You Know Who I Am

I haven’t yet heard the new Arcade Fire album. I watched them on The Daily Show last night and thought they sounded pretty good, so I suspect I’ll catch up with it eventually, maybe even sooner than later. But without getting off on a self-involved tangent here, it’s worth pausing for a moment to consider my reluctance to embrace this band. After all, I’ve mostly enjoyed their other records, this one is attracting lots of positive reaction, and I like what I’ve heard from it. And yet, I hesitate. Why? The obvious answer is that I’m merely reacting against the obnoxious level of hype around the band. There may be something to that, but this is hardly a phenomenon unique to Arcade Fire. Perhaps it’s more a question of sensibility. To put it another way, I don’t feel a connection.

This is not, of course, an entirely rational response, but it is a real one, and it’s crucial to the way most serious music listeners, as well as many casual fans, relate to pop artists—that is, in ways that go well beyond music per se. I’m not talking about anything as deadly dull as an artist’s “philosophy” or even worldview. What I have in mind is something more analogous to Andrew Sarris’s notion of “interior meaning,” a fully formed artistic sensibility that both encompasses and transcends form and technique, as well as thought and feeling.

Which brings us to the case of M.I.A. In the three years since the release of her second album, Kala, she’s become a pop-cultural lightning rod, celebrated as a hero by many fans for her backstory as much as her music and condemned as an empty-headed purveyor of radical chic by others. The latter camp has had no shortage of fuel, much of it provided by M.I.A. herself in a series of public pronouncements culminating in a condescending (albeit skillfully conceived and written) New York Times Magazine profile by Lynn Hirschberg, who, it must be said, has made something of a career out of this sort of thing. But anyone reading this obviously has access to Google, so I’m not going to rehash any of that here. What’s interesting is how all this drama relates to M.I.A.’s music. On the surface, M.I.A. signifies rebellion, third-worldism, even revolution, yet her dabblings in business and fashion, not to mention her much-chronicled life of luxury, locate her in a more nebulous space. And her public statements suggest that she’s not particularly well-informed.

I’ll try to explain. Once upon a time, things were simple. There was Society and there were those outside of Society, and you knew exactly which side of that line you and everyone else was on. This is not to say that elements of the counterculture weren’t quite regularly co-opted by Society, etc. etc., but merely that this used to be an operational distinction in popular culture. Now its last vestiges are disappearing. Nearly all of the true zeitgeist figures in the current poposphere—Barack Obama, Lady Gaga, Lebron James, Don Draper—are to a large extent blank screens onto which we can (and do) project our own fantasies of who they “really” are. Theirs is a studied opacity. They are both the culture and the counterculture.

M.I.A. fits this mold, although she bears less resemblance to any of the figures mentioned above than to Kanye West, another tabloid-ready superstar given to erratic behavior who, like M.I.A., has made great records despite a lack of conventional musical ability, in the sense of vocal or instrumental prowess. Both Kanye and M.I.A. are less artists in the traditional sense than musical and cultural curators, guides to certain sensibilities. (This is particularly true of M.I.A.—as a producer, Kanye is at least directly responsible for the sound of his records.) This is why questions about authenticity rankle so much. She’s identified herself with a certain political posture, and if she can’t deliver the goods, then…well what? My own views on the issue were succinctly articulated by Robert Christgau in his review of Maya: “The notion that M.I.A. isn't politically meaningful because her motives are mixed and her ideas are screwed up is clueless about how pop music works—namely, all kinds of screwy ways.” Yes, exactly. Pop (music or otherwise) is a medium of grand gestures and unintended consequences.

As for the album…well, you know, it’s all right, neither a Kala-level masterpiece nor the Self Portrait-style disaster that Pitchfork would have you believe. I’m not going to knock her for going all pop-star narcissist on us; she’s entitled to work that vein for at least one album, and it’s not like she didn’t warn us with the title. Following a minute-long intro (that’s why I don’t have an iPhone!), Maya kicks into gear with the industrial grind of “Steppin’ Up,” which strikes a familiar outsider pose, mocking the torpor of mainstream club culture (“Bass lines and ass/Anything fast”), and the savvy pop of “XXXO,” which casts a jaundiced eye on what passes for affection in the age of portable electronic devices. The canny wordplay of “Lovalot” conflates references to suicide bombers with mentions of Obama and Hu Jintao. And of course there’s the scintillating “Born Free” (think Primal Scream’s XTRMNTR with A Thousand Leaves-era Kim Gordon singing), the lead single that raised hopes of a Difficult Third Album in the In Utero/Wowee Zowee mode, even as the song’s “banned” (whatever the hell that means in 2010) video, a risible gloss on Peter Watkins’s 1971 counterculture classic Punishment Park, came off as just the sort of attention-getting stunt that M.I.A.’s grown too fond of. You take the bad with the good; unfortunately, it’s the best track on Maya by a considerable margin. To get there you’ve got to slog through the insipid reggae-pop of “It Takes a Muscle” and the formless muck of “It Iz What It Iz.” The shallow electro-rock of “Meds and Feds” sounds like the work of labelmates Sleigh Bells, which is OK because I can tolerate Sleigh Bells for exactly one song. And while “Teqkilla” is not quite as annoying as its title, “Tell Me Why” has some of the laziest lyrics in the M.I.A. catalog (“Things change but it feels the same”).

The so-called “deluxe” edition comes with four extra songs (are they part of the album are not?), of which only the first, “Internet Connection,” qualifies as a throwaway. Indeed, the perky punk-funk of “Illygirl” and the laid-back Afro-pop of “Believer” would have been better-than-average on the album proper. And the final track, “Caps Lock,” strikes a plaintive note found nowhere else on Maya. “My left side is my right side,” she sings, and no further explanation is necessary. She’s a rebel so she rebels. It’s a good bet that M.I.A. won't be following in the footsteps of Peter Garrett or Bono anytime soon, but that’s not to say there’s no content to her music, even if it’s merely a willingness to say “no” to society’s “yes.” And at least for now, that’ll have to do.

The Meaning of Lebron

Tonight at 9 pm, Eastern Daylight Time, the man they call King James will speak to us on national television. On that broadcast he will reveal the secret that millions have longed to know and thousands have striven to learn: the identity of the NBA team for which he will be playing basketball for the next five or six years. Or possibly fewer.

So tell me something I don’t know. Obviously the whole ESPN broadcast is a massive ego trip, but accusations of egotism against a man who openly aspires to be a “global icon” are nothing but redundant. Lebron not only transcends sports, but conventional notions of celebrity. He is not only a new kind of superstar, equal parts athlete, pitchman, and free-floating signifier, but a literal superman (he may not be the greatest basketball player of all time, but he's surely the greatest basketball talent). As the likes of Beyoncé have shown, there’s no such thing anymore as overexposure, and backlash is reserved for history’s greatest monsters, like Tiger Woods. It is what it is. Hate the game, I say, not the player. The news that Lebron had opened a Twitter account this week seemed almost quaint. Lebron is the new medium. ESPN has a presence in Lebron, just as it does on television or the Internet. And as with TV and the Web, Lebron is now a part of us, like it or not. Despite a seven-year basketball career that would already rank him among the sport’s greats, what we are now witnessing is not his apotheosis, but indeed the birth of Lebron. It’s sort of like the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, if that helps any.

So whether you’re a basketball fan or not, you too are now bound up in the meaning of Lebron and its implications for our collective future. Hence, the frenzy of the past few weeks, which have seen a deafening vuvuzela-like buzz of reports and rumors, in which it’s become impossible to separate fact from opinion, truth from spin, solid journalism from hope, spite, and wishful thinking. No piece of minutiae has gone unexamined, no stray comment or sartorial detail left uninterpreted. As with all things Lebron, the media attention is unprecedented, and everyone has an opinion. Because, rightly or wrongly, the choice he announces tonight will go a long way toward defining Lebron, forever shattering some cherished interpretations of him while validating others. It is a choice fraught with unintended consequences and hidden meanings, meanings totally unrelated to the idiosyncratic, even capricious, factors that motivate actual human decision-making. With the ever-hapless Los Angeles Clippers and the talent-depleted New Jersey Nets seemingly out of the picture, we’re down to four teams in the running for Lebron: the Miami Heat, the Chicago Bulls, the New York Knicks, and of course the Cleveland Cavaliers, and each has developed its own text, its own commentary on the meaning of Lebron.

Miami. The latest of a series of frontrunners, Miami would pair James with fellow superstar Dwyane Wade, along with all-star forward Chris Bosh. There are a lot of questions about the rest of the roster, and the idea of Lebron teaming up with another of the league’s top five players rankles basketball purists, but it’s easy to see why the Heat are considered the favorite tonight. Miami is The Show, Miami is Amazing, Miami feels like Now. Miami is three friends getting together to play pickup games, to create the nucleus of the kind of fun, freewheeling winner that veterans would sign up to play with for the league minimum salary—that is, if the NBA weren’t looking at a probable lockout in 2011-12. Miami says that Lebron is Spectacle.

Chicago. Chicago is the choice of the serious basketball crowd (unless they’re fans of one of the other teams in the field, of course). Unlike the attempts to build a roster from scratch in Miami and New York, Chicago offers a ready-made cast of talented basketball players whose skills complement each other. Chicago is where Lebron goes to win multiple championships as (unlike in Miami) the undisputed alpha dog. Chicago is rational. Chicago is greatness. Chicago is also a city in the shadow of Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player who ever lived. Chicago says Lebron is Basketball.

New York. New York is the proverbial big city, the place where dreams are made, or at least the place where Lebron is supposedly most likely to fulfill his potential as a worldwide superstar, while reviving a moribund franchise in a rich basketball market. But New York is a bit nostalgic too, perhaps even more so than the final option below. Nostalgic for the days when it was the undisputed center of the universe, the days before Lebron and all the other new media made everything so confusing and complicated. New York says Lebron is The Big Stage.

Cleveland. And then there’s Cleveland, the team for whom Lebron, a native of nearby Akron, has won back-to-back MVPs without their reaching the NBA Finals either season. The roster is mediocre and appears unlikely to improve much in the near term. Cleveland is the choice of the traditionalists, of finishing what you started. Cleveland is destiny, living by faith and not by sight. Given the excruciatingly drawn out (not to mention nationally televised) nature of this affair, Cleveland doesn’t exactly say Lebron is loyalty, and we can safely pass over Lebron is humility, but mabye Lebron is Home.

Free Jafar Panahi

I want to take a moment to draw attention to some organizing efforts on behalf of the Iranian director Jafar Panahi. For those who haven't heard, Panahi, the director of several fine films including Crimson Gold (2003) and Offside (2006), was arrested March 1 for "unspecified crimes." He remains in custody and has since been accused of attempting to make a film against the regime, potentially a serious charge in Iran.

Shortly after Panahi's arrest, a number of Iranian filmmakers and other artists signed a petition calling for his release, and this past week a number of major American filmmakers and critics have launched a petition of their own. This post from critic Anthony Kaufman, one of the organizers of the latter effort, briefly summarizes how that petition came about.

The post also touches on a key issue, perhaps the key issue regarding this type of organizing, which is the possibility that such efforts to call attention to government-sponsored injustice could be ineffective or even backfire by prompting backlash from the authorities. I'm no expert on Iran either, but I think Anthony's analysis here is fundamentally correct. The depth and length of the protests in the aftermath of last year's elections clearly showed some major fissures in public support for the current regime, and international expressions of solidarity with the opposition have clearly had a positive impact on morale, if nothing else.

Coming attractions: I'll have something to say about Obama's Supreme Court pick sometime after he gets around to making one. Also, I was going to do a post about the new Arizona immigration law, but found that I don't have anything original to say about it. I will say that I persist in the belief that the right of law-abiding persons of whatever ethnicity to go about their daily business without fear of being randomly harassed by the police cuts close to the heart of what it means to live in a free society.