Posts by Craig Young
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Rich: Yeah, it was NWA, but Tiki Tane took it up, probably because it also reflects some Maori and Pacific Island experiences and perveptions of policing practice and policy in Aotearoa/New Zealand. And he had the right to freedom of expression in that context, whatever the New Zealand Police might have thought.
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As for 'hate media', it is simply film, television, Internet or other cultural products that promote the dehumanisation and vilification of specified communities of interest. In pre-Vichy France, it was Jews. In white supremacist discourse, it's African-Americans, Maori and Pacific Islands or immigrant communities. In the work of some militant fundamentalists, it is LGBT community members. And sadly, the same prevails in the case of certain Jamaican ragga music or gangsta rap.
Who was it that said "I may not agree with your words, but I will support the right to let you say them." I may support the right to freedom of expression, but that doesn't neccessarily mean that I endorse the content in this context.
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Russell, not all hip hop is. Certainly no *Polynesian* hiphop I've come across is.
However, there's a particular subgenre of such music that does have objectionable lyrics that condone violence against women, homophobic violence and intra-community gang violence. While I don't condone or endorse its censorship, I do have the right to disapprove of its content *without* urging its censorship. I have no problem at all with hiphop and rap lyrics that discuss poverty, experiences of institutional racism and other forms of social injustice within their lives- including Tiki Tane's attitude toward police officers, come to that.
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I think it all comes down to the media effects that one attributes to particular cultural products or practices. Does hate media result in hate crimes? As an anti-censorship activist of many years standing, I'd have to say not. Sure, I find the misogyny, homophobia and advocacy of interpersonal violence within this musical genre to be deeply offensive, but like rape, hate crimes probably have many causal triggers.
But, hey, this isn't a positive musical genre. Wow, people of colour killing each other and doing the work of white supremacists for them...
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What about the diversity of media sources? Does anyone have any hard data on which ones are regarded as most reliable, compared to others?
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All we got back in the seventies was a single gender-seperated class of sex education dealing only with reproductive anatomy (Middleton Grange, the same school that spawned Graham Capill- his dad was one of my teachers). Didn't stop me from turning out gay at the end and Wreaking Horrible Vengeance for What They Put Me Through. Fortunately, this was shortly before the advent of HIV/AIDS.
I am so over Garf Georj! What a wonderful case for euthanasia that man is...
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We do have *one* gay Cabinet Minister (we used to have two to three under Clark). However, the transgender community still isn't covered under antidiscrimination laws. I take your point about 'marginality' though, Russell, and I've often argued that most of us aren't anymore.
In contemporary NZ/Aotearoa, most marginality seems attributable to economic inequality and compounding factors like mental illness and community care inadequacies, untreated substance abuse, homelessness and vagrancy and (in New Right discourse) 'welfare dependency'. Ah, for some good old fashioned red-blooded socialism right now...
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Oops- my earlier post should read Marcella Althaus-Reid. Here's a juicy link...
http://www.althaus-reid.com/index1.html
And a quote from the blurb on her wonderful book, Indecent Theology (!):
"All theology is sexual theology... What can sexual stories from fetishism and sadomasochism tell us about our relationship with God, Jesus and Mary? Isn't it time that heterosexuals came out of their closets too? By examining the dialectics of decency and indecency and exploring a theology of sexual stories from the margins, this book brings together for the first time Liberation theology, Queer Theory, post-Marxism and Postcolonial analysis in an explosive mixture. Indecent Theology is an out-of-the-closet style of doing theology and shows how we can reflect on the Virgin Mary and on Christology from sexual stories taken from fetishism, leather lifestyles and transvestism. "
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For a far nicer and rather more pro-sex feminist Christian 'dirty girl,' try the work of Marcia Althaus-Reid. She'd probably have the horrid Ms Renaud fleeing the room screaming in seconds...
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Craig R:
Wrong. I do support marriage equality, but the civil union debate took the heat out of the issue, as well as securing us relationship equality legislation (Relationships Statutory References Ac5 2005). I just don't think that it should take precedence over transgender equality and adoption reform, which seem to be easier to deal with, in any case. They don't arouse as much opposition, and additional successive LGBT rights successes will demoralise the opposition.Speaking of which. I see FamFirst is pontificating about SSM again. Does anyone have any information about Curia Research, that suspiciously religiously titled polling company that they keep citing...?