Junior Theme Post! WAKA FLOCKA (Yeah chloe directorrrrrrr)

Also this is a combo post, please look at "Give up the funk" for my blog review

I am researching the Disney corporation as apart of my junior theme. On Suday when I was sick, I watched a great documentary about Disney's animation practices in the mid 80's in early 90's, called Waking Sleeping Beauty. I found it super interesting that so many of these films I love so much we're kind of cast aside and thought of as lame when they were first being produced. For example, one of my favorite movies (and subsequently favorite disney channel tv shows) is The Little Mermaid, and during the first pitch of this movie, it wasn't even supposed to be a musical! CRAY CRAY. Its interesting to see how much things can change through a long process, like junior theme!

Give Up The Funk

Today was my first day I could take sometime to watch TV this week so I turned on VH1and watch the 100 Greatest Artists of All-Time countdown. Most of these countdowns have the same artists: Stones, Beatles, Zeppelin, and Michael Jackson, but no one exciting or new to a list and this one seemed the same way. Then came number 38. Sly & The Family Stone was a funk band from the late 60's who challenged every aspect of mainstream culture at the time. Not only were their lyrics a call for social action during the civil rights movement, they really pushed the envelope and showed what the future could bring for music. They had black and white musicians playing this intense funk fusion music calling for a change of the American social structure.

Their first number-one hit was "Everyday People"

They changed their sound from funky funk to a more commercial pop funk to appeal to the masses. This song coined the phrase "different strokes for different folks", which became a phrase of empowerment in 1969. This band really tried to change to world they were living in one song at a time.

We've been talking so much about the civil rights movement and how it was a grass-roots movement and this song attests to the fact that "Everyday People" can change things.

Sly and The Family Stone paved the way for so many integrated bands like Alice in Chains, Rage Against the Machine, Prince and the Revolution, and the new generation of music listeners need to be introduced to this band.

(And for reference, Give Up the Funk is a Parliament Funkadelic song which owns)

I Can't Give No Satisfaction

On the Grammy's last sunday, Sir Mick Jagger sang a tribute to the late Solomon Burke. When I was watching this, the only thing that struck me was the fact it was the first time Mick Jagger had ever performed on the Grammy stage, but DocOc brought up another side to this that intrigued me. He found it interesting that the man paying tribute to this great African-American artist was a British white man. But to me, this wasn't strange. Although the Rolling Stones are a british based band, everything from their sound to even their name are deeply rooted in American soul and rock. Their band name came from a Muddy Waters song, and they've been so heavily influenced by American blues and rock, I feel that Mick Jagger was a great person to pay tribute to Solomon Burke.

I do see how a white man paying tribute to a black man can seem to be making the world more vanilla but I think that the Grammy Academy made a good decision to enlist the help of Mick Jagger. Many people who watched the Grammy's this year had no idea what Lady Gaga was wearing let alone who Solomon Burke was, and by having one of the biggest rock stars from one of the greatest bands of all time introduce his music to a new generation of fans (who sorely need it may I add), then it is their responsibility to share this mans talent. If it has to be through a brit, then so be it. Any vehicle to help a man continue to give his greatest gift seems worth it to me, black or white.

What makes you different...

We've been talking a lot about race these past few weeks, and I've wanted to make an insightful blog post about my interactions in interesting race situations in that time. I wracked my brain, looked through pictures to jog my memory and... nothing. I could not remember a time in my young life in which I was in a place where someone's race mattered. My dads best friend and my pseudo-uncle Leon is black, my best friend in the universe is Peruvian, I grew up in a heavily jewish town, and I am a member of the B'hai Temple in Wilmette. I guess its a little weird that I've never been in a situation I can remember where race mattered, and it is not even that my whole life has been sheltered. My dad worked as a Dominick's security guard all around Chicago when I was growing up so I was exposed to different races of people from a young age. When Barack Obama was running for president, I was honestly annoyed by how much people brought up his race and how he would be the first black president. To me, that didn't matter. He was an intelligent man and a very engaging speaker and I didn't know why that was being over shadowed by his race or that it was some how a "surprise" that he could be as polished or "clean" according to Joe Biden. I had known black men who were very smart and incredibly articulate and I didn't know how that could be surprising...

This may simply be me babbling about my lack of racial tension in my life and how I've had a vanilla life, but I feel like I haven't. I feel like no matter what my exposure has been or will ever be, I'm not going to see race as a class marker or anything other that genetic code. I mean, if there was something about me that I couldn't control that people judged me on, I'd just want it to stop and feel like an equal, with equal opportunities to prosper and fail as the next person, but my only genetic oddity is that I am a 6 foot tall girl from Glencoe so maybe I can't really know what I would do in that situation but I would hope that is what I would do...

maybe this doesn't make sense, but I just wanted to explain my frustration with not being able to connect class discussions to my life in interesting blog fashion.

If it makes you happy, it can't be that bad?

We've been talking about how Huck Finn should end in class lately. Max was talking about a "Hollywood Ending" (I more equate it to a Disney ending but its cool Max) to Huck Finn and everyone more or less rolled there eyes because no story as complicated as Huck's could possibly end happily. But in the immortal words of Miss Sheryl Crow-

  If it makes you happy, it can't be that bad

What would be so wrong with Huck buying Jim then freeing him, letting Jim go back and be with his family and adopt Huck and have them all live happily ever after?

When things end well in books, people write off the book as the writer giving up. Like at the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, many people believed that when J.K. Rowling ended the book with Harry and Ginny getting married and having kids named after their fallen friends, she was coping out of writing a real ending. But why does everything have to be sad? Why does every great piece of literature have to end bittersweetly? Why can't it be a big chocolate sundae with whipped cream? Why does it have to be baking chocolate?

I am a sap for happy endings, and I always think there should be more of them. Peony should have been able to marry David and lived happily ever after, instead of her having to go to an abby and be away from the man she loved. Tita in Like Water for Chocolate should have been able to marry Pedro and they could have had babies who were also incredibly sensitive to chopping onions and had crazy magical tears. Anna from My Sister's Keeper should have been able to live with her Kate after Kate's leukemia was cured. The world is sad enough, can't we allow ourselves to escape into a book that is complex but doesn't remind us of the sadness in the world we're trying to escape from?

Shameless Plug

Not really AIS related buuuuut...
Over the summer I interned at a local recording studio owned by Gary Fry, CSO composer /Emmy & Grammy winner. While working there, we worked on the score for a short film entitled Last Wish, starring former Bond Girl, Lana Wood. We also recorded the intro song "Tell Me" which I ended up mixing. It was in the papers a month ago or so (can be seen here). It's a very interesting film with great msuic, not that I'm bias or anything ;) but you guys should check it out for sure :)

Happy Birthday to you!

I have one of those daily calendars with fun little facts on each day by my bed, which I got for Christmas. It is called The Left-Hander's Calendar and has facts about famous lefties and famous left hander's birthdays. Today, my handy dandy calendar informed me that it is the birthday of Lewis Carroll (his 179th to be exact), author of The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland and other books such as Through the Looking Glass, And What Alice Found There. Alice in Wonderland is one book that has thrilled me and terrified me my whole life. The scenes that Lewis Carroll creates are so vivid and strange, I can't help but get the chills when I read them. But Alice's story is one of childhood imagination, retold through the words of an adult. Today in class we were talking about how an author creates characters and tells stories through them. Clearly, shrinking to a size smaller than a mouse and being swept up in a river of your own tears is fantastical and not a big T truth DocOc has been talking about all year, but a broader, little t truth can be drawn from the chimerical pages of Carroll's writing. Carroll is giving his truth about imagination, the worlds we go to when day dreaming like Alice (or tripping like he was) and the glories and dangers of dreaming your life away (and drug use). Alice visits the fun side of dreaming at the Mad Tea Party, and the dangerous side when she meets the testy Queen of Hearts. This story, like the ones we've read in class, have a very important little t truth from the author, being told through a character of his design.