Nostalgia and the Death of the Polaroid

Careful what you reject, you might become your parents.

If you haven’t heard yet, Kodak is discontinuing their Polaroid products by the end of this business quarter. This may seem like somewhat of a shock considering the level at which instant photography exist within our culture. Utilized by Warhol to your friends on Myspace, the Polaroid photo is a major element of the iconography that characterize the mid to late twentieth century. We all have memories connected to an instant photo. Its influence has permeated our society at an incalculable level.

With the sudden disappearance of the much beloved Polaroid photo, the question arises: Is film dead? Or maybe more precisely asked: Is everything that we have grown up with disappearing? The answer is a resounding yes.

People have already been predicting the death of the compact music disc for years. With advent of Ipod and downloadable music, we would be fooling ourselves to think that the CD is here to stay. The same is occurring to books. Sony recently released the E-Book which is equipped with a high pixel density display panel using what it calls "electronic paper". All our favorite novels may soon be read on a device that can fit in our back pocket.

While some embrace the arrival of advanced technology, many indulge in things of the past, take pleasure in their aesthetic appeal and reject the new. We all yearn for something from the past but this act of nostalgia is a reoccurrence with each generation. If you’re one who prides yourself on not having a Myspace or refusing to buy an Ipod, here is a little hint of what you’re becoming: exactly like your parents.

Rejecting the coming digital age may seem an inoffensive action, however such wistfulness for the past is an attitude that can have future implications rooted in bigger issues that are social in nature. And if you are not careful, such an attitude will lead you to be exactly like those you abhor now. Comedian Doug Standhope poignantly explains;

“Baby boomers are going to start to die in droves and it’s a good thing. Their day is over and there is new shit that they won’t accept. Old people look back at the good ole days and it was good because they were young and they act like it was the day. But no it was good because youth is good. That’s gone…your fucked. And now because it’s not the day anymore they got to reject anything that is new like we do with hip-hop if you’re in your 30’s and white. ‘That aint music…we had music back when 38. Special was around.’ What? We should kill ourselves because of the hypocrisy.”

While the context of such a statement is characterized by sarcasm Standhope has a point. At once, even our grandparents were young and hip. Slowly, as they got older they begin to dislike new art, technology and ideas. This probably happened around the same time they started tucking in their shirts and voting republican. Chances are that if you constantly reject the new, then you’ll do the exact same.

The point is that one should take caution in immediately snubbing what is the latest trend, technological innovation or cultural movement. Keeping an open-mind and attempting to understand the new and seemingly foreign is important to not simply prevent a recreation of the paradigm we exist in now (stubborn old conservatives running our country) but to create the necessary environment to progress into something socially better.

In a recent Harpers excerpt taken from his yet-to be released book In Defense of Lost Causes, Slovenian sociologist and cultural critic Slavoj Zizek attacked the modern leftist view that change can only come from existing and working on the fringes of the establishment.

“The lesson here is that the truly subversive thing is not to insist on “infinite” demands we know those in power cannot fulfill. So wonderful that, with your critical demands, you remind us what kind of world we would all like to live in. Unfortunately, we live in the real world where we have to make do with what is possible. The thing to do is, on the contrary, bombard those in power with strategically well-selected, precise, finite demands, which can’t be met with the same excuse.”

It starts with a rejection of many aspects of latest cultural trends and over time develops into a blindness where one cannot see beyond the ideologues and time period of our youth. It’s been said almost way too many times but the “times are-a changin’”. While this mantra may be interpreted by some that a transformation fitting our ideals is on the horizon, it is also a statement of constant renewal and rebirth.

To be truly radical, subversive or create the greatest possibility for change, one must work within the current, established framework. Plus, you’ll have a better chance of being that hip grandparent rather than the one who your grandkids loathe visiting on Sunday afternoons.

By the time you graduate you are already on the out and a new generation full of varying, and possibly different ideas is arriving. How will you react to their demands? Whatever you do, never consider immediate rejection. They deserve to be heard and considered just as much as we do now.

Bye Bye Polaroids

In case you haven't heard yet, Kodak is discontinuing their polaroid products.

As a major element to our culture over the last 40 years, this seems really unfortunate. Utilized by Warhol to Marc Jacobs ads to your mother to your friends on myspace, this is one instance of nostalgia that I will never feel bad about missing.

Use those last packets of film well kids!

Dahl

please go here immediately and let Roald tell you an old story his way...

Huckabee

Taken from the Washington Post today:

"President Bush yesterday urged attendees of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., to unite behind the presumed nominee. Although he did not mention McCain by name, the president said whoever ends up being the Republican nominee will represent conservative values.

Earlier today, Huckabee disputed the assertion that McCain had locked up the GOP nomination and said he won't quit the presidential race.

"I didn't major in math," Huckabee told a cheering crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference meeting, according to the AP. "I majored in miracles."

_____

Just a personal observation:

Say what you will about Huckabee, I can't help but think this guy is adorable. Yeah...yeah...everyone talks about how he is some religious, conservative nut. However in comparison to Bush and/or Romney, this guy is way more likable.

With numerous appearances and participation with Colbert and Conan's shenanigans and as a bass player in a band called, "Capitol Offense"; this guy is like the harmless Christian neighbor who bakes the neighborhood yummy banana bread on Christmas that you can't help but like even if your politics are different.OBVIOUSLY, I don't want him to run our country but it just seems everyone is too ready to take a dualistic approach to this presidential campaign. Huckabee isn't my candidate but you can't help but feel that there is alot less bullshit with this guy than other candidates...including Hillary-who as much as I want to like, is a really unconvincing speaker.

All I am saying is just because he is a conservative Christian doesn't mean he is an evil, horrible person. Maybe just a bit confused and you know...homely and un-hip no matter how hard he tries.

Its bigger than hip-hop

from a recent point-counterpoint article published in The Rearguard:


“I’m just trying to innovate and stimulate minds.” -Common

There is nothing wrong with hip-hop that are solely products of its culture. All aspects considered “wrong” with hip-hop are products of a society that existed well before an M.C. started making up rhymes over the beats of an old record. So why is it so often singled out?

The media often isolates the sometimes misogynistic or violent imagery contained in hip-hop lyrics as a source of the problems that plague America. These stereotypical portrayals of hip-hop are often given by commentators who aren’t experts on the culture A recent example is sportscaster Jason Whitcock who linked hip-hop as a possible source for Michael Vick’s participation in dog-fighting, calling it a culture that is “destructive to young people.” Such critics are often misleading and full of generalizations who largely ignore positive aspects of hip-hop and fail to take into account the entirety of what hip-hop embodies or its positive aspects.

Essence magazine in 2005 started a project called “Take Back the Music,” aimed at cleaning up the negativity towards gender in rap lyrics. Media outlets often fail to take notice of the socio-political consciousness of acts such as Dead Prez, Talib Kweli, Common and many others. When superstar Kanye West declared that George Bush “hated black people” in the post-Katrina aftermath, his statement was largely disregarded.

The reality is that socially conscious, progressive mediums of art and entertainment don’t sell. The type of hip-hop that gets the most coverage is often that which also sells the most. Hip-hop artists are producing what we are buying and it would be economic suicide to stop creating a product that earns millions of dollars. We are a culture attracted to violent and sexist images. Accusing hip hop of being the single originator of these images is unfair and naively fails to take into consider the violence and sexism in American pop culture.

Music journalist Orlando Lima recently wrote that; “blaming hip-hop for our societal addiction to drugs and violence is like hypothesizing its Lindsey Lohan's fault every time an athlete gets pulled over for drunk driving.”

Or was it hip-hop that made Lohan drive drunk?

By contextualizing the situation within a framework of popular culture in this country to prove that the finger pointing is biased and unjust. Violence and sexism still does exist within its genre but it’s cause goes beyond the music. It’s bigger than hip-hop.

To better understand the problematic aspects of lyrics in hip-hop, they must also be examined within the framework of black American (youth) culture. And as the good Dr. Michael Eric Dyson points out in his book Know What I Mean?, the metaphysical roots of hip-hop culture lie within the ghetto.

“The ghettos functions as an intellectual organizing principle of expression and the logic of the ghetto – or at least the logic of legitimating the ghetto in rap discourse-depends on understanding the complex and contradictory interests of the people who live there.”

Rappers are storytellers that seek to express a true portrayal of urban life from the point of view of an oppressed and marginalized minority, complete with all the emotionality and controversial iconography that is connected to that experience. The stories of ghetto life in America contain guns, drugs, money and violence. It is disturbing and offensive, but it is all a part of the necessary elements to the “mythopoetics” of a realism that hip-hop lyrics find foundation within.

Hip-hop often recounts tales of success; a theme most Americans obsess over. In these stories, an individual’s hustle, desire, and talent often lead beyond the ghetto to a new life filled with “bling” and an endless supply of materialistic wants. This new life embodies the triumph of the individual who was able to succeed, to ascend up the economic ladder. It is the fulfillment of the American dream without any help from America.

Of course these “success story” and this mythology does not represent the entirety of hip-hop or American black culture. However, these aspects are vital and must be understood before undertaking a critical analysis of hip-hop culture and some of its more offensive lyrics.

here is nothing within these lyrics that is anything new to American culture or other genres of music. Hip-hop is only more explicit about it. As Dyson explains,

“…it ain’t hip-hop that’s teaching the broader culture how to dog a woman; it’s the broader culture’s ways and rules that are keyed in by hop-hop lyricists.”

In an attempt to eradicate sexism and violence from our society, hip-hop isn’t the place to start. Guns and violence are expressions of urban life where hip-hop finds its roots. Music videos of “Cristal” champagne and Porsches are images of success by an individual with all the odds against them. Some may take offense and others might be inspired, but before you start pointing the finger, start looking elsewhere first. The source of all it stems from something larger: What you are buying.