The Greatest Albums of 2007

We now take a break from our regularly scheduled Queer leftie cultural critique for that most contrived, flawed and invariably maddening of "music journalism" traditions -- the year-end "best of" list.

What follows are my "top 11" albums of 2007 (I couldn't settle on 10), in order from "worst" (#11) to best (#1). A few introductory notes on my biases: I prefer female vocalists -- the more eccentric, the better. I like music that is complex, riveting and emotionally and intellectually challenging. In most cases, I prefer to call attention to the neglected and underappreciated. Thus, you won't see Feist's The Reminder, Tegan & Sara's The Con, or Amy Winehouse's Back to Black, although I actually enjoyed all three albums quite a bit.

The rankings become increasingly arbitrary below my top 2. This list is not meant to be taken too seriously. The music, however, should be taken as seriously as possible.

Thus, without further ado-


#11: "The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn" - CocoRosie

Bianca and Sierra Casady create warped, circuitous music that, upon first description, might sound like indie-hipster affectation, like weirdness for weirdness's sake. As in -- "Oh my God, I found this great band that uses children's toys as instruments and recorded their entire first album while sitting in a bathtub in Paris." And indeed, CocoRosie's detractors claim that those of us who call ourselves fans couldn't possibly enjoy the music and that we must be posers, only pretending to like what we hear for the sake of coolness. If CocoRosie's recordings were any less captivating, I might agree. Fortunately, the music is hypnotic, as frightening as it is lulling. Their eccentricity is organic, not forced. On The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn, the sisters employ more structured melodies than in the past. The result is refreshingly tuneful without sacrificing any of the band's trademark strangeness.
favorite tracks: "Rainbowarriors," "Japan," "Animals."


#10: "The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard" - Rickie Lee Jones

In 2003, Rickie Lee Jones (who is in my pantheon of most-worshiped artists) released the meticulous and deliberate The Evening of my Best Day, one of the strongest albums of her career and one of my favorite albums of the decade thus far. If The Evening of my Best Day presented RLJ at her most artful and crafted, The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard is its converse -- a raw, rugged and often improvisational rock record. Sermon emerged from RLJ's collaboration with writer Lee Cantelon, who invited RLJ to read on a recording of his work The Words, a collection of Jesus Christ's experiences and teaching reconceptualized for contemporary readers. RLJ found herself unable to read Cantelon's words without setting them to music, and began improvising melodies live in the studio. Sermon's earliest songs came out of these sessions. As a result, the album has a unique immediacy, emotional candor and spiritual resonance. Its religious philosophy prioritizes the experiences, doubts and questions of everyday folk, and may be best represented by a lyric from the song Where I Like it Best:
"How do you pray in a world like this/You know, I see the people on TV/And they close their eyes and they bow their heads/And they say "Let us pray"/And it feels so cold and meaningless."
and later:
I tell you what/You gotta take it back from them/Because the prayers belong to you/All you gotta do is say hey hey/I'm down here too, I'm down here too/I'm down here too."
...a humanist gospel both powerful and haunting.
favorite tracks: "It Hurts," "Where I Like it Best," "7th Day."


#9: "The World has Made me the Man of my Dreams" - Meshell Ndegeocello

Meshell Ndegeocello has long been my favorite "neo-soul" artist, a contrived critical term that her complex and politicized fusion of funk, soul, rock, jazz, etc. predates by at least half a decade. The World has Made me the Man of my Dreams is her most involving release since 2002's Cookie: the Anthropological Mixtape, finally integrating her recent jazz experimentations and collaborations with her more established artistic voice. Funk, soul, jazz, psychedelia, afrobeat, sensuality and politics are all present and accounted for. The world (slash Meshell & co.) has made me the Meshell Ndegeocello record of my dreams.
favorite tracks: "The Sloganeer: Paradise," "Elliptical," "Shirk," "Article 3."


#8: "White Chalk" - PJ Harvey

This is one of the only albums on my list to receive widespread (and deserved) critical attention. Thankfully, most of those reviews do justice to the album's intensity. You'll see the word "haunting" popping up quite frequently, and for good reason. With all of the talk about PJ Harvey's status as an iconic alt-rocker and songwriter, I've always been surprised by how rarely people seem to talk about the raw power of her vocals. That seems to be changing with this release. Polly Jean has immense artistic integrity, pushing herself into new and likely uncomfortable terrain with her first set of piano-based material. Although these songs are down-tempo, they should not be mistaken for "mellow" or "soothing." They are as challenging and confrontational as anything else she's ever recorded.
favorite tracks: "Grow Grow Grow," "When Under Ether," "The Mountain."


#7: "Saltbreakers" - Laura Veirs

For relatively simple music, Laura Veirs albums are shockingly revelatory. Veirs is a rare guitar-based singer-songwriter whose palette is expansive rather than insular. Her lyrics are literate and her melodies infectious and sturdy. On Saltbreakers, the production details and band arrangements are thrilling, augmenting and exposing new characteristics of the songs rather than flattening or oversaturating them in canned junk. It's all about the subtle details: the piano on Don't Lose Yourself, the backing chorus on To the Country, the entrance of the delicate electric guitar partway through Cast a Hook. I also dig the album's thematic resonance, with most of the songs employing ocean-oriented metaphors and romantically invoking Veirs's Pacific Northwest locale. I compulsively spun this one for a good month or so.
favorite tracks: "Ocean Night Song, " "Don't Lose Yourself," "Cast a Hook," "Black Butterfly."


#6: "Find Me" - Happy Rhodes

Find Me is Happy Rhodes's first release since 1998. As an active member of an at-times rabid Happy Rhodes-oriented fan community (see "Ectophile's Guide to Good Music" in right-hand navigation), I had mild concerns that this recording would not meet expectations, and that I'd be forced to exclude it from this list and suffer the wrath of my fellow fans. Thankfully, Happy recorded one of my favorite albums of her career, a more song-oriented effort than her sometimes atmosphere-heavy back catalog. (Please, please, please purchase this record from CDBaby and help support the career of this criminally under-appreciated artist). The review I wrote when this album first became available remains apt:
With a perfectionism and eye for production detail to rival her musical influence Kate Bush, Happy Rhodes has always released records packed with transcendent, multilayered soundscapes. Yet Find Me may be her most fully-realized production. Whereas Happy's past records have at times had an even, almost metronomic quality that some have called "druidic," the songs on Find Me have heightened shape, contour and drama. The most memorable, like the searing title track, move from quiet beauty into explosive climaxes. When she called this her "rock album" at a recent performance, the audience tittered. But if by calling it "rock," Happy means to reference the album's high-octane, walloping emotional arc, she may not be far off the mark.
favorite tracks: "Find Me," "She Won't Go," "Here and Hereafter," "Can't Let Go."


#5: "The Bird and the Bee" - The Bird and the Bee

The Bird and the Bee is one of those female-male collaborations that results in musical alchemy. Inara George is a singer-songwriter and guitarist, Greg Kurstin a producer and keyboardist. The band's detractors (thankfully, a minority) hurl half-baked politics involving words like "yuppie" and "Starbucks" to dismiss this gorgeous music. They're full of crap. Although Inara and Greg have a lovely, loungey vibe that serves as pleasant mood music, their complex melodies -- evocative of 60's pop, jazz and tropicalia combined in an electro blender and hurtled forward into an uber-hip future -- refuse to be reduced to the category of "background music." As in the complicated pop songs of Burt Bacharach and Hal David, The Bird and the Bee's breeziness masks wrenching heartache and turmoil. And like Dionne Warwick singing those Bacharach-David tunes, Inara George makes a cakewalk out of shit that's really fucking difficult to sing on pitch (believe me, I've tried). I also recently had the pleasure of taking in Inara and Greg's endearing live show -- looking forward to more from these two.
favorite tracks: "Fucking Boyfriend," "I'm a Broken Heart," "My Fair Lady."


#4: "Obligatory Villagers" - Nellie McKay

I don't tend to put much stock in cockamamie rock critic theories of lineage and succession. But I have concocted one theory that I enjoy, which situates Nellie McKay alongside Joanna Newsom and Regina Spektor as one third of the new triumverate of 1st-class female eccentrics -- the Bjork, Tori Amos and Ani DiFranco of the 21st century, if you will. When McKay first came onto the scene with 2002's delightful Get Away from Me, I found myself questioning whether, going forward, she would be able to transcend the timeliness of ironic humor for something more timeless. Over time, the sheer breadth of her musical imagination has put my fears regarding her subject matter to rest. Nellie is too gifted to disappear. Her cracked cabaret compositions have always called for a more organic and immediate setting than the programmed arrangements of her past recordings have been able to provide. Obligatory Villagers is her first album with a live band, for whom Nellie composed all of the orchestrations. As a result, it's also her most fully-formed, sounding more than ever like madcap postmodern feminist musical theater -- for instance, the second track, Oversure, opens sounding exactly like a Broadway overture before evolving into a spirited song-and-dance routine (one imagines) paying homage to a female vampire from an obscure B-movie. Nellie McKay has always been one of the most distinctive contemporary artists. Here, she's finally in full command of her powers.
favorite tracks: "Oversure, "Gin Rummy," "Galleon," "Testify."


#3: "American Doll Posse" - Tori Amos

This is Tori Amos's most ambitious record in years -- a glam rock spectacle that eschews the confessional for the performative. As the critic at Pop Matters described, Tori becomes the ultimate drag queen version of herself. After spending most of the decade shelving her characteristic draaaammmmmaaaaa so as not to upset her young daughter, Tori finally decided the daughter was old enough to deal and promptly opened up a fresh can of bad-ass. Such bad-ass would be worthless were it not creatively inspired. Luckily, American Doll Posse is vital in both its vision and execution. Although most have praised the album's ambition, it has been criticized on two fronts. First, some suggest that at 23 songs and nearly 80 minutes, Posse is too long. But unlike 2005's The Beekeeper, no obvious contenders emerge for chopping; few can agree on what to discard. Additionally, the length makes sense in context, as the album is an exploration of multiple constructions of femininity, performed by five different "women" understood to be different aspects of Tori's personality. This high-concept conceit is the album's other most criticized feature, but only because it is frequently misinterpreted. The five women are not intended to be fully-formed, three-dimensional "characters" with distinct musical voices. Rather, they are "dolls" -- deliberately one-dimensional feminine archetypes. The women are costumes we wear to perform particular identities; what emerges is a kind of experiential social commentary on marketing, artifice and the fractured "self" in contemporary patriarchy. The meta-narrative explores Tori's own construction as the "authentic," confessional female singer-songwriter, an appellation that can become as constrictive, reductive or artificial as any other.
favorite tracks: "Teenage Hustling," "Digital Ghost," "You Can Bring Your Dog," "Body & Soul," "Code Red," "Dark Side of the Sun."


#2: "Marry Me" - St. Vincent

Like My Brightest Diamond, Bat for Lashes or Feist (well perhaps slightly less like Feist, since Feist is actually Leslie Feist's last name... but I digress), St. Vincent is one of those "bands" that rests primarily on the shoulders of a single, multi-talented female singer-songwriter with rotating guests. In addition to writing powerful and unconventional tunes, St. Vincent's Annie Clark (a multi-instrumentalist like her friend Suf) honed her craft as a guitarist for The Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens. I put great deliberation into choosing my number one record of the year, and if the award had been given on the basis of sheer freshness and thrill factor (I ultimately prioritized composition and album craft), it would've gone to Annie. The opening track, Now Now, is a strong representation of what lies within, musically speaking, deftly combining such seemingly disparate elements as buoyant, rhythmic electronics, children's chorus-provided backing vocals, agile acoustic guitar fingerpicking, disarming dissonance and formless electric guitar feedback. A series of similarly oddball masterpieces follows before the album wisely closes with a set of more mellow and conventional jazz-folk songs. My only (and relatively minor) complaint is that the closing track doesn't build into a climax to match the album's majestic opening. ...And if you're interested in hearing more about Annie's excellent lyrics (I tend to neglect the words these days), Slant Magazine has a great year-end review.
favorite tracks: "Now Now," "Your Lips are Red," "Apocalypse Song."


#1: "The Summer Storm Journals" - Noe Venable

The greatest album of the year does not appear on any year-end lists. The greatest album of the year does not appear on any year-end lists because this world in which we live is a low-down, damaged place. Into that damage, Noe Venable brings redemption through art. In Prayer for Beauty, the lyrics of which might legitimately be considered the Noe Venable manifesto, Noe sings, "say a prayer for beauty/they keep coming to take her apart/so many ways I've tried to say it/ oh my life oh my gods oh my heart." Noe is an artist who values beauty. Not superficial, hollow beauty, but a bottomless beauty with the power to rearrange the world. The Summer Storm Journals is the first album that Noe has produced and arranged herself, and her intentionality shows in every carefully-crafted note. Noe is currently working to integrate "intellect, spirit and art," and this transformative process permeates her work. Rachel Salomon's breathtakingly intricate cover art is an ideal representation of the complex music that lies within. The Summer Storm Journals is an album of many layers, layers to be savored, then peeled away to expose other, equally profound experiences. Consider the marimba and arpeggiated (?I think?) piano runs on Army of Nows. Or the piano's evocative chord progression on Flower in Time, accompanied by strings, reminiscent of Laura Nyro's Upstairs by a Chinese Lamp. If anyone tries to tell you this album is "precious," they might actually be telling the truth. This album is indeed precious -- precious and indispensable. ...Like Happy Rhodes, Noe will directly benefit from your purchase of this record, directly from her website if possible.
favorite tracks: "Prayer for Beauty," "Swim with Me," "Flower in Time," "Army of Nows."


2007 was a fantastic year for music. Ultimately, the only valid reason for writing a year-end "best of" list is to call attention to records one feels deserve to be heard. On that note, I hope you'll consider my recommendations. Each one is a powerful work of art in its own rite.

Changeable Land - by Me

an ideal christmas gift for audiophiles

new article

Through that Wholeness - Intersectional Queer Politics

Musings: Desire and the "Other"

I saw him at the gym this morning, and I couldn't keep my eyes off his naked ass. He was standing at the sink, with his back toward me. I was standing in front of my locker. He was White, but he was was dark, with the kind of naturally tan skin -- is this what is meant by olive complexion?? -- that extended across his buttocks. The buttocks themselves were not large, but they were shapely and toned, the skin around their edges darker as though outlined with an artist's charcoal.

I'm accustomed to being somewhat critical of my desire for darker men. I believe that it is impossible to fully separate this desire from my upbringing and experiences within a society and dominant culture that constructs women and men of color as hypersexual and subhuman and a mainstream White gay male culture that fetishizes racial difference.

While I still believe that it is important to maintain this critique, this morning I found my thoughts traveling in new directions. Perhaps the desire for the "other" is neither "good" nor "bad" in and of itself. Perhaps it simply is. Perhaps it is a natural (as much as I believe anything is "natural") curiosity about difference, a pull toward the unfamiliar.

Perhaps the problem comes when we do not couple that curiosity with an interest in individuals' humanity. (I'm not talking about one-night stands vs. relationships. I do not believe you need to sleep with someone more than once to treat them like a human being). When we separate the ass from the body, from the individual, and transform it into a fetish object. When we allow our fear of difference to transform our curiosity into a will toward domination. This is colonial psychology -- a fear of engulfment by the "native" commingled with delusions of grandeur and superiority.

Perhaps actually owning, valuing and following our desire to its least corrupt conclusion could offer an alternative to racist fetishization, one that does not divorce mind from body in a classic "Western" dichotomy, labeling the "other" as the body and the body as filth. Could such a thing be possible, in this time and in this place?

Or am I a utopic delusional?

I haven't had time to write anything in a while, as most of my energy has been directed toward two articles I've been writing for other websites.

Here's one.

And here's the other.

Under Your Command (Patti Smith Does Lollapalooza)

Lollapalooza. Patti Smith took the stage, in every way the unabashed crone I was expecting, dressed in an oversized peace symbol-emblazoned t-shirt, a limp and wrinkled sport jacket and a wide-brimmed hat. The costume at first humorously (if lovably) hippified transformed before me, with each layer shed -- first the hat and then the jacket, a momentary flash of joyful bralessness as the shirt untucked (referring back to "Easter" and that infamous album cover shot of the sweaty underarm, the sexiness of the natural and the unkempt) -- into how for her it must feel on a daily basis. Neither ironic nor nostalgic. This was her. This was us. Somewhere along the way, I realized I was experiencing my first real rock show.

"Because the Night" came somewhere around the 3/4 mark. I wasn't expecting it, couldn't imagine that after decades of singing it she could be anything other than sick of it, let alone equally intense and perhaps even more invested than when she first recorded it, this song that, with its co-mingling of desperation, despair, adulation and ecstasy more accurately captures the tensions, the immediacy of physical intimacy than anything else I've ever heard/seen/read.

love is an angel
disguised as lust
here in our bed
till the morning comes

She closed with "Rock and Roll Nigger," knocking down her mic stand at least twice -- like all her motions, not choreographed or a pose, but an outgrowth of a genuine, internal ferocity. Our collective arms flung into the air, across a broad spectrum of ages, gyrating. My own tears welling.

I recognized- the true rock star understands they're a medium as much as they are the spectacle. They channel, transferring kinetic energy through their body into those of the audience, suddenly tethered to one another by electromagnetic bonds.

She shouted, "No more war! A clean environment! Protect our freedom!"

I realized that this wasn't about living in any mythologized past. This was about the moment, about the future, and my intellect, although still present, questioning, "What exactly do we mean by freedom?" was for once marginal, barely registering. I was body and un-inhibition.

The rain baptized me, showered through the spotlights like a motion painting, and it occurred to me that perhaps the answer to that question -- what is freedom? -- might have something to do with what I was feeling.

Lesson learned: Rock and rtoll is more than just singularity and a badass strut. It's also, paradoxically, sincerity and community.

Why do Gay Boys Play with Dolls?

I was at Walgreen's shopping for golden raisins for an experimental pork chop recipe when my morning took a sudden turn.

With a resume to revise, a file cabinet to organize and a student loan to consolidate, this was how I chose to spend the first hour of my day off.

On the left is Graduation Barbie 2007's "before" photo. On the right is her new look after a makeover courtesy of me. It's amazing what can be accomplished with a Sharpie, a ball-point pen and a pair of scissors.

When I was a child, my grandparents feared I'd grow up to be either gay or a (hetero)sexual pervert because my mother condoned my playing with Barbies. When my mother retells this story as a humorous anecdote, she emphasizes the seeming contradiction between these two fears, perhaps as a way of managing her anxieties regarding the former. But I wonder if my grandparents' concerns don't make a fucked-up kind of sense within the logic of our dominant culture. Whether pervert or fag, my doll play would leave me incorrectly gendered, as something other than the ideal male.

When children play with dolls, we often presume that they are engaging in some form of preparatory role-play, the actions taken by their dolls somehow shaping their own actions as adults. Of course if that were really the case, I'd be holding my romantic rivals captive in lockers, or poisoning my competitors for the 1991 Best Actress Oscar -- the sort of behavior engaged in by my own excessively soap-opera influenced Barbies.

Still, there is no question that dolls are discursively powerful. Discursive power functions through the meanings and ideologies attached to particular language and symbols. Dominant discourses constrain, direct and manage our conceptions of what is possible or true, knowable or known, deviant or normal. In the social construction of gender, dolls, like clothing, may represent a particularly seismic cultural fault-line, loaded with multiple meanings and contestations.

Conventional feminist wisdom -- or at least, the most broadly-known, most mainstream feminist wisdom -- sees Barbies as contemptibly patriarchal representations of ideal femininity, a way of teaching girls from a young age what they are expected to become. It is no coincidence that this ideal is White, blond, and engaged in a variety of middle-class-coded activities, and that it is marketed by a transnational corporation.

But what of the young Queer boy, for whom the Barbie doll is a forbidden and subversive pleasure? What about the finely-wrought feminist critiques of the gendering of toys, the important role doll-loving men of all sexual identities play in destabilizing and redefining dominant masculinity?

Is it possible that a symbol that for one community (communities) represents oppression may for another represent liberation?

It is these sort of slight experiential differences that sometimes lead marginalized communities to wrongfully believe that our fates are something other than intertwined. Here, Barbie emerges with yet another personality -- as an agent in the politics of "divide and conquer."

Although I'm not yet ready to reject Barbie's potentially Queer revolutionary potential, I do believe we must be willing to examine the ugly underbelly of certain gay fetishes for fierce femininity. Gay masculinity's relationship with women is fraught. Most of us are far too resistant to acknowledging or deconstructing our own misogyny.

When I was a student at Sarah Lawrence College, a friend of mine used to complain that she hated the way some gay boys treated their female friends like "playthings" instead of people. This was at the height of the Will and Grace-influenced early-2000's fag hag fad, when even I found myself flinging this offensive term about with a shameful casualness and frequency. Of the many problematic characteristics of "Will and Grace," one of the most upsetting was the way Will Truman's HRC-ready dignity was always purchased at the expense of the hapless and dysfunctional Grace.

One popular theory holds that the gay man's obsession with the diva comes from the projection of his own desires onto her body, where wanting men is less illicit. Related to this is the classic "The Red Shoes"-style triangle, in which two men play out their desire for one another through an objectified female proxy.

The same ferocity we prize in women we condemn amongst our own, in page after page of online personals posted by "athletic" and "masculine" men who are "looking for same." The old defense that our desires should be free from critical analysis needs to be called into question when it's used to justify the bashing of fellow fags for fagging faggier.

Of course I don't mean to say that playing with Barbies is always-already linked with gay misogyny or the transformation of real women into doll-like playthings. I'm merely noting that I ought not be entirely uncritical of my own fetish for Barbies, or attempt to pass it off as 100 percent subversive without a more thorough analysis.

In the meantime--

Isn't she hot!?

Thoughts on "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows"

contains spoilers. contains spoilers. contains spoilers. contains spoilers.

I finally finished "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," pushing through the last third of the book in a marathon session that started around midnight and kept me up until 5 AM.

"Hallows" is ultimately a thrilling and satisfying read. Although Rowling's weaknesses are as present as ever, including her sometimes clunky language (as when one character experiences grief "like a physical wound") and tendency to pile on one plot convolution too many (the circuitous logic of the "Elder Wand," like Crouch's Polyjuice impersonation of Mad-Eye and Hermione's time-turner before it, is an unnecessary strain on credibility), so are her strengths as an inventive world-builder and emotionally-wrenching storyteller. Most importantly, Rowling delivers on every promise she's ever made and answers every question she's posed over the course of her seven-book series, from the crucial (ie, What is the source of the connection between Harry and Voldemort? What motivates the morally ambiguous Snape?) to the more marginal (was anyone else as happy as I was to finally have explained the oft-referenced historical tensions between goblins and Wizards, or the secret Dumbledore had on Petunia Dursley?) Along the way, she packs in many reference points to past adventures, staisfying hardcore fans while simultaneously reminding readers how deeply earned a climax this is. In contrast to the lackluster "Half-Blood Prince," the stakes start high and only intensify. I've been reading a great deal of fiction this summer, including some heavy/classic lit, and this is the only thing to draw actual tears, leaving me shaking and huddled in the corner. There's something to be said for that.

At the same time...

I have questions about the text's thematic resonance. Its ultimate message has something to do with self-sacrifice and the true meaning of courage and heroism. Which is all well and good, but also a little bit simple and moralistic.

There's a darkness and a moral complexity that's always swirled around the margins, and sometimes the forefront, of Rowling's texts, keeping me riveted but also leaving me wanting more.

Here, Rowling introduces the powerful symbolism of Harry and Voldemort's fates intertwined; Harry discovers a portion of Voldemort's soul lives within him, then discovers that he cannot die while Voldemort lives, as his own blood runs through Voldemort's veins. This is a notion of good and evil as interdependent -- neither can exist without the other -- that is philosophically resonant.

Too bad, then, that Rowling dilutes this symbolism with the perhaps more comforting but less truthful assertion that good may indeed exist in the absence of evil, so long as we kick evil's ass. And all the better if good comes in the form of that most trusted harbinger that happy days are here again -- the heterosexual family.

The politics of Rowling's texts have always been impressively complex. She shows that Voldemorts are created as much through collective complacency and complicity as they are through their own initiative. Here, we see how the Death Eaters' rise to power is accomplished through the strategic and methodical management of fear and deeply-imbeded ideologies of Wizard supremacy. In Dolores Umbridge, Rowling has written one of the most chillingly accurate representations of the political animals that manage our world and of the banal evil that traipses through our governments, churches and schools with a bright-pink bow in its hair and a broad smile spread across its face.

One of my favorite Harry Potter moments comes shortly after Harry's first encounter with Voldemort at the conclusion of "The Goblet of Fire," when Dumbledore underscores the need to atone for Wizards' injustices toward other magical creatures in order to effectively counteract Voldemort, then sends out his agents to begin building coalitions. In "Hallows's" final battle, some of the most thrilling moments come from supporting players, as Molly Weasley kicks some LeStrange ass, Neville decapitates Nagini, thestrals and a hippogriff help Thrawp fight malevolent giants, the centaurs enter the fray and Kreacher commands an army of house elves. All of which leaves me all the more disappointed with Rowling's contention that Potter-like, Christ-like (is it any surprise that Harry's patronus is a stag, often used to represent Jesus?) martyrs and figure-heads are necessary to galvanize collective action. I look forward to reaching a point as a culture (cultures) where we truly DON'T need another hero to believe that there's hope.

So here's how I wish it had gone:

Harry defeats Voldemort, but discovers that it is not possible to destroy the piece of Voldemort's soul that lives inside himself. In the final frame, the Voldemort in Harry challenges us to recognize our own will to power. Voldemorts can be overthrown, but the conditions that create Voldemorts remain in place. How many of us live our lives as the Dolores Umbridges, Percy Weasleys and Aberforth Dumbledores of the world, pledging our allegiance to the status quo or "looking out for number one"? Harry's journey is at its core a "coming of age" story. For me, this means acknowledging that our struggles with evil are ultimately lifelong.

Perez Hilton and the Politics of Privacy

I was just watching Perez Hilton's appearance on "The View," (a pop cultural text I can't seem to stay away from -- always simultaneously problematic and ridiculously informative about who we are, where we're at, and what kind of questions we're asking and not asking) and thinking about the complicated politics and ethics of celebrity and privacy.

The women were challenging him on his invasiveness, on all the *eek!* mean things he says about famous people, questioning whether he'll be able to take what he dishes the higher his own star ascends.

And he's putting forth what I (with some assistance from Michael Warner) would call a Queer ethic of shame, a kind of "Bitch please," dirty laundry-airing, we're all in the same pit of filth, lemme drag you down and let's roll around together, don't pretend you're any better-than-me sort of position that I would love to see identified as a kind of ethics, but which is unfortunately usually labeled as an "amoral" (though not necessarily IMmoral) position.

There was something almost innocent, almost naive about him, as though he hasn't fully considered the full range of potential consequences of what he does, and that at some point, something unexpected may still befall him. And indeed, he may do things I find ethically questionable -- I haven't seen enough of his site to have a fully developed position.

But that's less interesting to me than the questions that "The View" women weren't asking and probably won't ever think to ask--

About what exactly privacy means. Whether privacy can or should be understood as an inalienable right. Who has had and has the right to privacy, both historically and currently. How privacy manifests as a component of privilege. What relationship might exist between "privacy" and the questionable/problematic constitutional "right" to property?

The fact is -- and I suspect Perez Hilton gets this, even if he doesn't articulate it quite so intellectually -- Queers in America have had a rather vexed relationship with the concept of privacy. As Eve Sedgwick elaborates in "The Epistemology of the Closet," we've been paradoxically told to "keep our private lives private" (as in, "I don't care who you sleep with as long as you aren't doing it in front of me"), while simultaneously having our private spaces more thoroughly monitored and policed, being penalized for our lack of full disclosure when our "deviance" is discovered. This hypocrisy, this inconsistency operates to keep us vulnerable.

Women, poor people and/or people of color, both Queer and heteronormatively-privileged, have also and relatedly not been afforded the same right to privacy as folks possessing class, race, gender and sexuality-related privileges. The supposed sexual "deviance" of women of color has been open to public inspection since the 19th century Khoikhoi woman Saartjie Baartman was displayed in public spaces as "The Hottentot Venus."

Although the "outing" of gay celebrities may be ethically questionable, I also kind of get being a little bit frustrated with the Neil Patrick Harrises and TR Knights of the world, who make it look so easy to keep one's difference behind closed doors, or to think of Queerness as an insignificant aspect of one's self that doesn't negate one's general social acceptability.

I don't think this an option that everyone has.

"Privacy" is far from straight-forward. It's a concept in need of further interrogation and elaboration.

...and a message to Perez, re: his new hair, with help from Lady Sov-

"Hey bitch -- did you know you're ORANGE!?"

Humps Intervention

Everyone's all a-titter over Alanis Morissette's cover of the Black Eyed Peas song "My Humps," and her accompanying video, posted on YouTube.

Most seem to believe that this is all-in-good-fun parody.

By contrast, I find it to be Alanis's most committed and genuinely moving performance in years. Whether intentional or not, Alanis has created a brilliant and complex commentary on objectification, femininity and popular music.

The key the performance's brilliances lies in two factors: her plaintive, earnest reading of the song, and the disconnect between that reading and the stereotypical, sexed-up "pimps and hoes" imagery of the video. That disconnect creates a critical space in which the viewer becomes aware of their own position. We hear the lyrics more clearly than we have previously. Alanis implores us to look at her body and consider what we'd do with it, and for the first time, we take the question seriously. We become aware of our own desires and assumptions. What are we going to do with all that ass? What claim do we have to Alanis's body as possessors of the gaze? What power imbalances do or do not exist within that relationship?

Alanis brings two pathologized feminine popular music archetypes -- the weak, emotive singer-songwriter and the hypersexualized pop diva -- into conversation with one another, calling our attention to the ways in which women's bodies and experiences are frequently flattened into one dimension.

Brave New Wha???

I just finished reading Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" for (believe it or not) the first time.

Interestingly (tellingly?), I didn't find it particularly horrifying. The genetic engineering of rigid hierarchy is relatively upsetting, but the lack of sexual moralism (as distinct from morals/ethics, moralism is the casting of judgments and construction of hierarchies based upon sexual behaviors and identities) and the abolition of the "pedagogization of children's sex," as Foucalt would call it, the encouragement of shameless erotic play between children, is rather thrilling. I also have some affinity for the axiom that "we all belong to one another." Additionally, I'm not sure that as a given it would be such a terrible thing to sacrifice passion, creativity, individuality, etc. for a kind of blissed-out, drugged-up happiness, especially if we were to be entirely unaware of the possibility for alternative ways of being. And I kind of really want to go to a "feely." Sythesized sex on a bearskin rug sounds fantastic. The "savage" John's non-stop spouting of Shakespeare and self-flagellating religiosity annoy me as much or more than anything that is a part of the social order itself.

My reaction, particularly my rejection of highfalutin' enlightenment principles of truth and beauty (truth = bah!...spoken like a true Gen Y-er), might illuminate my own position within a transnational mass-mediatized consumer culture that has already progressed toward aspects of Huxley's vision. But I also think it illuminates some of the limitations of Huxley's text, some of which are admittedly attributable to historical context as much as narrowness of vision. I appreciate his analysis of power, which examines the ways in which we "love our servitude," which is distinct from an analysis of power as sheer force and domination, such as that presented by Orwell in "1984." But Huxley's idea of "loving our servitude" more or less boils down to childhood psychological conditioning, to subconscious psycho-social control. I understand that this was a genuine concern for the author.... but it remains a notion of power as "top-down." I tend to be more interested (like Foucalt) in how power functions through our own self-policing, our own accommodation to dominant/accepted norms/values/ideologies. We can recognize the "truth" and still self-consciously choose to believe in, or at least submit to, regulatory fictions. This strikes me as far more interesting than being controlled by voices in our sleep.

Additionally the question emerges -- if we love our servitude, who are we servile to? With the possible exception of class, Huxley doesn't name any specific social hierarchies at work in his dystopia. The "losers" are evidently humanity in general, because we lack art, religion, selfish attachments to one another and our all-precious individuality. Of course the working classes, bread en masse and genetically inferior, have objectively shittier existences. But they are entirely unaware of this shittiness, which although tragic, makes them largely unsympathetic. Huxley's dehumanizing descriptions of the subaltern Gammas and Epsilons, many of whom are people of color (the only characters, aside from the American Indian "savages," who are racially marked), seem to betray his own disdain for and fear of the poor folk of his own time as much as they do the evils of the social system he describes. They frequently function as terrifying images of the society's awfulness, rather than as actual people. Then there's the "savages," the text's ultimate "other." Huxley manages to invoke both the construct of the "noble savage" (through John, who incidentally is White, the child of a "civilized" woman), and cast Pueblo Indians as nightmarishly deprived and backward. The women in the text are the same agency-less, one-dimensional, largely symbolic figures that populate much of the dystopic literature of White men.

In Huxley's world, men (and I do mean men, since that is all we see) who become more conscious of their condition and of their intellectual, creative and relational straitjacketing, are permitted to relocate to islands of other free-thinkers. It kind of reminds me of Imperial Russia's exile of dissidents to Siberia. All the cool kids get to hang out with one another, write masterpieces and brainstorm. (I kind of want to go!) With the rest of the population blissfully unaware of their conditions, I'm not entirely certain I understand, within the terms set forth by the novel (meaning the valorization of individuality, intellectualism, creativity and selfish relationships), what's really at stake.

Constructing the Diva: Virginia Rodrigues and the Commodification of Candomble

Virginia Rodrigues and Candomble:

“The people of nago sing/Their bodies will not remain inert,” Virginia Rodrigues sings in “Salvador Não Inerte,” or “Salvador is not Inert,” from her 2000 album Nos. This Bahian Carnaval song, transformed by Rodrigues into a lilting ballad that some have compared to European classical compositions (Cibula, Davies, Hollings), evokes movement. As its message is transported from the streets of Salvador de Bahia and into the stereos of discriminating “first-world” music connoisseurs, who comprise the majority of Rodrigues’s audience, multiple questions emerge. What sort of movement is evoked? Who is moving? In what direction are they moving? What is the intention of their movement?

Virginia Rodrigues and her practice of Candomblé are recorded commodities. As such, they are fundamentally products of the global capitalist marketplace. Candomblé has been appropriated by dominant power in Brazil in the construction of an “authentic” national culture. Relatedly, the legitimization of Candomblé has supported the “myth of racial democracy.” The export of Virginia Rodrigues’s recordings and performances through global capitalism supports these objectives. Rodrigues’s practice of Candomblé is presented paternalistically as “ethnic flavor” by critical media in the “developed” world, while her biographical narrative is employed to reinforce the American and global capitalist mythology of “rags to riches.” In contrast, Rodrigues’s own performance of Candomblé through her lyrics and press statements is more resistant. Rodrigues maintains commitments to the spiritual integrity of Candomblé, Afro-Brazilian identity and desires for racial justice. Rather than uncritically embracing global capitalism, she situates herself within the local cultures of Salvador de Bahia and the alternative global formations of the “Black Atlantic." These tensions between globalization/capitalism/commodification and Afro-diasporic resistance/spirituality/local culture characterize Virginia Rodrigues’s position as the “diva” of Candomblé.

The Commodification of Candomble and Virginia Rodrigues:

Candomblé is a syncretic Afro-diasporic religious tradition of Brazil, most heavily practiced in the state of Bahia where the Afro-Brazilian population is especially large. Candomblé involves a synthesis of Yoruba, Ewe-Fon, Bantu and Catholic customs, with the Yoruba influence emerging most potently. There are multiple “nations” of Candomblé with different emphases and ethnic histories. All emphasize the interconnectedness of “creation, power, wisdom and divinity” (Henry 110), with the relationship between humanity and the natural world prioritized. Initiates of Candomblé believe in a supreme deity named Olódúmaré who is beyond human comprehension. The Orixás, deities who possess more human characteristics, facilitate connections between humanity and Olódúmaré. Most Orixás possess both positive and negative qualities. Thus there is some emphasis on maintaining the balance of forces held in tension. Most initiates have a particular Orixá with whom they identify, and may channel through ecstatic trance. In general, the body emerges as a fundamental site of religious experience. Candomblé is not concerned with eternal salvation but with everyday reality. As Reginaldo Prandi describes, “ultimate concerns for Candomblé mean the concrete issues of life” (656).

The practice of Candomblé was for many years outlawed, and its followers were persecuted. Orixás were syncretized with Catholic saints to evade detection. More recently, this situation has shifted as Candomblé has been publicly legitimized. However, Candomblé now faces the threat of annihilation or devaluation through appropriation by “national culture.” Beginning in the 1960’s, middle-class Brazilian intellectuals embraced Candomblé as they “searched for what could be taken as the very original roots of Brazilian culture” (Prandi 644). Candomblé is now “implicated in Brazil’s national representations” (Johnson 315), as a symbol of “authentic” Brazilian culture for global consumption. This is in spite of the efforts of many Candomblé initiates to maintain Candomblé’s secrecy and specifically Afro-Brazilian character.

Through these nationalist appropriations, Candomblé reinforces the “myth of racial democracy” that constructs Brazil as a racial paradise where frequent miscegenation purportedly erases race as a cogent factor in social organization. This myth denies the reality that darker-skinned Afro-Brazilians remain at the bottom of most social hierarchies. The generation of the “myth of racial democracy” by sociologists such as Gilberto Freyre allowed for the validation of Afro-Brazilian practices such as Candomblé and their cooptation by “national culture.” As Dutch anthropologist Mattijs Van de Port describes, “the reimagination of the Brazilian nation as the unique mix of the white, Indian and black races allowed for a reevaluation of the African heritage on Brazilian soil” (447). This process had particular implications within the state of Bahia, where poverty and the large Afro-Brazilian population contributed to a predominantly negative popular image. In the interests of improving their reputation, “Bahia’s (largely white) cultural elite was particularly eager to profit from this renewed interest in Afro-Brazilian culture” (Van de Port 447).

Beyond (and related to) this appropriation by “national culture” and the “myth of racial democracy,” Candomblé is now a product of global capitalism through tourism and mass media. Because of its symbolic value as an arbiter of Brazilian and Bahian authenticity, Candomblé is now marketed by “tourist entrepreneurs” (Van de Port 447), and is “under siege…by cameras” (Van de Port 447). Legitimate fears exist that “the media will reduce Candomblé to mere folklore” (Van de Port 447). As U.S. anthropologist Sheila S. Walker describes, “this commercialization and, to some believers, profanation of their sacred symbols, music, dances, and costumes further contributes…to making them a pervasive part of the everyday reality of nonmembers as well as members” (105). Candomblé is appropriated by “national culture” and the “myth of racial democracy,” then commodified and exported through global capitalism and the mass media.

It is within this context of appropriation and commodification that Virginia Rodrigues emerges. Her recordings are themselves commodities, purchased by her patrons who are predominately “first world” elites. Rodrigues is an initiate of Candomble, and the majority of her material references these experiences. Music has special value within Candomble as a mechanism for communication with the Orixas and a primary vehicle of religious experience. As anthropologist Brian Brazeal notes, “music is not just an accompaniment; it is the means by which ritual work is done” (640). Clarence Bernard Henry further clarifies that “music is one of the most important vehicles of religious expression” (110). Because of the value ascribed to music, the commodification of Virginia Rodrigues’s songs, many of which are invocations of Candomble’s deities, is especially relevant to the commodification of Candomble as a whole.

Virginia Rodrigues’s reception by critical media abroad highlights the construction of Candomble as “authentic” Brazilian culture exported through global capitalism. When Rodrigues made her debut, the New York Times immediately dubbed her “the new voice of Brazilian music,” a title that is repeatedly referenced in forthcoming media. Rodrigues becomes the carrier of authenticity, with Ink Blot Magazine’s Matt Cibula enthusiastically declaring “this album IS Candomble, it IS black Bahian Brazil, it IS dignity and soul.” But it becomes immediately clear that Cibula and his cohort are not entirely certain what this means; although Rodrigues’s practice of Candomble is referenced in nearly every article written, Candomble is never contextualized, and its value for Rodrigues is never elaborated. Rather, Rodrigues is continually described in “othering” terms; “a big, black, smiling sun; her voice…polished by the sea, weathered by the wind” (Church), Rodrigues is a “poised mountain of a woman” (Berson).
Critics gravitate toward Rodrigues’s biography. After living in poverty for many years, Rodrigues was “discovered” by singer-songwriter Caetano Veloso and began her career relatively late in life (she was in her 30’s). The critical press repeatedly re-deploys this narrative. As Wellington, New Zealand’s Evening Post tells it, “it is a fairytale story - the poor girl from the slums of Bahia…toiling unrewarded in humble church choirs, apparently destined through cruel circumstance to be denied the opportunity to develop her God-given gift” (Hollings), while the San Diego Union Tribune declares that “the story of Rodrigues’ discovery…is straight out of a Hollywood melodrama” (Gilbert). Whether Rodrigues’s experience is a “fairytale” or a “Hollywood melodrama,” critics remain intent on romanticizing her life story. These romantic narratives emphasize Rodrigues’s ascent from poverty into praise by “first world” elites; in so doing, they appropriate Rodrigues’s biography to reinforce capitalist ideologies of upward mobility as manifested in the classic concept of “rags to riches.” Through her participation in her own commodification, Virginia Rodrigues is complicit in the commodification of Candomble.

Virginia Rodrigues and Afro-Brazilian Consciousness

Within her own statements and recordings, Virginia Rodrigues at times displays a resistant Afro-Brazilian identity that challenges the very discourses of “national culture” and “racial democracy” and processes of global capitalism in which her own work is implicated. Rodrigues is conscious of her own social location, having once stated, “I’m a woman, I’m black, I’m poor” (Church). Rodrigues understands her own work as a mechanism for highlighting and improving the conditions of Black Brazilians, declaring, “it may seem like I'm singing with anger sometimes and that's because some songs talk about the situation of black people in Brazil. As a black person, I've felt racism and still feel it”; Rodrigues goes on to identify Brazilian racism as “a big problem” (Nazareth). Because of its emphasis on individuals’ everyday experiences, many have claimed that Candomble is a religion devoid of political intent. As Reginaldo Prandi says, “Candomble has no message for the world: it would not know what to do with the world if it was given the chance of transforming it” (656). But in a national context where race and racism are explicitly denied, declarations of Afro-Brazilian consciousness, including self-conscious affiliations with Candomble, are themselves political acts.

Furthermore, we cannot assume that Candomble and the mass media are inherently antithetical. Although global capitalism’s profit motivation and institutional power complicate the issue, mass media may be a “necessary evil” in struggles for recognition. Mattijs Van de Port notes that “religion has always depended upon practices of mediation in its attempts to render present the transcendental realm to which it refers” (445). Thus the question is not whether a relationship exists between religion and media, but rather how and toward what ends religion is mediated in a given context. As Candomble is appropriated and commodified, Afro-Brazilians may attempt to utilize the mass media on their own terms. Italian anthropologist Livio Sansone reminds us that globalization, although powerful, is not as totalizing or all-encompassing as we sometimes imagine it to be. He says, “locals reinterpret the global and…certain aspects of globalizing forces, rather than creating homogeneity, end up being instrumental in the creation of local varieties of…culture” (140). This complex relationship between the local and the global creates spaces for Virginia Rodrigues to resist commodification, or to frame her commodification in more resistant terms.

On her sophomore album Nos, Rodrigues interprets songs from the Bahian Carnaval, several written during the Black Brazilian consciousness-raising movements of the 1970’s and 1980’s. Many are invocations of Orixas and other deities of Candomble. Most are rooted in Afro-Brazilian identity and grounded in the experiences of Salvador de Bahia. In “Salvador Nao Inerte,” (Salvador is not Inert), Rodrigues sings, “the spirit of Olodum is Negritude/Overwhelming in its magnitude/The masses are swept up in its song/And fill the square with emotion.” Elsewhere, this Afro-Brazilian consciousness takes on more combative qualities: “And the idealism spreads itself/From the sacred throne made right/by the sun/History reveals for the good/The revolt of the Adja people/That installed themselves in the spirit” (“Reino de Daome," Nos). In contrast to her commodification in mainstream critical media, Virginia Rodrigues at times exhibits an oppositional consciousness.

Virginia Rodrigues and the Black Atlantic

Virginia Rodrigues’s recorded work also situates her within alternative global formations. Paul Gilroy’s concept of the “Black Atlantic” highlights the transmission and exchange of cultural forms and patterns of resistance within the African diaspora. Gilroy describes the Black Atlantic as “the suggestion that cultural historians could take the Atlantic as one single, complex unit of analysis in their discussions of the modern world and use it to produce an explicitly transnational and intercultural perspective.” (15) As they travel across and within borders, the creations of Afro-diasporic artists in different nation-states may resonate as much with one another as with those of fellow citizens. The Black Atlantic isn’t so much a particular historical narrative or theory as it is a lens, a “unit of analysis” that enables us to recognize previously unidentified connections across and between cultures.

Candomblé is linked with other Afro-diasporic religious communities originating in Yoruba and Ewe-Fon traditions, including Cuban Santería and Haitian Voudoun. Rodrigues’s religious practice itself connects her to Black populations in Africa and the Caribbean. Many of the Bahian Carnaval songs that Rodrigues performs on Nos were produced within the context of transnational Afrocentric consciousness-building movements of the 1970’s and 1980’s. Brazilian scholar Antonio J.V. dos Santos Godi, in his history of the development of samba-reggae, traces the “constructions of an Afrocentric aesthetic in the Carnival of Salvador” (213) to this era, noting that “from the outset, [this] local phenomenon…was related to Afro-diasporic musical forms with global projection” (213). The Salvadoran Carnaval song “Afrekete,” interpreted by Rodrigues on Nos and written by Edil Pacheco and Paulo Cesar Pinheiro, was copyrighted in 1987, locating it within this era. The figure of Afrekete is difficult to identify. Although she is not one of the primary Orixás, Afrekete is likely an Ewe-Fon deity and trickster figure connected with the sea (Provost 46-47). It has been suggested that she might also be linked with the Orixá Eshu, another trickster figure who facilitates communication between humans and deities. In Rodrigues’s song, Afrekete is empowered by Xango, the Orixá of thunder and justice.

Rodrigues elevates her Afro-Brazilian racial identity through identification with Afrekete, declaring, “because I am the color of Afrekete/This way I am full of emotion with/Afrekete in my heart.” As in her other work, Rodrigues’s song for Afrekete is explicitly rooted in the local context of Salvador de Bahia. She sings, “It was on the ground of Salvador, Bahia/That I risked my path.” At the same time, “Afrekete” is linked with the transnational exchange of cultures within the African diaspora. In her “biomythography” Zami, Black American writer Audre Lorde reclaims and resignifies her mother’s Afro-Caribbean heritage to construct a history of Afro-diasporic lesbianism and Black women-loving-women. At the conclusion of her narrative, Lorde describes a transformative sexual encounter with a woman named Afrekete. Lorde and Afrekete are bonded through their mutual experiences of American racism. Lorde’s momentary connection with another woman of the diaspora heals her, leaving a “print…upon [her] life with the resonance and power of an emotional tattoo” (253). Afrekete’s name is an intentional reference to the (for Lorde) Afro-Caribbean deity, whom Lorde describes as “the mischievous linguist, trickster, best-beloved, whom we must all become” (255).

Virginia Rodrigues and Audre Lorde are connected across the Black Atlantic, from Africa to Brazil to the Caribbean to the United States, by their invocations of Afrekete. Disenfrachised by race, class and gender, they are empowered by their identification with the Black female divine. It is of further importance to note that the particular female deity in question is understood to be a trickster, a figure of subversion reappearing in multiple forms throughout the African diaspora as Eshu, Legba, the Signifying Monkey or Brer Rabbit. Rodrigues becomes the trickster when she claims agency to direct her own commodification. As literary scholar Kara Provost describes Lorde’s relationship with the trickster, “the power of the trickster’s heterogeneous identity and ability to communicate, connect and survive despite (and because of) difference” (47), creates a model for resistance.

Constructing the Diva:

Virginia Rodrigues is often described as a “diva,” as when the Independent’s Michael Church dubs her “the diva of the Favelas.” Divas are themselves contested figures. As powerful and autonomous female performers, divas provide models for female empowerment as they “get away with” non-normative lifestyles in the public eye. At the same time, divas’ singularity and exceptionality may foreclose possibilities for collective mobilization. The contradictions of diva-dom take on particular relevance with relation to Virginia Rodrigues, who is not only a powerful woman performer, but also a Black, poor and “third world” performer. Rodrigues’s singularity and the related commodification of her work implicates her in Brazilian “national culture,” the “myth of racial democracy” and global capitalism. At the same time, Rodrigues often exhibits an oppositional consciousness that connects her with movements for Afro-Brazilian recognition and situates her within the alternative global formations of the Black Atlantic. Like the Orixás of Candomblé, who possess constructive and destructive impulses, Virginia Rodrigues embodies tensions.


Works Cited

Berson, Misha. “Rodrigues: Her Voice will Melt your Heart.” The Seattle Times 12 April 2001. E3.

Brazeal, Brian. “The Music of the Bahian Caboclos.” Anthropological Quarterly 76.4 (2003): 639-669.

Church, Michael. “The Diva of the Favelas.” The Independent (London) 12 March, 2004. 18.

Cibula, Matt. “Virginia Rodrigues: Nos.” Ink Blot Magazine 2002. 3 March 2007

Davies, Ellen. “Singing from the Heart of Brazil.” The Evening Post (Wellington) 1 March 2002, 22.

Gilbert, Andrew. “Church Background Helps Define her Style.” The San Diego Union Tribune 1 November 2001, 15.

Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic. ?

Godi, Antonio J.V. dos Santos. “Reggae and Samba-Reggae in Bahia: A Case of Long-Distance Belonging.” ?

Henry, Clarence Bernard. “Music and Female Imagery in the Candomble Religion of Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.” Journal of Latin American Lore 22:1 (2004), 109-136.

Hollings, James. “A Voice of Raw Beauty with Power to Surprise.” The Evening Post (Wellington) 4 March 2002, 13.

Johnson, Paul Christopher. “Migrating Bodies, Circulating Signs: Brazilian Candomblé, the Garifuna of the Caribbean, and the Category of Indigenous Religions.” History of Religions 41.4 (2002): 301-327.

Lorde, Audre. Zami: A New Spelling of my Name. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1982.

Nazareth, Errol. “Brazilian Singer Explores her Roots.” The Toronto Sun 14 April 2000, 81.

Prandi, Reginaldo. “African Gods in Contemporary Brazil.” International Sociology 15.4 (2000): 641-663.

Provost, Kara. “Becoming Afrekete: The Trickster in the Work of Audre Lorde.” MELUS 20:4 (1995), 45-59.

Rodrigues, Virginia. Nos. Natasha Records, 2000.

Sansone, Livio. Blackness without Ethnicity. ?

Van de Port, Mattijs. “Visualizing the Sacred: Video Technology, “Televisual” Style, and the Religious Imagination in Bahian Candomblé.” American Ethnologist 33.3 (2006): 444-461.

Walker, Sheila S. “Everyday and Esoteric Reality in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé.” History of Religions 30.2 (1990) 103-128.

The Death of Kara "Starbuck" Thrace Destroyed me in the Most Fantastic of Ways, or Why Battlestar Gallactica is still Utterly Fantastic

warning: contains crazy spoilers.

Generally, I tend not to post my responses to television unless they engage the material from the perspective of a "cultural critic," examining cultural products as texts where various social hierarchies are either challenged or reaffirmed, and/or where categories of identity are produced and managed. But after the controversy that has erupted following Sunday night's killing of Kara "Starbuck" Thrace on Battlestar Gallactica, I've decided to change my tune. What follows is written more as a fan than as an intellectual activist. ...or at least it's as non-intellectual as I'm currently capable of being.

I've avoided polluting my experience of Battlestar Gallactica with involvement in fan communities. I find this series to be so shockingly fantastic that I can't bear to interact with "fans" who do not understand the depth and integrity of what they are watching. I know this sounds pretentious as all frack. I'm ordinarily very pro-fandom as a healthy manifestation of agency, a way of "talking back" to mass culture. But where Battlestar is concerned, this ceases to work for me. My stomach literally churns when I hear this series referred to as entertainment. I believe Battlestar Gallactica to be a work of art that is mythological, biblical and Shakespearian in scope, while simultaneously grounded in the visceral, the human and the everyday. It's expanded my understanding of what the format of television is capable of producing.

The other night, distraught by the death of Starbuck, I broke my own rule and sought solace from the internet fan-base. What I encountered disturbed me more than I ever could've expected. Fans' responses to the third season in general and to this episode specifically are truly disheartening. It seems as though many experience this series solely as an action/adventure epic about kicking bad-guy ass, and do not know what to make of the increasingly blurred boundary between humans and Cylons, a progression that I believe to be one of the series' central themes. They are bored by "overly dark" episodes about the subtle tensions, differences and inequalities that divide humanity from within. Perhaps they should re-evaluate their fandom. Episodes like "The Woman King" and "Dirty Hands" are what Battlestar is all about. In a recent TV Guide interview, Mary McDonnell characterized the series' mission more effectively than in anything else I've ever read:

"We keep having to return to our main thrust, which is the survival of the fleet and the definition of the enemy. I think that's where the core of the show lies, is continuing to push, push, push at how we perceive the enemy, and what is the root of our perception and how in the world can we redefine what that means, so that we could respond differently? And I think that's what the Cylons represent. They represent the enemy as ourselves. But when are we going to evolve on the planet to the point where we see that we have to bridge the gap between ourselves and our perceived enemies, rather than go to war with them and continue to destroy? I think that's what the show is really about. What does it mean to survive? What if we didn't? A lot of the reason that people really enjoy watching the show is because it's not just dealing with terrorism and war and the idea of being an occupied nation and insurgency, but it constantly elevates those ideas and says, "What if there was another dimension at which we were beginning to perceive it?"

I believe this "elevation" to "another dimension" is only going to become more prominent in the episodes to come. The question of the meaning and value of "survival" is central. If viewers can't appreciate this complexity, perhaps it's actually good that they jump ship.

And with regard to Sunday night--
In all of the hullabaloo over Starbuck's death, no one seems to be acknowledging that "Maelstrom" was an absolutely fantastic episode. The exploration of Starbuck's relationship with her mother was wrenching; whoever penned the drecktastic ep several weeks ago about Adama's ex-wife should take lessons from "Maelstrom's" writer on how to "show not tell" when establishing a character's backstory. The transition from Leoben-the-creepfest to not-Leoben-the-spiritual-guide was fascinating and in keeping with that "character's" mystical and cosmologically-inclined backbone. Adama's destruction of his model ship was one of the strongest moments Edward James Olmos has given us all season. The episode's lack of resolution is intentional. It's called storytelling.

Perhaps Starbuck's "destiny" still waits to be unfurled. Perhaps she pulled the ejection lever and went through "the eye of Jupiter," or perhaps she is one of "the final five." Personally, I suspect there is something far more mystical and radical coming down the pipeline, something having to do with this "space between life and death," something that will more fundamentally question "human" and "Cylon" as separate and oppositional categories. ...Or perhaps Starbuck's obsession with her destiny was a manifestation of her inner turmoil. Perhaps her final act was indeed fueled by desperation. Perhaps she committed what amounts to suicide. Perhaps some of us remain permanently thwarted and haunted, our redemption withheld; perhaps we erupt in balls of flame without meaning or purpose. I believe this is a very intentional move on the part of Ronald Moore and David Eick to force us to sit with this possibility before revealing their "master plan." If viewers cannot handle this ambiguity, if they cannot face this darkness, if they require neat-and-tidy narratives where all lives have a purpose that is predictably and reassuringly revealed in the denouement, then they do not deserve to be watching this series.

As I believe Katee Sackhoff was herself quoted as saying on some message board (this was reiterated elsewhere, so I have no confirmation)... Let them finish the fracking story.

Me & the Universe/The Universe & Me

"We believe that the Universe itself is conscious in a way we can never truly understand. It is engaged in a search for meaning, so it breaks itself apart, investing its own consciousness in every form of life. We are the Universe, trying to explain itself."

"The molecules of your body are the same molecules that make this station and the nebula outside, that burn inside the stars themselves. We are star-stuff. We are the Universe, made manifest, trying to figure itself out. And, as we have both learned, sometimes the Universe needs a change of perspective."
--Delenn, "Babylon 5"

Recently, I've been reconsidering religion.

In my religious ethics course on creating sustainable communities within the context of globalization, I'm learning to embrace the rejection of andocentrism, a concept that previously felt anathema. I feared there was a slippery slope from letting go of our beliefs in human beings as the most valuable form of life to the devaluation of particular human beings on the basis of race, gender, class, sexuality. In part because of the frequent scapegoating of poor people of color for environmental degradation, I felt it was important to emphasize human rights as a higher priority than environmental health. But increasingly, I find myself understanding biodiversity as a prerequisite for human justice. To understand advocacy for environmental sustainability as somehow opposed to the welfare of marginalized human communities is but another manifestation of "divide and conquer." Environmental wholeness facilitates diversity in human communities. I am claiming new concepts of "relationality." Until now, I've embraced intersectionality in relation to systems of domination and oppression, yet have not considered myself intertwined with creation at a more individual and embodied level.

I found the above quotes, delivered by the Minbari Ambassador Delenn on the sci-fi series "Babylon 5," to be deeply resonant. It is mildly embarrassing to find inspiration in a television character. Posting this dialogue here, I am afraid it sounds like new-age drivel. Even before my disconnect from institutionalized religious practice, when I was still involved as an activist within the United Methodist Church, I avoided all expressions of belief that did not highlight justice, liberation and resistance to oppression; they seemed to me to be hollow and sentimental. But at their best, professions of faith are cosmological. They situate us, clarifying our relationship to creation and to one another. This is far from sentimental.

I am the universe, trying to explain itself.

Last year, as Diversity Outreach Consultant for DePaul University's Queer student organization, I screwed up royally by intellectualizing religion as "cultural systems" for meaning-making, forgetting the extent to which individuals' identities are emotionally embedded in religion. Seeking a more grounded experience of myself within community, I find myself wanting to re-embrace the emotionality of religious practice through tradition and ritual. I want to humble myself to mystery and the unknowable, to consider my body a loaner whose stewardship I'm entrusted rather than an object that I own. I do not know where this development will lead me... but as Delenn says, "faith manages."

Militarism and "the Family" on "Battlestar Gallactica"

Militarism and nationalism are frequently buttressed by a resurgence of images of the ideal patriarchal and heteronormative family. These images discursively construct a cohesive national identity in opposition to an enemy “other.” Post 9/11 and during the Iraq war, this neo-conservative focus on the family has been in evidence in American dominant culture. The reimagined “Battlestar Gallactica” is a cultural product informed by post-9/11 realities. The series’ human protagonists are the only survivors of a genocide executed by the robot Cylons, and live amidst displacement, crisis and war. The series resonates with contemporary political contexts without drawing obvious or reductive parallels, allowing for complex and multi-dimensional ethical explorations.

The majority of “Battlestar Gallactica’s” dramatic action takes place aboard the Gallactica, a military ship commanded by Commander William Adama. The Gallactica protects a small fleet of civilian survivors as they quest for a new home. The Gallactica’s crew can be analyzed as a family unit; Adama himself frequently invokes familial metaphors to instill accountability and interdependence within his crew. Adama fulfills the role of the benevolent patriarch, commanding loyalty from his crew who look to him for guidance and hope amidst difficulty. Adama approaches his crew as individuals rather than interchangeably, cultivating their distinct talents and forgiving their failures. Adama’s matriarchal counterpart is President Laura Roslin, the former Secretary of Education who assumes leadership as the only surviving Cabinet member. Roslin frequently functions as the series’ moral center, ensuring that civilian democratic values are not subsumed by military procedures and that the long-term interests of humanity are prioritized.

While constructing the Gallactica as a “family” facilitates social cohesion, it is important to note that this cohesion is always solidified against the threat of an enemy “other.” Although the Cylons are a creation of humanity, they are understood by the majority of Gallactica’s crew to be humanity’s antithesis. Although they are now partly biological, can appear in human form, and possess emotions and consciousness, the Cylons are still understood by humans as “things” and referred to by such epithets as “toaster” and “skin job” (when referring to the human-likeness models). The Cylons, for their part, believe humanity to be irredeemably corrupted by destructive impulses. In contrast to humans’ complete disavowal of any human-Cylon connection, the Cylons actively and regularly refer to themselves as “humanity’s children,” and see the annihilation of the parent as necessary for the child’s evolution. Additionally, they believe that their monotheistic God (humans worship a polytheistic pantheon very similar to that of the Ancient Greeks) mandates that they “be fruitful and multiply,” which because of their hybrid biology still requires human involvement. Thus the human-Cylon struggle is sometimes cast in Oedipal terms as sexualized intergenerational conflict. For humans, refusing to acknowledge Cylons’ increasing humanity or the potential validity of their claims means successfully avoiding any ethical implications these realities may impose upon their war project. Family metaphors help divide the world into inflexible polarities of “us” vs. “them,” “insider” vs. “outsider.” Family discourse serves the interests of dominant culture during wartime.

In one wrenching sequence of episodes, the “extended family” of humanity is divided from within by the discovery of another surviving Battlestar, the Pegasus. The Pegasus functions as Gallactica’s mirror image, an example of what Adama’s crew might’ve become had they made different choices. In contrast to the Gallactica’s benevolent patriarchy, the Pegasus is a rigid hierarchy ruled with an iron fist by the autocratic Admiral Helena Cain. Rather than emphasizing civilian protection, survival and species relocation a la the Gallactica, the Pegasus has gone on the offense against the Cylons and prioritized military objectives to the point of requisitioning civilian ships and “stripping” them for valuable supplies and crew members. As Cain takes command of Adama’s fleet, a three-way triangular interparental conflict develops between Admiral Cain, Commander Adama and President Roslin. While Roslin immediately recognizes the threat Cain poses, Adama initially defers to her superior rank, only balking after she criticizes his command and interferes with his ship’s internal affairs.

The blending of Pegasus and Gallactica’s respective families is ridden with conflict, and can be analyzed on multiple levels. The separation of public and private spheres often serves to mask private violence. To the extent that military crews are deeply isolated and privatized “families,” they are often not accountable for internal abuses. On the Pegasus, torture and rape of Cylon prisoners has been fully normalized. Additionally, Cain is known to have once publicly shot her second in command in the back of the head after he disobeyed a direct order. In gendered terms, Admiral Cain embodies the archetype of the powerful female who takes on masculinized characteristics in order to survive in male supremacist institutions. Cain shows disdain for President Roslin’s more traditionally feminized background as an educator and is critical of Roslin’s “soft” diplomacy, wanting to “cut through the hand holding.” Although Commander Adama’s protest against Cain can be understood as a defense of democracy, it is also a response to her usurpation of his patriarchal authority. It is also worth noting that the crews of the Pegasus and the Gallactica are able to achieve a tenuous truce only when the opportunity is presented to combine resources for a new campaign against the Cylons; family cohesion is once again achieved in opposition to an enemy “other.” At the same time, tensions between crews reach their boiling point when the Pegasus officers abuse the Gallactica’s Cylon prisoner Sharon Valerii, suggesting that “the enemy” can also become a source of disunity.

Realities on Gallactica highlight the limitations of family metaphors and family discourses in militarist contexts. I’d like to conclude by suggesting alternatives to “family” as it is traditionally constructed within militarist settings. Cultural critic Judith Halberstam notes that family frames often prevent us from conceptualizing alternative models for collectivity. Halberstam provides as an example the film “March of the Penguins,” in which our nearly obsessive focus on the reunification of the penguin nuclear family blinds us to the other potentially beneficial relational forms employed by penguins, such as when male penguins huddle together en masse to conserve warmth during the coldest months. Cylons employ a consensus model for collective decision-making in which a representative copy of each of the eight human-hybrid Cylon models voices the concerns of their constituency. Humans’ blind hatred for Cylons prevents them from seeing the potential merits of Cylon social systems. Family metapors in wartime can create dysfunction, mask atrocities and encourage hatred of the “other.” Alternatives to “the family” may prove beneficial.