Stop Killing Love One Another

I had the day off from work today, and it was nice out, so I decided to go for a long walk. As I was making my way up North Avenue I saw this long, white car (a real old beater) with blocky hand-painted words written in red along its sides: "Thou shalt not kill" Stop Killing Love One Another

Minus the Bible quote, it was certainly a sentiment that I could get behind. Especially given Chicago's current climbing crime rate, which had taken a few months off earlier this year, only to spike again Father's Day weekend with 41 reported shootings that left seven dead.

Stop Killing

The hand-painted message, which smacked of desperation, got me to thinking about what would cause a person to do something like that, to scrawl a message out on their own car and then drive around. I came to the conclusion that what they really wanted was for their voice to be heard, and for their message to make a difference in a world where they felt otherwise powerless to change anything.

In a city whose priorities are all out of whack it's easy to sympathize with a person like that. After all, Chicago is a place where everyone goes into a complete frenzy over a hockey game, meanwhile retaining a collective passive apathy as its mayor dismantles the public school system and misallocates funding to its neighborhoods. No one wants to listen to a concerned citizen. They only want to escape, to lose themselves and their problems in a city-wide spectacle.

But that's also what this person's car had become, a spectacle of another kind, one they hoped to beget change.

And it had worked, at least on some level, because it had caught my attention. As I looked around I saw that others were pointing and staring at the car as it drove by.

And then someone shouted from the bus stop behind me, "You stop killing! Those damn fumes!"

And here it was, the counter statement, a complete non sequitur, which had entirely missed the point.

Later, further down North Avenue, I saw a man wearing an umbrella hat. He was pushing a collapsable shopping cart with three mannequin heads attached to it on metal rods. Each of the heads also wore an umbrella hat. It was an indelible image, but I had to wonder what this man's message was.

Later still, there was a deaf (or mute?) man sitting on a park bench signing to his dog. I took a moment to observe the situation, as I'd never before considered how someone who couldn't speak would communicate to his pet. And it was clear as day that the man was shaming the dog for it's bad behavior. With a quick sweep of his hands the man bumped his fists on top of each other and then pointed deliberated downward. The dog, its ears pinned and tail between its legs, sank to the earth, where it rolled its sad doggy eyes back up to its owner. After a minute the owner carefully touched the dog's rear to get its attention, and then patted both his open hands on his thighs. The dog bounded up, tail wagging, and set its head in the man's lap, where it was given one heck of a good scratch behind the ears.

Love One Another

*Note: I wasn't able to take a picture of any of these events. I was luckily able to find the image of the car online.

Miley Cyrus - We Can't Stop - Reaction to Vice interview

As far as I'm concerned, it's a song and a music video, both carefully engineered in conjunction with her image in order to make money. Period. I don't think you can say that Miley is being racist, because the 'black culture' (which isn't actually black culture any more than Billy Ray Cyrus' image is an authentic representation of 'white culture') she's appropriating is itself perpetuating racist stereotypes. It's a gross simplification to claim otherwise. 

And on another note, how is it possible for one pop entity (Miley, who has been engineered by a corporation, remember) to bite the 'authentic' style of another pop icon (Rihanna, who this song was apparently written for)? There is no ownership, cultural or personal, within the context of corporate America. It's like claiming one TV dinner has appropriated the 'authentic ethnic recipe' of another brand of TV dinner.

I always remember the title of Challenger's first album in cases like this: Give People What They Want In Lethal Doses

Instead of throwing blame on pop entities like Miley Cyrus or Gucci Mane and Three Six Mafia, perhaps we should be asking ourselves why these media commodities continue their longevity and prevalence in our mainstream culture. The products wouldn't exist without enough people who wanted to buy them. But why do we want to buy them?

Like the song says: We Can't Stop.


Excerpts from Vice interview:


Q: When you see the black characters in this video, do they come off as accessories or fully realized people? Is it important to make the distinction? And what does it say about Miley's intentions?

A: Miley and the black actors in the video are all props on the stage of visual pleasure. I think it's important to consider that these images function within the sphere of multinational corporate control so both the lead (Miley) and the accessories do not maintain a high level of autonomy in terms of imaging.


Q: Is there a blame that should be placed on artists who work in hip-hop, such a Gucci Mane and Three Six Mafia, for helping mold the stereotypes that Miley presents in the video, even if their work is balanced by other elements that are conspicuously left out of her interpretation?

A: Absolutely. However our critiques of them need to be contextualized. Who makes these artists possible, why are their songs in heavy rotation, what labels and corporations are supporting these images and messages? Artists like Wise Intelligent, Public Enemy, One Be Lo, Bahamadia, and others have been putting out relevant images and messages that are not homophobic, sexist, and generally problematic for years. Yet they do not have the airplay or access as some of the groups you mentioned. It's not enough to be critical of the artists, though we should be—it must extend to the corporation that makes it possible.