Yeah, this song had existed on my periphery since last week, when there was a definitive backlash against it. It is what it is. It is a fairly conventional pop song sung by a teenager and Auto-Tuned to death.
I paid more attention to it while listening to Slate's Culture Gabfest where they had an interesting conversation about it, backfilling some information for me, like that the song and video were a present from Ms. Black's parents.
Then...The Awl did a close reading of the video, identifying it as a radical text.
How cool is that? Let me tell you...Very.
Three girls march single-file into the house, eager for introductory lessons to chemical abuse, sexual politics, personal branding—the sickly trinity of numbness that will see them through whatever non-lives the data banks ladle out to them.
We return to the computer graphic calendar sequence, the litany of days: Ms. Black’s image flickers across the screen, now doubled, fractured, schizophrenic, threatening Kleboldian frenzy—as we cut to an African-American man in his early thirties.
He wears diamond earrings, a light beard, drives across the familiar blue-screen cityscape. He alone seems untaken by the false images around him. Is it because he can’t forget American brutality? Does ancient bondage keep him from modern numbness? Is he protected from pharma and plasma by fire hoses and cotton fields?
I know see a local "university" kowtowing to various groups and reintroducing some cultural studies classes with this as the centerpiece.
Long live Friday and the people who are living for it. They are our Lennys and need to be protected.
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