Why Spike Lee Is Evil...

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

Fart Carnage schrieb:

> And don't get me 
> started on Public Enemy, the feature group on Do The Right Thing's 
> soundtrack. They've also built their reputation by spewing out black power 
> slogans from the 60s while offering nothing new to the discourse. 


  public enemy definitely offered something new to the  s o u n d.

  (here you may check out again the luhmann-mail i forwarded yesterday).

  & to some of the younger people those black power slogans were, perhaps, not 
  so very well known. furthermore, they were presented in a new context.   

  on the issue i can recommend chapter four of tricia rose's already classic 
  study "black noise" from 1994. it contains a close reading of "night 
  of the living baseheads", the song as well as the video. to illustrate the 
  polit-aesthetical complexity of pe's work i give you an outtake: " ... public 
  enemy's use of the audubon ballroom in 'baseheads' as the narrative point of 
  departure is part of a larger community dialogue and struggle over social 
  space and political power. using the ballroom as his 'base', chuck d situated 
  pe's vision as an extension of malcom x and focussed attention on the audubon 
  park controversy while the issue was being hotly contested. his explicitly 
  antimedia, antigovernment stance suggests that he supports the community-based 
  distrust of the audubon park project and its effects on the surrounding harlem 
  community. 'baseheads' video images and lyrical focus on the dangers of drug 
  addiction, the loss of power and agency it produces and its devastating effect 
  on black people, is in brutal contrast with the city's proposed audubon park 
  biotechnical complex, whose purpose is to create non-human life forms that can 
  resist disease and poisons ..." (p. 122). 


  in "prophets of rage" from 1988 public enemy sez:

  "with vice i hold the mike device/with force i keep it away of course/and i'm 
  keepin' you from sleepin'/and on the stage i rage/and i'm rollin'/to the poor, 
  i pour it on in metaphors/not bluffin', it's nothin'/we ain't did before".


 

                                           
                                       now bring on da noise! mc säure