Review of the show at Rhizome
Apr. 8th, 2007 09:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_fantastic_ms_foxAthen's Boy's Choir - Awesome.
Team Gina - ...usually entertaining.
Yeah, that about covers it.
Katz (from ABC) was eloquent and funny. He combined spoken word with video. He spoke about the time he stood by an anti-abortion protest with a sign reading "don't listen to these haters," then realized that there might be someone doing exactly the same thing at a pro-abortion protest, realiveng that this was silly, and wondering so how do we get along with each-other? This is when I started clapping (alone). He also stopped halfway through one of his pieces to say that he thought that the original wording might be kinda sexist, so he changed the words - and then he did it again with the different version which didn't sound as good. Bold.
He covered a variety of topics, and was critical, humorous and, when appropriate, self-implicating. Good social criticism. He made me think. Cheers. Worth my time and dollar. Go see him.
Team Gina also made me think, but mostly because I required a period of introspection to figure out why it bothered me. TG was a spoken word slash hip-hop act with synchronized dance. And stage-right-Gina had a tattoo that spelled out "13" in Mayan, which gets a point. But it was... whiny. The kind of whiny you get when well-to-do folks hang out in left-wing circles where you're supposed to be "oppressed" before being taken seriously.
There is a certain irony when a hip-hop dance team (where one member has an anthropology degree and the other is a professional artist) complaining about thirteen year old White boys emulating gangsta. Or complaining about said boys when what they're describing makes it pretty clear that the kid is not bothering them in any way; and is coming from a fucked-up family.
The piece about straight guys made me realize that I was sitting next to a straight (or bi?) (trans-) guy who would never do any of the things that they were kvetching about. Nor would any of the straight (cis) guys that I hang around with. And what they were complaining about wasn't that bad - it was a rude comment, much as heard by anyone who breaks with the social norm whether it's on the grounds of sexual orientation, or religion, or occuption, or familial composition. It sounds more to one of the social problems that develops when you hang around in homogendered (or homo-religious/occupational/hobbyist/ethnic) social circles: you forget why others act the way they do, forget how to deal with it (because you don't have to deal with it, you just have to walk back to your bubble), and start blanket labelling - and by escheving friendly social contact, you're not left with many positive interactions.
Still. Fun. Good as a warm-up act, not a full piece.
Team Gina - ...usually entertaining.
Yeah, that about covers it.
Katz (from ABC) was eloquent and funny. He combined spoken word with video. He spoke about the time he stood by an anti-abortion protest with a sign reading "don't listen to these haters," then realized that there might be someone doing exactly the same thing at a pro-abortion protest, realiveng that this was silly, and wondering so how do we get along with each-other? This is when I started clapping (alone). He also stopped halfway through one of his pieces to say that he thought that the original wording might be kinda sexist, so he changed the words - and then he did it again with the different version which didn't sound as good. Bold.
He covered a variety of topics, and was critical, humorous and, when appropriate, self-implicating. Good social criticism. He made me think. Cheers. Worth my time and dollar. Go see him.
Team Gina also made me think, but mostly because I required a period of introspection to figure out why it bothered me. TG was a spoken word slash hip-hop act with synchronized dance. And stage-right-Gina had a tattoo that spelled out "13" in Mayan, which gets a point. But it was... whiny. The kind of whiny you get when well-to-do folks hang out in left-wing circles where you're supposed to be "oppressed" before being taken seriously.
There is a certain irony when a hip-hop dance team (where one member has an anthropology degree and the other is a professional artist) complaining about thirteen year old White boys emulating gangsta. Or complaining about said boys when what they're describing makes it pretty clear that the kid is not bothering them in any way; and is coming from a fucked-up family.
The piece about straight guys made me realize that I was sitting next to a straight (or bi?) (trans-) guy who would never do any of the things that they were kvetching about. Nor would any of the straight (cis) guys that I hang around with. And what they were complaining about wasn't that bad - it was a rude comment, much as heard by anyone who breaks with the social norm whether it's on the grounds of sexual orientation, or religion, or occuption, or familial composition. It sounds more to one of the social problems that develops when you hang around in homogendered (or homo-religious/occupational/hobbyist/ethnic) social circles: you forget why others act the way they do, forget how to deal with it (because you don't have to deal with it, you just have to walk back to your bubble), and start blanket labelling - and by escheving friendly social contact, you're not left with many positive interactions.
Still. Fun. Good as a warm-up act, not a full piece.
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Re: "Deserve's got nothin' to do with it"
Date: 2007-04-10 04:20 am (UTC)1) Alturism - not that people shouldn't be thanked for 'good works', but that you should do 'good works' for the sake of the work, not your ego/rewards.
2) That though I think that minorities need to open up a place for the 'majority' to ally themselves with minorities, it shouldn't mean editing our experiences, lives, and feelings about being a minority, and that the 'majority' members should recognize that b/c they do not have an understanding of what it means to be in the minority, or a specific minority, that it will take a certain amount of listening, humility, empathy, education and hard work to become a trusted ally. Basically, it's good for the soul for a priviledged person to be an outsider, and need to learn new norms and perspectives, and being an ally can be a part of that process.