Opinion of Iggy Azalea

[ingemann]

FF because I can't see why she's worse than most pop singer or rapper. BTW this whole being angry at a artist for "racial appropriation" is sickening.

[ingemann]

BTW this whole being angry at a artist for "racial appropriation" is sickening.

Strong words. Why 'sickening' and not just 'excessive' or 'uncalled-for' or something like that?

Because when I read such statements, I get this bad feeling in my gut. That feeling is not "uncalled-for" or "excessive" it's "sickening".

Also this idea that you can steal cultural elements from another culture rather than just adopt them, is a sign of a person who are unable to set the modern world in a historical perspective, and a sign of the person thinking there pure cultures.  

[ingemann]

BTW this whole being angry at a artist for "racial appropriation" is sickening.

Strong words. Why 'sickening' and not just 'excessive' or 'uncalled-for' or something like that?

Because when I read such statements, I get this bad feeling in my gut. That feeling is not "uncalled-for" or "excessive" it's "sickening".

Okay, fair enough.

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You really don't see a difference between good-faith, mutual cultural exchange and blithely helping oneself to a grab-bag of traditions and aesthetic sensibilities airlifted in from other cultures wholesale? It's basically the same as the difference between literary allusion and plagiarism...

[ingemann]

The trouble with it is as a concept is that unless you are being really careful there's a risk that you start heading back into a previous and rather less enlightened era of cultural criticism; the idea that certain forms of culture are entirely the property of certain peoples (and may actually be innate to them on some level), that culture can be 'polluted' by outsiders and so on. It's not a very long journey from there to Das Judenthum in der Musik, and it should be noted that there are stations further down the line than that...

Right, this is why I've always been firmly critical of the phrase 'cultural appropriation'. It gets thrown around for everything from stereotyping to whitewashing to... this. Even if one were to completely throw out the idea of cultural appropriation though, one can see why Iggy's success upsets people.

Yes I get that some people think she's horrible person and/or musician, and whether You, I or anybody else agree or disagree, that's a legitimate but highly subjective critic of her. But it wasn't the one people use, they criticised her for "stealing" Black music. Which show a very ugly mentality in the people who say that.

As for someone who said earlier that Iggy is in the way for more talented Black female rapper, that's completely ridiculous. Musicians stand on their own and some of them make it big, through a mix of luck, stubborness and charisma, not necessary talent. The greatest musicians are not necessary the people making it big.

[ingemann]

ingemann, this is admittedly not directly comparable but I'm going to submit that what Iggy Azalea is all about is a sort of distinctly uncomfortable middle ground between this and the sort of good-faith cultural exchange that you seem to assume it is: Do you understand what the problem with minstrel shows is?

Yes I do, the fact that they ridiculed Black people and portraited them as buffoons.

Here's the thing, you can't say that Iggy act is a ministel show and say that she copy them at the same time. Unless you want to say that modern African-American musicians run their own ministrel show for the benefit of White Americans, and if you believe that's the case, Iggy is really the least problem.

[ingemann]

ingemann, this is admittedly not directly comparable but I'm going to submit that what Iggy Azalea is all about is a sort of distinctly uncomfortable middle ground between this and the sort of good-faith cultural exchange that you seem to assume it is: Do you understand what the problem with minstrel shows is?

Yes I do, the fact that they ridiculed Black people and portraited them as buffoons.

Here's the thing, you can't say that Iggy act is a ministel show and say that she copy them at the same time. Unless you want to say that modern African-American musicians run their own ministrel show for the benefit of White Americans, and if you believe that's the case, Iggy is really the least problem.

Yes, the fact that it can be argued to be mimicry rather than cruel parody is why I conceded that the comparison isn't direct. But the issue is that it's chimerical to claim that mimicry can't be mocking unless the thing being mimicked is itself flawed.

You can't mock something by adopting it, unless it's flawed from the start. If you want to mock something which isn't flawed in itself, you have to change it, even if only in minute details, and what Iggy does is clearly imitation, which is the most sincer form of flattery. But if you see it as mocking, the thing she imitate aren't fundamental flawed in your opinion.

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Yes that's a fine opinion to have, but because something doesn't work in the new context doesn't mean that the artist copying the style is guilty of anything but bad taste.

I don't see anything wrong with the Chinese copying European historical buildings, I see what they produce as inferior to the original, but I don't see it as inherent wrong of the Chinese architects to reproduce others designs.

Besides, the 'cultural appropriation' talk is kind of losing the plot in that what's so terrible about Iggy Azalea specifically isn't so much the music as the defensive, lashing-back, wounded-gazelle nature of the way she responds to being criticized for it. That, and her Twittter feed, just in general.

... and that's a legitimate critic of her, that you thinks she's a horrible person. The problem is that it have nothing to do with "stealing" the culture of African-Americans

[ingemann]

Cultural appropriation is bullsh#t and anyone legitimately engaging that kind of pseudo-Maoist nonsense is terrible and should be ashamed of themselves.

My issue isn't with "cultural appropriation". It's that she's actively working to undermine the culture she's imitating.

I expect I will regret this, but please explain you reasoning.

[ingemann]

Did you know there's a shirt being sold on some website (forget where) that has Kurt Cobain's suicide note printed on it? Why is that a thing? Why does everything have to be a trend or a fashion statement?

Who cares?

A man took his own life and people made it in into a piece of clothing. My whole point is trying to say that not everything needs to be a trend, especially not things that are delicate and personal.

A website sells shirts with a very bad taste text on it... who cares, I don't because I hadn't heard about the website. In fact I find the whole selling Che shirts much worse, simply because it's so common.

[ingemann]

I once met a guy who had a bin Laden t-shirt because "he is an important man of our time". I said "oh, so it's kind of like having a Hitler t-shirt around 1940 then?"

That was too provocative for him so he walked away.

I support shirts like that, it make it easier to know who to avoid, and in case of a terror attack easier for the police to know who to shot. Yes there will likely be some collateral damage among the hipster community, but that's a price I'm willing to pay.