Molotov Cocktail
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Transcript of Molotov Cocktail
MOLOTOV COCTAIL
1
MOLOTOV
COCKTAIL. A concoction of politics and pop
culture.
Writing in the Media Portfolio by Wan Eijas Ariffin.
MOLOTOV COCTAIL
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Contents
Against Me! – Transgender
Dysphoria Blues
Page 4
What I Learned From Watching
Eurovision
Page 6
The Radical Politics of Kanye
West
Page 9
Her Gender Politics is Confusing
Page 12
MOLOTOV COCTAIL
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Reviews .Against Me! –
Transgender Dysphoria
Blues
Against Me! return with one of
their best yet
Against Me! gained most of their cult
followers with their first three albums
by playing a sound which was unheard
of in the punk scene, coupling poetic
lyrics with intense energetic sing-
alongs. However, since their debut on
a major label, New Wave, many started
to fall out of love with the band. Many
declared them as sell outs, claiming
they changed their sound to appeal to a
more mainstream audience, while the
remaining fans defended the band’s
decision to reinvent themselves to their
death.
All that happened seven years ago
though. Despite releasing White
Crosses in 2010, a stellar record which
combined rock with hints of pop, the
band seemed to fall off the radar.
However, when the band announced
their latest record, Transgender
Dysphoria Blues, it put Against Me!
back in the spotlight when their lead
singer, Laura Jane Grace came out as a
transgender. Many were intrigued how
MOLOTOV COCTAIL
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this would affect the band’s sound and
direction.
The album opens with the title track to
a thunderous drum roll by the band’s
new drummer Atom Willard, reassuring
many that the energy never left. The
impression one might get upon hearing
Laura’s passionate singing is one of
emancipation, that Laura is finally
emancipated from the pressures of strict
gender roles enforced upon her.
However this doesn’t seem to be the
case, as a closer inspection to the lyrics
tells us about her struggles in coping
with gender dysphoria. Much of
Laura’s lyrics in the album is presented
in the same way. Laura passionately
sings about coping with alienation,
gender expectations and dead friends in
the songs True Trans Soul Rebel,
FuckMyLife666 and Dead Friends. The
way Laura presents her lyrics not only
lets listeners emotionally connect with
Laura’s struggles but it also allows the
listeners to co-opt these songs into their
own songs of struggle.
Musically, this album is Against Me!’s
most diverse project. Songs like
Drinking With the Jocks, Paralytic
States and Black Me Out would
recapture lost fans who long for Laura’s
fast guitars and roaring voice which
was missing in their last few albums.
Newer fans would also find much
enjoyment in Laura’s combination of
pop and rock with songs like
Unconditional Love and Two Coffins.
Despite being the band’s best work in a
long time, this album fell short of being
one of their best in their catalogue. The
band’s desire to appease a broad fan
base backfired as the album sounded
messy at times. The result of mixing
their old sound with their new sound
felt like it was a compilation album of
their tracks over the years. This album
lacked the cohesive sound which was
felt in their last few albums.
Overall, this album managed to prove
many of the doubters wrong. It showed
the older fans that they still have the
fiery passion burning within them and it
convinced the newer fans to remain
fans of the band. Despite the lack of
cohesiveness in the album, it says a lot
about the band’s future, which many
thought were dead.
Written by Wan Eijas Ariffin
Photo by Kmeron via Creative
Commons
MOLOTOV COCTAIL
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What I Learned From
Watching Eurovision
An outsider’s view of Europe’s
biggest event
I’ve lived in the United Kingdom for
about two years now after coming to
Canterbury for university. After two
years in Canterbury and some weekends
in other parts of England, I’m starting
to understand the culture more. Before
coming here, how I perceived the UK
was largely shaped by the UK’s pop
cultural exports. I learnt about how
passionate Brits were about football
from films about hooligans with ex
footballers who’s acting was only
slightly better than a teenager in a high
school play. I learnt about how
depressing the weather was from all the
dreary songs bands like The Smiths and
The Cure put out. I mean what else
could encourage these bands from
constantly spewing out depressing
anthems but the depressing weather,
right? I guess it’s pretty safe to say by
now I pretty much get what you lot are
about.
Then I realised that despite the UK
being in Europe, the UK is kind of
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culturally divorced from the rest of the
Europe, and despite me knowing what
the culture here is like, I don’t really
know much about the rest of the UK’s
continent-mates. I thought that the best
way to learn about Europe without
spending much money was to indulge
in its pop cultural celebrations. So this
year I’ve decided to partake in what I
recently learnt was a European custom,
drinking while watching Eurovision to
learn as much as I could about Europe.
This year’s Eurovision final was held in
Copenhagen, Denmark, a place which I
don’t know much about. I’ve always
had the idea that the Scandinavia must
be really boring with all of its socialism
and lack of income inequality and all
that. Eurovision began with a typically
beautiful white blonde woman carrying
the Eurovision trophy, then turns into a
beam to the rest of Europe signifying
that Eurovision unites the Europeans
together under one roof. Then, all of a
sudden, we were treated to a montage
of a bunch of masked men on
motorbikes and fast cars racing through
the beautiful town of Copenhagen.
Perhaps, this was deliberate on the part
of the producers to trigger trauma
amongst their Ukrainian audience, to
show them a somewhat Hollywood-ised
version of the invasion of masked
Russian gunmen in Crimea. Already I
knew I was in for a treat.
Coincidentally, the first contestant was
Mariya Yaremchuk from Ukraine, who
sang a pop song called Tick-Tock. The
first thing I noticed was that there was a
man behind her who was running in
what looked like a human scaled
hamster wheel (refer picture).
Throughout the rest of her performance
I was actually more fixated with the
hamster wheel guy than Maria. Though
she did leave my head bopping along to
her catchy chorus. The hamster wheel
and the chorus left me at a state of
trance for a longer time than I’d like to
admit.
Next up, Belarus went on with a song
aptly called Cheesecake by Teo. After
seeing Ukraine’s eccentric performance
I didn’t know what else to expect.
Everything about Teo seemed as if he
belonged in the early 2000’s alongside
campy Casanovas like Marc Anthony
and Ricky Martin. That performance set
the tone for the rest of the night, campy,
kitsch but at the same time fun and
entertaining.
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About halfway through the show,
Conchita Wurst of Austria came on.
Being a politics student and a fan of
pop culture, I’ve always loved it when
pop culture rears its beautiful bearded
subversive head. Conchita Wurst
garnered plenty of attention before the
show for being a transgendered woman
with a full beard. Her powerful ballad,
Rise Like a Phoenix stood out against
the rest of her European opponents.
Belting out powerful lyrics like “Once
I'm transformed, Once I’m reborn, You
know I will rise like a phoenix” you
could tell she had a personal connection
to the song, which made the fun night
full of camp feel a lot more sincere and
hopeful.
By the end of the three hour show, I’ve
caught myself laughing at the jokes,
offended by certain racist jokes the
hosts made against Chinese people,
booed along with the audience
whenever Russia came on and hopeful
with Conchita’s win.
I felt like I enjoyed Eurovision not
despite of the camp and kitsch but
because of it. I enjoyed seeing how the
artists and the audience didn’t take
themselves too seriously, which made
everything all the more fun and
entertaining. Despite the continual
struggle to unite Europe through the
EU, with the rise of right wing parties
and the failure of neoliberal economy, it
felt good to see different people uniting
and having fun while an Andy
Samberg-lookalike is singing “I want a
moustache” on stage. If there’s
anything I learned about European
culture tonight is that it’s multi-
talented, diverse and ten years behind
current music trends.
Written by Wan Eijas Ariffin
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The Radical Politics of
Kanye West
An insight into the rapper’s
subversive thoughts
Whenever you meet a non-Kanye West
fan, the opinions you get of him aren’t
really diverse. Almost every single time
you’ll hear how he’s either a talented
rapper with a huge ego or a talentless
rapper with a huge ego. Videos of him
ranting against corporations for limiting
his creativity, or videos of him just
ranting are widely shared and often
ridiculed. People often dismiss it as just
another rich celebrity rant who’s
whining about rich people problems.
What most people overlook is that
many of his messages can be extremely
profound and powerful.
After the release of his latest Yeezus,
Kanye went on a massive nationwide
tour in the United States promoting his
album. In each state of the tour, he
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would give a 20-minute speech to his
fans, often thanking them for coming
out to the show and explaining the
motives and motivations behind the
Yeezus album. He’d remind the fans to
not let “the man” suppress your
creativity, to continuously challenge the
status quo and to stay true to your roots.
While it’s not exactly profound nor
radical, these words could bring a much
deeper impact on a young
impressionable teenager, much like how
it impacted me when I listened to
Kanye’s first album, The College
Dropout when I was 13.
In his album Yeezus, he justifies calling
the album Yeezus by putting forward
that “simply put: West was my slave
name and Yeezus is my god name”
which is a clear homage to the
revolutionary Malcolm X. When asked
why Malcolm changed his last name to
“X”, he claimed that his initial last
name was a Western name given to him
by his slave owners. In naming his
album Yeezus, Kanye is clearly
deliberately making people
uncomfortable by bringing back an
issue which continues to haunt the
United States even in 2014, which is
white supremacy.
Kanye’s homage to Malcolm X isn’t
some dumb fluke and Kanye isn’t as
dumb as people make him out to be. In
the album Yeezus, Kanye samples songs
from people like Nina Simone and Gil
Scott Heron, who were in their own
right influential artists who spoke
against white supremacy, corporations
and black power.
In his song New Slaves, Kanye starts
the song that automatically confronts
the listener with the lines “My momma
was raised in the era when, Clean water
was only served to the fairer skin”. In
New Slaves, Kanye brings up the fact
that despite the civil rights era has
passed, the majority of inmates in
private prisons are black. Despite
Kanye now being a celebrity, Kanye
laments that he’s unable to express
himself artistically and is suppressed by
corporations who are only using him for
profit. Kanye manages to articulate that
despite him being at the top, having
both financial and cultural capital
doesn’t mean anything if you’re not
white, that you still “have to know your
place” in America, even in 2014.
Plenty of critics dismiss his recent
outbursts and lyrical content by painting
Kanye as jumping on the “subversive”
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trend that has developed ever since the
2008 economic collapse. These critics
obviously haven’t listened to any of his
previous albums then. In 2004 when
Kanye first released his album The
College Dropout, Kanye raps “drug
dealer buy Jordans, crackhead buy
crack and a white man get paid off of
all of that” in his song All Falls Down,
painting the epidemic plaguing modern
Black America, that white people are
the ones who profit from problems like
crack addiction in black communities.
Despite just releasing his seventh album
last year, Kanye is already working on
his new album. Let’s hope those who
dismiss him before this would actually
start listening, who knows, he might
just start something.
Written by Wan Eijas Ariffin
Photo by Peter Hutchins via Creative
Commons
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Her Gender Politics is
Confusing
Her, directed by Spike Jonze, was
released last year to much critical
acclaim, even managing to snag an
Oscar at the Academy Awards. Despite
its acclaim, plenty of fault can be seen
in its portrayal of women, especially
their role in heteronormative
relationships.
The movie Her by Spike Jonze is a
story that sees Theodore (played by
Joaquin Phoenix) falling in love with
his super intelligent OS, Samantha
(played by Scarlett Johansson). Set in a
not so distant future, Her presents the
future as some sort of technological
utopia in which our lives are made
much more convenient with our
computer friends organising our lives
for us. Despite being set in a
technological utopia in a not so distant
future, it seems that the only thing that
hasn’t progressed in the movie is its
gender politics.
In the movie, Theodore falls in love
with his OS, Samantha, years after
suffering from the break-up from his
previous girlfriend, Catherine (played
by Rooney Mara). Catherine claims that
one of the reasons they broke up was
because Theodore thought that she was
too complicated and even suggested
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that she take Prozac so that she will fall
in line to what he thinks she should be.
In other words, Theodore only sees
women as objects to fulfil his needs and
happiness. He actually fails to see that
women aren’t like him and have their
own free desires free will which may
not necessarily involve the significant
other.
Throughout the movie we see Theodore
hasn’t really progressed from his break
up. He fails to learn from his mistakes
that he can’t control women, and that
they don’t exist merely for his
happiness. This is telling as the
audience sees Theodore panicking as
Samantha briefly goes offline at Her
own whim for an upgrade. It seems that
Theodore cannot cope that women are
able to progress without needing a man
in their lives to upgrade as we see it is
the converse for Theodore, who places
all his happiness on a woman.
In Her, Spike Jonze manages to play
out the cliché trope of the Manic Pixie
Dream Girl (MPDG). Just like any
other MPDG film, the man is in a
constant fantasy, constantly
romanticising the woman’s role in
making the man happy but totally
disregarding the woman’s desires
.
Written by Wan Eijas Ariffin
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