Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Kids Say the Darndest Things: Miley Cyrus Internet Quotes

Is it just me, or is the Miley Cyrus interview with Movieline dead on? 

Here are some quotes, that illustrate Miley thinking intelligently on the subject of the Internet:

 "I was kind of, like, tired of telling everyone what I’m doing. I hate when I read things and celebrities are complaining like, ‘I have no personal life.’ I’m like, well that’s because you write everything that you’re doing. So I was that person who was like, ‘I’m so sad. I have no real, normal life, everyone knows what I’m doing.’ And I’m like, well that’s my own fault because I’m telling everyone. And then I’d tweet, ‘I’m here,’ and I’d wonder why a thousand fans are outside the restaurant. Well, hello, I just told them. So I’m just, like, kind of thinking doesn’t really make a lot of sense. Everything I’m saying is not really going with what I’m putting on the internet."

 "I'm a lot less on my phone, I’m a little bit more social. I have a lot more real friends as opposed to friends who are on the internet who I’m talking to — which is like not cool, not safe, not fun and most likely not real. I think everything is just better when you’re not so wrapped up in [the internet]. I just think it’s kind of lame. I feel like I hang out with my friends and they’re so busy taking pictures of what they’re doing and putting them on Facebook that they’re not really enjoying what they’re doing. You’re going to look back and have a million pictures, but you’re not going to be in any of them. Because you’re not having fun, you’re too busy clicking away. So I think just enjoy the moment you’re in, and stop telling people about it. Just enjoy it.”

 "I'm telling kids, don’t go on the internet, it’s dangerous, it’s not fun, it wastes your life, and you should be outside playing sports or something.”

You know, I think she might have a point.  Maybe, but doubtfully, she's been reading Beaudrillard?


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Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Googling Gaga: Telephone Haters

So, I won't post the Telephone video here because you can watch it here or here. But I will point out in this edition of Googling Gaga, also known as Google Gaga, that the Lady is drawing fire from both sides. In a controversy of Madonna-esque proportions, the Telephone video is getting all sorts of people up in arms. First, the right-wing conservatives who think it's disgusting and poisonous that Lady Gaga and Beyoncé are portrayed as lesbian lovers.

I love Fox News (ironically). And I think when anchor Meghan Kelley is asking those contrived, well-rounded journalistic questions about censorship, she raises the right points. People obviously don't have to watch this if it offends them. In regard to the mass murder that Beyoncé and Gaga simulate in the video, I'm guessing the same people who don't like it aren't going to be purchasing the Quentin Tarantino box set any time soon.  Yes, mass murder is "disturbing," but you gotta dig deeper, people, and think about what's being referenced.

Then, on the other side of the spectrum, Lady Gaga is drawing fire from the transgendered community, who are basically pissed off at the angle she's taken in playing up the accusations that she's actually a "hermaphrodite." 

From gudbuy t'jane: 

"I’ve made no bones before about my lack of awe for Lady Gaga. It’s not that I have anything against her specifically, but I find the aggrandizement of her as a radically different feminist artist as shallow: she’s able-bodied, cis, blonde, thin and conventionally attractive (I find the argument that she’s somehow shattering beauty norms really hard to swallow), and generally taking part in the privilege of attraction as western culture grants it.

As a trans woman, she mostly caught my attention due to the transphobic and intersex-phobic rumours about her being either trans or intersex. While these rumours were typically a product of living in a transphobic and transmisogynist culture, Lady Gaga’s response was one of gender and genital essentialism, stating that her vagina was offended by the claims.

It seems with her latest video she’s continuing this gender essentialism, slipping in a “no dick = not a tranny” joke at about a minute in, before the song even begins to play. The scene is set in a prison, and after being dragged to her cell and stripped by two women who appear to be trans, Lady Gaga climbs up against the bars in a shot clearly designed to dispel any rumours. At that point one of the trans women guards says to the other, “I told you she didn’t have a dick,” and they walk away.

When the original rumours about Lady Gaga’s genitals were circulating, I stayed away from the story for the most part, out of respect for her. Her offended vagina comment quickly lost my support, however. That she’s using trans women and drag queens to exoticize her videos doesn’t defer from the cissupremacist stance that women = vagina, and trans women are therefore not real women. Her anxiety at being seen as trans is clear, and her response is typical of cis privilege and trans marginalization: we’re supposed to wipe our brows and sigh with relief that she’s actually a real woman. This is transmisogyny."
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Monday, March 15, 2010

The Joy of Gender

Tonight at U of T there is a free workshop on gender being given by psychotherapist and activist Hershel Russell called The Joy of Gender.  Russell continues to dismantle notions of gender identity through these provocative workshops striving to show that variations in gender expression is a positive part of our cultural experience.  Check out more about Hershel Russell here, and if you want to participate in this free workshop the stop by the Centre for Women and Trans People at 563 Spadina.  The workshop is from 6pm-8pm.  Here is an interesting video where Hershel is a panelist, for TVO, to discuss gender identity:

 


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Friday, March 12, 2010

Something to Check Out This Weekend: Rob Salerno and Louroz Mercader Fundraiser

Hi there.  Remember my predecessor for this blog, Rob Salerno? 

Well, if you've been missing him here, now's your chance to go support him and say hi and thank him for the times you shared here at Toronto Diary.  Rob is running for Toronto City Councillor Ward 27 and is having a fundraising event this weekend at Fire on the East Side.  So, go check it out and support him!  Here's the link to the facebook event right here.

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Thursday, March 11, 2010

Why is this the world we live in?: H&M Sonia Rykiel Riot

This is like a horror film to me:

This was the scene at an H&M in Paris when the doors were opened to start selling that Sonia Rykiel stuff.  What in the hell is wrong with the world? 


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Aubrey Laufer


Get in touch with Aubrey:

aubrey.laufer@xtra.ca

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