The Future Shines on Her Smile
October 24, 2007 at 4:44 pm
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Tarantino is the first white filmmaker to forge a career based on disreputable, underclass taste — the movie culture that black urban youth were raised on and affectionately viewed as their own. Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill owe their inspiration to ’70s blaxploitation movies — a Hollywood trend that catered to the domestic fragmentation that occurred in America after ’60s political dissent, responding specifically to the social conflagrations of riots and rebellions that shifted the tax base and demographic make up of most U.S. cities. (Abandoned urban movie houses were blighted, left to feature the kind of trash-product that had been the traditional fare of drive-ins.) Blaxploitation anticipated a lasting cultural fragmentation. The pop audience that the ’60s seemed to unite became newly segregated into distinct racial and generational enclaves. The young folk who grew up on blaxploitation (and who would innovate hip hop culture) withdrew into disaffected sub-cults — claiming grade Z action movies, even the cheaply made and hastily dubbed kung-fu imports, as aesthetic ideals divorced of any social or ideological thinking. -Alter.net
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“O Ren Ishii adventure”
01. Yeasayer - Sunrise (MySpace)
2080 sunrise single (We Are Free, 2007)
02. Björk - Ambergris March
The Music form Drawing Restraint 9 (One Little Indian Us, 2006)
03. Medeski Martin and Wood - Partido Alto
The Dropper (2000)
04. The Flashbulb - Passage D
Binedump EP ( Bohnerwachs Tontrager, 2005)
05. Son House - Grinning in Your Face
Original Delta Blues (1998)
06. The Go! Team - Patricia’s Moving Picture
Proof Of Youth (Sub Pop, 2007)
07. Battles - Tonto (Four Tet Remix)
Tonto (Four Tet / The Field Mixes) (Warp Records, 2007)
08. Moondog - Avenue of the Americas (51st street)
Viking of Sixth Avenue (2006)
09. Public Enemy - Harder Than You Think (Instrumental)
Harder Than You Think (Slam Jamz Records, 2007)
note: Can a music genre and its signifying form exist outside the narrative of popular culture. (ie. does this song sound white or black without the usual context?) Admittedly this is a much more polite than I originally put it as a responds to S/F-J article in New Yorker. On top of very hard to pin beyond the obvious, this sort of conversation is not useful nor fun beyond revealing thinking construct of an observer. It’s nothing more than a critic projecting his own cultural perception. And often it doesn’t even fit with what goes on. For eg. What sound exactly is the list above? It certainly is organized in some criteria, but does it conforms to what critic likes to call “indie rock“? (bass line, soulful, rhythm/harmony structure, voice) Second, this list is a proof that internet and the various resources in can create a coherent sound beyond what is commonly accepted. Without the internet and various site like oink, adventurous sound cannot emerge except out of few elites with access. Consequently the primary function of p2p is to aggregate sounds in quantity never before for everybody. New sound can be created by anybody outside few traditional taste makers. Anybody. This is what the media conglomerate fears. So this post exists only because of current form of cross talk on the net. (more discussion 1, 2, 3)
see also: Made her smile for a while
image: O Ren Ishii from Kill Bill.
O- Ren Ishii (Kill Bill)
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It’s fascinating how Tarantino can stretch a comic character and lift it with a mix of low brow story and latest cinema story telling. The music also very tiltilating. In the scene above alone, there are 3 styles of music. They bring the impossible mix of cultural signifiers forward effortlessly.
about the list: I tried to make it as obvious as possible. How the ideas of blues, bass line, electronica, voicing, lyrics/lack of lyrics in places that usually should be are happening. And this is what various so called indie artists are doing. (if not the high degree of independence from what goes on with top 40 chart) All in all, I think this is more about texture and layered rhtyhm than obvious things like lyric, bass line or subject matters.
It’s a clone of Tarantino’s spaghetti culture.
Battles interview
(their single with four tet remix is excellent)
A Japanese guy told me he couldn’t understand a single word of Lucy Lu’s “Japanese” in that movie.
“Tarantino is the first white filmmaker to forge a career based on disreputable, underclass taste”
Good lord! Please don’t tell that to Charlie Chaplin fans.
ha.
when I was a kid and took myself way to seriously, a friend insisted chaplin is funny. And I say it’s just a jerky black and white slapstick. Cartoon is way better.
To this day I still can’t see what’s so funny about the three stooges.
During my time in montpellier I went in to some sort of temporary museum on la place du comedie dedicated to Chaplin and I have to say it was probably the only good, clean & fun moment on my stance there… I get Chaplin and I love his facial expressions but I just don’t get the three stooges or horace and andy either.
Mmm it seems that not only is Tarantino forging a movie career based on underclass taste but his soundtracks follow the same pattern as well, the man by himself practically resurected surf music and has propelled the musical careers of many long forgotten artists on each one of his films. I have to say most of the times I’m more excited about his soundtrack selections and their place on the film than on his actual films.
And hey! cool music selection, specially fond of the Son House, Moondog and public enemy ones,I had to doublecheck on the latter because I was reading public enemy but I thought I was really hearing Arthur Russell, the drums sound kind of murky and overlapped but i find the under-production appealing.
Hey sq I was wondering and trying to solve the puzzle of well, you and I need to ask: are or were you a beatnik at some point of your life? Your thoughts, music and relation to nyc kind of lead me to that conclusion… of course I’ve been drinking, slept 5 hours yesterday and i’m beginnign to drift off… so should shut up instead of meandering on my ignorant thoughts. Just curious :P
If I were a actually in beatnik generation I’d be dead of old age by now. But I generally take beatnik realism look at politics as something incredibly hip and timeless.
The last of S/F-J article. Actually from arcade fire band member explaining some of their music root. (with Mp3 samples.)
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sashafrerejones/2007/10/thats-all-folks.html
Surprisingly—in a pleasant way—Butler was a civil correspondent, and wrote not simply to defend Arcade Fire, as any proud band member would, but also to engage the ideas in the piece:
First, I would encourage you not to ignore the Latin element in rock-and-roll history. “Twist and Shout” by the Beatles is in fact “a fairly faithful rendition of a 1962 R. & B. cover by the Isley Brothers.” But that 1962 version is a fairly faithful rip-off of La Bamba by Ritchie Valens, which is a fairly faithful rip off of a traditional Latin tune plus a rock and roll beat. A song like “Stand by Me” (written by a black man with the help of a couple Jews) was written in part to cash in on the Latin craze in America. But those kind of syncopated rhythms are now so embedded in our culture that I, at least, have a hard time recognizing them as Latin.…
Secondly, don’t forget that miscegenation need [not] be across color lines. Poles and Italians and the Irish don’t mix, traditionally. I think an artist like Joanna Newsom is stealing Old World folk-style music (dare I say Irish?) and mixing it with more American Folk, which is partly white and partly black and partly mysterious (which you touch on in your article).
As for the MP3, there are parts where I can’t identify exactly what parallels Butler is drawing, but many of them are self-explanatory.
Keep in mind, I’m not saying we’re the funkiest, most soulful bunch of dudes and ladies (though we do, at least, always clap on 2 and 4).
We will end with clapping, entirely aware that it isn’t applause. The two and four will hold us for a while.
link here:
http://thenewyorker.typepad.com/online__sashafrerejones/files/arcade_fire_key.mp3
eh? so are they saying that tarantino doesn’t draw from and liberally steal from asian cinema? wow. i think they’re being a bit narrow in their analysis.
[...] note: This is a follow up for ‘The Future Shine‘ list. That music influence, albeit has origin, is not as easy to track. The late 60’s was the time when British folks influence enter rock and altering the shape of basic rockabilly form [1]. Lyrics forms and subject broadens and the use of acoustic is not just for simple solo sound. Chuck Berry even tries some latin form. And then there is Bo Diddley with his unconventional rock rhythm for his time, which makes his work timeless. And of course everybody was doing blues black or white, folks or rocker. It was part of menu that everybody had to do. That was the blend that enters psychedelia [2]. I am fro the school of mix and match. If it hasn’t been tried before, time to blend and stretch it. Make it rock. [...]
I tend to be more impressed than amused by Chaplin. On the other hand I can’t think of anything that is not funny about the Stooges (excepting the stuff with Curly Joe, of course).