Fwd: Riot Porn

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Shentongnewyork

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Jun 11, 2012, 6:38:10 AM6/11/12
to non-vio...@googlegroups.com, OWS Messaging Cluster
Sharing with the larger groups the viral MTV by KW and JZ, and Todd's commentary.

Our nonviolent discussion shall continue.

ST



http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/riot-porn/47457


Riot Porn

June 4, 2012, 10:16 am

I can’t say I understand the lyrics of the recently released video “No Church in the Wild,” but the video pulsates, and what it pulsates to is the allure of riots, riot police, and Molotov cocktails. This is no clunky fringe production by some black bloc kid crashing out of middle school to make a name for himself with a big bang, but an arresting co-production by two of the gargantuan names in hip-hop, Jay-Z and Kanye West, along with Frank Ocean.  It’s accrued 3,349,000 views at this writing.

I doubt it’s the lyrics that bring in all those eyeballs. The phrases skitter around like mosquitoes:  something about Socrates, something about Jesus, something about lying priests and unbelievers, something about a new religion. There’s cocaine, monogamy, jungle fever. Interpret away, hermeneutics buffs. But the video, directed by Romain Gavras, son of the Greek film director Costa-Gavras, is what’s arresting. The piece is supremely edited for pump-up.  It’s the images that kill.

Molotov cocktails. Young men in masks attacking riot police wielding plastic shields. Armor, tear gas, mounted cops clubbing demonstrators, battering them, pummeling them. The kids fight back, advance, smash windows, turn over cars and set fire to them. Defiance, flames, and for good measure, an elephant up on its hind legs. Classical statuary stares at, mocks, the human comedy. The driving beat never lets up. Hot town, summer in the city.

To use a phrase to which I was introduced by Occupy Wall Street activist Priscilla Grim, who helps edit the “We are the 99 Percent” Tumblr, and whom I wrote about inOccupy Nation, this is “riot porn.” That doesn’t mean it’s advocacy, exactly.  It could be argued that the hip-hop artists aren’t advocating, only prophesying. But they’re playing with fire.

The Occupy movement is obsessed, to a fault, with the menace of cooptation, as if the establishment steals their thunder by mouthing their phrases (“99 percent,” “1 percent”). But while multimillionaire rappers revel in apocalypse and seize upon the incendiary thrills to define the moment, you can be sure they won’t be around when the clubs come down, the fires are lit, and the bodies are buried.


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(c) 2012 Todd Gitlin 
Nothing here may be reproduced without my express permission.

Todd Gitlin
Professor of Journalism and Sociology
Chair, Ph. D. Program in Communications

Journalism 201F
Columbia University
New York, NY  10027

Phone:  212-854-8124
Fax:  212-854-7837

My most recent books are a novel, Undying (you can order at http://amzn.to/elDYQ), and The Chosen Peoples:  America, Israel and the Ordeals of Divine Election
(with Liel Leibovitz).  More at http://www.thechosenpeoples.com; orders at:  http://amzn.to/bFZroS/

My new book, Occupy Nation: The Roots, the Spirit, and the Promise of Occupy Wall Street, is out as an e-book, then goes on sale in paperback Aug. 21.  More info and orders at http://occupynation.mobi or  
http://amzn.to/IOqjhQ 









--
In Solidarity


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