for lack of a better word “effeminate” I get. But when someone who is trans woman, or trans man for that matter has a problem with the trans women and trans men that dress opposite to their gendered biology, that I don’t get.

Ugh… my brain is a mobius strip.

One final note, it seems that this whole idea of trans women and trans men are (I know if someone who is transsexual/transgendered reads this they will hate me for saying this) simply copies of copies. I see this in that since gender is an artificial by-product of patriarchal society and that men who were raised as male who somewhere along the line identify as female are merely copying the feminine artifice. That’s a little convoluted. Lets try that again.

A man who was raised as a boy is taught the ideas of gendered societal norms of what it is to be male, but when this man realizes that he identifies more as female then decides to be trans woman, he then becomes a copy of the ideas of societal norms of what it is to be female. But on the other hand there are transgendered people that say that it is not the societal feminine ideal that they are pursuing. What is it then that they are? We need a third option outside of man and woman. Maybe that’s what it is to be transgendered, maybe that is the third and fourth options and maybe most people are just too hung up on the old fashioned ideas of bifurcated male and female. Hmmm…

“The Politics of Graffiti” OR “Mild-Mannered Modern-Day Picassos”

I once thought about getting a tattoo. It was going to be my mIRC chat name Lost_BoyZ done up in wildstyle. I even went so far as to commission a friend to do some sketches. My parents would’ve killed me if I went through with it.

Really, they would’ve.

Thankfully at the time I was dating a girl who had gotten a tattoo down there of a frog holding a crystal ball. She made me think twice.

There’s something about graffiti that’s always turned my crank. I love going online and looking up pieces: The colours, the large scale cryptic messages, the letters that flow in and out of each other so that where one begins is a mystery and where another ends is anyone’s guess. It’s urban art, with the city as canvas as well as being part of the picture. It’s beautiful stuff, really. In Craig Castleman’s “The Politics of Graffiti” I got to see it from the other side. Well, not so much “see” it as read it, and not so much “get” it as find out about the overblown anti-graffiti initiative by former New York City Mayor John Lindsay.

Lindsay seemed to have a hard-on for graffiti. He referred to it as something that New Yorkers needed to band together to “defend it [the city of New York], support it, and protect it!” against graffiti. He called it a “blighting epidemic”, and of the writers themselves said they were “insecure cowards” seeking recognition and that graffiti writing itself “is related to mental health problems.” WOW. What could’ve spurned this hatred for graffiti? Was his home vandalized? His infant child covered in TAKI 138 tags from head to toe? No, something much worse. He was planning on running for president.

All kidding aside I think that the extent to which graffiti angered Mayor Lindsay was not only indicative of some serious mental issues, but was also illuminating of how far removed Mayor Lindsay was from the middle class bracket of his constituents. Castleman writes, “The mayor’s anger over the continued appearance of graffiti on the subways exploded publicly on June 30, 1973. Steven Isenberg explained, ‘When the Mayor went to mid-town to publicize the parking ticket step-up, he took the subway back to City Hall and what he saw made him madder than hell.’ Immediately upon his return to his office the mayor called a hurried press conference at which he snapped, “I just came back from 42nd Street in one of [MTA chairman] Dr. Ronan’s graffiti-scarred subway cars, one of the worst I’ve seen yet.’ The mayor stated that the extent of name marking in the trains and stations was ‘shocking’…” I’m sure it would be to someone living in the cushy upper-salary brackets. But for the people that took these trains everyday, I can’t help but wonder what they thought of the massive expenditures relegated to anti-graffiti policies of Lindsay’s reign.

I tried to see it from Lindsay’s point of view. Aside from this being a political platform, what is it about graffiti that angered him? Maybe he just didn’t like it, maybe he thought it was ugly. He probably did. This was something new and many people are opposed to new because new means change, and for some, change is some bad medicine to swallow. I loved Claes Odenberg’s take on graffiti in his book “The Faith of Graffiti”, he says, “I’ve always wanted to put a steel band with dancing girls in the subways and send it all over the city. It would slide into a station without your expecting it. It’s almost like that now.” This almost-a-simile is exactly what graffiti is, it is an assault on the visual cortex, an assault that breaks up the monotony of the various shades of gray.

The point where art and the publicly shared space is where graffiti is made, this is my take. Mayor Lindsay didn’t see it this way, what he saw was that graffiti “tended to nullify many of his efforts to provide the city’s subway passengers with a ‘cleaner and more pleasant environment’ in which to travel.” Something, I’m sure, would resemble an operation room; Cold, clean, smelling of anti-septic. This might be possible if there weren’t any people around. Shades of grey do not contribute to feeling alive; check that against the faces of people walking around on cloudy days versus the faces of people on blue skied sunny days. People like colour.

I can’t help but wonder if Mayor Lindsay really believed the stuff coming out of his mouth or if he believed that people believed that what he was doing was for their personal betterment. I’m not from New York, nor have I ever spent any respectable amount of time in the Big Apple, but I don’t think that saying New York has bigger problems to deal with than graffiti would be completely out of line. To say that “graffiti is a form of behavior that leads to other forms of criminality” is like saying that marijuana is a gateway drug. Come on, the only thing that marijuana is a gateway to is a bag of Doritos and a Wendy’s milkshake. And the only thing that graffiti is a gateway to are stained fingers, pants, and shirts, and maybe even a cameo in Marc Ecko’s upcoming movie ventured based on his smash hit video game “Getting Up”. What am I babbling about? Click here. And then click here.

“Blackface” or “I get why Spike Lee has a problem with Hip-Hop now, and I think don’t think he’s right.”

I remember a time when I could simply enjoy something without thoughts of racial inequality, cultural appropriation, homoerotic sub-texts and such coming in and forcing me to think. I remember those times, those were good times. I guess those lofty days are gone, huh?

The first thing I have to question now about hip-hop is this: Can I like hip-hop? Am I allowed? Am I allowed to enjoy it without having to know about the historical appropriation of black music? Would I seem like a jerk to someone who does knows? Would Spike Lee invite me to his next movie premiere? I suppose I could, they would and that Spike still would, but what if I decided I wanted to be a hip-hop super star [(live large, drive phat cars…) I had to throw in that Cyprus Hill lyric]? Would I then be contributing to the cultural theft that Blacks have been subjected to since the dawn of the pop-culture/music era?

I was in another class and we were talking about Hip-Hop and appropriation of voice (yes, I brought it up because I’m still trying to get this.) I said something to the tone of hip-hop being great because it brings people together; there are kids in China right now doing Headspins to Kanye west beats, there are native teens rockin’ roccawear and listening to Jay-Z, there are white kids in various Ontario suburbs veggin’ out in front of the tube watching BET. The cultural and racial gap is closing. Hip-Hop is great. Then someone said this, “But I don’t see it that way. It’s not great that everyone is listening to Hip-Hop, it’s for a specific people.” I told her I felt sorry she felt that way, and the prof, seeing where the debate was headed, quickly changed the subject. But it haunts me, the idea that Hip-Hop is for a certain people. I don’t buy that shit, but is it? Even its history, its genesis in the “predominantly African-American and Puerto Rican South Bronx” breaks away from that idea of Hip-Hop being solely for Blacks.

The fact remains that Hip-Hop is enticing, there is something about it reaches so many people and connects them in ways that Disco never could. *Shiver* Disco. Tate writes, “The aura and global appeal of hip-hop lie in both its perceived Blackness (hip, stylish, youthful, alienated, rebellious, sensual) and its perceived fast access to global markets through digital technology.” While I don’t really get the technical-jargony bit about “markets through digital technology” the idea that being hip, stylish, youthful, alienated, rebellious, and sensual are traits exclusively black angers me. Why is Tate building up these walls? Hip-hop reaches so many people, it transforms lives. I can understand how the appropriation of Jazz and Rock and Roll can piss people off because it pisses me off, but hip-hop is different. Its different in that we live in a period of time where equality is at the forefront, while yes, it might just be veneer, still there is a sense that equality it is important. Back when Rock and Roll and Jazz were big it wasn’t like how things are now. I’m not saying that things are perfect, but I am saying that things are different. No one would ever say that hip-hop was done by white people first, no one is stealing hip-hop, no one is changing hip-hop, hip-hop is changing the landscape and not the other way around.

Isn’t there a bigger issue though? While history is important we can’t simply live looking backwards. Things progress and while hip-hop was created in a predominantly black cultural vacuum, it made its way out and is touching down all over the globe. Why can’t hip-hop be the cultural forum where there is a universally shared culture? Why can’t hip-hop BE that universally shared culture? We aren’t dealing with the white/black binary here anymore. People all over the world are feelin’ hip-hop. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t mind that my people were responsible for creating something that united more people than anything else in the entirety of human history.

Back-tracking a bit I wanted to touch on the Robert Christgau piece “In Search of Jim Crow”. I don’t know if I just didn’t “get” it, but was he saying that there was a silver lining to minstrelsy in that white people that performed these shows and those that attended the shows were enticed by black culture and in some twist of logic by Christgau that means that they some how accepted black people? I don’t buy that shit. Even if I did get Christgau wrong I know that I am in fact detecting something in his writing that attempts to paint an understanding of how one could accept minstrelsy. As I said before, I don’t buy it.

The whole bit about the veracity of the Jim Crow story being called into question sets up something else in my mind. Christgau writes of the Jim Crow story, “it has a ring, doesn’t it? In fact, it’s such a hell of a metaphor that one understands why few historian of minstrelsy have resisted it, and why it shows up frequently in less specialized accounts of race relations and popular music.” For those of you that don’t know the myth/legend of Jim Crow here’s the condensed version:

White man named Rice happens upon a Black slave who is handicapped in some way. The various retellings of the Jim Crow story give and take away various impairments to the black slave, but basically he can’t walk very well because he either has some sort of leg problem (at the least) or is partially paralyzed on one side of his body (at the worst). Anyway, when Rice sees the Black slave, the black slave is “dancing” as best he can while singing “Every time I turn about I jump Jim Crow.” Rice, seeing this as entertaining, starts a minstrel act sometime after. Rice steals both the clothes the Black man was wearing as well as his song, his dance, and even his crippled features.

Whether or not there is any truth to this tale we’ll never know, but regardless of whether it is truth or fiction, either way it present equally fascinating metaphors. On the one hand the literal stealing of culture and identity plays well if the tale is true, on the other hand if Rice’s actions of stealing from the Black slave are made up it up all together the story is built on hatefulness, conjecture, and stereotype. And, surprise, surprise, so is minstrelsy. There is no silver-lining in minstrelsy, it is lined with hatefulness and stereotypes that lead away from understanding anything about anyone.

Hip-hop by Whites, Hispanics, and Asians is nothing like minstrelsy. Hip-hop is a medium from where people of any cultural heritage can find a way to express themselves. Hip-hop isn’t about stealing from Blacks and trying to be black, it’s about expressing yourself in a common forum that has conventions and rules that anyone can follow.

“Yes, Yes Y’all. Oral History of Hip-Hop’s First Decade” OR “Herc, Flash, and Bam: The Tripartite Soul of Hip-Hop’s Origin”

In Plato’s Republic Plato is transfixed on the number 3. Plato Republic, the actual city in text that he wishes to create is tripartite; it consists of three classes of citizens: Guardian Rulers, Auxiliary Guardians, Producers. In book 4 of Plato’s Republic Plato asserts that not only should the city in text consist of a tripartite class structure, he posits that the human soul itself is tripartite consisting of Desire, Reason, and something classified as “Spiritedness”. This spiritedness is, to my understanding, what happens when the human body does something that is against Reason. It’s that part of you that allows you have that “one more drink” when you’re at the bar when you know you should be home reading your assigned reading.

Hip-hop, the genesis of it anyway, is also tripartite. On page 46 of "Yes, Yes Y’all. Oral History of Hip-Hop’s First Decade” we have Afrika Islam putting down some science for us: “My allegiance was definitely to the music and the record. The techniques, the more technical style came from Flash, and as far as sound systems, that came from Herc. That’s the way it was.” We’re given the first two pieces of hip-hop’s tripartite soul in this. Grand Master Flash was all about the technique. Herc was about the system, the sound, the bass. Afrika Bambaataa was about the incorporation of other elements outside what people in his following considered to be “their music”. So to fit these dudes into the form of Plato’s Tripartite soul, I’d probably put Herc in the Desire slot, Flash in the Reason slot, and Bam in the Spirited slot. Yea… that looks nice.

I love Hip-Hop music, but until I read this excerpt, to tell you the truth, I knew nothing of Hip-Hop’s history. I grew up listening to Tupac, Biggie, and Wu-Tang— Later I started rockin’ acts like Nas, Common Sense, Mos Def and Talib Kweli in my ipod. I went through my phase when I loved the “gangsta rap” sound, but as a grow older I realized that there was an image being portrayed there that was, to say the least, incongruent with reality. The scary thing is though that that warped simulacra of how life is is being consumed and emulated and lived by the younger generations. That shit scares me. While I love the beats that Dr. Dre puts out, while I love the rhymes that Eminem drops, I can listen to 50 cent, but I doubt I’d ever go to a concert or even buy an album by them. I love their music, but I am not a G-Unit Nut-Hugger.

A lot of Hip-Hop is about image and the problem with image is that it is a façade, it’s a mask, and it’s not necessarily real. But many people, teens and young adults alike, just don’t get that. That’s what makes it scary. I was listening to talk radio AM 640 just before the break and they had a panel of debaters on. I can’t remember from which organization each person, there were three of them, were from, but it was something like one of them was “for” hip-hop, one was “semi-against” hip-hop, and another was some politician. The guy that was for hip-hop just about lost it when the guy who was semi-against hip-hop said that, “violence is a part of hip-hop culture.” The guy who was for hip-hop said, “No it’s not, violence isn’t a part of hip-hop culture. Talib Kweli says that the violence that comes into hip-hop isn’t about the culture, it’s about the Blackman’s life and it bleeds into hip-hop because hip-hop is predominantly black.” Then the guy who was against it said, “I thought it wasn’t a racial thing, you said it wasn’t.” I guess I missed that because I’d just tuned in. “The guy who was for hip-hop said, it’s not a racial thing, it’s cultural thing. Violence is not a part of hip-hop culture.” The politician chimed in and said, “Well, you don’t see Garth Brooks waving a gun around in any of his music videos.” I don’t think I ever heard a politician say anything that ever made any sense — that was a rare moment. That conversation on the radio and reading this article really makes the question “what is hip-hop?” problematic for me. Are there two camps in hip-hop? Or is that what we as hip-hop lovers want to believe, and that the violence in hip-hop is a part of hip-hop even if try to deny it. Maybe its dependant upon the listener, maybe what they choose to listen to determines what hip-hop is for them.

In closing of this post, I wanted to say one more thing. If hip-hop is about image then what do the clothes say? Walk by a high school, preferably a public high school because of the whole uniform thing in catholic high school, as the students are being let out for the day. Spot the hip-hop listeners. It’s easy. This is what you’ll see: The guys clothes are all about concealing — Baggy pants, over-sized sweaters, large-puffy coats. The girls clothes are all about revealing — exposed mid-riffs, tight-ass jeans, itty-bitty jackets.

I don’t know what this means or signifies. I’m just throwing it out there.

Vannet - Starry Ombrelle

Vannet - Starry Ombrelle

“Intellectual Property, Copyright and Hacking” OR “Manifesto of a Pirate”

I’m all for free culture. I’ve always been about the “hook up”. Why am I all for it? Well, because I’m a poor university student who has currently amassed a disgusting amount of debt in an attempt to coax my brain to grow more synapses. And that right there is what’s wrong with the idea of free culture. Users like me are the monkeys that throw the wrench into the perpetual motion machine of free-culture.

In Lessig’s speech that was transformed into a flash webpage, he gives us a refrain.

1. Creativity and innovation always builds on the past.
2. The past always tries to control the creativity that builds on it.
3. Free societies enable the future by limiting the past.
4. Ours is less and less a free society.

Intriguing stuff, Lessig. It’s a sombre view of what lies beyond the horizon for us. While I do not challenge any of the 4 parts of Lessig’s refrain I have to say something of the first part. Premise 1 is assumptive; it leaves no room for that uber-creativity, the type that is no derivative, the type that is no inspired by something else. Still, we’ll go with it because that’s what it seems to come to these days; everything is a remix or remake or rehash of something that was already created before. Note that I’m putting no negative spin on my voice; I believe that many “remixed” creations are great and their enjoyment is not lessened by the fact they are “remixes”.

But as for the refrain in general, I get it. Due to our society’s frantic rush to copyright, and to allow for copyright to extend infinitely, the creative process, as well as the window for development of advancements is being roped and pulled to a halt. Free-culture, in the use and support of Free Software, by using copyright to code within the usages, namely the recoding of the original to add improvements, fights against this stagnation of code. It fights against the limiting of creativity. I get all this, and that’s all good. But what happens when all products are infused with this type of copylefting? My concern is that had copylefting been the norm at the beginning of the computer age is that the quality of software available now would be significantly worse than what we currently have to deal with. I mean, yes, Linux is very stable and blah blah blah. But how many grandmothers can check their main from root without turning their computer in a $3000 dollar paper weight? And how long has it taken Linux to get to its various incarnations called Distributions? I won’t get into that shit too deeply, but basically when Linus Torvalds created the Linux kernel he set a multi-billion dollar wave through the industry. Now people sell Linux with various distribution packages around the original kernel. It’s like selling M$ Windows with other software but instead of selling it it’s all free. To answer the question that spawned this jaunt into Linux history: A VERY LONG TIME.

Since Linux and most of the free software out there is only as good as the community makes it. What does this mean? Well it means that there are three possibilities. The software is shit, mediocre, or it’s the bomb. Looking at what’s been done with the Xbox (see one of my previous posts about that) I’d put my money on the software being great. The only problem is that the initial hardware and software needed a lot of money to back R&D. Without the initial Xbox, with all of its security issues, limitations, and flaws, there would be no Xbox modding. Without a proprietary system, the system that multinationals like Microsoft back, there would be no Xbox. But does that mean someone wouldn’t have developed something like this? It’s a possibility, but my money would have to go to the no side on this.

In his article “The People Who Use Them” from the Technological Review Lessig writes, “… A historical pattern: a practice is at one time “free”; something changes; that freedom is lost; in response, activists work to restore that freedom. Thus, coding had been free; changes in the market had rendered it unfree; free-software activists acted to restore that freedom.”

Lessig and his interlocutor Epstein look at the issues concerning proprietary and free culture systems in a black and white sort of dichotomy. While Lessig is more inclined to agree with Epstein (in my opinion it’s a way of deflecting argument without really arguing) and Epstein the constant advocate for DRM technologies, I have to pick at Lessig for a moment. When I said “Users like me are the monkeys that throw the wrench into the perpetual motion machine of free-culture,” what I meant is that I believe that the majority of people that have their hands in the free culture cookie jar aren’t there to make improvements. They are the family members that come to the wedding reception, but not the church. How then does free culture deal with that? Do they just assume that there will be some that will pay when the choice is optional?

For example, look at Julian Dibbell’s article “Unpacking my Record Collection”. He goes into detail of how easy it is to rip CDs into MP3 format and then trade them peer-2-peer networks like Napster. There are people, like myself, that are downloading this music without ever buying the albums. While this is free culture, it’s stealing. Or is it just stealing because we uphold the tenants of a proprietary system? Oh sure, in Lessig’s lecture-cum-flash presentation he states that it only affect the market 5%. But I think it would be safe to assume that that number will rise as the years march forward. How does free culture deal with it? What does free culture have to say about the pirates? The people that do not contribute they simply resell copies of originals for a profit?

*all instances and examples of piracy in this writing are fictitious and is in no way an admission of guilt. Nah-nah nah-boo-boo.*