I’ve been preoccupied with Rihanna’s video for “We Found Love,” directed by Melina Matsoukas, since its release last week. Two reasons:
1) “We Found Love” has gotten comparisons to “Trainspotting,” “Requiem for a Dream,” Cee-Lo’s video for “No One’s Gonna Love You,” some Gregg Araki movies, and even a more sinister version of those heavy-handed Levi’s All-American commercials full of youthful ladies and gents running around in cornfields. But all of these examples feature white people. Most of the comparisons I’ve seen made so far feature white teens and twenty-somethings living their beautifully tragic lives, exploring what it might mean to get wrapped up in drugs, the idea of love, dependence on either, and then trying to find a way out. This happens even when the media is created by mixed filmmakers or plays during covers sung by people of color. Rihanna’s video focuses entirely on two people of color, including non-white faces in a story bloggers have already reminded us ad nauseam that we’ve seen before in other forms.
That is, writers point that out, and then commenters point out that the lead male in the video, Dudley O’Shaughnessy, looks like bleach-haired Chris Brown, which may or may not be intentional, but does lead me to —
2) Rihanna’s said a few times that she’s not interested in or equipped for being a formal spokesman for domestic abuse, but she does want to give people who’ve had similar experiences a voice. I see “We Found Love” as the latest instance where she’s weaved that kind of complicated story into her mainstream image, from her involvement in “Love the Way You Lie” to the video for “Man Down” and most recently these new visuals. And while advocacy is hugely important, Rihanna’s creative efforts with directors like Melina Matsoukas remind me not to discount the impact simply including different people and experiences in stories can have. It gets people talking, and encouraging survivors and communities to talk is typically one of the biggest goals for anyone trying to help marginalized groups.
But what makes all of that most effective is that it’s presented in a video that feels worth watching. The relationship is believable, the juxtaposition of happy song with a darker reality is striking, and that’s what makes it all work.
So I’ve watched “We Found Love” multiple times. I keep thinking about it and wanting to talk about it. That’s probably a good thing.
I know there’s been a lot of edutainment aimed towards very young children. Kindergarten and pre-K children never seem to lack vaguely disturbing shows about aliens who want to teach them how to read, but sometimes I wonder about kids older than that. Where do they get their moral lessons from?
Shows like the new “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” series have somehow attracted viewers of all ages, but is there anything like “The magic School Bus” What about this generation’s Bill Nye? Where is the television show that’s an obvious product of society’s biggest concerns?
Warren Buffet had the same questions. He’s better set up to do something about it, though, so get ready to experience his new series, “Secret Millionaires Club.” The New York Times describes it as, “a rebooted animated Web series that follows the adventures of a group of kids as they tackle financial emergencies, like low-performing lemonade stands and troubled bicycle shops.” Basically the most boring cartoon imagined and then — a Jay-Z appears, an animated example of How to Be Great.
This changes everything. That alone sets this up to easily out-do something like “Captain Planet,” since Jay-Z is real-life ballin’ and (thankfully) doesn’t have green hair. Jigga man, teach me how to balance my books. Diversifying portfolios is wonderous. In 2011, the magic school bus is probably a chopped up Maybach. Of course!
I tend to forget that CSS exists outside of my 2006 whirlwind obsession with them right as “Cansei de Ser Sexy” began making international noise. Then they’ll release something like “Hits Me Likes a Rock,” a track that’s light and infectious, and I’m reminded of why I cared.
This new video for “Hits Me Like a Rock” doesn’t let up on the fun either, taking a bunch of tutorials for dance to teach wallflowers how to shake their bodies.
The first ‘Battleship’ movie trailer earning Michael Bay comparisons made me think about the art and sound departments for the ‘Transformers’ franchise today. While the storytelling for those films has been all over the place, the art and sound design has been consistently exciting to me.
This SoundWorks Collection featurette exposes some of the work behind the sound design and effects for ‘Transformers: Dark of the Moon.’ Key crew members, including supervising sound editor Erik Aadahl, talk about mixing the film for 7.1 surround sound and a few of the experiments done to capture and create initial ‘wild sound’ for the film.
Recording the sound of dry ice against different metals still strikes me as especially cool. If that movie didn’t have a runtime of half my life, I’d watch it again to try to nail down some of these elements.
The site OMGICU dedicates itself to aggregating information about celebrity sightings via social media, but this week it’s used that mission to also demonstrate just how effectively mobile users can document current events.
The setting: a highly anticipated concert debut. The method: smartphones. Combine those elements with a little editing help and a kind of video take on Storifying, and OMGICU presents R&B singer and recent internet buzz act The Weeknd’s first live show as told completely by fans in attendance.
Traditional cameras were banned, and the press wasn’t allowed to bring in much either. By culling real-time tweets and mobile footage captured during the shows, OMGICU fully still manages to recreate The Weeknd’s opening song, “High For This,” from his very first club performance in Toronto on Sunday, July 24.
DJ Caruso premieres the first installment of “Inside”
It’s July 25th, which means the first installment of director DJ Caruso’s experiment in social media filmmaking hits the Internet today.
The movie’s website is currently overloaded, but the full episode is available on Youtube. So far the main character Christina, played by Emmy Rossum, has woken up to find she’s been trapped in a room. She tries to get some photos of her location uploaded to Facebook, and then her internet connection dies. Story of my life, really.
Hypem.com unveils ‘Fast Forward,’ a music blog sample plate
Have you tried Fast Forward yet?
I’ve always enjoyed The Hype Machine because it allows me to play through new music and popular favorites with a little more personalized context than a service like Pandora. If I want to know more about specific tracks, I can click through to blogs, and then also discover whole new corners of the music blogging abyss. Their newest experiment, Fast Forward, takes that idea and gives it a meth addiction.
Here’s how the new service works, according to Hype Machine:
From the latest, popular, or genre channels of blogged music, we show you screenshots of related blog posts, while playing short samples of the songs being discussed. Want to read the whole post? Click the big image on your screen. Like the song? Click the heart to add it to your Hype Machine favorites. Use your arrow keys, space bar, or the > button to skip to the next sample.
And it moves really fast. Fast Forward is micro-blogging in an almost purely auditory form. It may end up helping bloggers simply because users end up opening tab after tab just to hold on to a song before it gets lost in the wealth of sound bites.
Fast Forward doesn’t work well for prolonged periods of listening for the same reason. There’s no time to settle into anything. Still, when I hit that “I hate everything on my iPod” wall, it’s a really consuming, fun way to get a barrage of tastes and possibilities in very little time.
Imagine any CD sampler ever created but free and seemingly endless. Try it out, and then let The Hype Machine know what you think.
