From Tom Millar Sent Fri, Jul 16th 1999, 20:56
From Tom Millar Sent Fri, Jul 16th 1999, 20:56
White suburban dwellers are the root of all evil, you see. It's quite simple, really. White suburbanites are the only group massive and presumably privileged enough to attack at random for all the problems within America. The white suburbs have no voice of their own and thus can be lambasted at will for all the shit that happens in this country without fear of backlash. If you live in a major metropolis, not only do you get to see all the cool shows, you also get to talk down to anybody who lives anywhere else, since the city is where 'everything happens, man.' Any contribution to the arts by a person from outside the city can be easily derided simply because of its geographic origin. Plus, black Americans automatically get double quality points for everything they do since all of us white folk spend so much time shitting on them, or at least we used to. I'm fucking sick of it, because according to this equation nothing I put out has any merit compared to, say, DJ Spooky. Fuck A Bunch Of That. I hate this entire argument- I wish I could just forget what color every artist I ever listened to was or what city/country/scene they came from. The whole business can be distilled down to simple elitism and the insatiable human desire to pigeonhole everything. Just listen to the music and see if you like it; the art is what belongs under the microscope, never the artist or his intentions. Last time I checked, the combination of politics and art was called propaganda (socialist realism, anyone)? Tom