The Morning Dump: Long live LaChapelle, joke rap, ‘The Wire’ as academic text, Liz Lemon is not ugly and what that means
Posted on 27. Mar, 2010 by theashcan in Morning Dump
- I’m hopped up on cold meds and drunk from a lunch meeting as I write this bold statement, but David LaChapelle is the Holden Caulfield of fashion photography. As skeezy Terry Richardson makes the news rounds and we lament Annie Leibowitz’s financial decline, LaChapelle opens up to Dazed Digital about learning from his mistakes and being affected by bad shit happening around him and growing up with two parents who loved him oodles and believed in him. Maybe that seems to be antithesis to caustic Caulfield, but I stand by the idea that most of us who have led quite pedestrian, nuclear lives relate to the Catcher protagonist because he represents our latent angst. Long live LaChapelle.
- I hate joke rap. I can’t stand listening to it, I don’t find it funny and I go all stony-faced when it’s forced on me. Even if there are decent punchlines and alla that jazz, it all boils down to an ironic frat boy bastardization of a beloved art form. Sean Fennessey makes a good case for joke rap in this Village Voice piece, but he also proves my point—but can someone tell me the big, glaring difference standing between a Das Racist or a Donald Glover and Lonely Island?
- Few would dispute that David Simon’s The Wire is intelligent television — some might even argue it’s the smartest show ever penned. Two years after it ended however, the show continues to enjoy heady times; but this time quite a bit more literally. The Wire is starting to pick up steam with academia as social scientists increasingly employ the HBO tome as educational text. Slate breaks down why Harvard and Duke are among colleges now teaching The Wire, while Eric Beck’s essay on Omar Little as neo-liberal subjectivity shoots TV analysis from the AV-Club to the Ivory Tower. Get it? Shoots? Har Har Har.
- I’m sober and well rested as I write this statement. I’m also a guy. But that doesn’t mean I don’t learn lots from Tigerbeatdown’s feminist blogger Sady; her awesomely-written 13 Ways of Looking at Liz Lemon muses on how a particularly popular brand of Lemon-ish feminism is not only midguided but selfish, on how 30 Rock works as a show, and of course, on Sady herself. I’m always up for a good 30 Rock think piece. It’s like they stuff that show with as much critical catnip as they can, then just sit back and LOL as we scramble tooth and nail to unpack it. Also in this series: 30 Rock and conservatism, and my dad’s favourite: 3o Rock and Filipinos. Right, dad? Dad, where’d you go? Nobody loves me.
