In honor of Joan Holloway on tonight’s episode of Mad Men :)
1 month ago - 
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Sylvie Kim: Schticking it to the Man: The Significance of (a Funny) Heejun Han on 'American Idol'
Heejun Han. Photo courtesy of American Idol’s official site.
For those of you who watched the lukewarm first night of live performances of American Idol’s 11th season and its subsequent tedious results show, you likely caught Interscope exec Jimmy Iovine providing pre-recorded…
Right on point!! A good analysis of Heejun Han as an American Idol contestant from a critical race theory perspective.
2 months ago - 28
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I rarely vote for American Idol contestants, but I voted for Heejun nearly 100 times last night. Make no mistake, Heejun is the worst singer on American Idol, but his sense of humor makes him the most entertaining. And as a supporter of VoteForTheWorst, that’s right up my alley.
Look, I think pretty much all of the finalists are good this year, but they all stand up there and perform boring ballads, do what they’re told, and allow themselves to be commodified. Sing like this! Dress like this! The way Heejun met with Tommy Hilfiger, didn’t take him seriously, and then wore an ugly t-shirt anyway is commendable.
What really motivated me to vote was Steven Tyler’s critique. Though Tyler is paid to be a “judge”, he never gives any negative feedback, even when someone royally sucks, so the fact that he was so angry at Heejun for putting on a joke act is telling. It’s clear the producers are tired of his comic relief, and that’s all the more reason to keep him. And for the record, Steven Tyler, Heejun is not “taking a piss out of the song” by giving it an I-don’t-care-I’m-going-to-be-me performance, he was actually honoring the song’s meaning. (If you want to get up in arms about a singer misinterpreting a song, how about that probably gay long-haired kid singing “Only the Good Die Young” without any of the authority of a guy trying to pressure a religious girl into having sex?) But yeah, Heejun is taking a piss out of the show. Maybe if Tyler weren’t so busy getting loopier than Paula Abdul and hitting on underage girls, he’d realize that he’s one of the show’s biggest jokes of all.
(Side note: one time at Katy’s birthday party, Maddy and I stopped the festivities to serenade her with our duet of “My Life”. We hadn’t really thought about the lyrical content first, so there was a lot of cringing from her friends and family as we sang lines like “Go ahead with your own life, and leave me alone”, but to her credit, Katy just fake smiled and clapped as if it weren’t insulting.)
Tonight, Heejun barely squeaked by in the results show. (My votes mattered!) The judges really read him the riot act for his antics, and I hope it doesn’t crush his sarcasm and make him try anything earnest next week. Heejun has a way better chance of leaving this show a comedian instead of a singer, so I hope he continues playing to his strengths. Whether he’s giving celebrity guests photos of himself, baffling Ryan Seacrest with his witty one-liners, flinging his microphone around haphazardly, or tweeting embarrassing photos, I want to see more of it. If he keeps treating this show like the joke that it is, I’ll keep hitting the redial button on my way to dodgeball.
Agreed! In between being grossed out by the disgusting antics of Steven Tyler (watching tonight as Elise sat on his lap while singing her part in the group song — — barf —- )…What has really floored me is the subtle racist comments made about Heejun by the judges/other people connected to the show. In the audition, they all expressed how SHOCKED they were that he could actually sing well. Most likely this is because not only is he Asian, but he’s a non-native English speaker. Jimmy Iovine even made the comment last week that Heejun could be part of an “Asian pop” revival (because, after all, he’s ASIAN! Would anyone have said that any of the white contestants could be part of a white pop genre? No!)
And seriously, is this show NOT a vehicle for capitalism? I mean with all the Ford ads and the Coca-Cola product placement, I forget that this is supposed to be a singing competition.
Urm. And yeah, don’t judge me for watching American Idol. We all have our vices!!!
Vice Magazine hates women (why? we’re so awesome…)
Even though I’m at times amused by their documentaries….Vice Magazine is comprised of some of the douchiest writers in the entire world, and their issues are replete with sexist drivel.
Anyway, I was getting all worked up over this when I stumbled across the following article about Bratmobile refusing to be interview by Vice:
http://www.vice.com/read/bratmobile-v7n10
Good for them!
**Updated**
I wanted to update my post to reflect the fact that Vice also seems to have a big problem with people of color. I didn’t want to link to their dumb site again, so here’s the Wiki entry (which provides good links that will sufficiently enrage any decent human being): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice_(magazine)
We’re all having a Whitney Houston dance party for the next week.
Sexist review of Dum Dum Girls show in Brooklyn Vegan
So, this Brooklyn vegan write-up exemplifies sexism in hipster/underground music culture: http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2012/02/dum_dum_girls_w_1.html
#1 The fact that someone at Brooklyn Vegan decided to make DDGs’ outfits the headline of the story, rather than their new songs, is really sad and pathetic.
#2 Check out the sexist comments from people calling them “bimbos” and “outfit rock” pretty much because, GASP, they dare to be both FEMALE and PRETTY and play and write music. Nevermind the fact that they write amazing textured songs with actual depth to them. Plenty of bands, regardless of their gender make up, place an emphasis on aesthetics in addition to the music. This does not automatically make the band vapid. But when women put on lipstick or something automatically they get attacked for it.
