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MOLOTOV

COCKTAIL. A concoction of politics and pop

culture.

Writing in the Media Portfolio by Wan Eijas Ariffin.

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Writing in the Media Portfolio by

Wan Eijas Ariffin.

Email: webw2@kent.ac.uk

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Contents

Against Me! – Transgender

Dysphoria Blues

Page 4

What I Learned From Watching

Eurovision

Page 6

The Radical Politics of Kanye

West

Page 9

Her Gender Politics is Confusing

Page 12

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Reviews .Against Me! –

Transgender Dysphoria

Blues

Against Me! return with one of

their best yet

Against Me! gained most of their cult

followers with their first three albums

by playing a sound which was unheard

of in the punk scene, coupling poetic

lyrics with intense energetic sing-

alongs. However, since their debut on

a major label, New Wave, many started

to fall out of love with the band. Many

declared them as sell outs, claiming

they changed their sound to appeal to a

more mainstream audience, while the

remaining fans defended the band’s

decision to reinvent themselves to their

death.

All that happened seven years ago

though. Despite releasing White

Crosses in 2010, a stellar record which

combined rock with hints of pop, the

band seemed to fall off the radar.

However, when the band announced

their latest record, Transgender

Dysphoria Blues, it put Against Me!

back in the spotlight when their lead

singer, Laura Jane Grace came out as a

transgender. Many were intrigued how

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this would affect the band’s sound and

direction.

The album opens with the title track to

a thunderous drum roll by the band’s

new drummer Atom Willard, reassuring

many that the energy never left. The

impression one might get upon hearing

Laura’s passionate singing is one of

emancipation, that Laura is finally

emancipated from the pressures of strict

gender roles enforced upon her.

However this doesn’t seem to be the

case, as a closer inspection to the lyrics

tells us about her struggles in coping

with gender dysphoria. Much of

Laura’s lyrics in the album is presented

in the same way. Laura passionately

sings about coping with alienation,

gender expectations and dead friends in

the songs True Trans Soul Rebel,

FuckMyLife666 and Dead Friends. The

way Laura presents her lyrics not only

lets listeners emotionally connect with

Laura’s struggles but it also allows the

listeners to co-opt these songs into their

own songs of struggle.

Musically, this album is Against Me!’s

most diverse project. Songs like

Drinking With the Jocks, Paralytic

States and Black Me Out would

recapture lost fans who long for Laura’s

fast guitars and roaring voice which

was missing in their last few albums.

Newer fans would also find much

enjoyment in Laura’s combination of

pop and rock with songs like

Unconditional Love and Two Coffins.

Despite being the band’s best work in a

long time, this album fell short of being

one of their best in their catalogue. The

band’s desire to appease a broad fan

base backfired as the album sounded

messy at times. The result of mixing

their old sound with their new sound

felt like it was a compilation album of

their tracks over the years. This album

lacked the cohesive sound which was

felt in their last few albums.

Overall, this album managed to prove

many of the doubters wrong. It showed

the older fans that they still have the

fiery passion burning within them and it

convinced the newer fans to remain

fans of the band. Despite the lack of

cohesiveness in the album, it says a lot

about the band’s future, which many

thought were dead.

Written by Wan Eijas Ariffin

Photo by Kmeron via Creative

Commons

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What I Learned From

Watching Eurovision

An outsider’s view of Europe’s

biggest event

I’ve lived in the United Kingdom for

about two years now after coming to

Canterbury for university. After two

years in Canterbury and some weekends

in other parts of England, I’m starting

to understand the culture more. Before

coming here, how I perceived the UK

was largely shaped by the UK’s pop

cultural exports. I learnt about how

passionate Brits were about football

from films about hooligans with ex

footballers who’s acting was only

slightly better than a teenager in a high

school play. I learnt about how

depressing the weather was from all the

dreary songs bands like The Smiths and

The Cure put out. I mean what else

could encourage these bands from

constantly spewing out depressing

anthems but the depressing weather,

right? I guess it’s pretty safe to say by

now I pretty much get what you lot are

about.

Then I realised that despite the UK

being in Europe, the UK is kind of

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culturally divorced from the rest of the

Europe, and despite me knowing what

the culture here is like, I don’t really

know much about the rest of the UK’s

continent-mates. I thought that the best

way to learn about Europe without

spending much money was to indulge

in its pop cultural celebrations. So this

year I’ve decided to partake in what I

recently learnt was a European custom,

drinking while watching Eurovision to

learn as much as I could about Europe.

This year’s Eurovision final was held in

Copenhagen, Denmark, a place which I

don’t know much about. I’ve always

had the idea that the Scandinavia must

be really boring with all of its socialism

and lack of income inequality and all

that. Eurovision began with a typically

beautiful white blonde woman carrying

the Eurovision trophy, then turns into a

beam to the rest of Europe signifying

that Eurovision unites the Europeans

together under one roof. Then, all of a

sudden, we were treated to a montage

of a bunch of masked men on

motorbikes and fast cars racing through

the beautiful town of Copenhagen.

Perhaps, this was deliberate on the part

of the producers to trigger trauma

amongst their Ukrainian audience, to

show them a somewhat Hollywood-ised

version of the invasion of masked

Russian gunmen in Crimea. Already I

knew I was in for a treat.

Coincidentally, the first contestant was

Mariya Yaremchuk from Ukraine, who

sang a pop song called Tick-Tock. The

first thing I noticed was that there was a

man behind her who was running in

what looked like a human scaled

hamster wheel (refer picture).

Throughout the rest of her performance

I was actually more fixated with the

hamster wheel guy than Maria. Though

she did leave my head bopping along to

her catchy chorus. The hamster wheel

and the chorus left me at a state of

trance for a longer time than I’d like to

admit.

Next up, Belarus went on with a song

aptly called Cheesecake by Teo. After

seeing Ukraine’s eccentric performance

I didn’t know what else to expect.

Everything about Teo seemed as if he

belonged in the early 2000’s alongside

campy Casanovas like Marc Anthony

and Ricky Martin. That performance set

the tone for the rest of the night, campy,

kitsch but at the same time fun and

entertaining.

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About halfway through the show,

Conchita Wurst of Austria came on.

Being a politics student and a fan of

pop culture, I’ve always loved it when

pop culture rears its beautiful bearded

subversive head. Conchita Wurst

garnered plenty of attention before the

show for being a transgendered woman

with a full beard. Her powerful ballad,

Rise Like a Phoenix stood out against

the rest of her European opponents.

Belting out powerful lyrics like “Once

I'm transformed, Once I’m reborn, You

know I will rise like a phoenix” you

could tell she had a personal connection

to the song, which made the fun night

full of camp feel a lot more sincere and

hopeful.

By the end of the three hour show, I’ve

caught myself laughing at the jokes,

offended by certain racist jokes the

hosts made against Chinese people,

booed along with the audience

whenever Russia came on and hopeful

with Conchita’s win.

I felt like I enjoyed Eurovision not

despite of the camp and kitsch but

because of it. I enjoyed seeing how the

artists and the audience didn’t take

themselves too seriously, which made

everything all the more fun and

entertaining. Despite the continual

struggle to unite Europe through the

EU, with the rise of right wing parties

and the failure of neoliberal economy, it

felt good to see different people uniting

and having fun while an Andy

Samberg-lookalike is singing “I want a

moustache” on stage. If there’s

anything I learned about European

culture tonight is that it’s multi-

talented, diverse and ten years behind

current music trends.

Written by Wan Eijas Ariffin

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The Radical Politics of

Kanye West

An insight into the rapper’s

subversive thoughts

Whenever you meet a non-Kanye West

fan, the opinions you get of him aren’t

really diverse. Almost every single time

you’ll hear how he’s either a talented

rapper with a huge ego or a talentless

rapper with a huge ego. Videos of him

ranting against corporations for limiting

his creativity, or videos of him just

ranting are widely shared and often

ridiculed. People often dismiss it as just

another rich celebrity rant who’s

whining about rich people problems.

What most people overlook is that

many of his messages can be extremely

profound and powerful.

After the release of his latest Yeezus,

Kanye went on a massive nationwide

tour in the United States promoting his

album. In each state of the tour, he

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would give a 20-minute speech to his

fans, often thanking them for coming

out to the show and explaining the

motives and motivations behind the

Yeezus album. He’d remind the fans to

not let “the man” suppress your

creativity, to continuously challenge the

status quo and to stay true to your roots.

While it’s not exactly profound nor

radical, these words could bring a much

deeper impact on a young

impressionable teenager, much like how

it impacted me when I listened to

Kanye’s first album, The College

Dropout when I was 13.

In his album Yeezus, he justifies calling

the album Yeezus by putting forward

that “simply put: West was my slave

name and Yeezus is my god name”

which is a clear homage to the

revolutionary Malcolm X. When asked

why Malcolm changed his last name to

“X”, he claimed that his initial last

name was a Western name given to him

by his slave owners. In naming his

album Yeezus, Kanye is clearly

deliberately making people

uncomfortable by bringing back an

issue which continues to haunt the

United States even in 2014, which is

white supremacy.

Kanye’s homage to Malcolm X isn’t

some dumb fluke and Kanye isn’t as

dumb as people make him out to be. In

the album Yeezus, Kanye samples songs

from people like Nina Simone and Gil

Scott Heron, who were in their own

right influential artists who spoke

against white supremacy, corporations

and black power.

In his song New Slaves, Kanye starts

the song that automatically confronts

the listener with the lines “My momma

was raised in the era when, Clean water

was only served to the fairer skin”. In

New Slaves, Kanye brings up the fact

that despite the civil rights era has

passed, the majority of inmates in

private prisons are black. Despite

Kanye now being a celebrity, Kanye

laments that he’s unable to express

himself artistically and is suppressed by

corporations who are only using him for

profit. Kanye manages to articulate that

despite him being at the top, having

both financial and cultural capital

doesn’t mean anything if you’re not

white, that you still “have to know your

place” in America, even in 2014.

Plenty of critics dismiss his recent

outbursts and lyrical content by painting

Kanye as jumping on the “subversive”

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trend that has developed ever since the

2008 economic collapse. These critics

obviously haven’t listened to any of his

previous albums then. In 2004 when

Kanye first released his album The

College Dropout, Kanye raps “drug

dealer buy Jordans, crackhead buy

crack and a white man get paid off of

all of that” in his song All Falls Down,

painting the epidemic plaguing modern

Black America, that white people are

the ones who profit from problems like

crack addiction in black communities.

Despite just releasing his seventh album

last year, Kanye is already working on

his new album. Let’s hope those who

dismiss him before this would actually

start listening, who knows, he might

just start something.

Written by Wan Eijas Ariffin

Photo by Peter Hutchins via Creative

Commons

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Her Gender Politics is

Confusing

Her, directed by Spike Jonze, was

released last year to much critical

acclaim, even managing to snag an

Oscar at the Academy Awards. Despite

its acclaim, plenty of fault can be seen

in its portrayal of women, especially

their role in heteronormative

relationships.

The movie Her by Spike Jonze is a

story that sees Theodore (played by

Joaquin Phoenix) falling in love with

his super intelligent OS, Samantha

(played by Scarlett Johansson). Set in a

not so distant future, Her presents the

future as some sort of technological

utopia in which our lives are made

much more convenient with our

computer friends organising our lives

for us. Despite being set in a

technological utopia in a not so distant

future, it seems that the only thing that

hasn’t progressed in the movie is its

gender politics.

In the movie, Theodore falls in love

with his OS, Samantha, years after

suffering from the break-up from his

previous girlfriend, Catherine (played

by Rooney Mara). Catherine claims that

one of the reasons they broke up was

because Theodore thought that she was

too complicated and even suggested

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that she take Prozac so that she will fall

in line to what he thinks she should be.

In other words, Theodore only sees

women as objects to fulfil his needs and

happiness. He actually fails to see that

women aren’t like him and have their

own free desires free will which may

not necessarily involve the significant

other.

Throughout the movie we see Theodore

hasn’t really progressed from his break

up. He fails to learn from his mistakes

that he can’t control women, and that

they don’t exist merely for his

happiness. This is telling as the

audience sees Theodore panicking as

Samantha briefly goes offline at Her

own whim for an upgrade. It seems that

Theodore cannot cope that women are

able to progress without needing a man

in their lives to upgrade as we see it is

the converse for Theodore, who places

all his happiness on a woman.

In Her, Spike Jonze manages to play

out the cliché trope of the Manic Pixie

Dream Girl (MPDG). Just like any

other MPDG film, the man is in a

constant fantasy, constantly

romanticising the woman’s role in

making the man happy but totally

disregarding the woman’s desires

.

Written by Wan Eijas Ariffin

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