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Damn, that version might be better than the original but that may be partially b/c I've grown to regard Ice T more as Fin from Special Victims Unit than as an OG gangster rapper and it's funny seeing Fin go off like that...
Toxic masculinity and red pilling boys and young men
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superrific
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All right, fair enough. I didn't mean to imply that you were ignorant; only that early Suicidal was not exactly popular. My guess is that the vast majority of people your age are unaware of the original. Obviously, you know very well. Probably better than me -- I was never into Suicidal.
And I can see your point about the reception, as opposed to the intent. That is an important consideration. On the other hand, I suspect that the vast majority of people watching it are in on the joke. It wasn't, to my knowledge, a big hit or anything. Ice-T has said that the main reason he does Body Count is to help our his childhood friend who plays guitar on these tracks.
superrific
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I think it's better, considerably. I mean, why wouldn't it be? The original was recorded DIY, by a band of teenagers, unskilled at music at the time, in the early days of crossover punk/metal. As long as the cover stays faithful to the spirit of the original, it should be an improvement. And I'd say hell yeah, it stays faithful to the original. It's not a sellout at all.
Ddseddse
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Because it doesn't have the line "All I really wanted was a Pepsi... but she wouldn't give it to me!!!!" in it!
I kid, I kid.
ChileG
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My wife used to teach TK (now AD in the office) and advised a LOT of parents (not all) to keep their sons back a year (we did with our son). Some took her advice, some did not.
She said no parent who held their son back a year for TK ever said they regretted that decision, but a lot of parents regretted not taking her advice.
superrific
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Just one Pepsi!Because it doesn't have the line "All I really wanted was a Pepsi... but she wouldn't give it to me!!!!" in it!
I kid, I kid.
Seriously, I get your point and I was thinking about it a bit more just now. I agree that some of the stereotyping in the video is really unnecessary. I actually don't mind soy boy. You kind of need the vegan guy to look like that, to make the humor work. There's really no reason to make the call center guy Indian, though in fairness there's one line to that effect but it doesn't go any further. Nothing else about that guy has anything to do with ethnicity. And the imagery of the wife is maybe over the top. It obviously serves the purpose, which is that Ice-T obviously doesn't give a fuck about her, but I guess it didn't have to go that far.
I also like the lyric, "Oprah ain't got no man," although it's a bit of a guilty pleasure. It shouldn't be funny.
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I do not understand trumps appeal with Hispanics or Black men as he's pretty clear that he doesn't care for them and if they happen to be undocumented, then he wants to deport them.
The thing with the economy, as with most things, it may not be the worst in the world but when it's your problems they are your worst problem.
I've been listening to a podcast about financial psychology. The host interviews and tries to help people to understand their beliefs and why they are the way they are with money. It's eye opening to hear people talk about this, but one thing that's common for most of them, so far, is the biggest problem is their understanding of money, how money impacts their lives, and why they are the way they are with money.
Listening to this is also humbling and reminds me that I am very fortunate. Yes, I've had challenges and struggles, but I'm in a good place.
Part of why I believe as I do now is because of the help that I received over the years when I was struggling.
I think this has been a very interesting thread. Lots of good arguments around causes vs results vs correlations.
The "People are not as comfortable talking to other people any more" from @rodoheel really jumps out to me as a key impacting sex issues (which makes sense to me) as well as economic-distress (or resentments which impact male-dominated society a little differently) and gender-aspirations/pressures. It's just too easy to wander into echo-chambers, wander onto disinfo, then your tribal bias is less about your local community, rather some faceless online monoculture.
But would this be happening even without social media or kids being so online? Since "Sex and the City", there is a new objectification of men... but would it be a problem?
Paine mentioned this being an international phenomena, does it go beyond US and UK?
The "People are not as comfortable talking to other people any more" from @rodoheel really jumps out to me as a key impacting sex issues (which makes sense to me) as well as economic-distress (or resentments which impact male-dominated society a little differently) and gender-aspirations/pressures. It's just too easy to wander into echo-chambers, wander onto disinfo, then your tribal bias is less about your local community, rather some faceless online monoculture.
But would this be happening even without social media or kids being so online? Since "Sex and the City", there is a new objectification of men... but would it be a problem?
Paine mentioned this being an international phenomena, does it go beyond US and UK?
Yes, Asian countries especially.
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You guys need to add this to the music thread.
First time I had ever heard that. It's interesting.
I like that his chair has written on the back: "Ice Motherfucking T".
Also, isn't that his wife? Damn...
Paine
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Any country that has traditional masc/femme gender norms is going to have this issue if they don’t already.
Pursuing progressive economic policy seems to blunt the force of this reactionary force though. Look at Mexico for example. A culture that was written off as hopelessly machismo just elected a leftist woman as president.
Just because a poll shows that Black people or Hispanics in the U.S. are more anti gay or anti trans than white people doesnt mean these numbers are set in stone.
Progressives have to offer an alternative vision that addresses the economic concerns. It’s unsurprising that people turn to all sorts of strange things when their economic security seems to be slipping away.
How many of these young men only hear one side of the story? The red pill side? I’d wager it’s a good amount of them.
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Heelsandeers
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People need to be clear eyed about the appeal of this content. It's authentically appealing and always has been. What is knew is algorithmic social media and the concerted push to make this kind of content on such a large scale
I tend to agree that changes in our social order that disproportionally impact men are contributing to its appeal. Men, especially less successful lower status males, are naturally going to be drawn to reactionary media
That is the problem that needs to be addressed if people want reduce the appeal of this content. Imo the other stuff is just not that important. Also, I think there's a difference in the way music is consumed compared to the way content from these internet life coaches is consumed
I tend to agree that changes in our social order that disproportionally impact men are contributing to its appeal. Men, especially less successful lower status males, are naturally going to be drawn to reactionary media
That is the problem that needs to be addressed if people want reduce the appeal of this content. Imo the other stuff is just not that important. Also, I think there's a difference in the way music is consumed compared to the way content from these internet life coaches is consumed
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As an evolutionary matter, even several centuries probably are not long enough to have such and effect (and arguably war should cut the other way as the most likely to go fight should be culled from reproducing).
But the final argument of kings more likely was made easier/became a common political reality because by some nature teens and young men are relatively easily exploited to conflict, and certainly culturally boys have been raised for centuries to admire knights and soldiers and martyrs. The “purpose” of men has certainly been bent from provider/hunter/protector of the family or tribe to the offensive weapon of political warfare.
If you ever read or watch documentaries about the ways young men are radicalized or otherwise recruited to terrorism and/or criminal gangs, appeals to the sense of true purpose are often a key element.
And that has also made it easy to convince young men that empowering women has upset the “natural order” and destroyed men’s purpose. The instinct to protect a mate or family is warped to hatred and a desire to dominate and destroy women as a class who have allegedly stolen your purpose and denied your stature as head of a family and tribe. It is a powerful radicalizing message.
Guess I should be careful with understatement since an aggressive male defense mechanism has been inculcated in hominids (and most other animals) since before hominids were human. It's more hundreds of thousands of years. Offensive actions in territorial disputes go back at least that far. It's been a hugely important part of society going back to our more primitive ancestors.
Notice that I don't say animal. Making the distinction between humans and animals is a mild form of insanity and anyone who thinks there's a gap and that our human animal doesn't have a huge affect on our daily reactions are always going to have a problem understanding who they are. What we are trying to do is difficult. Evolution has led us to one place and technology has made different attributes more important that those our heritage has taught us was important.
As someone once said, “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we were put in this world to rise above”.
This is part of the discontent with young males and part of the lure of gangs and terrorists. (a rose by any name) A society that doesn't need physical prowess as much a mental acuity takes much of the point out of sports, if not the pleasure, our weapons technology does not depend as much on massive numbers in face to face combat so the martial practices are more hobby than necessity and even the farming and building is less about numbers and physicality. Cap this with a spiritual tradition that is at least paternalistic and runs toward male dominant and you have a lot of inertia to overcome.
They now have to compete with women who have literally been forced to pay close attention to detail, cooperate with others, cultivate a nurturing nature and stay focused on daily tasks. It frequently come with a passive aggressive nature all males dearly love and cherish, but is also frequently an effective work technique.
I don't think there's an easy fix. Lots of an unfettered education and a fair amount of sublimation will help. A rethinking of our societal needs would be big. Probably the hardest point to get across and to change is that this is not just male vs female but science vs philosophy/religion. Belief is a hell of a lot more entrenched than learning.
Notice that I don't say animal. Making the distinction between humans and animals is a mild form of insanity and anyone who thinks there's a gap and that our human animal doesn't have a huge affect on our daily reactions are always going to have a problem understanding who they are. What we are trying to do is difficult. Evolution has led us to one place and technology has made different attributes more important that those our heritage has taught us was important.
As someone once said, “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we were put in this world to rise above”.
This is part of the discontent with young males and part of the lure of gangs and terrorists. (a rose by any name) A society that doesn't need physical prowess as much a mental acuity takes much of the point out of sports, if not the pleasure, our weapons technology does not depend as much on massive numbers in face to face combat so the martial practices are more hobby than necessity and even the farming and building is less about numbers and physicality. Cap this with a spiritual tradition that is at least paternalistic and runs toward male dominant and you have a lot of inertia to overcome.
They now have to compete with women who have literally been forced to pay close attention to detail, cooperate with others, cultivate a nurturing nature and stay focused on daily tasks. It frequently come with a passive aggressive nature all males dearly love and cherish, but is also frequently an effective work technique.
I don't think there's an easy fix. Lots of an unfettered education and a fair amount of sublimation will help. A rethinking of our societal needs would be big. Probably the hardest point to get across and to change is that this is not just male vs female but science vs philosophy/religion. Belief is a hell of a lot more entrenched than learning.
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I began my career at Duke Univ/Hospital My vice Chancellor was a "domineering" large male who bedded his subordinate secretary (of course both were married )and scared his subordinate Male "Lts". I moved to UNC and my Dept head was an old School Labor relations guy brought to UNC to bust the Cafeteria strikes He liked to cross his arms and glare. I moved to Memorial Hopsital for a hot minute and the guy that ran the large Accounting /collections division was a bulldog who literally slept with 50% of his employees .
So my first 10 years of work were jammed full with "leaders" that were aggressive Type A assholes-most of whom had sex with female employees that were way far down the OChart from their lofty positions.
By the time I wandered over to State Govt proper a lot of that had changed. Eventually I was in mostly female led organizations......
The three guys I discussed above were all B School guys-when B school was likely all Male.The State Govt proper folks I worked under were typically Human services majors-often Females
Added anecdotal Edit
So I worked Gumnt all my life . In the 90s I met once week in an Episcopal verison of a bible study ( not a Baptist version ) with some guys. We would chat about life-work . One was an aspiring IBM mid level Manager. I was fascinated by his discussions of work. As far as I could tell 80% of his divisions effort was at aligning themselves , betting on , the Higher ups that they thought would get more power in the next reorganization. And they literally had major reorganizations every 6 months. I always wondered what his group did to add value to IBM.The primary work goal seemed to be to get promoted . B School guy
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Ddseddse
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Ha! Yeah, for some reason I'm stuck on the the flying carpet. Such casual racism that no one bothered to differentiate the flying carpet (Arabian) with the Taj Mahal (Indian), sure there was a massive amount of cultural exchange in real life, but they couldn't even be bothered to get their racist tropes straight. But then again, maybe this is just another "I don't give a fuck" element that was intentionally (and ironically) inserted? I don't know, tbh.
Absolutely a guilty pleasure. I was dying to drop it in the Covers thread, but felt like I couldn't in good conscience. So when I saw the opportunity to drop it in this thread I jumped on it.
To bring the discussion back around to the topic of this thread, I do think it's staggering how many proto-toxic masculinity tropes are all packed into this one video. I think the producer of the video (I assume Ice-T) identified the cultural emergence of some of these topics early on and wanted to do a piece that was thought provoking and mildly subversive (against a problematic status quo) which I think is fine in isolation.
But nothing ever stays "in isolation". To me this is a great example of the irony poisoning topic that I've raised before. I don't think it has to always be an intentional tactic from the start. An argument can be made that this type of content can, down the road, metastasize into something ugly by people who strip away the nuance (i.e. irony) and, unintentionally or intentionally, decide to take the content at face value.
That puts us all in an awkward position. The last thing in the world I want to be is a stick in the mud killjoy. But at the same time, I do think we need to be careful, in the times we find ourselves in, about how content is going to land once it is (intentionally or unintentionally) stripped of it's irony and nuance.
Which was kind of my point in saying that this video could be taught in a seminar on the origins of toxic masculinity. I wasn't holding it up as an example of toxic masculinity specifically (though it does have it's problematic aspects as have been discussed), more that I think it offers a lot of insight into how the stripping of nuance, and the swapping of an ironic/subversive frame with an adamantly literal frame is a huge part of the problem.
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superrific
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You are correct that Black and Hispanic people are not necessarily more anti-gay. I do not believe in racial essentialism. Do you? But, in 2024, it is clearly true that homophobia is quite rampant among non-college educated black men, and somewhat among Hispanics. By contrast, the same poll I quoted shows that black men with a college degree were the least homophobic cohort.
As for Mexico, really? We elected Barack Obama for president. That didn't signal the end of racism. In fact, the racism came back worse than ever. Maybe the everyday experiences of millions of people can't be summed up in a presidential election?
superrific
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1. I didn't even notice anything in the window until you pointed it out.
2. Your point about irony is well taken. I would liken it to a radioactive decay. You start with a sarcastic rendition of something terrible. It's great. But with each passing day, a little bit of the sarcasm vanishes, every time someone sees it and thinks it's not sarcastic. Over time, we can safely assume I think, that the sarcasm will fade away almost entirely. The key variable is the half-life.
I remember, when I was in college, a lot of students were really big into "camp," ironically you know. They watched cheesy movies because OMG they're so cheesy! and listened to cheesy music because OMG it's so bad it's good, and so on. It's not hard to see where this is going. In the end, the people who made the Brady Bunch movie or the Scooby Doo movie or any other nostalgia kitsch don't really give a fuck if you watch it ironically or not. You're just spending your time watching the Brady Bunch movie.
3. There's another danger that you hint at, and that's expectation setting. If the cultural landscape is divided between 1) cultural artifacts that are sexist in nature; and 2) cultural artifacts that mock that sexism by grossly distorting it -- well, then you have a cultural landscape that is entirely devoted to sexist depictions of women. In a way, it doesn't really matter whether group #2 is criticizing #1 or not.
I mentioned in another thread that I'm working on a novel. I'm half done. Probably a little more. And since it has never been the case in human history that half-finished novels fail to be finished, I'm on the fast track. But anyway, one vow I've made to myself is that I will never, ever depict violence against women in my work. An easy way to make a villain villainous is to show him raping or beating a woman, especially the heroine. Character development often occurs by showing the characters struggling to cope with something terrible that happened to them, and a rape or sexual assault is a really easy plot device to that end. But then we are left with a whole lot of books and movies that show women getting preyed upon, and the message that gets imparted is that violence against women is just a fact of life, it's just something that happens, so on and so forth.
I grant that there is value in consciousness-raising. If rape was never shown on screen, then perhaps people might come to believe that it's very rare, not really a social problem, etc. But if it is common, then people get numbed to what really happens. It becomes a plot point. It becomes part of the emotional response to the film/book and thus loses its value as social criticism (yes, I am Brechtian on this point). Well, anyway, since I don't have to worry about rape depictions vanishing, I will be going with "none from me" and do my small part.