Earlier this week, Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus won song of the year for Old Town Road at the MTV Video Music Awards. Released last December independently onto SoundCloud during the Yeehaw Agenda, which encouraged people of color to embrace the cowboy/cowgirl aesthetic, Old Town Road’s popularity took off after it became a viral meme on social media platforms, with TikTok in particular helping things along. By March, the song made Billboard's Hot 100, Hot Country Songs, and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs charts simultaneously.
But one month later, Billboard removed the track from its country chart and set off a big controversy, which entailed a debate over what is or isn’t a country song and whether the appearance and race of the artist had anything to do with Billboard’s decision, especially when it’s a work by a gay black teenager from Atlanta for a genre which has historically been associated as the music of white people in red America. The song would eventually become the Billboard Hot 100’s longest running No. 1 ever.
Billboard’s explanation for why Old Town Road is not a country song was a claim that the musical composition of the track only used “country and cowboy imagery” and did not include “enough elements” of what is considered to be country music. As the child of a woman who kept George Jones on during parts of the day, the arguments and gate-keeping over what is considered to be proper country music have been long-standing (Charlie Rich burned the envelope announcing John Denver’s win of the Country Music Awards (CMA) Entertainer of the Year in 1975) and exacerbated in recent years as the genre’s more pop elements have dominated the industry. Country music is also a genre where the industry’s center of power is located among Nashville record labels; there are customs and traditions associated with how an artist is supposed to make it; and the listeners “are given what they're supposed to like and then that's that." The video for the song, which featured Cyrus singing a remix of the track’s hook came, after Cyrus was among those who publicly criticized Billboard’s decision and argued it was indicative of a music industry which boxes in what people of color are capable of. On Wednesday, the CMAs announced their nominees for “Song of the Year,” and Old Town Road was noticeably absent.
This sort of debate is present in all genres of music (e.g., get a bunch of rock fans to sort out who is or is not a heavy metal band and at some point there’ll be an argument), but it goes beyond that. If one pulls back to take a larger perspective, in almost any group of people who coalesce around an object, idea, or belief, there will ultimately be some who feel it’s their mission in life to defend the purity of it, even as the definition evolves. And this is true whether we’re talking about what is country music, toxic male nerds raging over female superheroes, or gate-keeping what it means to be a Democrat or even an American. The key characteristics of this sort of dynamic are obsession, entitlement, and a loss of perspective. Within any sufficiently large group of people united behind some commonality, eventually things will splinter when some portion of the group starts believing they are better. The truest of "true" believers become the self-appointed defenders charged with protecting what they perceive as being the honor and dignity of what they hold dear.
Think about what our culture has endured over the past four years: People resentful of changing norms and values have decided the best course of action is to attack any evolution of American culture which expands what it means to be part of this country. So, instead, they have placed people in certain boxes, and are literally attempting to put up walls in order to enforce a specific vision. All of this got me thinking about how ridiculous these arguments can be.
The essence of a thing is what it is said to be, in respect of itself. Aristotle said something along these lines about 2,400 years ago, and it’s a fundamental aspect of metaphysical arguments about identity. When someone defines a thing as a thing, it’s predicated on associating a collection of qualities and characteristics which are unique to it. We basically define a “chair” as being a seat cushion attached to a backing which is supported by four legs. Any object along those lines, we usually classify as being a chair. Ever get a feeling things seem off and aren’t what they should be, whether in looking at an antique that’s not really an antique or reading a story about well-known characters done poorly? Well it’s because on some level it doesn’t match the qualities either an individual or society has associated with those things. Thus, they don’t fit their identities.
But there are things which go beyond this concept, since cultures are sometimes more than a list of their qualities and stereotypes. It’s not even like a chair or a country song where things can be so easily pigeon-holed into a category. And aspects of culture are even more problematic to define, since telling a gay person whether they’re gay enough or a black person if they’re black enough is not only a shitty thing to do, but also all kinds of wrong.
American culture is not exactly easy to define, since to be an American can mean a great many things. We are a pluralistic society, and not a single monolithic culture. We are an amalgam of many, many different cultures which come together, whether in a melting pot or salad bowl, to form a diverse collective identity. It's a collective identity which is constantly changing, evolving, and growing. And while it has caused misunderstandings, prejudices, and deep resentments over the years from people on this side of the fence, many feel that our diversity is the true source of our strength and appeal … even if some are fighting tooth and nail to stop it.
The most demonstrable behavior exhibited in any of these arguments about identity is the need to do the equivalent of taking a dump in the punch bowl by bringing their irrelevant hangups, which may or may not be based in sexism, racism or ignorance, into discussions which should have nothing to do with them. And they do it because they either can't stand someone having a good word to say about something they dislike, or there's just the desire to piss off another group of people out of pure fucking spite.
- For any positive story about a politician, public figure, institution, or country performing a good act or accomplishing a goal, invariably someone will feel the need to make sure their criticism of what they feel the true nature of the situation is will be part of the discussion, whether it's relevant or not. This is the reason any YouTube video commemorating the anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing must invariably have comments from jagoffs discussing how women and people of color have destroyed everything since 1969.
- With any band or artist that has a significant cult following, if they should have a top 10 Billboard hit single, some part of their fans will accuse the band or artist of "selling out." The old fans may look down on any new fans that come into the fold after the band or artist becomes successful. If the album is successful, some will say it was done for the money, not "the art." If the next album is even more successful, then the street cred of the previous successful album goes up, and the new album is the "sellout album" for a new subset of fans.
From Randy Lewis at the Los Angeles Times (April 8, 1990):
The Grateful Dead are feeling the symptoms of a condition that few people ever expected this oddball group to contract: an overdose of commercial success ... In 1987, the Dead did something no one expected. They turned out a hit single. Suddenly, the Dead became the focal point for a whole new audience that knew little about the sense of brotherhood and camaraderie that typified Grateful Dead gatherings. These people looked at the Dead and saw only the quintessential rock party band, an entity whose followers seemed to emerge from suspended animation long enough to shout, "Can you dig it?" "groovy" and "ohhhhhh, mannnnnnn!" for a few hours at a concert before stepping back into mothballs--headbands, cotton drawstring trousers and all.
Dead shows soon began to draw more and more fans interested in nothing more than partying their brains out, oxymoronic as that may be. That contingent isn't by any means new to the group's following, but the dimension to which it has grown is.
"I have friends who were complaining about the 'new' Deadheads in 1972--really," said the group's longtime publicist, Dennis McNally. "But without being invidious to any one group of people, in general (problems have resulted from) sheer numbers. You put lots of people in a small space, and some people start stepping on some people's toes."
- Paul Feig’s 2016 remake of Ghostbusters was both a critical and financial disappointment. However, from the first moment the movie was announced, there was a certain amount of sexism in the mix as well, with an unhappy contingent of middle-aged fanboy assholes who think it’s their duty to protect their childhood from the cooties of an all-female reimagining of the story. As mentioned in an earlier post, the extent of this misogyny extended to leaving nasty comments on the Facebook page for Tufts Medical Center in Boston after Leslie Jones, Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, and Kate McKinnon visited sick children in their Ghostbusters costumes. Feig called the reactions surrounding the movie “some of the most vile, misogynistic shit I’ve ever seen in my life.” And the trolling of Jones became so bad she was almost chased off Twitter, after people repeatedly accused her of playing a racial stereotype—Feig claims Jones’s role was originally written for McCarthy. Some of the negativity came from protectiveness against any sort of change away from the status quo of the original. That’s been true for almost any reboot. But it was also arguably about larger societal ideas of gender roles and the image of what women are supposed to be, which filters down into pop culture representations. And when the square pegs don’t fit into the presumed round holes, some people dislike that which goes against what is deemed to be “normal.”
- Star Trek: Discovery has been on the receiving end of hostile male audience members claiming the presence of female lead characters of color is a form of “social justice warrior” liberal propaganda, which is strange for people who are supposedly fans of a Gene Roddenberry franchise known for its history of progressive stances. This sort of cognitive dissonance isn’t without precedent. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, an anti-federalist who killed 168 people and was tied to white supremacist groups, was also a huge fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a show centered on a united, multicultural humanity leading a socialist, interstellar superstate, which McVeigh claimed should be a “a Utopian model for the future.” Just spend a moment trying to square that circle.
From Kate Gardner at The Mary Sue:
Naturally, there were some trolls, mostly who were insistent that there was no place for religion in Roddenberry’s world—a convenient mask for their hate … But for the most part, the Star Trek community has embraced Imani’s cosplay, sending her love and shutting down the haters. Imani also told Today, “The really cool thing was that some people who were being extremely rude were totally shut down by legions of Star Trek fans. Star Trek fans, we’re seen as being very cerebral and very nerdy, and when we can use that nerdiness for social justice, it’s super cool.”
- Comicsgate has been called an evolution of Gamergate, wherein a segment of comic book fans decided to attempt a blacklist which targeted major figures in the industry, like Larry Hama, Mark Waid, Alex de Campi, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Matt Fraction, Ta-Nehisi Coates, etc., who were either women, people of color, or whose politics are left-leaning. Comicsgate was perceived as a backlash against publishers deciding to expand their characters and stories to encompass more diversity, with some retailers blaming declining sales on “black,” “homo,” and “freaking female” comics. But what set things off allegedly was a group of female Marvel Comics staffers (a.k.a. “The Milkshake Crew”) posting a selfie on Twitter, with two alt-right comic book trolls in particular, Richard C. Meyer and Ethan Van Sciver, using it and other issues—too many people of color being around and the female characters’ breasts not being big enough—as jumping off points to complain about women and liberals ruining everything by existing.
- The release of Captain Marvel was besieged by hate from some conservatives and angry male nerds who were offended a Marvel Studios film was centered around a woman and felt the source material had been compromised in order to advance a political message. When star Brie Larson gave an interview to a disabled journalist wherein she stated she specifically requested the press availability be opened up to more people of color, women, etc., since she felt the events were dominated by a succession of white men asking her questions. To a certain group of people up their own assholes, this attempt at diversity was a declaration of war on men and whiteness which could not be allowed to stand. So dipshits with too much time on their hands went to work on trying to tank Captain Marvel’s Rotten Tomatoes score, similar to previous alleged attempts at a coordinated (Russian) trolling campaign against certain films to stoke political strife, while also leaving comments like: “I somehow feel that [the Skrulls] are not the enemy, but that I am, since Brie Larsen has been careful to state she doesn’t want the press tour to include types like me.” This caused Rotten Tomatoes to change their policies regarding how they score upcoming movies in order to combat trolls. Even after the film grossed over $1 billion, the same trolls spread conspiracy theories claiming Disney had lied about the movie’s revenue in order to keep their vendetta against it going.
- In 2015, the Hugo Awards, which honor the best in science fiction literature, saw the start of the Sad Puppies campaign which was a backlash against a younger group of women and people of color who took home awards the previous year. Writers Brad L. Torgersen and Larry Correia organized a way to game the system for particular nominations in order to combat what they saw as elitists using the Hugo as an “affirmative action award” to honor works which highlight diversity in a genre which has some issues with fans being racist assholes. According to the Sad Puppies proponents, they were only representing “real” fans and protecting the works those fans liked from “fear of social justice witch hunts.” But the fact women seem to be winning a lot of Hugos even after attempts to control the nominations must piss off some of these idiots something awful though.
From Aja Romano at Vox:
N.K. Jemisin’s groundbreaking fantasy series the Broken Earth trilogy has won critical acclaim, been optioned for development as a TV series, and received numerous accolades from the sci-fi and fantasy community. And on August 19, it achieved yet another milestone when Jemisin became the first author in the Hugos’ 65-year history to win back-to-back awards for every book in a trilogy. Jemisin won the award for Best Novel three years in a row, starting with The Fifth Season in 2016, The Obelisk Gate in 2017, and now The Stone Sky in 2018.
In an acceptance speech that’s being hailed as one of the best ever made at the Hugos, Jemisin defiantly raised a “rocket-shaped finger” (a reference to the rocket-ship design of the massive Hugo statue) to the racist rhetoric that positions the recognition of her work as being about identity politics rather than her own talent.
“It’s been a hard year, hasn’t it,” she began. “A hard few years, a hard century. For some of us, things have always been hard. I wrote the Broken Earth trilogy to speak to that struggle, and what it takes to live, let alone thrive, in a world that seems determined to break you — a world of people who constantly question your competence, your relevance, your very existence.”
- Any film adaptation of a popular book or novel will usually have some fans of the story who think the movie is vastly inferior and argue vehemently against its existence even if they’ve never seen it, instead of judging it on its own merits and accepting it as a different entity.
- The addition of female writers to the staff of Rick and Morty in its third season resulted in those writers being subjected to online harassment, threats, slander, and some horrible excuses for human beings doxxing their personal information across the internet.
Dan Harmon: These knobs, that want to protect the content they think they own — and somehow combine that with their need to be proud of something they have, which is often only their race or gender. It’s offensive to me as someone who was born male and white, and still works way harder than them, that there’s some white male [fan out there] trying to further some creepy agenda by ‘protecting’ my work. I’ve made no bones about the fact that I loathe these people. It fucking sucks. And the only thing I can say is if you’re lucky enough to make a show that is really good that people like, that means some bad people are going to like it too. You can’t just insist that everybody who watches your show get their head on straight … And I’m speaking for myself—I don’t want the show to have a political stance. But at the same time, individually, these [harassers] aren’t politicians and don’t represent politics. They represent some shit that I probably believed when I was 15.
- Any discussion where the question is asked: “Which was better?” (e.g., Breaking Bad versus The Wire). This is also true of which character was better (e.g., Kirk or Picard, Mike or Joel on MST3K, Fourth Doctor or Tenth Doctor for Doctor Who, etc.), or who would win in a fight, since it will ultimately lead to strong opinions about canon and whether aspects stay “true” to the nature of the work’s identity. And the same thing is true if the dynamic is applied to discussions about music. (e.g., Tupac versus Biggie, The Cure versus The Smiths, The Who versus Led Zeppelin, Metallica versus Megadeth, Velvet Revolver versus Guns N' Roses, etc.)
- There is a segment of Star Wars fandom, and conservative elements of pop culture criticism, which don’t like the property being in the hands of a woman (Kathleen Kennedy) who at the very least has stated diversity, both in front of and behind the camera, is a goal of hers at Lucasfilm, or the fact more people of color and women are in significant roles as part of the franchise. Also, the themes of Star Wars, which are anti-fascist and anti-authoritarian, step on the toes of Republicans and conservatives, whose cult of personality is currently creeping in the pro direction for those things. This has been seen in an extreme backlash from some of the franchise’s fans disappointed with The Last Jedi, with some of the audience being downright racist and sexist in both their viewpoint of what Star Wars is “supposed to be” with slurs against people involved with making these movies. And the way some of those people decided to deal with it was to revel in their stupidity, which included allegedly driving actress Kelly Marie Tran, who portrayed Rose in The Last Jedi, from Instagram with repeated racist and sexist comments.