Category Archives: Zeitgeist Movement

A lot can change in 20 years. Shrek, which celebratedits 20th anniversary this year, went from scrappy, brash comedy to, according to some, the pinnacle of human creation. Over the past two decades, Shrek became a movie, a franchise, an unstoppable meme, a cruel god, and a generational symbol of love, life, and togetherness. How did it become so strangely ubiquitous and weirdly potent? DreamWorks, the studio behind the film, certainly put a lot of effort into making sure their star ogre was everywhere, but a triumvirate of Shrek-related happenings in 2013 and 2014 might just mark the moment when the fans picked up Shreks momentum for better or worse.

After the 2001 film that started it all, DreamWorks made sequels, spinoffs, and TV shorts, most of which couldnt live up to the original. Between every new release, Shreks corporate masters saturated the market with (mostly awful) video games, costumes, and birthday party kits. Then, things got weird. In a strange display of early crossover culture, Heinz and DreamWorks dropped green Shrekketchup. ShrekTwinkies oozed Ogre Green Creamy Filling. If they could make it green, they made it Shrek. In retrospect, the marketing strategy resembled nothing more than multi-million dollar memes, saturating the public zeitgeist with an image until it becomes overbearing. Eventually, though, the internets artisan memers took over the franchise. The people who once only played a passive role as consumers literally had a field day with their favorite ogre.

Granted, people had been having fun with Shrek before the 2013-2014 tipping point. Tim Heidecker and Erik Wareheim dedicated a notable amount of time to satirical Shrek the Third promotions on their Adult Swim program, Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! After that, the history of Shreks obsessive online fandom is already well documented. In 2009, Shrek talked to fans in the first person on his Facebook page, marking the slow transfer of ownership from DreamWorks to fans calling themselves "brogres."Shrek art and fanfiction spread across the web. The memes became stranger, darker, and more obsessive with each passing day. In the mid-2010s, they hit a fever pitch with three distinct branches of franchise fandom.

The first and most infamous development was 2013s Shrek is Love. Shrek is Life., the story of a young boy who prays to and is then sodomized by Shrek. The original post came from an anonymous 4chan user, but the story picked up popularity over the next few months. People wrote increasingly devotional and sexual iterations of the tale. Then, video-makers created dramatic readings and animated adaptations using 3D models of Shrek.

Shrek is Love. Shrek Is Life. took the internet by storm when the React series, a YouTubeshow dedicated to capturing peoples live reactions to internet oddities, had popular YouTubers watch the videos. It became a cult-like cultural moment that spawned what became known as Shrekism. While we can regard this era as the franchises cringy angst-filled preteen period, it was fundamental to Shrek cultures future development. The Shrek is Love. Shrek is Life. movement solidified the ogre as a perennial figure on the internet. Fans memed it for good, for evil, and everything in between.

Luckily, not all Shrek fandom would be as graphic as Shrek Is Love, though many would carry on the same ironic spirit at least initially. On Jan. 24, 2014, a group of gamers created a subreddit, for a nearly decade-old fighting video game called Shrek Super Slam. When the game came out in 2005, it was widely criticized for being unpolished shovelware, or money-grab software made without much care for content or quality. In an interview with Vice, one of the games managers, Paul Culp admitted that Shrek Super Slam wasnt quite a passion project for his crew, although he says they put more work into it than the most ardent critics thought. The rest of the team could have easily phoned it in and moved on but they didn't, Culp told Vice. A lot of love and attention to detail went into that game.

It may have taken fans years to fully appreciate the effort, but eventually, the Shrek Super Slam developers received appreciation for their work as Super Slam turned into a highly competitive (and highly ironic) gaming scene.

Super Slam picked up popularity when dedicated fans found ways to manipulate the games sloppy mechanics into skillful technique. The scene mirrored Nintendos Super Smash Bros. community. Fans created Shrekboards similar to Smashboards, an online hub for competitive players to discuss guides and tournaments. Players shared tips and tricks for moves like grab releases and crumpet dashing. While the community never received too much mainstream attention, its members definitely showed dedication to their craft. It takes one type of fandom to revive an old, unappreciated movie tie-in video game. It takes another to become really, really good at that game.

Today, while the Shrek Super Slam community isnt at its peak, the Discord channel still organizes weekly tournaments. The group struggles to maintain engagement for a game thats main pull is its poor design. Of course, nothing on the internet ever really dies. Players love of the game showed Shreks power to bring people together to revel in the strange, quirky, and uncanny. It also marked a maturation of the internets relationship with the character.

The same year gamers started r/ShrekSuperSlam, Shrek fandom proved it could flourish outside the dark recesses of the internet. Just as the fairy tale refugees made their way to Shreks swamp in the first movie, every year a growing number of Shrek fans make the pilgrimage to Madison, Wisconsin, for Shrekfest.

It has expanded from a small picnic event to a true festival with a sound system, bands, a large projector, and more people every time we throw it, Shrekfest co-founder Eric Nitschke tells SYFY WIRE. At the free event, attendees dance and listen to live music. The more-dedicated participants compete to see who has the best costume, can roar the Shrekiest, or eat a raw onion the fastest without throwing up. As a grand finale, everybody comes together for a Shrek watch party. It truly is a celebration of love and life.

For more than half a decade, Shrekfest has been a (mostly) earnest celebration of the movie, but its fitting that it all started with an ironic joke.

The way Shrekfest got started was that there was a fake Facebook event that tricked my friends and I, fellow co-founder Grant Duffrin tells SYFY WIRE. We were crushed because we were so excited to attend this event called Shrekfest that promised an onion eating contest, a roaring contest, a costume contest, a Smash Mouth cover band. You know, the works. So when we found out it was fake, I started making the calls that I needed to make this a reality. I saw there was an event that had a ton of people responding to it online so it made sense to make it real because theres a demand for it.

The demand continued to grow as around 1,000 people celebrated Shrekfest in 2019, and even more joined virtually in 2020.

Shrekfest is important because of what it gives the people who attend it, Nitschke says. Namely, acceptance and freedom to be completely goofy. People really come out of their shells at the fest, and for many, this is the only time and place where that can happen. Whether it be dancing to All Star in the rain or singing Shreks closing hymn of Hallelujah in imperfect harmony, what was once a concerning joke religion on the fringes on the internet has become deeply impactful for so many annual attendees. It can easily be another religion. It feels like a religious experience,Duffrin says.

With fans arguably more behind the wheel of Shreks onion carriage than DreamWorks at this point, it's only appropriate that the movie gets a reboot that fully encapsulates the internets relationship with their beloved ogre. In 2018, Duffrin and his team at 3GI, the group behind Shrekfest, produced Shrek Retold, a crowdsourced shot-for-shot remake of the original movie. Different creators produced every acne to make what an earlier SYFY WIRE article described as the pinnacle of human creation. Duffrin says, That was a project that was able to exist because of peoples love for Shrek. I dont think that would be able to happen with any other movie.

After rumors of both a fifth sequel and a total reboot under Illumination studios, the official future of Shrek is unclear, for now. However, the internets Shrek has a bright path ahead of it. 3GI plans to release Shrek 2 Retold soon. Shrekfest will also continue strong. After the COVID-19 pandemic moved the annual gathering online last year (and probably this year), Duffrin and his team hope to make future iterations a hybrid event so people far and wide can join in on the fun.

In the 2010s, a generation of young people used the internet to find their voices. Shrek became a familiar face for them to channel pent-up creative energies. The path wasnt exactly a pretty one, but what in the world of Shrek is? After 20 years, Shrek went from DreamWorks breakout franchise to the internets beloved symbol for love, life, and the rejection of normalcy. From the depths of internet chatrooms to the open fields of Madison, brogres created a testament to peoples collective power to find inspiration and build something beautiful. Shrek memes, Shrek Super Slam, and Shrekfest all managed to forge communities out of nothing but what they had available and some deep nostalgia for a big, stupid, ugly ogre who taught us that were all better off together.

Visit link:

The Shrekoning: How three events in the mid-2010s marked Shrek's meme evolution - SYFY WIRE

Even if you arent on TikTok, youre probably seen the viral video. A young brunette sits in Alamo Square with a polka dotted mask pulled below her chin, the collars of a three-quarter zip Patagonia fleece and a black down coat scrunching up around her neck. Influencer economy. Creator economy. Passion economy, she says, wide-eyed and nodding. Silicon Valleys not going anywhere.

San Francisco-based comedian Alexis Gays TikTok earned tens of thousands of views last year for a reason. The video, captioned every single park hang in San Francisco, is a blizzard of MBA-speak and tech industry psychobabel familiar to anyone living in the Bay Area, whether they work in tech or not.

The clip isnt a problem in and of itself. Its funny, spot-on, and should serve as a cold glass of water in the face of anyone with even a modicum of self awareness working in the information economy. After all, how many of us heard Alexis say, Sorry, I just have to send this one Slack, and sighed in solidarity?

The problem is, if you scroll hashtags like #SanFrancisco, #SF, and #SanFran on TikTok, youll find a lot of people that seem uncannily similar to the character Gay plays in the video except for them, its no joke. On San Francisco TikTok, users find relatable comedy videos about working from home, overly-produced compilations of the best places to grab coffee, and Bitcoin bros coaching their audience on how to manifest millions. For people who only know San Francisco by whats posted on the micro-vlogging app, we must look like a monolith of athleisure-clad, nootropic-hoovering workaholics and considering the way Gen Zs favorite app seems to drive the Zoomer zeitgeist, I worry thats who the majority of younger Americans think we are.

As with its most successful social media predecessors, TikTok tends to group users into silos using a notoriously addictive algorithm that learns to show you content you and other people youre connected with like. Theres Skater TikTok and ATLA TikTok. In the first community, youll find hours of footage of the worlds best skaters ollieing across America. In the second, youll find fun dance routines, decadent Southern recipes, and slang tutorials.

While Atlantas TikTok community is one of the most active, regional groups on the platform, most major cities in the United States now boast their own group of region-specific creators. Creators who dominate #LosAngeles, for example, post everything from touristy sight-seeing guides to slow-mo videos of street vendors overloading elotes. New York TikTok boasts both a popular crew of fashion influencers alongside Gen Z political organizers.

This regionally-focused content is more than just fodder for the locals: it also serves as an accidental advertisement for the city it represents. Many users are using the platform to decide where to travel next, preferring TikToks more explanatory video content to the previously-preferred aesthetic stills of Instagram travel accounts. Real estate influencers on the platform are also using it to teach users how and where to buy a house.

Though techies have become San Franciscans favorite punching bag, we all know theyre an important part of our community just not the only part. If Chicago gets to show off with both streetwear style guides and raucous videos of nightlife, why cant we have San Francisco TikTokers who are crabbers, or psychedelic musicians, or IPA aficionados alongside all the crypto evangelists telling us to invest in Doge? Why cant we show the members of Gen Z who make up 40 percent of users on TikTok that we have something more to offer?

Luckily, some creators are giving us a little more dimension online. Nick Cho, co-founder of Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters became an overnight sensation as Your Korean Dad, posting comforting POV-style videos that make the audience feel like theyre on a family outing. Jocelyn Chin posts inspiring videos of her luxury, custom-designed picnics at parks throughout the city. Kirk Maxson posts daily videos of sandcastles he makes with a unique technique of dripping wet sand rather than molding the castles with his hands.

However, these influencers are the exception, not the rule. The majority of the content representing San Francisco on TikTok revolves around hybrid work models, hustle culture, and the next big app.

Whats missing, besides salty fisherman, psych rockers, and beer nerds?

How about the Bay Areas progressive organizers, who trace their lineage back to Oaklands Black Panthers and Berkeleys Free Speech Movement? Or the folks who have been brewing their own kombucha in the Marin headlands since long before the pandemic pushed so many of us to try our hand at home fermentation?

Speaking of Skater TikTok, its worth noting that Thrasher Magazine is based in San Francisco for a reason the city has long been a skateboarding mecca. And speaking of magazines, the San Francisco-born Rolling Stone practically invented serious pop music criticism.

As for the tech industry, the shade and the skewering are well deserved. But for every TED Talk about Making the World a Better Place, there is a well-meaning startup that may actually make the world a better place. And while its true that Elon Musk is basically a blunt-smoking Bond villain, the success of Tesla undoubtedly played a role in getting General Motors to commit to an all electric fleet by 2035 and Ford to build an electric F-150.

Look sure maybe we did use Slack to message our landlord when the rent was late last month. Maybe we have been seen speed-walking the streets of the FiDi with an Airpod in each ear. Maybe the Allbirds and Patagonia puffy combo has outbeat the John Lennon sunglasses and flare-leg pants.

But to Gen-Z TikTokers: were so much more than that. I promise.

Original post:

Gen-Z: S.F. is More than What You See on TikTok - SF Weekly

"The NBA has always demonstrated a desire to push the game to new heights and into new arenas of culture," says Hennessy U.S. senior vice president Jasmin Allen. "The game's influence goes well beyond the court to impact communities around the world."

The work acknowledges that "Hoopers were no longer just hoopers, they were becoming artists, business owners, executive producers and whatever else they wanted to be," adds Droga5 copywriter Nate Richards.

Indeed, "Make Moves That Start Movements" underscores the league's ever-expanding influence (at a time when the NFL, MLB and other sports have idled or lost ground). The NBA recently explored these themes in its Idris Elba-voiced playoff campaign, while Hennessy elegantly illustrated such concepts last year. Even Nike's "Play New" draws from a similar game plan, showing competition, movement and exercise enriching lives outside the lines of play.

On the most basic level, these efforts portray sports as a vibrant facet of the modern zeitgeist, strengthening character, improving lives and buttressing neighborhoods in sundry ways. Clearly, that's true for hundreds and millions (perhaps billions) of folks worldwide. So such messaging, essentially an evolution and expansion of the "Just Do It" ethos, rings loud and true across multiple campaigns.

Beyond the half-minute "Start Movements" anthem, Hennessy plans to extend its "Unfinished Business" platform to the NBA, encouraging teams and players to launch and support community projects nationwide. Droga5 introduced the initiative last year to assist Black, Asian and Latinx small-business owners struggling against inequities exacerbated by the pandemic.

"Two things that have made me who I am today are my drive on the court and inspiring and impacting others beyond the game of basketball," Westbrook, who made an "Unfinished Business" donation to help facilitate positive change, says in a statement. "Working with Hennessy, I'm able to continue expanding my legacy to make a meaningful impact and keep inspiring others."

Client HennessyCampaign Make Moves That Start MovementsTitle Take it FarLaunch Date 06/07/21

Agency Droga5 NYCo-Chief Creative Officer Felix RichterGlobal Head of Art Alexander NowakCreative Director Haywood Watkins IIICopywriter Nate RichardsArt Director Macaihah BroussardAssociate Design Director Albie EloyDesigner Olivia PiazzaJunior Designer Kevin McCallumAssociate Director of, Film Ruben MercadalSenior Producer, Film Samar ZamanAssociate Producer, Film Hugh CopelandSenior Music Supervisor Mike LadmanMusic Supervisor Sarah TembeckjianDirector of Business Affairs Dan SimonettiCelebrity Talent Relations Lead Whitney VoseSenior Business Affairs Manager Ann Marie TurbittAssociate Director of Art Production Bianca EscobarExecutive Producer, Print + Fabrication Alyssa DolmanRetoucher Mike VorrasiRetoucher Natasha KaserRetoucher John ClendenenGraphics Studio Manager Michael MocklerChief Brand Strategy Officer Harry Roman-TorresStrategy Director Drew SimelSenior Strategist Justin ClagetteGroup Communications Strategy Director Delphine McKinleySenior Communications Strategist Tattiana BambaGroup Data Strategy Director Christina FieniSenior Data Strategist Daria KorenGroup Account Director Lindsay ColeAccount Director Jordan CappadociaAccount Manager Sydney GoldenAssociate Account Manager Sela BetzProject Manager Danielle Gibbons

Client Mot HennessyPresident & CEO, Mot Hennessy North America Seth KaufmanSVP, Hennessy, Mot Hennessy North America Jasmin AllenVP Brand Marketing, Hennessy Derek RuedigerSenior Brand Director, Hennessy V.S Deon HarrisBrand Director, Hennessy V.S.O.P Isadora BaillyBrand Director, Hennessy X.O & Innovations Rachel LiGlobal President & CEO, Hennessy Laurent BoillotGlobal CMO, Hennessy Julie NolletGlobal VP Marketing, Hennessy Premium Range Amanda HawkGlobal VP Marketing, Hennessy Super Premium Bertrand LandreauGlobal VP Marketing, Prestige Brands & Innovation Emmy Aoun Gestin

Production Company Divison7Director Joshua KissiDOP Logan Triplett, Minka Farthing-KohlEx. Producer David Richards, Kamila ProkopProducer Luigi Rossi

Photographer Joshua Kissi

Editorial Cut + RunEditor Jonnie ScarlettAssistant Editor Chris HilkManaging Director Lauren HertzbergProducer Hope DuHaime

Post Production The Mill NYExecutive Producer Mandy HarrisAssociate Producer Katharine MulderryCD Gavin WellsmanColorist Michael RossiterColor Producer Evan Bauer2D Leads Andre Vidal, Taner Besen2D Team Jeff Robins, Tara Holldand, Kieran Hanrahan, Kshitij Khanna, Hailey AkashianFinish Anton Anderson

Music House Found ObjectsExecutive Creative Director Trevor GureckisExecutive Creative Director Jay WadleyCreative Director Ben MarshallCreative Adam WeissExecutive Producer Jennie ArmonHead of Production Matt NelsonProducer Katt MattProducer Nick ChomowiczAssociate Music Producer Agatha Lee

Sound House Wave StudiosSound Design & Mix Aaron ReynoldsExecutive Producer Vicky FerraroProducer Eleni Giannopoulous

More here:

Hennessy and the NBA Strive to Make an Impact Beyond the Lines of Play - Muse by Clio

IN MARCH, FACING MULTIPLE COMPLAINTS of sexual harassment, New Yorks three-term Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo, issued an apology. I never knew at the time that I was making anyone feel uncomfortable, he said. I never, ever meant to offend anyone or hurt anyone or cause anyonepain.

One of the pioneers of evolutionary psychology, David Buss lays out a theory of sexual conflict between men and women involving a co-evolutionary armsrace.

To many, the apology seemed only to underline Cuomos cluelessnessor disingenuousness. How could he not have known that sexually charged conversations with subordinates, some of them young enough to be his grandchildren, were bound tooffend?

Evolutionary psychologist and Berkeley Ph.D. grad David M. Buss has someanswers.

On average, men find women more attractive than women find men, says Buss, 68, professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. Studies also have found that men tend to prefer women younger than themselvesand, as they grow older, their preferred age gap increases. Men in this situation tend to commit mind-reading errors, Buss says, finding it unfathomable that the woman is not also attracted to them. A male sexual over-perception bias could have led Cuomo to mistake a friendly or ambiguous signal, such as a smile, for sexualreceptiveness.

Not all men are equally susceptible to the sexual over-perception bias, Buss adds. What we found in our lab study is that men who are most inclined to do this are high in narcissism. Other research shows that men with status or wealth feel a sense of entitlement, and have this psychological proclivity to feel that the rules are made for other people, not for them, he says. In other words: When youre a star, they let you doit.

One of the pioneers of evolutionary psychology, Buss details these ideas in a new, ripped-from-the-headlines book, When Men Behave Badly: The Hidden Roots of Sexual Deception, Harassment, and Assault (Little, Brown Spark). Juxtaposing more than three decades of laboratory research with case studies from the animal kingdom, hunter-gatherer societies, and the Wild West of internet dating, he lays out a theory of sexual conflict between men and women involving a co-evolutionary armsrace.

Evolutionary psychologists maintain that natural selection and sexual selection have favored specific traits and tendencies. One of the disciplines core tenets is that reproductive biology has given rise to psychological differences between men and womensuch as the male desire for sexual variety and the female preference for long-term commitmentthat enhance mating success. Conflicts naturally arise because what is good for women is not always good for men, and vice versa.

Our modern cultural environment may have exacerbated these conflicts, Buss argues, leading to widespread sexual harassment, stalking, assault, and rapepatterns of conduct that the #MeToo movement and societies around the world have only just begun to confront. But Buss notes that he has been studying these issues for years. The cultural zeitgeist happens to be coinciding with my work, hesays.

With its emphasis on human universals, evolutionary psychology has long been criticized for downplaying the role of culture, or for failing to disentangle culture and biology. Feminists have taken the discipline to task for what they see as an endorsement of gender-based distinctions and a sexist status quo. And there remain strong academic currents of what Buss calls sex difference denialism, exemplified by books such Gina Rippons Gender and Our Brains: How New Neuroscience Explodes the Myths of the Male and Female Minds (2019), which emphasizes brain plasticity, and Cordelia Fines Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society (2017). Fine suggests that the social impact of overstating evolutionary differences is the denigration of womens professionalambitions.

In this new book, his first in a decade, Buss confronts such criticisms directly, positing a complex relationship between patriarchal cultural institutions and evolved psychology. He also seeks to identify the personality types of men most likely to transgress against women. Far from endorsing the status quo, Buss writes that he hopes to raise consciousness and spur change, to reduce the occurrence of sexual conflict and heal the harms itcreates.

IN THE EARLY 1970sand early 1980s, evolutionary psychology did not yet exist. No one studied human mating strategies, and sex differences were believed to be trivial or nonexistent, Buss wrote in a 2003 paper, Sexual Strategies: A Journey into Controversy, in the journal Psychological Inquiry. If there was a nature to humans, according to mainstream assumptions, it was that humans had no fundamental nature. People were plastic, formless, passive receptacles whose adult form was achieved solely by input that occurred duringdevelopment.

With its emphasis on human universals, evolutionary psychology has long been criticized for downplaying the role of culture, or for failing to disentangle culture andbiology.

Buss himself has been integral to changing these attitudes. David is the worlds foremost researcher on the psychology of sexuality, says Steven Pinker, the renowned Harvard professor and experimental cognitive psychologist. He has a grasp of deep ideas from evolutionary biology, insight into human motives and emotions, ingenuity about research methods, and the right combination of moral seriousness and good-naturedhumor.

Buss describes his own nature as rebellious. Born in Indianapolis, he moved repeatedly as a childfrom Pittsburgh to northern New Jersey to Austineach time his father, a psychology professor, switched jobs. His mother, a homemaker, worked with the NAACP to combat housing discrimination. Busss adolescence was bumpy. My grades absolutely plummeted, in part because of the peer group that I got involved with, he says. He dropped out of high school after two marijuana possession arrests (both times the charges were dropped) but earned a diploma at nightschool.

Matriculating at the University of Texas, he finally found his academic footing. He encountered evolutionary theorythe first intellectual idea that mesmerized me, he saysin a freshman geology class. His 1975 psychology term paper, Dominance and Access to Women, made the then-novel argument that men competed for status to gain sexual access towomen.

At Berkeley, Buss focused on personality psychology. One of his mentors, Jeanne H. Block, was a leading exponent of the idea that sex differences were the result of socialization, not biology. But as an assistant professor at Harvard, Buss met others who shared his evolutionary outlookincluding the husband-and-wife team of John Tooby and Leda Cosmides and the entomologist E.O. Wilson, author of the controversial 1975 book Sociobiology, which emphasized the biological roots of social behavior. Buss also incorporated into his lectures the ground-breaking 1970s work of the anthropologist Donald Symons, on the evolution of human sexuality, and the biologist Robert Trivers, on sexual selection and parentalinvestment.

Buss came to believe, that mating was the center of the psychological universeand that men and women had different sexualpsychologies.

Busss breakthrough was a collaborative multiyear study of mating preferences, the International Mate Selection Project, encompassing 10,047 subjects from 37 cultures. (My Nigerian colleague wished to know whether I sought mate preferences for a mans first wife, second wife, or third wife, Buss noted wryly in Psychological Inquiry.) Published in 1989, after Buss had moved to the University of Michigan, the study demonstrated that men universally valued youth and physical attractiveness in womenpresumptive markers of fertility. Women, by contrast, sought long-term mates with high status and economic resources to provide for them and theiroffspring.

Buss came to believe, he wrote in Psychological Inquiry, that mating was the center of the psychological universeand that men and women had different sexual psychologies. Over the years, he refined and expanded his theories, looking, for example, at the varied mating strategiesboth long- and short-termemployed by men and women. Buss (who has taught at the University of Texas at Austin since 1996) has written several books for popular audiences: The Evolution of Desire, The Dangerous Passion (on jealousy), The Murderer Next Door (on homicide), and, with Cindy M. Meston, Why Women Have Sex. He also authored a textbook, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind, the first, and still the dominant text, in thefield.

Busss research has given him insight into his own behavior, too. He describes himself as basically, exclusively, a long-term mating guydivorced, with two children; widowed when his second wife died of cancer after a 20-year marriage, and now in a very happy more than eight-year-long partnership with another professor at the University of Texas atAustin.

For much of my life, Ive been very shy with women, Buss reflects. Evolutionary psychology predicts that women will prefer self-confident men, since self-confidence is a cue to status. And as he attained professional success, Buss says, Ive shown more self-confidence in approaching women who strongly attractme.

Even though I think of myself as empathic for a man, Buss says, I realized that, at some level, I had been clueless. And, undoubtedly, I still amclueless.

WHEN MEN BEHAVE BADLY IS, in part, the product of Busss growing consciousness of the prevalence and impact of sexual assault and harassment. So many women he knew had been touched by sexual violence, he says. The range was tremendous, from mild to horrific. But I saw the psychological scars itcreated.

Buss remembers a friend of his college girlfriend sobbing hysterically about being sexually abused. He heard a girlfriend consoling her best friend, who screamed in rage and anguish for hours, after being raped by two strangers. Yet another girlfriend told him she had been raped by someone she met in a bar. A former partner revealed a history of repeated rape that led to chronic black holedepression.

He recalls examples of sexual harassment as well: Four female graduate students complaining to their department chair about a male professors unwelcome advances. A graduate student told by an interviewer that he could not hire her because he wanted to ask her out, and he couldnt do so if she were in hisemploy.

During Busss undergrad years, professors threw keg parties where teaching assistants would have their arms draped around the undergraduates, he says. And it was not unusual for professors themselves to sleep withundergraduates.

I started talking to more and more women, some close female friends, some just women I knew. And many confided in me, Buss says. I started to realize how pervasive various forms of sexual violence were. He published a 2011 paper, The Costs of Rape, examining its traumatic aftermath. Even though I think of myself as empathic for a man, he says, I realized that, at some level, I had been clueless. And, undoubtedly, I still am clueless, since I dont think its possible for a man to fully grasp how psychologically devastating these things are towomen.

WHEN HE FIRST CONCEIVED OF WRITINGa book on sexual conflict, Buss figured he would try to be even-handedto note, for example, that both men and women engage in tactics designed to enhance their mating prospects. Womens efforts to avoid what Buss calls subpar males or their requirement of extensive courtship displays before consenting to sex have inspired male adaptations designed to circumvent these barriers, including lying about their income and their interest in commitment, he writes in When Men Behave Badly. Women, too, engage in deceptionfor instance, by under-reporting their weight or posting photoshopped or old pictures on dating sites, hesays.

Adaptive does not mean morally good, Buss writes. Identifying evolutionary origins of nefarious behavior in no way justifies or excusesit.

But the even-handedness Buss contemplated had its limits, he discovered. When you get to sexual violence, Buss says, it is the case that men are primarily the perpetrators, and women are primarily the victims. Predator-prey analogies, gleaned from the animal kingdom, are disturbingly on point, he writes, and help explain behavior such as sexual harassment, stalking, rape, and intimate partnerviolence.

Stalking and violence may arise from male jealousy, provoked by fears of sexual infidelity, mate defection, and paternity uncertainty. Studies have shown that female jealousy, by contrast, focuses more strongly on emotional infidelity, linked to the possibility of losing male investment in current or futureoffspring.

Another trigger of violent, controlling, or abusive behavior is what Buss calls mate-value discrepancy, which can be aggravated by changing circumstances. A man who loses his job, for example, might worry that his diminished resources would impel a partner to mate switchthat is, trade him in for a newer, more prosperous model.

One ongoing (if somewhat arcane) discussion within evolutionary psychology concerns whether men have evolved specific rape adaptations because sexual aggression results in more offspring. The alternative view is that rape is instead a byproduct of such factors as the male desire for sexual variety and low-investment sex. Parsing the evidence, Buss prefers the byproduct theory, and argues that rape could be reduced by [a] diminution of patriarchal ideology, stronger enforceable laws, greater police sensitivity to victims of sex crimes, and a more educatedpopulace.

Throughout the book, Buss insists that evolutionary psychology should not be tarred by the so-called naturalistic fallacy, which confounds what is with what should be. Adaptive does not mean morally good, he writes. Identifying evolutionary origins of nefarious behavior in no way justifies or excusesit.

Buss also aims to present a nuanced view of the relationship between culture and sexual psychology. The failure of patriarchal legal systems to recognize spousal rape, for example, is an artifact of men with an evolved sexual psychology that prioritizes their rights, he says. Once those laws exist, though, they do exert a social pressure. By the same token, changing legal and social norms can discourage patriarchal or sexistbehavior.

Ive realized that this work has profound implications for solving some real social problems, and I think sexual violence against women is the most pervasive human rights problem in theworld.

In fact, human beings are intensely responsive to such factors as social reputation and group consensus, if only because reputation bears on mating success. (Accusations of sexual misconduct, one might recall, led to divorces for men such as the film producer Harvey Weinstein and former New York governor Eliot Spitzer.) Sexual psychology gets played out in a social and cultural context, Buss says, and contemporary developments such as the #MeToo movement are sending tremors through government, academe, Hollywood, publishing, and the rest of theculture.

Not all men, of course, are guilty of offensive conduct against women. To pinpoint those who are, Buss returns to personality theory and the research of Delroy L. Paulhus, professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia at Vancouver (who did a sabbatical at Berkeley). Paulhus has identified three subclinical personality types whom he calls the Dark Triad: men high in narcissism (marked by a sense of personal entitlement), Machiavellianism (the tendency to manipulate and exploit), and psychopathy (lack of empathy). In a 2002 paper with Kevin M. Williams, Paulhus called these overlapping but distinct constructs. (He and two collaborators have since added everyday sadism, making for a DarkTetrad.)

In Busss view, it is Dark Triad men who are most apt to sexually harass, stalk, assault, and rape women. Geographic mobility and the potential for anonymity in urban settings have made Dark Triad personalities harder to detect and ostracize, Buss hypothesizes. And women living alone, lacking the kin protection of their hunter-gatherer ancestors, are more vulnerable to their predations. Modern life may be spawning an increase in a psychopathic strategy, Buss says. Its just easier for men to get away with deception, andworse.

Buss says he used to consider himself a pure scientist, uninterested in applications of his work. But that has changed. Over time, he says, Ive actually realized that this work has profound implications for solving some real social problems, and I think sexual violence against women is the most pervasive human rights problem in the world. Not that scientific knowledge is a magic bullet thats going to cure everything. [But] the assumption that male and female sexual psychologies are identical is a harmful position to take, given that we know that they arenot.

There are lessons in evolutionary psychology for both men and women, Buss suggests. Learning about such phenomena as the male tendency to infer interest where there is none can be helpful, he says. It doesnt necessarily mean youre going to be able to prevent experiencing the bias, but you might be able to correct it. (Andrew Cuomo, takenote.)

In an ideal world, Buss adds, women would be free not to worry that certain behaviors, such as imbibing intoxicants or rejecting undesirable suitors, might subject them to male sexual aggression or coercion. But, in our world, he says, not informing women about the circumstances in which theyre at risk is morally problematic, to put itmildly.

Julia M. Klein, a cultural reporter and critic in Philadelphia, has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Mother Jones, Slate, and other publications. Follow her on Twitter @JuliaMKlein.

More here:

Men Behaving Badly: David Buss on the Ancient Origins of Sexual Harassment - CALIFORNIA

If one were to ask about the zeitgeist or mind of India right now, some may refer to the breakdown of the health system, in tandem perhaps with the imperiousness of administrators. One bright spark would be the video of a six-year-old Kashmiri girl complaining to the prime minister about her online education workload. The positive response to her complaint undoubtedly taught Mahiruh Irfan the importance of voicing her opinion.

Political engagement by the youth helps to build social capital. In his widely acclaimed book, Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam has argued that social capital, or the social networks and norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them, lead to positive outcomes for society. Social capital, much like the economic concepts of physical and human capital, has value. However, Putnam has distinguished between bridging (inclusive) and bonding (exclusive) social capital.

Bonding social capital networks are inward-looking and tend to reinforce exclusive identities and homogenous groups. Examples include familial, ethnic or religious organisations. In contrast, bridging social capital networks are outward-looking and include people across diverse social cleavages. Examples include the civil rights movement and youth service groups. Bridging social capital networks are important, as they enable transactions with a wider set of unknown people. By responding positively to young Mahiruh, the LG demonstrated that bridging institutional networks are supportive of legitimate aspirations.

Bridging social networks increase generalised trust in unknown peoples, which in turn leads to higher levels of political, social and economic participation. Generalised trust is the opposite of particularised trust. In particularised trust, people trust only their own kind, kin and close associates. Research has demonstrated that, in the US, generalised trust predicted volunteering and charitable giving. On the contrary, particularised trust can negatively affect civic life.

Radicalised ideological movements harness the diminished trust of people by inciting them to challenge the established order through violence. A responsive government can sway large swaths of the population away from belligerents and undermine the legitimacy of terrorist organisations and warlords.

Mahiruhs complaint and the LGs response was particularly appealing because we see children as the best hope for the future. A state that hopes for lasting and abiding desirable change must focus on its children. The United Nations realised this when it went about peacebuilding in conflict and post-conflict societies. It recognised that increasing the voluntary participation of children in conflict and post-conflict societies enhanced accountability and promoted reconciliation. Therefore, it designed judicial and non-judicial mechanisms to bring to justice the perpetrators of violence against children. Mandates for transitional justice processes take into account the perspective of children, amongst other stakeholders. Further, the UN conducts systematic evaluations of the impact of transitional justice measures on children. Since 2007, UNICEF has collaborated with states to develop data systems on juvenile justice based on the Manual for the Measurement of Juvenile Justice Indicators. The Manual identifies a standard set of 15 indicators for measuring the extent of reform in juvenile justice. The point is emphasised by specific examples. In Guatemala, UNICEF supported the establishment of a police unit to investigate sexual violence against children. In Zimbabwe, UNICEF developed a strategy to support children in conflict with the law through legal aid and social assistance. The common denominator of these examples from an international organisation is that the state should recognise children as stakeholders from an early age.

To us, Mahiruhs case is a prime example that the state must engage its children in political processes as important stakeholders from an early age. We conclude, with the short and sweet German term nur zu or more power to the likes of Mahiruh and the LG.

This column first appeared in the print edition on June 7, 2021, under the title When Mahiruh complained. The writer is Chief Commissioner, CBIC

Go here to see the original:

The lesson in a six-year-old Kashmiri girls complaint - The Indian Express

The news that students at Magdalen College, Oxford have voted to remove a portrait of the Queen from their Middle Common Room because she represents recent colonial history, normally wouldnt cause such a kerfuffle. Student politics have always been bombastically idealistic at best, drearily predictable at worst. But the furore that has been ignited by the woke warriors latest move to cancel the Queen, brandishing her a symbol of colonialism, has come in the heat of a wider cultural war where an air-punching younger generation is hellbent on showing its elders the folly of their ways.

Last week, I saw up close the whites of the eyes of this feisty breed, powered by the invincibility of their woke beliefs, baying for the blood of institutional figureheads such as the Queen, when I was invited to oppose an Oxford Union debate with the motion: This House would abolish the monarchy.

The debate was scheduled immediately after Harry and Meghans Oprah interview, when the blurb raged: As scandal after scandal shakes the family, the legitimacy of our monarchy seems to hang in the balance. Should we protect an iconic symbol of Britain or stand against a corrupt system of rule? Can we justify the monarchys existence or are its faults too great for Britain to bear?

Controversial debates are nothing new, of course. Think of the 1933 debate in which undergraduates famously passed the motion: This House would under no circumstances fight for its King and country. The result, which polarised Britain, was significant domestically, and embarrassing internationally.

There was an echo of that past outrage when I entered the debating chamber to put forward my defence of the monarchy a tangible feeling that the outcome was portentous, as in 1933, not just spirited student joshing. It seemed to connect to a wider woke mood, currently pervading life, which threatens our academic institutions, workplaces and most of all, our right to speak out, even if it challenges the current cultural zeitgeist.

The poster children for this movement are the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who incessantly bandy their truth about race, mental health neglect and poor parenting. And it felt very much like the Sussexes have whipped the young into an empathetic frenzy which the republicans seized to their advantage in the Oxford debating hall last Thursday. Graham Smith, CEO of Republic, a pressure group that campaigns for the abolition of the UK monarchy and Dr Ken Ritchie, the founder of Labour for a Republic, a Labour-affiliated pressure group, presented a jaw-dropping picture of the Queen as some malevolent Svengali figure to the loudest whoops and jeers of approval by the audience.

While the atmosphere crackled with the reassuring electricity of lively conjecture, the students cheered and clapped when the humourless Smith pronounced that the Royal family was a racist institution by default, as well as being anti-Catholic, immoral, unethical, wrong in principle and corrupt. He said that the Queen wilfully used public office for private gain and was sinister. What felt more sinister was the undisguised loathing that the republicans held for Her Majesty and I truly fear the moment when they further unleash their rabble-rousing venom.

I spoke last, weighing in against Smith and his wildly inaccurate and disturbing caricature of the Windsors. Instead of the status, subjugation and superiority that he hollered on about, I suggested he should consider the life of service of the senior Royals. It was absurd to insist, as he did, that the Royal familys charity work was trifling and that they werent an obvious tourist draw. Would The Mall be lined with well-wishers if Boris Johnson moved into Buckingham Palace, I wondered?

When I proposed that the Queen was an inspiring feminist, I was booed, and later jeered for suggesting that instead of watering down the trappings of the monarchy, we should consider that nowhere in the world can replicate our crowd-swelling pomp and pageantry.

I cant remember any roar of applause when I said that the Queen represents continuity and stability, brilliantly binding our nation. And that while Prince Philip was her strength and stay, to abolish the monarchy would be to rid the country of its own strength and stay. I did get some laughs when I explained that the Queen was Britains best trade ambassador given the advantages of a Royal warrant to business.

Weary of the earlier endless slurs that the Queen and the Royal family were racist, I then braved the view we had no actual evidence of this. I suggested that Meghan was positioning herself on the world stage exactly where she wanted to be, so she could reign as an anti-establishment heroine to her adoring woke subjects. This was met with gasps of horror. As we know from Piers Morgans fate at GMB, to challenge Meghan these daysis to commit heresy.

Read more here:

I spoke up for the Queen at Oxford's debate... and was jeered - Telegraph.co.uk

Palestinians will be reflecting on the 54th anniversary of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip this week. Nothing will encourage even the most optimistic among them that they are even one inch closer to seeing the end of this temporary occupation. Looking at the likely new Israeli coalition government will certainly not give any cause for hope.Many Palestinians will declare that it matters not a jot who is in Beit Aghion, the Israeli prime ministers residence. The new Israeli coalition will, therefore, not cause joyous celebrations in Gaza, Ramallah or Haifa. Palestinians know that the settlements have expanded under every shade of Israeli government. All that alters is the focus of where they should be expanded. So, for Palestinians, this Israeli change coalition is not going to mean change for them.This nothing will change attitude has some merits, but it is slightly more complex than that.The probable 13th prime minister of Israel, Naftali Bennett, is no liberal. If anything, he is even further to the right than Benjamin Netanyahu. He was, for a time, the head of the Yesha Council that represents Israeli settlers. Bennett even boasted: Ive killed lots of Arabs in my life and theres no problem with that. He will perhaps be restrained by his coalition partners on the left, like Labor and Meretz, but he will also be aware that they will not wish to see the coalition crashing. Parties such as Labor and Meretz have very few opportunities to be in any coalition, given the plummeting levels of support the left in Israel has had this century.But Bennett is in a strange situation for a man whose party gained just 6.2 percent of the vote. He too will be reluctant to head into another election, at least until he has given the last rites to his predecessors political career and, preferably, seen him disappear into a prison cell. Bennett will need the coalition to work. This may be his one opportunity as prime minister the chance to establish his credentials as the long-term leader of the Israeli right. He will have to demonstrate he can deliver and appeal to various factions in the Likud party that do not worship at the altar of the cult figure that is Netanyahu.However, the man who has held that torch for the last decade and more is not going to go quietly into the sunset. Netanyahu may have to pack his bags, but he will do absolutely anything to break this coalition and get back into power. Rattled, Netanyahu has engaged in a series of explosive rants, largely against Bennett, whom he accused of selling the Negev to Raam, the Palestinian Islamist party that has agreed to join the coalition. Bennett fired back, saying: We are allowed to choose a government that you are not the leader of. One that is 10 degrees more right wing than yours. Netanyahu also took a leaf out of his friend Donald Trumps playbook by insisting: We are witnessing the greatest election fraud in the history of the country, in my opinion in the history of any democracy.To smash this coalition, Netanyahu will detonate a host of hand grenades, starting by raising the temperature in Jerusalem. Extreme right-wing groups will hold a march through the city on Thursday an act designed to foment clashes, not least when the marchers head through the Damascus Gate, the main entry point to the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. He and his cohorts will bait Bennett into acting tough and backing these racists, the likes of whom chanted Death to Arabs back in April.For the Palestinian citizens of Israel, this is a seminal moment. For the first time, they have more than a few feet under the table in an Israeli coalition (there has been a Palestinian minister in the past). How will this work out? The challenge for Mansour Abbas and his Raam party will be to meet the expectations of his support base while refusing to push Palestinian national issues. He is not going to get involved in issues such as Gaza, Jerusalem and Sheikh Jarrah. Abbas priority is funding for Palestinian communities in Israel. He has reduced his demands to one of budgets.All of this may have worked for Abbas during the elections in March. But the zeitgeist for Palestinians now is unity across all boundaries, which they feel has given them renewed strength. Abbas works against that and is consequently now highly unwelcome in Palestinian communities and in the Palestinian media. The Palestinians cherish their rights above a few extra shekels.Members of the main Palestinian party, the Joint List, are furious. New Member of the Knesset Sami Abu Shehadeh told me that our main issues were not discussed at all with his (Abbas) partners in the coalition. They totally ignored our Palestinian identity or Palestinian issues. He sees Palestinians as paying far too high a price for this. For Abu Shehadeh, one of Abbas mistakes is to ignore that it is not Netanyahus personality that is the problem, but his policies.So what are the options for the Palestinian national movement? President Mahmoud Abbas choices are limited. He could hold elections and then set up a unity government. More likely, he will wait to see if the Biden administration can conjure an opening for serious negotiations. At least Biden is not hostile in the same vein as Trump. President Abbas has an ear in Washington but, if he is to remain relevant, he has to tap into the new-found Palestinian fervor for unity, which was best expressed in the demonstrations over Sheikh Jarrah.

The challenge for Abbas will be to meet the expectations of his support base while refusing to push Palestinian national issues.

Chris Doyle

Hamas and Netanyahu have always played off each other an unwritten alliance of convenience as both hated even the idea of negotiations where painful concessions would have to be made. Both also hated Fatah. Some members of the incoming Israeli coalition are less keen on playing this divide and rule game. This might mean harsher policies against Hamas and, therefore, Gaza, both to demonstrate toughness and also because the prime agenda will be to strengthen Ramallah, not undermine it.Palestinian issues rarely figure in Israeli politics anymore. Yet, working across all lines as one, the Palestinians may now have their moment to send a key message to Israelis: You cannot ignore us forever. Maintaining a regime of occupation and apartheid is no way forward for either the Israelis or the Palestinians.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News' point-of-view

Follow this link:

Occupation and apartheid is no way forward for Israel - Arab News

Regardless of whether you think too much has been made of first impressions, it is an incontrovertible truth that you only get one shot at them. The needle hits the groove, and following the great cackle and hiss of anticipation that emanates from the vinyl, like an orchestras last fine tunings before the wall of sound that follows, the opening track is the gunshot that starts the race.

If listening to an album all the way through is a shortcut toshelterfrom the real world, then the opener offersthe view froma window into the realm of sonic sanctity that awaits beyond. Whether its the album whispering the comforting mantra of relaxinginto my armsor an adrenalised thundering intro that puts thewar pigsof this world on instant notice when an album gets its handshake sorted it can have you chantingGloriato the heavens in an instant.

Even in the modern age when a shuffle button is only a click away, the beguiling wonder of certain first songs seems to croon outlets stay togetherfor a while and freewheel through the rest of the albumlike a rolling stonehigh on the euphoric boon of a great record.

Whether its unwinding on aSunday morningand regaling in the majesty of an otherworldly concept for the thousandth time in afive yearperiod or eviscerating the Monday to Friday woes of asking is this it? in a boon of searing energy that surges you into the weekendlike a bridge over troubled water, an album is a magnificent thing to behold. The opening track is a come-hither beckon that calls for unity like a chant of come together and with the right opening note it can have you chanting thisll be the day that I die in no time.

Below, were diving into 15 of the greatest opening tracks of all time. And whats more, weve wrapped them up in a playlist to boot.

Patti Smith lent such a nurturing hand to punk that when the scraggly craze was christened, she was the Godmother present on the altar. She imbued the new art form with a profundity that, if anything, only sharpened its youthful visceral edge. This is a profundity that has remained throughout her career.

The opening stanza to her memoir concludes, Men cannot judge it, for art sings of God and ultimately belongs to him, and the first lyric she ever put forward to the world in the opening rap to her 1975 debut album,Horses,was Jesus died for somebodys sins, but not mine. In this singular instant, she not only introduced herself to the world as a sui generis talent impossible to ignore but emboldened punk as a monolith of the zeitgeist.

Speaking of first albums, first tracks, first lines, Arctic Monkeys put the indie world on hold with a blitzkrieg of pounding drums and attitude-laden guitars followed by the iconic utterance of: Anticipation has a habit to set you up for disappointment.

It is an ingenious meta piece of lyricism that enshrined the Monkeys introspective announcement of dont believe the hype with a wall of intent. In short, here was a band who werent interested in hype, backlash or anything else that comes along with rock n roll iconography, but they were a band about to cause a shake-up. Not a single second of disappointment followed; in fact, there was nothing but love and the occasional ruckus.

As though lassoed from the firmament of gilded lyrics, Nick Cave boldly beginsThe Boatmans Call with: I dont believe in an interventionist God, but I know darling that you do.If I were God, I wouldnt have the heart to reveal myself after a first-line like that. I would lovingly stay well away to protect mans humble, heartfelt demurring from my heavy-handed, all-consuming truths.

In my infinite benevolent wisdom, I would know that intervening at this late stage in the game would do nothing other than to reveal that all the little day-to-day travesties and bullshit that is eternally endured happens for a reason. In the process, I would make redundant the hopeful boon of art that offers salvation from suffering art like Nick Cave & The Bad SeedsThe Boatmans Call, which opens with a love song that says to all others that would follow: Why bother?

Certain first songs threaten to trip up the rest of the album. Don McLeans American Pie is one of those undoubted pieces of brilliance that is recognised by everyone as a masterpiece and doesnt suffer for the ubiquitous approval one little bit.

There arent many songs in existence that would happily reside in the record collections of your gran, a metal-head, a 16-year-old SoundCloud rap fanatic and the conductor of a symphony orchestras record collection, but American Pie is one of them. Simply put, it is an opener of perfect order, that tells the musical equivalent of the great American novel.

Nobody sings them like Al Green, that much is certain. Music just seems to come easier to some people and Al Green seems to perform vocal acrobatics with butter-cutting ease.

With Lets Stick Together he welcomes you into his world with sultry brilliance. If the soul music of the era was distilled down to one track then this would be it, and far from making it derivative or on-the-nose, it is actually a filigreed work of art that you could drop a stone into and never hear it hit the bottom.

While some openers coax you into position, War Pigs doesnt have a hair-raising second to wait. It smashes the saloon doors off their hinges and starts firing shots before asking any questions.

From the rumbling bass to the rafter rattling guitar, the pounding salvo of drums and no-holds-barred vocals, this song knows what its about and in doing so, it fills you with reassurance that what will follow is undoubtedly going to be an album of note.

This track is the Promethean force that all genres deserve to yield when they attempt to usurp the status quo, or at least shoulder out a small place to call its own amid the mainstream.

Calling something ahead of its time is an awful clich, but the fiddly issue with such shopworn statements is that some barge into the lexicon of the masses clutching more than a grain of truth. Sunday Morning is so far ahead of its time that it could be released tomorrow, and the clich would still stand up.

In fact, you can take Brian Enos word for it:I was talking to Lou Reed the other day, and he said that the first Velvet Underground record sold only 30,000 copies in its first five years. Yet, that was an enormously important record for so many people.I think everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band!So I console myself in thinking that some things generate their rewards in second-hand ways.

Its high-praise without even a hint of hot air.

If you were to play only the first two notes of this song, most music fans would know what follows. That sort of skill takes extreme knowledge of the craft and profound individualism so that both can be distilled down to a level of accessibility and an easily recognisable sound. As Leonardo da Vinci once said, Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Come Together is a track so perfectly sophisticated that I dont even feel pretentious by quoting da Vinci to say as much. The absurdists lyrics that follow are a high point of many in the back catalogue of John Lennon. And the song not only sets up the album that follows but helped The Beatles shape the sound of the future once more.

Baba ORiley is the album-opening equivalent of the captain coming over the tannoy and announcing that he will happily break the sound barrier and any other scientific limitations to have you at your destination in five minutes flat. Such is the onslaught of adrenaline that the song induces; you do very well to get to the end of the album without landing in a punch-drunk slump.

If the record represented a transition in sound for The Who, then as an opener, it could not be better. It doesnt even offer you a chance to have your say on the matter; it leaves you sock-less, opinion-less, but awestruck amid a maelstrom of euphoric rock.

An article of this sort really rams home the subjectivity of music. It is a realm with few concrete truths, and anything is up for grabs in its rambling undefined discourse. However, every now and again, a song presents itself with such unflinching brilliance and mercurial bravura that every living thing under the sun just has to stand back and regard it. Dylan turned electric with a force comparable to Thomas Edisons second coming.

Wrath and rage have rarely met with such poignancy, and by the good grace of Dylan and whatever mystic figures of folk fate were weaving his back catalogue in this period, its all embalmed in an adrenalised sonic fuzz that figuratively slaps anyone half-listening into captivated submission.If Dylan was the Jesus figure of the counterculture movement, then this was his moment of caustic condemnation in the temple of his own creation, and it proved one thing beyond doubt: hell hath no fury like a Dylan scorned. Imagine the balls of knowingly having to follow this and yet still managing to do so?

At the height of the Vietnam War, bands were scrambling to make their voices heard. While Gimme Shelter might not be as an exacting blow as some of the other anti-war dirges that followed, it inadvertently captured the zeitgeist all the same.

The reason that this song has been used in so many movies is the same reason that it is such a great album opener. In an instant, it reaches out from its sonic world, grabs the lapels of anyone whos listening and rattles them about like a Skoda going over a cattle grid.

The first glitching little piece of guitar work that opens this record is engrained into the aural reserves of an entire generation, even now, I can hear its rapid acquiescence to Fabrizio Morettis steady opening drumbeat, and the song isnt anywhere in earshot.

This spiritual crystalising is a measure of both the album that follows and indeed its titular handshake. It is a song of such singular generational poignance that it barely seems as though it was written, more so that the universe willed it into existence and all that from the first little piece of production wizardry that welcomes the humming coming-of-age epic that follows.

In the fickle notion of rock n roll coolness, Glen Campbell has lost out. Swathes of people will pour scorn on his involvement in this list simply because he never tousled his hair before performing, but Bob Dylan once described Wichita Lineman as the greatest song ever written, and thats as good a middle finger as any to waft at all you naysayers.

From Carol Kayes opening bass notes to the scintillating strings, the soundscape for Jimmy Webbs unfinished work flourishes into a cacophony of symphonic bliss. Therein a story unfolds with a crystalising encapsulation of the life of the American working class. Lines like I know I need a small vacation / But it dont look like rain have more depth than many would care to admit, and Campbell himself doesnt miss a beat in delivering them.

Concepts are brilliant on paper, but behind them, there must be an awful lot of clout. Bowie dazzles with the dallying magnificence of his imagination in crafting Ziggy Stardust and his escapist universe, but he punctuates his alien world with a humanised touch that proves transcendent and reaches out from the clandestine realm of a clever idea and hurls you in by the heartstrings with lines like And it was cold, and it rained so I felt like an actor / And I thought of Ma, and I want to get back there.

WithZiggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars,David Bowie paved the path to a new bohemian way of living for anyone sensible enough to be converted by his mercurial ways. Five Years is the first gilded yellow brick on that heavenly road of musical perfection, scarcely rivalled by anything else.

When Jeff Bridges first watchedPulp Fiction,he likened it to the same cold splash of water to the face that Talking Heads first threw at him in a refreshing shake-up of sensibilities. Earlier this year, Dry Cleaning blasted the music industry with a very weird super soaker.

The song bursts into life with a swirl of kaleidoscopic sounds that simultaneously induces a stupefied silence and a rush of superlatives.About a minute into the record, and Scratchcard Lanyard is already flowing like the thoughts of a totally mad woman sitting on a chaise lounge in a flat watching daytime TV and looking out of the window, reporting every passing thought as the world goes by. That woman is Florence Shaw, and she propagates the depths of a literary odditorium akin to the uber-subtle subversiveness of Russian absurdists like Daniil Kharms. Shes definitely in a league of her own.

Will I come to regret this inclusion over the likes of Natural Mystic, Whats Going On or Like A Bridge Over Troubled Water etc.? Perhaps, but I would rather die on the hill of championing this entirely original progressive future and live on with pie on my face than treading the safe pastures of long-heralded classics besides, what else is an opening track for but introducing something new?

View post:

From Patti Smith to Black Sabbath: The 15 greatest album openers of all time - Far Out Magazine

It's the end of an era, and oh how times have changed.

Keeping Up with the Kardashians, the global sensation which turned the Kardashian family from just another rich family in Los Angeles on the peripheries of public consciousness for Robert Kardashian's role in the OJ Simpson case and maybe for Kim's friendship with Paris Hilton into household names and, whether we like it or not, a dominant collective force of cultural influence.

"KUWTK" Farewell Season Begins March 18 on E! | E! http://www.youtube.com

The family is getting another show on Hulu very soon, so no need to cry or rejoice, depending on whether or not you own a Kylie Lip Kit; the show must literally go on. However, the original series aired for 20 seasons over 14 years, so its ending signals the end of an era like no other.

When the show first began, it was unclear who would watch it and how long it would last. Clearly, it was opportunistic navel gazing at its finest, but most people let alone the Kardashians didn't take it seriously.

The Beginning

The family rose to fame after Kim Kardashian's now-infamous sex tape with Ray Jay was leaked without her permission, launching her into the eye of a brutal news storm of slut-shaming and misogyny.

However, instead of flinching away from the attention, Kim Kardashian used the media fascination to pioneer the Kardashian brand. Cue some now-notoriously sinister Kris Jenner momager action, and suddenly there was a reality show and the world was their stage.

Though Ray Jay has become a forgettable footnote in the Kardashian story, it seems hard to believe that this is how it all started. Now, with more mainstream conversation about destigmatizing and legalizing sex work, and the #MeToo movement putting the emphasis on the people and structures who abuse power, rather than shaming the victims of said abuse, their origin story is almost hard to fathom.

However, considering the era into which they emerged especially in the light of Framing Britney Spears, which exposed how ruthless and unforgiving the press and media were before the age of social media and shifted journalism norms it is commendable how the Kardashians emerged from the media speculation with a show, a brand, and a chance to become household names.

No one could have predicted just how big the family would get. In 14 years, the already-wealthy family acquired unfathomable amounts of money and fame and each defined themselves and their brand separately.

However, despite many media outlets attempting to girlbossify their story and praise the family as the pinnacle of female success, entrepreneurship, and even empowerment, what the Kardashian family's dominance reveals are the fickle morals of popular culture and the power of controversy despite its deeper implications.

The patriarchy loves to find reasons to level unfair criticisms at the Kar-Jenners for their dating and sexual lives but all that talk is just distraction. What's actually egregious about the Kardashian empire is how they have consistently monetized "controversy" as their brand, despite the repercussions on marginalized groups.

Though their first "controversy" of the sex tape is what propelled them to fame, the Kardashian brand was quickly established as a spectacle of navel gazing, a Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous-style peek into their privileged lives. Suddenly, they were aspirational, and we were supposed to want to "keep up with" them, as the show's name suggested.

However, for a while, Kar-jenners still weren't taken seriously as part of the upper echelon of society. They were celebrities on a technicality reality stars who would fade into obscurity, most people thought.

After 20 seasons, countless spinoffs, celebrity entanglements, and Kim Kardahsian's infamous 72 day marriage to Kris Humphries (the only PR couple which could hold a candle to the exhausting farce of Shawnmila), everything changed when Kim Kardashian and Kanye West got together.

The KimYe Era Changed Everything

Not to attribute her whole career to a man, but Kanye, with an expert mix of taste and timing, transformed Kim Kardashian's brand from an indistinct casualty of 2000s fashion into the muted, "iconic" style she is known for today.

And thus a new era of the Kardashian family had begun, the era which would be a cultural reset for us all.

If I were to pin an exact moment to said new era, it would be the moment that Vogue, the pinnacle of American fashion and style, announced that Kanye West and Kim Kardashian's wedding would be featured in the magazine and the two would appear on the September cover.

The fashion industry was livid. At the time, Kim Kardashian was still just a reality TV star and Kanye just a rapper. But 2014 was the beginning of the cultural shift which would center a completely new kind of mainstream. Anna Wintour has since defended that cover, but hindsight tells us that she was at the zeitgeist, predicting what the new era of fashion and culture would look like and who would be its stars.

"This cover was a deeply controversial cover," she said in her Masterclass trailer. "But Kim and Kanye were a part of the conversation of the day. And for Vogue not to recognize that would have been a big misstep. You are leading, not following and that's a very important lesson to always keep in your mind."

2014 was a transformative year for the culture. It birthed new fascination with Black culture in an unprecedentedly mainstream way. The 90s had pioneered "multiculturalism" and the myth of the post-racial society, which saw "diversity" but not inclusion, as non-white people and cultures were still decidedly othered from the mainstream. The early 2000s saw hip-hop move further into the mainstream, but still with an element of spectacle attached and a clear separation between hip-hop music and culture with the actual mainstream.

But things were changing by the 2010s. More and more rap hits were playing on pop radio, celebrity culture was transforming in the wake of social media, and in response, so were we. According to The Guardian, 2013 was "a golden year for hip hop" in which "it became impossible, this year, to talk about popular culture without also talking about hip-hop."

The marriage of KimYe was also a marriage of pop culture and hip hop, and it started them on a trajectory which would transform style, beauty standards, and social media norms.

In the past seven years, the Kardashians have become the arbiters of beauty standards and have monetized their celebrity and social media impact Kim's makeup and clothing lines, Kourtney's goop-esque lifestyle brand "Poosh," Khloe's Revenge Body brand, Kendall's cool-girl Tequila, and the empire Kylie built after getting lip fillers that changed her life.

No Babe, Not the Cultural Appropriation

However, behind the billions of dollars the family has collectively amassed is a habit of profiting from the aesthetics of marginalized groups. The Kardashians are now almost synonymous with the "slim thick" aesthetic, which is now the desired body type, according to Instagram and, like, FashionNova ads.

The Kardashians have also been credited for popularizing big lips in the mainstream with their shameless fillers to get their enhanced pouts. Less than a decade ago, plastic surgery was a taboo topic of speculation, but the culture has shifted to more shameless body modification and the normalization of treatments like lip fillers in the mainstream.

Is this Kylie Jenner dressed up as Khloe Kardashian dressed up as Beyonc? https://t.co/y6H4SZyMTA

However, so many of these aesthetic "choices" that are so praised on the Kardashians have made Black people, especially Black women, the object of mockery, humiliation, and even historical subjugation from racist caricatures to stereotypes that deem Black women undesirable anything but the exaltation and profit that the Kardashians receive for adopting those features.

Controversy = Cash

But this is not incidental it's part of their brand. The Kar-Jenners associate themselves with predominantly Black celebrities for clout, often joke about dating mostly "rappers and hoopers," and profit socially from their proximity to the "cool" cultural trappings of celebrity Blackness while literally profiting from their appropriation of the same cultures.

Many of their scandals have been accusations of cultural appropriation and even Blackfishing: Kim Kardashian's "boxer braids" (they're just cornrows), Kylie's entire aesthetic, and recently even Kendall Jenner's tequila.

And while most celebrities don't really face repercussions for getting "canceled," the Kardahsians more than most actually thrive off the controversy any press is good press, especially when you're a reality star. Often, the family won't address issues they're embroiled in until the next season of the show premieres, then you can cue the teary excuses prominently featured in the trailers to garner more viewers.

'KUWTK': Kendall Jenner Tearfully Apologizes for Pepsi Commercial: 'I Genuinely Feel Like S**t' http://www.youtube.com

The Kar-Jenners also proliferate a lot of harmful imagery and habits in exchange for profit. Waist trainers, diet teas, and extreme levels of photoshop are common features on Kar-Jenner Instagram posts, participating, and in some ways pioneering, a culture of body dysmorphia based on an illusion. While the Kar-Jenners are certainly not responsible for the body image issues of their followers and the rampant rise of social-media induced anxiety, they certainly contribute to it. And since speaking out would risk their cash potential, it keeps going.

But at what cost?

The ending of Keeping Up with the Kardashians may be the end of one era, but it in no way diminishes their fame or their impact the show didn't end because their influence is dwindling, but more like because they have outgrown it.

The new era of the Kar-Jenners promises even more success, as they have managed to keep the eyes of the world on them for 14 years and even transform their reputations to become one of the most powerful families in the world though partly at the expense of marginalized and vulnerable folks.

And since there is no end in sight for this, all we can do is brace ourselves and continue to critique the institution that allows them to keep going, not just unscathed but bolstered by their offensive transgressions. I vote we all just turn away, close our eyes, unfollow and block, and stop engaging with them. Because wouldn't it be hilarious if the Kar-Jenners woke up one day to find that everyone had stopped paying attention?

Read the original here:

The End of an Era: "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" Just Ended. But Will We Be Free? - Popdust

It is a curse to live in an era you do not understand. It is a fair bet that many Oregonians, across the political spectrum, harbor that anxiety.

In the recent Oregon election, five Eastern Oregon counties voted in favor of joining Idaho. This is a movement thats been around for a while. Although differing from the concept of the State of Jefferson, conceived in 1941, to form a new state from counties in southern Oregon and Northern California, it flows from the same sense of marginalization.

Oregon is not unique in how its economic and political cultures are frequently divided. Joel Garreau gave the most complete explanation of this reality in his 1981 book, The Nine Nations of North America. State borders are artificial lines that group together populations with discordant priorities. If we were starting from scratch, all state lines might bear little resemblance to what they are.

As with the State of Jefferson, Idaho annexing elements of Eastern Oregon is unlikely to occur. It would take agreement within the Salem and Boise statehouses, as well as in Congress. Approval of such a reconfiguration would give license to an avalanche of similar efforts around the country, setting a precedent few state and national leaders would welcome.

While I dont think the Idaho plan is good for Oregon, I understand the emotional motivation among Eastern Oregon voters. An author of the separation concept, Mike McCarter, of La Pine, has said: Rural Oregon is in an abusive relationship with Willamette Valley. McCarter is the former president of the Oregon Agribusiness Council and the Oregon Association of Nurserymen.

Much of what chafes at rural people is Salems and Portlands ignorance of what lies east of Hood River. That eventually comes down to natural resources management.

Animosity toward Salem revolves around how land uses are prioritized. In the broadest terms, Oregonians who live beyond the states northwest urban center too often are made to feel like bumpkins for pursuing the economic opportunities at hand, which despite impressive diversification, still often revolve around agriculture and wood products.

Conversely, the states urban zeitgeist is to see other Oregonians as mired in an outmoded attachment to traditional extractive industries and under the sway of Trumpist grievances.

One does not have to live in the broad dry expanse of Eastern Oregon to feel the brunt of Salems ignorance. Here at the mouth of the Columbia River, Salems myopia was apparent in 2012 with former Gov. John Kitzhabers needless, scientifically baseless and boneheaded attack on gillnet fishermen. Gov. Kate Brown has lacked the guts to undo Kitzhabers stupid policy.

Meanwhile, Portlands largest city has become a place that many of us no longer recognize. For me, the transformation began years ago when The Oregonian debased its product. Like it or not, a metropolitan area is a media center. But that is no longer the case with Portland.

The riots and vandalism have given downtown Portland, sheathed in plywood, an ugly and bereft look. The citys weak political leadership has enabled a catastrophe that has gone on about a year, perpetuating a sense of a place not in control of itself, and certainly in no position to lecture or dictate to others.

The divisiveness illustrated by the Greater Idaho idea is part of a larger nostalgia for the decades immediately following World War II, when Oregon viewed itself as overcoming petty differences in the pursuit of sensible accommodations that generated mutual success. Like most nostalgia, this rosy view minimizes the hard negotiations and occasional hard feelings that set the stage for a prosperous and egalitarian period of progress.

Rekindling these conditions requires a deliberate and well-executed process. Respectful discussions coupled with concrete follow through are what it will take to bridge Oregons urban-rural divide.

While each of the 36 counties cant go its own way, or find greener political grass across the Idaho border, Oregonians can and must do a better job of listening to one another.

Steve Forrester, the former editor and publisher of The Astorian, is the president and CEO of EO Media Group.

See the rest here:

Writer's Notebook: Let's relearn how to live together - Daily Astorian