anotsosadsong:

Aziz Ansari on ‘Conan’

#pocket husband

"The Tree of Youth" was an unusually gnomic clue, even for Comme des Garçons, but on reflection, it did seem to support the hint dropped by a house spokesperson that the new men's collection was concerned with adolescence. As a tree grows, it is subject to different seasons and unexpected elemental forces before it reaches maturity. Such a notion certainly provided a frame on which to hang the clothes Rei Kawakubo showed today. Innocence, awkwardness, and sexual confusion shared catwalk space with a worldlier attitude and the first stirrings of sophistication. Stephen Jones' hats suggested Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny, which brought to mind Raf Simons' comment the other night about the indomitable pride of cartoon characters. There was something of that—the pride and the cartoon—in the clothes today, in the way, for instance, that a hooded top, uniform of urban youth, was speckled with bright bobbles. Their candy colors sat well with Julien D'Y's hairdos. He's always been good at disturbing hair. This particular style hinted at princesses and starlets, especially in tandem with silvery lamé and the kind of chenille robe that would have done Norma Desmond proud. There will always be kids who opt for glam as their own private revolt into style.

You can find Comme's own defiant oddness echoed anywhere from Dries to Meadham Kirchhoff this season. Sometimes it invokes dystopia, but the salutary takeaway from today's presentation was its happy ending. Innocence redux.
—Tim Blanks

RA: Real Scenes: Johannesburg

RA tells the remarkable story of the South African city’s thriving house scene. South Africans are the biggest consumers of house music in the world, and Johannesburg is the beating heart of their scene. If you’re looking for proof, there is no need to visit a nightclub. In turning on a television, listening to the radio or walking down the street, it’s clear that a 4/4 pulse is the metronome of everyday life. The city’s preferred sound—vocal-led, percussive, melodic—is largely at odds with what’s popular in other international markets; this coupled with cripplingly slow internet speeds goes someway to explaining SA’s absence from the global house music conversation.

Features Oskido, Vinny Da Vinci, Black Motion, Black Coffee…

There’s a great opinion piece by Michael J. Dolan over at The Skinny. Motivated by a mixed review of his recently released stand-up record and by some candid words from a friend, he re-examines his material only to discover in it — and in stand-up more generally — misogyny of which he was previously unaware. Dolan’s piece is smart, engaging and bracingly honest. Here’s a taste:

The defence so often used is that they’re only jokes. They’re not to be taken at face value, we obviously don’t mean it. But you’ll rarely hear a contemporary act try to justify racism that way. We know that in a culture of racism every racist joke contributes to that culture and that none of them are acceptable. This is no different. In our culture of misogyny, of violence against women, every misogynistic joke contributes.

(Thanks for sharing, SP.)

Most designers name their collections, but Walter Van Beirendonck stands alone in making his titles a philosophical challenge. "Shut Your Eyes to See" was the latest. "The world is so overwhelming that you need to look into yourself," he explained. "Find your own identity, that's what matters. And you have to protect it."

By way of illustration, WVB delved into his own past, and the performer who posed such extravagant queries about identity that he changed a generation. Who else but David Bowie, the man, once again, of the moment? Surprisingly, WVB—13 years old when Ziggy Stardust was released—had never before gone to the glam well for inspiration. He made up for it here. The collection had the glitter of Lurex, the sheen of spacey metallics, the height of a platform boot, the decadent depth of its Dorian Gray finale.

Contamination is a word that has cropped up a couple of times during this season of shows. WVB's career has always testified to the power of oppositions colliding, transmogrifying. He's a fantastic tailor, but he can't see a pin-sharp piece without wanting to do something iconoclastic to it. Here, perfectly decent jackets were roundly abused with Christmas tinsel. In the same vein, he patched an abstract doll figure out of Lurex onto an army green blazer, and zagged a major zig, also Lurex, down another jacket, this one a sober navy. The Aladdin Sane flash is one of the most iconic emblems of the late twentieth century, a potency that was acknowledged by its appearance here. WVB dropped Bowie's eye into the mix as an atavistic symbol. He also wired glittery red lips over his models' mouths. "Mick Jagger," he laughed. Jagger, almost Bowie's match in the fluidity of his identities, was evoked in a Lurex Infanta dress that duplicated the pristine white affair designed by Mr. Fish for the Stones' free concert in Hyde Park in 1969.

All of that only means that there are levels upon levels in a WVB collection. This was a particularly rich one because of the designer's lifelong connection to its source material. But there's always something more that makes him such a provocative proposition. In amongst the playfulness, the momentum of the presentation, he hits the heart of darkness. Here, at the finale, the Starman was alone, in a proper pipe-and-slippers dressing gown. It was a fabulously downbeat conceit with which to close a fabulously upbeat show.
—Tim Blanks

We’ve been waiting for ‘Goldenheart’ to drop ever since Dawn Richard took things to a whole other level with her vocals on the Dirty Money album and followed it with some of the...

Those “We recommend” links you see at the end of articles everywhere on the Internet are actually paid links supplied by a company called Outbrain, and they’ve been getting more and more click-baity over the years. With this link from Salon, I think things have reached their logical conclusion.

missingstreet:

Quiz: Jay-Z Lyric or Line From The Great Gatsby?

This is the best thing I’ve seen all day.

Birds use whatever they can get their beaks on to build nests, including cigarette butts. Surprising new research from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México shows that instead of giving baby birds a bad case of smoker’s cough, the cigarettes in their nests might actually be helping them. The more used-up filters a nest had, the fewer nest-dwelling parasites called it home.

Since nicotine is a natural pesticide, it’s likely that trace remains of the chemical in the butts are keeping away the creepy-crawlies. The researchers still don’t know if the birds are using butts because they’re good insulators, or if they’re somehow aware of their anti-parasite properties. Birds in more wild environments have been known to line their nests with strong-smelling, bug-repelling herbs, so it’s possible they’re instinctively attracted to that special cigarette stink.

Via Io9

There was a period in the late ’90s/early ’00s when a lot of terrible “underground hip hop” emerged. This isn’t really a problem in of itself, it’s natural. The problem was that many of these artists ended up being promoted and consumed primarily by people who previously had little engagement with the genre.

These listeners (and journalists, and publicists and eventually artists and label owners) were suddenly hyper-invested in the fate of rap music, with little interest in establishing a historical perspective or contemporary context. So it got to the point where they would be championing these frequently amateurish and fringe acts as advancing or improving upon the flaws of this genre that they didn’t know shit about.  I used “college radio” as a shorthand for this demographic because college radio (r.i.p.) was one of the main networks by which this stuff was being distributed. You might call it Indie today. Or hipster, I don’t know.

In any case the disconnect clouds the conversation in a weirdly imperialist way - I had a college radio show during that time and remember overhearing some random indie label impresario described as “The Suge Knight of Hip Hop,” as if Suge Knight isn’t already The Suge Knight Of Hip Hop. (Dude pronounced it “Shoogh,” naturally.)

The critical “poptimism” movement of the mid-’00s sort of corrected this (at the expense of some great underground rap, but that’s another blog post entirely) and realigned the center of the conversation in favor of, say, Kanye West and Rick Ross records. But I think it’s tipped backwards over the past year or two. Now people in the critical and indie communities - many of which once again have a low investment level in hip hop or maybe even just discovered it - are championing and canonizing artists who simply do not register amongst rap’s core audience.

I’m not about to name names because I generally try not to shit on underground or under-established independent artists - even the garbage ones - but I do think there are a lot of half baked indie rappers who have popped up in the past few years and benefitted greatly from the naivety of the people writing about them.

And I wish I did get less work.

sunflowerlily:

this took me way longer than it should have

Here are all the clothing labels namedropped on Long Live A$AP, ranked 1-10 by how impressed I am by their relative obscurity and/or presence on this record. Yes, I am a nerd on many levels. 

GOLDIE:
Maison Martin Margiela -2
Naked & Famous Denim -1
Christian Louboutin -0

PMW:
Hush Puppies (Schoolboy Q) - 10
Nike (Schoolboy Q) -1

HELL:
Audemaurs Piguet - 1

PAIN:
Margiela - 2
Jeremy Scott (with the drop crotch!) - 1

FUCKING PROBLEMS:
Michael Jackson penny loafers (honorable mention by Danny Brown)

FASHION KILLA
Prada - 1
D&G - 1
Escada -4
Balenciaga -2
Helmut Lang -2
Alexander Wang -1
Donna Karan :( -1
Cartier -1
Jean-Paul Gaultier -2
Jilsander - 4
Oliver Peoples - 2
Costume National - 7
Ann Demeulemeester - 9
Visvim - 3
Balmain - 7
Stine Goya - 9
Isabel Marant - 7
Linda Farrow -6
Dior - 1
Damir Doma - 8
Tom Ford - 4
Thom Browne - 7 
Rick Owens - 8
Raf Simons - 8
Versace - 1

SUDDENLY
Girbaud - 1

ANGELS
Hood by Air - would be a 10 but he is friends with $hayne so 5 but shout out the Hood by Air reference

Twitter / Kisa:”This bin has a bin icon on it to let you know it’s a bin. Yet the bin icon doesn’t resemble the actual bin.”

warnick:

directionstolastvisitor.com, 2011 by Charles Broskoski. (via VVORK)

stfunithingas:

Let this graph put things into perspective for anyone who’s even thinking about blaming Muslims for 9/11.

I'm calling it already: Windows 95 Tips is Blog of the Year.

Every now and then, I am reminded of how lucky I am. I'm lucky that none of my readers has ever responded to a comment I made, which they didn't like, by calling me ugly. I'm lucky that they've never called me a cunt or a whore. I'm lucky that they've never threatened to rape me and then called me a humorless bitch when I pointed out how messed up that was. In general, the worst comments I've ever had directed to me, here, were from people accusing me of being a paid shill for Big Conspiracy, which is just funny.

But that shouldn't be luck, guys. My experience should not represent a minority experience among the female science bloggers I know. (And it is.) I shouldn't have to feel like thanking you, the BoingBoing readers, for being kind enough to not treat me like shit just because I'm a lady person.

Treating people with respect should not be a controversial position. It should not be a mindblowingly crazy idea to point out the fact that women are quite often treated as objects and, thus, have to deal with a lot more potentially threatening situations than men do. It shouldn't be offensive to say, hey, because of that fact, it's generally not a good idea to follow a woman you've never spoken to into an elevator late at night and ask her to come to your hotel room. Chances are good that you will make her feel threatened, rather than complimented.

And, even if you disagree, it's still totally not okay to threaten to rape people you disagree with. Seriously. Other than the specific bit about rape, we should have all learned this in preschool. And the fact that so many of the people engaging in this behavior claim to be rational thinkers and members of a community I strongly identify with ... well, that just makes me want to vomit. I honestly don't know what else to say.

Read Rebecca Watson's full article, Sexism in the Skeptic Community

Salvador Dali leans to the far left for Philippe Halsman

Greta Garbo and the MGM Lion.

On September 25, one of Sweden’s most prestigious national dailies blew up an article on its front page about cultural director at Stockholm Culture House Berhang Miri (a Swede of Iranian descent) reshelving Hergé’s Tintin books because of their perceived colonial taint, generating heated press and internet debate. Surprisingly, the furore rages on three weeks later, which if you also include the discussion about Stina Wirsén’s film character Lilla Hjärtat marks a very unusual month of the Swedish public sphere discussing historical racist stereotypes and colonial traces in children’s literature.

We asked Nathan Hamelberg, member of The Betweenship group (which probes racist structures from a young, mixed-heritage perspective), to explain the discussion and its wider implications in Swedish society.

What is #tintingate? How did it develop?

To an extent, it’s a part of a larger discussion that’s been ongoing for at least a year, in which racism has been discussed more openly, but where the exceptional thing has been a specific focus on the trivial places where racism has appeared: on candy packaging, as an artist’s cake, and so on.

Then the whole thing exploded when a major newspaper wrote about the artistic head of a youth culture centre moving the Tintin books to an adult section, after which the negative Twitter reactions came almost immediately. Some were opposing it because they claimed it was censorship. Others were saying it was counter-productive, that Tintin wasn’t racist. And of course there was a third, not worth responding to but very vocal group who basically were just provoked by the fact that a Swede of Iranian descent was allowed into the media spotlight at all. On the other side, anti-racists generally were standing up for Behrang, claiming to see the problematic traces in the Tintin books.

What’s interesting is that there appears to have sprung from what could be seen as a rather marginal discussion a much broader shift in who gets to have the privilege of defining what is racist or not. A lot of non-white voices have been permitted to be heard in the biggest media for the first time. That is amazing to me.

What are your thoughts on the arguments presented?

I think there are problematic exaggerations and generalisations on all sides. No-one is really advocating using censorship as a simple solution, which commentators seem to claim is what’s happening. I don’t event want to tell you all the nasty things Behrang’s decision has been compared to. Truth is, with libraries there’s always a decision of what books end up being placed on which shelves, what kind of literature is promoted, and which books ends up in storage.

The whole thing became unnecessarily polarised. For all the lofty expressions about freedom of speech, we have never applied those principles to children’s literature the same way. I wish we could have a more nuanced, ongoing discussion about libraries, selections and children’s texts, because these are important issues.

Some have claimed that the whole thing was a journalistic set-up, blowing up a regular reshelving decision by an inexperienced middle manager in order to generate precisely the debate that occurred.

I think there’s some truth in that. The newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, was somehow goading Miri to make a brash statement and it became so incendiary because of it. Part of the strength of the reaction was a direct result from that article, with people believing that Berhang has a carefree attitude towards censorship.

Do you personally think the Tintin books have problematic colonialist elements to them?

I think there are several layers that are problematic, yes. First of all, there are the early books that are blatantly and openly racist, like “Tintin in the Congo.” As a second layer, there are things that would be considered racist today but that were quite normal in Hergé’s time. This can be apparent to critical-minded adults, but not to the pre-teens who this particular library is made for. Thirdly, there’s the very fundamental problem that even the anti-racism in the books is typical of Hergé’s time and its racial hierarchies. The anti-racist effort in the adventures of Tintin is portrayed as a sort of civilatory white man’s burden — a knightly, gentlemanly missionary activity. At the time before decolonisation this may have appeared normal, even radical to an extent, but today it’s at best infantile and at worst derogatory. It exemplifies the essential problem with white anti-racism in general, certainly the problem with anti-racism in Sweden.

That said, and to complicate matters, I’m also a fan of Tintin.

Nathan Hamelberg

How would you connect this discussion to a wider debate on the problems of literature with a colonial heritage?

There’s the standard argument, almost playing the devil’s advocate, that it’s necessary to keep these colonial depictions “for an educational purpose”. But necessary for whom? Do we need, in our current time, to have racist imagery stockpiled on us again and again? What kind of message does that send to children? What kind of message does it send to those depicted?

And if these “educational examples” are so important, why does it appear as if the same white people who are advocating for them have learnt nothing from them? I’ve seen, for instance, Prisoners of the Sun being referred to as a shining example of Tintin’s anti-racism. And yet it portrays Andean Quechua people as incredibly superstitious and practicing human sacrifice, with only the fully westernised Quechua boy Zorrino shown in a positive light. The native people not siding with the whites are made out as evil, completely ignoring the horrors of colonial crimes. And of course Tintin is the white man to the rescue… And these people are supposed to have learnt something from being critical to racist literature? Honestly, it’s as if Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom were to be considered a fair representative of Hindu culture.

It’s also problematic that we need to continually review and respond to the books that are obviously racist. I’m more interested in the works that are in between, the ones that can be kept, and the question of how we can guarantee that there will actually be a critical discussion around them. I really don’t think it’s so strange to take something like Tintin away from children. We are perfectly ready to make this sort of appraisal when it comes to gender roles, or sexuality, or the negative stereotyping of poor people in very old books, but I think the problem here is that it’s seen as a group concern, something internal to Afro-Swedish people. The wider implications around children’s rights not to have their group depicted as a racist stereotype are missed. And honestly I don’t know which white parents would want their children exposed to racist imagery anyway!

In the Anglo-Saxon and Francophone world the discussion around Tintin’s colonial heritage has been ongoing for a lot longer, with Tintin in the Congo for instance not published in English until the 90s because of concerns about its stereotypical, racist depictions. How is Sweden different here?

Sweden’s national identity is interesting. We’ve got this view of our country as being fundamentally anti-racist at a deep level. This has almost become the big official Swedish ideology. And yet our anti-racism is different from that of the UK, France or the United States because their anti-racism has been framed against a backdrop of an awareness of the crimes of colonialism, and as a response to them. Sweden has a colonial history as well. It participated in the slave trade and was the last of the Western European countries to abolish slavery. Yet people here know almost nothing about it! It’s just a note in history textbooks, and there are almost no efforts to commemorate the victims.

Up until the Second World War, Sweden was a pioneer state when it came to eugenics and scientific racism, and continuing a programme of forced sterilizations way after. I had a discussion with my uncle — Sierra Leonean like my father but living in the Netherlands — and he was shocked to learn that the left-leaning social democratic country he held as an ideal was actually sterilizing citizens as recently as in the seventies. I had to correct him, “Harold, Sweden is actually still sterilizing transsexual people in this very day and age…”

And at the same time: after WW2, which left Sweden untouched, the increased economic prosperity and the large built-up surplus led to an almost 100% reversal of self-image, with Sweden suddenly wanting to appear as a shining beacon of foreign aid and international solidarity. Now, I’m not saying there isn’t some good reason for this. For instance, the Swedish state secretly and illegaly supported the ANC (of South Africa) economically when no other western countries did — when there seemed to be little hope for Apartheid ever ending. Sweden helped refugees flee Chile after Pinochet’s coup there. And at times we’ve had the most liberal asylum laws in Europe. Many Vietnam War draft dodgers came here, and Sweden was (perhaps together with Canada) one of the few western countries where criticism of the Vietnam War moved from the fringes of the debate to its mainstream.

But what actually changed on the ground is a different matter. There has remained a systematic silencing of non-white and dissident voices that questioned the official truths. And the official anti-racist line (with its generous foreign aid) contrasted and coexisted with a continual state racism against national minorities, especially the Roma, with forced sterilizations, bans on settlement a common practice. And a strong social segregation along racial lines continued to exist.

Sweden is a country with a strongly enforced sense of homogeneity and a strong central political power. We never had to compromise to share power with regional minorities as Britain or Spain had to, inscribing rights to non-Castillian or non-English groups. Comparatively, Sweden’s national minorities — Jews, Sami people, Roma, and Finns (which is a very large minority indeed) — were very slow to receive their rights. Instead, there’s been a pressure to conform, a passive aggression directed at those who do not comply with the official line of “when in Rome”. Minorities and immigrants are supposed to be grateful for being allowed to stay here — a claim which ignores that Sweden has played a role in sustaining the conflicts that led many to seek refuge here in the first place, selling weapons to both sides in the Iraq-Iran war under the table, for instance.

“Tintin in Congo – the IKEA version” by Åke Forsmark.

Do you think Sweden is finally waking up to its colonial heritage then?

I’m not sure. In a sense, this debate is like a childhood disease: while having it earlier would have resulted in milder symptoms, the way it’s happening now is quite difficult. So I don’t think things will change in the short term. Still, the fact that non-white voices are entering the debate is amazing, and necessary. The cultural establishment in Sweden has been lagging behind on this issue in so many ways, even compared to the rest of society. For instance, a senior sports commentator recently was caught on tape calling an African footballer a “darkie”, and the initial reactions were miles ahead of the naive #tintingate discussion. The widest implications of this whole affair must be about the cultural establishment. It needs to be de-segregated! It can no longer be the case that only white voices are allowed to define what is and isn’t racist.

If Sweden is so ignorant about racism, why did this discussion start now?

It’s a series of things. The “war on terror” has fuelled a lot of islamophobia. Post 9/11 there’s been a lot of room for a populist, xenophobic right, as we now see in Sweden, with the Sweden Democrats in parliament and with violence against Roma and against black people. The economic crisis has fuelled this as well. The fact that these movements have become so prominent has led to a lot of mainstream politics agreeing on the presumptions of their world view, a division of us-and-them, a discussion based on racial hierarchies. Anyone who questions these hierarchies is punished, and that is what we’re seeing here.

Do you feel the conversation is likely to continue after #tintingate?

Not necessarily as much in the spotlight. Perhaps in a more low-key way, and mostly in critical circles. After all, to some extent, that this has happened right now is largely a fluke. One thing we’ll see more of is a discussion of these issues among feminists, who have had their own vicious attacks against them and whose more left-wing elements are strongly rooted in anti-racism. In this conversation, much of the most resolute opposition has come from non-white feminists.

By T.J. Tallie and Maria Hengeveld
It’s been a week since the now infamous events of the Joburg Pride Parade, where the organization One in Nine attempted to disrupt the parade in order to protest both systemic violence targeting black lesbians in South Africa and the commercialization of the Pride event itself. The heart of the protest, calling for one minute of silence for black queer victims of violence, was met by animosity and additional violence from the predominantly white attendees. Reading media reports of the event itself, we are reminded of the complexities of Marikana; in the days and weeks following the mining massacre, there was no clear or easy story, but rather multiple histories of capitalism, violence, state repression, and brutality, each jostling against each other and refracting in confusing new realities. Yet as Brett has stated on this site, this “was not a crime and a tragedy on the scale of Marikana. It was not even startling and unusual.” But it was gripping to see it captured so vividly on film, where both the violence and fearful, misguided claims of legitimacy are revealed in such simple, disheartening ways.

One of the most salient moments of the Pride exchange occurs in the video when white organizer Jenny Green shouts “This is my route!” at the protestors; yelling with confusion and anger from her car. There is, perhaps, an understandable sense of anger at someone’s meticulously planned public event being ‘ruined’ by the arrival of unexpected bodies. Yet the confusion and incredulity that anchor that angry sentence say so much more. “This is my route!” is a claim to space, and to authority and legitimacy on the highly politicized streets of Johannesburg, and South Africa in general. The stakes are not merely over the timeliness of organizing and schedules on a springtime march through the city; rather, that simple sentence reveals much about claims and counter claims of legitimacy in a postapartheid South Africa, made infinitely more complicated through the politics of sexuality and LGBTQI rights. Who is allowed to claim the legitimacy and authority to plan the “route” in question? In an ostensibly post-apartheid South Africa, where political legitimacy no longer rests in the hands of the white minority but the economic and social inequalities still weigh highly in their favor, these questions loom large.

South Africans sympathetic to the One in Nine Campaign have viewed the protest as a legitimate social critique of Pride’s evolution from its dangerous and politically powerful beginnings in 1990 under the apartheid regime. In particular, filmmaker Gillian Schutte, photographer Nadine Hutton and journalist Charl Blignaut have been deeply critical of the racial assumptions and entitlements that have produced such angry, defensive responses from Joburg Pride Parade supporters, most of them white. Schutte pointedly asserts, “The violence and hatred shown to the One in Nine protestors was another example of white entitlement. Not a jot of embarrassment was shown by the abusers.” In her assessment, Hutton made explicit the consequences of white entitlement at the Pride Parade: “the face of this year’s gay pride was ugly and racist and violent. This is the daily horror of black queers.” Schutte adds that the violence towards the black protestors threatened by Green (who revved her car at the protestors amid calls to ‘run them over’) and directly enacted by fellow organizer Tanya Harford, served to “show just how little most white people empathise with black issues, black bodies and black emotionality. The inherent mantra of ‘white is right’ was written all over this event.” Blignaut decried the “privileged white queers who want to place us all in a neat, homogenous box,” allowing a “queer apartheid” to slowly develop within Pride celebrations.

Writing for South Africa’s Daily Maverick, Rebecca Davis argues that the racial lines both in South Africa—and particularly within the LGBTQI community—are enduring and powerful. The article privileges One in Nine member Kwezilomso Mbandazayo as a major source, and reports some of her (and the group at large) concerns faithfully: that the Joburg Pride board is exclusively white, that Pride has become a depoliticized, commercialized space existing only as a social celebration without any social power or purpose, and that all of this is taking place in a moment where queer black people face daily threats of violence that are completely ignored by the Parade.

As Davis’s piece (and Brett’s post on AIAC) make clear, the politics of white supremacy and resistance have been stamped upon South Africa’s LGBTQI history as much as everywhere else within the country. The utter insularity of many white South Africans from the daily realities experienced by over eight-tenths of the population from whose outright oppression they benefitted collectively is threaded through the history of LGBTQI struggle in South Africa. The largely white dominated GASA (Gay Association of South Africa) refused to denounce apartheid, and its leaders publicly equivocated when black gay activist Simon Nkoli was jailed by the apartheid state, showing the very thin level of queer solidarity within the country.

The media analysis and the video footage from Saturday’s event both illustrate an obvious point: the assumption propagated by the Pride Parade that people possessing a shared experience of oppression by heteronormative society will unite in solidarity is at best a naïve illusion and at worst a dangerous deception, as the protestors attacked on Saturday can surely attest. Living in South Africa, we have observed a sense of ‘black rights fatigue’ playing at the edges of many forms of white political discourse. The idea that the systemic exploitation and disadvantage of the country’s majority should be ‘fixed’ after two decades, or can be solely assigned to the incompetence of the ANC is a convenient myth that justifies this dangerous white entitlement. It is used by white South Africans weary of having to feel guilty or even think about the entitlements that have led them to such extremely different circumstances from those dwelling in the townships (or lokshini, as a white Pride marcher derogatorily referred to the supposed homes of the One in Nine protesters).

Yet as we have watched the video over and over, that sentence still haunts us. “This is my route.” The fraught politics of belonging rear their head in those four words. For all of the assertion of power and threats of violence behind Green’s words, she is trying, desperately, to assert that she belongs, that she is control, and that she has a place in South Africa. Yet the black bodies lying in front of her on that Rosebank road tell her that she does not, should not have the power to draw the routes she desires. The bodies in the street attempt to crack a racialized sense of entitlement that allow Green and others like her to pretend they are not part of the larger forces that have turned a historic political demonstration into a commercial party, and continue to obscure the lived terror of less privileged members of her own ostensible ‘community.’

These are great clips, with subtitles in French, featuring DJ Omar Haha, Sadate and Vigo. "Lots of people criticize this music, but it's spreading like a virus."

Coins are ubiquitous in Mario games, but their function has remained relatively constant. Who can deny their allure? The collectibles are a little different this time and just that small change can affect the way the whole game is played.

- - -

For one thing, it’s a Mario that’s concerned with score once again; that arcade vestigial tail that’s been dragged around the 2D games since the series’ Donkey Kong origins has finally found a new kind of relevance. Not that the overall score wedged in amongst the clutter of the touchscreen has gotten any more important, of course. This time, it’s all about your coin grand total that builds up as you play, and the separate, much smaller, cash count that marks your best haul for each individual level.

Wherever you find the coins in this game, they generally represent a complication: a prize to tempt you away from your headlong pelt to the finish line. Mario’s coins have historically been used to lead the way. Here, it’s the absolute reverse, and they can’t wait to guide you into trouble.

You’ll replay those levels because you want to see how many coins each one can contain: you’ll find yourself shaking them, in effect, until nothing else comes out. It helps, of course, that the gold is hidden around the place with typical Super Mario flair. 2D Marios have always been quietly musical games, ever since Super Mario 3 decided to sync its brick sparkle effects with the jaunty beat of the soundtrack, so it should be no surprise that the shimmering collectables in the latest instalment often appear in rhythmical bursts.