Lead into Gold: Humping and Dumping in the Culture of Appropriation
by: Dispatx Art CollectiveAppropriation in Creative Practice
In the UK newspaper The Independent, Andy Smith reported on December 20th that the "cultural elite" brought up on opera and the higher arts, which supposedly turns up its nose at anything as vulgar as a pop song or mainstream television, does not exist, according to research published by Oxford University academics.
There are many ways to take this, from arguing that 'high' art may in fact be inferior, to reacting rather childishly to the 4 categories ('univores, who like popular culture; omnivores, who like everything from Posh Spice to Puccini; paucivores, who absorb little culture; and inactives, who absorb none') and stating boldly a la Stephen Moss of the Guardian that
The great majority of popular culture in the UK is worthless, moronic, meretricious, self-serving, anti-democratic, sclerotic garbage: it's the enemy of thought and change: it should be ignored, marginalised, trashed.A far more interesting take on the debate is found over at The Hive. Michelle Kasprzak - defining herself as an omnivore per above - takes as her starting point the Black Eyed Peas' song 'My Humps' and revisits some of the discussions we had seen earlier here (and here) in debating the notion of appropriation of form vs. content.
The Wikipedia page for My Humps is as good a place to start as any, containing a full if brief history of the song's appropriations:
Peaches covered the song in 2006, altering the lyrics humorously and changing the title to "My Dumps".It is this back-and-forth that Kasprzak covers in her post on The Hive. To set the tone, here is the original song from the Black Eyed Peas:Alanis Morissette covered the song in 2007, seemingly as an April Fools' Day prank. In contrast to the original "My Humps", Morissette's cover is performed slowly and in the style of a ballad, with only a piano accompanying the vocal. On April 2, a video in which Morissette parodies Fergie's dancing moves in the original "My Humps" music video was added to the website YouTube. By April 3, the video was the most viewed on Technorati, and it was viewed 4 million times six days later.
Peaches then covered the Alanis Morissette parody, changing the title again to "My Dumps". This version combines Peaches' original "My Dumps" lyrics with Alanis' melody.
And here, immediately, is Alanis Morrisette's cover - by the same name:
So, what we have here is a song that has the same name, lyrics, a similar video ... and what seems to be a very different message. As per The Hive:
Moving on to look at Peaches' considerably more aggressive take on the song, in which Humps become Dumps, we might start either with the original parody or with the reworked version post Morissette. Both are available, and as Kasprzak herself notes, are interesting in the sense thatAlanis, herself a pop princess (albeit with a more “serious” persona) takes lyrical gems (cough, cough) from the Black Eyed Peas like this:
What you gonna do with all that junk?
All that junk inside that trunk?
How’m I gonna get get get you drunk
Get you drunk off this hump?…and makes it actually, almost, kind of — beautiful. The melody is memorable, and the parody is spot-on. It takes a “hit” that I never bothered to listen to, and recycles it into something infinitely more interesting, if even to simply take note of precisely how ridiculous the original lyrics are.
What’s marvellous about Peaches taking the parody a bit further is that it picks up where Alanis left off. Alanis did a great job of laying bare the inanity of the lyrics of the original song. Peaches links the whole thing back to the inanity of daily life - our dumps, our humps. Perhaps there will never be a Top 40 hit about our dumps, or our shopping list, or taking children to daycare, or going to the gym and doing the same routine for the fortieth time. It makes one wonder why, when there is a song about “how am I going to get get get you drunk” - which is surely about as interesting as my shopping list? Or perhaps even less interesting, depending on what I’m shopping for? [...] the best and the worst of [popular culture] can be fodder for other artists to make bigger, more interesting statements. To turn lead into gold, as it were.As appropriating works - form, content, or both - moves them up and down the chain of what one might consider Kantian high or low art, can any self-respecting artist be anything other than an omnivore?
Comments [2]
2008-01-03 07:03:23 by Oliver Luker
Muy interesante tu observación, Oliver.
La concepción del artista en el papel de omnívoro y el aparente divorcio con la élite cultural, me ha hecho pensar en algunos textos que he estado leyendo, sobre todo la mesa redonda que llevada a cabo por la revista October en diciembre de 2001, sobre las condiciones de la crítica de arte.
Sobre el tema del elitismo, creo que no ha desaparecido en el arte. La manera en que lo veo es que se ha dado una proliferación de contextos donde se genera una gran cantidad de tipos de arte. Y esta proliferación (que me parece tiene origen en o es resultado de la insistencia del arte por fusionarse con la vida cotidiana) ha producido una falta de definición sobre lo que es arte y lo que no. Los conceptos a los cuales nos seguimos aferrando han caducado - aunque es cierto que hay artistas que todavía pueden ser clasificados dentro de estrategias específicas, bien definidas, que surgieron en los 70's o antes. El marco de lo arístico ha desaparecido y esto hace pensar que la cultura de elite también, pero creo que se sigue haciendo un tipo de arte elitista, lo que sí noto que no vemos mucho hoy, es un tipo de conocimiento de elite.
La dinámica de adquicisión de conocimientos ha cambiado, la especificidad ya no es celebrada como un conocimiento exahustivo sobre un tema, sino como una conjunción única de diversos temas sobre los cuáles uno no es necesariamente un experto. Esta apertura se traduce como una bajada de calidad en el arte, pero no estoy muy segura si el argumento es cierto o no, en todo caso, creo que es un tema de debate y discusión muy interesante. Un área de exploración muy rica.
Por otro lado, la idea de onmívoro, que tiene que ver con la manera en que adquirimos conocimientos, también está ligada a una actitud. En la mesa redonda del #100 de la revista October, Andrea Fraser discutía que los críticos debían realizar una crítica site-specific y creo que este concepto es muy interesante, pues se muestra como una nueva estrategia, bastante radical, frente a los cánones establecidos (la academia, por ejemplo) La vulnerabilidad de lo site-specific hace posible que un crítico pueda ser un comisario, por ejemplo, y esto no quiere decir que el resultado sea siempre exitoso. Quizá porque aún es un terreno nuevo, esta elasticidad y agilidad de pensamiento y de contextualizar(se) aún no se ve con buenos ojos. Esta posición recién se está formulando y a mí me parece que funciona bastante bien, pues es xtrapolable a diversas áreas, no sólo a lo artísitico.
El problema que le veo es que puede confundirse con una falta de posicionamiento, pero creo que este juicio vendría dado por la vieja escuela, hoy tenemos que enfrentarnos a la modernidad líquida, no?
2008-01-04 05:36:29 by Vanessa Oniboni
