Jun. 3rd, 2010

wishfulclicking: man in black and white pulling back a curtain to show moving sky (skins: chris & jal walk)
Every so often I have a great day when it comes to reading stuff through google reader and I like to share:

Ethical Criticism of Genre Fiction: parts 1 & 2
I ignored this at first because I wasn't in a mood for it but I stumbled across part 2 today and had to read the first part. The comments are good too.

Or (2) you know quite well that there is a lot of stuff you wouldn’t endorse in a romance novel, some of it apparently endorsed by the (implied — more on that later) author, but either (a) you don’t read those books, or (b) if you do, you don’t “learn anything” from them, because you filter the bad stuff out. Ok, but then, you aren’t “learning” anything from romance novels. Rather, you are applying a moral framework you already possess to your selection of texts, or to your reading of texts, only letting what you have already decided are “good” messages in. In that case, it would be more accurate to say that your reading of romance novels reinforces or deepens or lends specification to moral beliefs you already hold. I think that is much closer to what is really happening, personally. But if it is, then we have to accept that if a reader holds pernicious moral beliefs, she can find some warrant, some deepening, reinforcing or specifying, of those bad moral beliefs in romance novels, too.


ASK RACIALICIOUS: HOW TO READ AND RESPOND TO LITERATURE OF COLOUR
I didn't realize the protagonist in Ash was supposed to be of mixed heritage or Asian. There's a lot in the post to get through and the comments are worth the read.

Sometimes I hear music or see a growing trend and I grab my cane and wave it while yelling 'damn kids, get off my lawn!' all while penning diatribes in my mind about how things used to be so much better: the funny thing about this is that I'm not even twenty-five yet and I've been having 'I'm getting too old for this shit' moments for years. I am an old, cranky soul.

But I really enjoyed this by a music critic.

So, at least in my case, I think it's a question of age rather than being a critic. Part of me suspects I would love them if I were 15, even if I felt embarrassed by it later. Their music evokes the hormonal fug of a teenage boy's bedroom; a certain overfamiliarity with the art of the first-person shooter.

I still think Pendulum are joyless, witless and grindingly dull, but the more I think about them the more I find something almost perfect in their ability to annoy me and the people I know. They prove that the generation gap is not dead, that we are not all trotting hand-in-hand through the fields of Latitude to see Fleet Foxes, and that's reassuring.

I've never warmed to the kind of music fan who hits a certain age and prides themselves on not knowing who is No 1, as if pop's future were beneath them and only its past worthy of their attention. I want to be excited by the new and the popular, and I frequently am. But Pendulum have defeated me. For that, in a strange way, I salute them.


One day I'll talk about how I view criticism but I'm very tired and I'm edging towards near incoherency.

Oh, and here are some pictures of birds affected by the oil spill.

I can't say I completely agree with everything I linked to but I did enjoy reading them.

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wishfulclicking: man in black and white pulling back a curtain to show moving sky (Default)
needs to up my sock game

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