November 26, 2015: Cultural Thanks-givings: Macklemore

[One of the best parts of being an AmericanStudier in 2015 is the abundance of impressive cultural works with which we’re surrounded. So for this year’s Thanksgiving series, I wanted to give thanks for five great works and artists about which I haven’t had the chance to write in this space. Share your own cultural thanks in comments, please!]

On two complementary songs that exemplify the rapper’s identity and appeal.

Seattle-based rapper Macklemore and his writing partner, Ryan Lewis, are best known for a trio of songs that focus on being yourself, even if that self seems to be located somewhere outside of the accepted mainstream: the silly smash “Thrift Shop,” which featured singer Wanz and became one of 2012’s biggest hits; the very serious “Same Love” from the same year, which featured singer Mary Lambert and became the gay marriage movement’s most prominent anthem; and this year’s return to silly success “Downtown,” which features singer Eric Nally as well as three of hip hop’s most senior artists (Melle Mel, Kool Moe Dee, and Grandmaster Caz). These songs are distinct and unique in lots of ways (due in part to those guest artists and in part to Lewis’s ability to craft a new sound for each), but they all share that central emphasis on embracing one’s own identity and perspective come what may—a logical thread for a thoroughly independent, purposefully outside the system artist like Macklemore, who followed his own muse for many years before hitting it big with “Thrift Shop.”

I respect that journey and the consistent themes it has helped Macklemore bring to such songs, but to be honest I’m more interested in the themes of identity he captures in a pair of lesser-known, complementary songs that to my mind exemplify his unique perspective and strengths. In “Irish Celebration” (2010; warning, this one will be stuck in your head for weeks, but in a good way), Macklemore raps about his national and cultural heritage (his real name is Ben Haggerty) in both funny and thoughtful ways. Indeed, while the most famous Irish American rappers are of course the boys from House of Pain, I would argue that it is “Irish Celebration” which should hold the title as the best Irish American rap song, as Macklemore’s anthem is far more interested in examining, critiquing, and also celebrating the unique histories and stories that comprise this cultural identity. Take this couplet from the end of the song’s first verse, which has included histories of the Emerald Isle’s complex relationship with those colonizing Englishmen: “Preach nonviolence but remind us of the scars/That define us, put a pint up everybody sing a song.” Or this one, that links Macklemore’s own history of addiction to his culture’s fraught but unavoidable relationship with drink: “I put down the drink, couldn’t drink like a gentleman/That doesn’t mean I can’t make a drinking song for the rest of ‘em.” Yup, the clear winner for greatest Irish American rap song.

There’s an elephant in the room when it comes to that sub-genre of rap, however, and it’s one that Macklemore addresses head on in my favorite song of his (and one that, to his great credit, he wrote and recorded very early in his career), “White Privilege” (2005). Of course in the 21^st century there is room for rap and hip hop made by every type of person in every corner of the world—in a unit on Global Culture in my IDIS Capstone course this semester we discussed songs by Psy, Matisyahu, and M.I.A., to name three such artists—but those ongoing evolutions don’t, can’t, and shouldn’t elide the genre’s clear and crucial origins in the African American community. And while other white rappers like Vanilla Ice and Eminem have tended to address those histories with a combination of posturing and defensiveness, Macklemore in “White Privilege” engages with them, and with related issues of cultural appropriation and the limits of identity and community, with an impressive degree of depth and thoughtfulness. “We got the best deal, the music without the burden,” he raps in the first verse, adding, “I give everything I have when I write a rhyme/But that doesn’t change the fact that this culture’s not mine.” And then in the multi-layered chorus he comes back to those persistent themes of embracing identity, but without leaving the history behind: “But I’m gonna be me so please be who you are/This is something that’s effortless and shouldn’t be hard/I said I’m gonna be me so please be who you are/But as I’m blessed with the privilege, they’re still left with the scars.” I’m thankful for the artist who can share both those sentiments, and many others worth our attention and response.

Last cultural thanks-giving tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Cultural thanks-givings you’d share?

November 25, 2015: Cultural Thanks-givings: Americanah

[One of the best parts of being an AmericanStudier in 2015 is the abundance of impressive cultural works with which we’re surrounded. So for this year’s Thanksgiving series, I wanted to give thanks for five great works and artists about which I haven’t had the chance to write in this space. Share your own cultural thanks in comments, please!]

Two of the many reasons why Americanah (2013) is on the short list of most important 21^st century American novels to date.

Part of me feels that the best use to which I could put this post on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah would be simply to implore you to go out and read it as soon as possible. I’m not promising that you’ll love it as much as I do—I know at least one AmericanStudier’s madre who was not particularly blown away by it, and of course as the Romans knew de gustibus non est disputandum—but I believe I can promise that you’ll find it a unique novel that’s as engaging and readable as it is important and innovative, a page-turner that’s also literary fiction of the highest order. So first and foremost, check it out, and if and when you do—or if you’ve already read it and have thoughts on it right now—please share your review and perspective in comments!

Without spoiling any specific aspects of Adichie’s novel, however (a great deal of the pleasure lies in discovering her characters, plots, and themes), I do want to make the case here for two particular elements that make the novel as important as it is. The more obvious element, and a vital part of Adichie’s novel in every sense, is its transnational, dual settings of Nigeria and America. It’s not just that Adichie’s novel offers a fresh and compelling take on the immigrant experience (although it does), or on the relationship between old and new worlds for its characters (although ditto), or on cultural and ethnic hybridity (yup), or on the fraught relationship between Africans and African Americans (definitely). It’s that she’s written a novel that is deeply reflective of, influenced by, and contributing to our understanding and conversations about both Nigeria and America, two widely distinct worlds that she treats as distinct yet also brings together in potent and convincing ways. I know few other novels that have been able to pull off those joint feats for any two cultures, feats which are so crucial to our fraught global moment, and Adichie’s success there makes her novel hugely impressive and important.

If Americanah is very much of its 21^st century moment in its settings and themes, I would argue that it is perhaps even more contemporary in one of its key stylistic elements. Ifemelu, Adichie’s female protagonist, creates a popular blog entitled “Raceteenth or Various Observations about American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black,” and Adichie intersperses blog entries of hers throughout and alongside the more conventionally narrated sections of the novel. These blog entries allow Adichie to create a multi-vocal and –perspectival narration and text in a way that feels fresh and engaging, and at the same time to engage specifically and compellingly with questions of digital voice, identity, community, and conversation, and how those do and don’t line up with our more private identities and relationships. It goes without saying that I’m a pretty natural audience for any novel that makes use of blogging in these layered and thoughtful ways, but I believe the questions and forms that this stylistic element allows Adichie to include would be of interest to any and all 21^st century readers. A great deal has been made, rightly, of the uniquely 21^st century style that Junot Díaz invented for his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2008), but I would say that Adichie’s version is just as unique and successful, and one more reason why I’m thankful for her must-read novel.

Next cultural thanks-giving tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Cultural thanks-givings you’d share?

November 24, 2015: Cultural Thanks-givings: Grace and Frankie

[One of the best parts of being an AmericanStudier in 2015 is the abundance of impressive cultural works with which we’re surrounded. So for this year’s Thanksgiving series, I wanted to give thanks for five great works and artists about which I haven’t had the chance to write in this space. Share your own cultural thanks in comments, please!]

On two ways the Netflix sitcom pushes our cultural boundaries, and one way it happily does not.

The Netflix original sitcom Grace and Frankie (2015) features one of the more distinctive and yet appropriately 2015 premises I’ve seen: two lifelong male friends and law partners come out to their wives as gay, in love with each other, and leaving their wives for each other and a planned gay marriage. The premise alone would make the show one of the more groundbreaking on our cultural landscape, but the fact that the two men are played by two of our most prominent and respected actors, Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston, makes this nuanced, complex, warm, and so so thoroughly human portrayal of a same-sex relationship even more striking. It seems to me that a greal deal more has been written about Transparent and Jeffrey Tambor’s portrayal of that show’s transgender protagonist than about Sheen and Waterston in Grace and Frankie—and without taking anything away from Tambor’s equally nuanced and impressive performance, I would argue that seeing Sheen and Waterston in these roles represents an equally significant step forward in our cultural representations of the spectrums of sexuality, sexual preference, and identity in America.

What’s particularly interesting about Grace and Frankie, moreover, is that Sheen and Waterston’s characters and storyline represents only half of the show’s primary focuses—and the other half, focused on the responses and next steps and identities and perspectives of their former wives Grace and Frankie, is in its own ways just as ground-breaking. Played to comic, tragic, human perfection by legendary actresses Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, these two characters represent to my mind two of the most in-depth and multi-layered portrayals of older women in television history. That there has been some behind the scenes controversy about the paychecks of Fonda and Tomlin in comparison to those of Sheen and Waterston, while of course frustrating and tied to broader current issues and arguments, also seems to add one more pitch-perfect layer to the ways in which the show asks us to think about the experiences, lives, and worlds of older women in a society that tends (as this scene highlights with particular clarity) not to include them in our cultural landscape much at all. In a year when the single leading candidate for the presidency (I refuse to consider Donald Trump for that title) is herself a woman over 65, Grace and Frankie engages with our current moment in this important way as well.

At the time that it’s four main characters and their storylines are thus so groundbreaking, however, I would argue (to parallel things I said about Longmire in yesterday’s post) that in its use of the conventions and traditions of the sitcom form Grace and Frankie feels very comfortably familiar. That might be one reason why Transparent, which blends genres much more into something like a dramedy, has received more critical attention and popular buzz (of course the parallels to the Caitlyn Jenner story are another such reason). Yet just because Grace and Frankie stays more within those familiar sitcom lines (featuring everything from physical comedy and wacky misunderstandings to recurring catchphrases and jokes) doesn’t make it less stylistically successful—indeed, I might argue that using such familiar forms yet making them feel fresh and funny is itself a significant aesthetic success, and one that Grace and Frankie most definitely achieved for this viewer. Moreover, there’s a reason why the sitcom is one of television’s oldest and most lasting forms—it taps into some of our most enduring audience desires, our needs for laughter and comfort that not only continue into our present moment, but have an even more necessary place alongside the antiheroes and dark worlds that constitute so much of the best of current television. Just one more reason why I’m thankful for Grace and Frankie.

Next cultural thanks-giving tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Cultural thanks-givings you’d share?