Old Spice ads have gone viral in the past few days.
They’re selling MANfumes for MANsmells to MANpeople, that I assume will also have the ladies lining up at the counter.
Maybe it’s the age thing. Perhaps it’s her awesome popularity. Or maybe editors have a point when they say that older, wiser and more educated fashion journalists are the bee’s whizz-fizz when it comes to objective and considered critiques.
And that they should have front row seats to haute couture.
Forever.
And, why not? They’ve gone through uni. But more importantly, they’ve gone through high school. They’ve laboured through professional writing courses and internships. They have degrees. They’ve done their time.
Hence the little ruckus (and I say little compared to AMY WINEHOUSE’S HAIR) that ensued after 13-year-old fashion blogger extraordinaire Tavi Gevinson scored a front row seat at a hoity toity fashion show, I don’t know where, they ride bikes there, I think.
Yes, the internet is a curse. All these people, distributing their music, writing and films on the interconnected webs, for free (well, relatively), and without needing to suck up to someone as irritating as low fat yoghurt.
Fashion editor Suzy Menkes put it best:
The world changed when fashion instead of being a monologue, became a conversation.
And once this happened, things could never turn back.
Bloggers, unrestricted by editors and less restricted by advertising (they do receive some gifts from people, like nail clippers and front row seats), are voices of criticism in an industry lulled by a desire not to piss anybody off. They have taken high fashion into their homes, ripped it up and put it in their scrap books. It’s not something they want to keep quiet about, and it’s not something to be reserved for the opinions of the highly educated. Anymore.
Designer Christopher Kane recently said (which he later tried to amend):
At some shows this season the front row was just all bloggers. I think it will die down though, and people know what they are doing. No one who wants to read a serious review of a show is going to look at what a 14-year-old thinks.
Hmm. He might want to think about how all these inconsequential voices will react to that. Regardless of age, people are reading and listening to fashion blogs in their millions.
But are fashion bloggers really so honest? Don’t designers give them hats and stuff?
On the other hand, glossy magazines offer objective critiques all the time. They aren’t swayed by designers and advertisers. Nuh-uh, simply not true.
Robert Johnson, editor at GQ, had this to say:
Bloggers are so attractive to the big design houses because they are so wide-eyed and obsessed, but they don’t have the critical faculties to know what’s good and what’s not. As soon as they’ve been invited to the shows, they can no longer criticise because then they won’t be invited back.
Well, he’s right about the show thing. Sure, some bloggers will accept gifts and give a good rap to a designer. But doesn’t this happen everywhere, in every field? He’s also right about something else: it’s safe to say that many bloggers are obsessed with whatever it is they’re writing about. And that’s what makes them so great to read.
Setting aside fashion blogs for a moment, in what other medium could you view a visual diary dedicated to sandwiches? Scanned images of sandwiches? Not photographed, but scanned?
Check out this interview with Suzy Menkes on the growing influence of fashion blogs. I found it here.
The Australian Classification Board refuses classification to any film or publication that depicts a person who is a child under 18, or appears to be, in a context that may cause offense. (This may involve sexual activity but is not limited to it.)
This isn’t new information, but has gotten bloggers and social commentators into fisticuffs after news last week that the ACB was banning adult publications depicting women who appeared to be underage due to their small breasts.
Teeny titties are not the only thing causing the uproar. Female ejaculation has also gotten the ACB in the firing line.
While the Film and Games guidelines do not specifically ban publications showing female ejaculation, it does refuse classification to the fetish of ‘golden showers’. The Board are yet to respond to questions about whether they consider female ejaculation to be urination. (The Australian Sex Party claims the ACB recently refused classification to a performance depicting female ejaculation, considering it a golden shower. However, the ASP provides no further information on the scene in question.)
The British Board of Film Classification has also had problems with the classification of female ejaculation. The Board claimed, until recently, that female ejaculation does not exist. They cited a whole bunch of scientific reports that proved female ejaculation to be physiologically impossible. Performers were, they said, merely urinating (also illegal to show in the UK). They must have been a little red in the cheeks when Anna Span challenged the law, citing her own scientific proof, and had it overturned. The BBFC now recognises female ejaculation as legitimate.
The debate about female ejaculation is pretty straight forward, I think. As part of Anna Span’s appeal to the BBFC, a sample of ejaculate from the model who performed in the film was tested to prove it wasn’t urine. She also included several reports that provide evidence of women’s ability to ejaculate.
The Australian Classification Board has been quiet on this issue. I look forward to hearing what they have to say, should they desire to be transparent and accountable for Australia’s classification guidelines.
The debate on younguns in porn is murkier, to say the least.
Some argue that teen porn promotes sex with minors, rape and incest. By allowing such material to be sold, the Classification Board is ’sending a message that it’s ok to want sex with real live young girls’.
In her article, Melinda Reist takes the line that pornography develops and promotes an agenda of sexual violence. While perpetrators of sexual abuse may consume high amounts of pornography, a variety of other factors including socialisation, family, culture and psychology have a huge impact on any inclination to cause a sexual offense. These issues have way more to do with causing sexually abusive behavior than watching some people getting off in a classroom.
Part of a ‘healthy’ relationship with porn is being able to see it for what it is – a fantasy landscape in which the laws of cause and effect are non-existent. If this distinction between fantasy and reality can be made, i.e. the distinction between engaging in a sexual relationship with someone who appears to be underage on screen and actively seeking them out in ‘real life’, then pornography can be a harmless, enriching and valuable space to explore our impulses and thoughts.
I need to stress here that a lot of porn is shockingly bad (just like a lot of films are, or books or whatever), and that the way sex is used in advertising and story-telling, the way it is dumbed down day in and day out to sell some coat-hangers or radios is a really thoughtless, worthless depiction of sexuality. This kind of porn only serves as a daily reminder of our lack of imagination.
If you want to see some interesting porn, try this.
Life on Mars may not be what you expected.
Unless, of course, you expected a lounge singing space cowboy entertaining lonely wayfarers in a seedy bar. If so, kudos, you’re awesome.
In the universe of Stingray Sam, Mars is like a derelict Las Vagas. It once thrived as an entertainment and resort capital, but its casino-lined streets and bar room musical talent a-plenty has dried up, leaving only a few weary drinking holes to sustain fragile dreams with some leftover sticks and packing tape. The only visitors who continue to dally with the red planet are the reclusive, or those who fail to realise that all the opportunities shipped out with most of the population.
Cory McAbee’s latest flick is a curious musical space-western that involves intergalactic corporatisation, dance routines and tiny little robots. And remember that bar room musical talent I was talking about? Well it seems some of it stuck to the walls during the mop up.
The Billy Nayer Show, the band in residence at McAbee’s sound lab, is one of the coolest, hipest, swankiest, (phatest? or is that just like, so naughties?) acts on the market. You know, in case you wanted to buy them or something.
They provide the soundtrack for the cosmic showdown of redemptive missions, privatised prisons and many, many men. Many. Many. Men. Whole planets of men. Male offspring spawning male offspring. Chuck and Dick making Duck. Fred and Edward making Fredward. You get it.
Ex-convict Stingray Sam has been roped into journeying with his former cell-mate the Quasar Kid (played by band mate Crugie) to rescue a now-rare young girl (McAbee’s daughter, Willa Vy McAbee), in turn repaying his debt to society and guaranteeing his freedom. The film is shot in high-def black-and-white, with catchy song and dance sequences led by McAbee and effective graphics and still-collage work by John Borruso. The film is original in plot and design and is a marker of McAbee and band’s talent and creativity (much like McAbee’s feature debut, The American Astronaut).
Stingray Sam was not exclusively designed as a feature. McAbee was commissioned by Sundance to make a film for mobile phones, so it ended up being a web series that can be viewed on anything from an iPod to the big screen. There are six episodes, each about ten minutes in length.
Perhaps it’s because I’m so used to watching something straight through at the cinema, without breaks at ten minute intervals and the repetition of a twenty second theme song, that I found the format distracting. At some screenings people began singing along to the opening titles, but I just wanted to get them out of the way and get back to the story.
Watching it on the web was a completely different experience, with the right amount of information packed into each episode and plot hooks that had me pining for the next one. I don’t know why, but it seemed like the story was more expansive on the internets, perhaps because the limits on what you can do with a story in 5-10 minute episodes are (semi-)defined, whereas in a feature you expect more time to be given to the characters.
The serial format was inspired both by old cinematic serials that were screened right before features (episodes were released weekly, so you had to go back to the same cinema to see the next installment), but more so the contemporary trend in media consumption. People are increasingly consuming media and entertainment via the web, and episodic content is much more suitable to this kind of viewing. Even features have been serialised for viewing on the web.
Here is a nifty, but cheesy, web animation series created by Stan Lee (co-creator of Spider Man, X-Men and The Hulk, among other super hero type people) in the early 00s.
Sing her the song!
Stingray Sam is a super web series, but you can decide for yourself.