ICE CUBE'S "ARREST THE PRESIDENT": A NEW KIND OF MEDIA


     Campaigning for 2020  has started with a bang featuring the usual media  blitz, like TV interviews, Town Halls and print articles. What is notably missing are other kinds of campaign coverage, popular years ago before current media practices. Would you believe buttons, banners,  flags, quilts, hats, and aprons took center stage to promote a presidential candidate, particularly popular during  the Civil War period?
     Yet, campaign slogans were also important and represented media of a different kind. Consider  "Let Us Have Peace" ( Ulyssess S. Grant- 1868 ), " A Square Deal All Around" ( Theodore Roosevelt- 1912 ),  " Happy Days Are Here Again" ( Franklin Roosevelt- 1932 ), and " Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow" ( Bill Clinton- 1992 ).
    The last two slogans were put to music which got voters' attention in an effective way. After all, William Saffire once said," Good slogans have rhyme, rhythm." 
     Which makes us think, what media category would we put songs / slogans in? Easy answer: Songs (audio ) would be turned into video via YOUTUBE, MTV, TV performances by musicians, etc.  Some would convey powerful commentary about a candidate, but the most memorable ones were those that produced protest messages. Remember  Bruce Springsteen's 2017 blue collar collaboration with Joe Grushecky, "That's What Makes Us Great." The lyrics are still relative: " Don't tell me a lie/ and sell it as a fact. /I've been down that road before/ and I ain't goin' back."
     Carol KIng's 2017 "One Small Voice" ( taken from her 1982 version ) is similarly relevant to Trump:  "The emperor's got no clothes on. No clothes? That can't be. He's the emperor."
     A more recent 2018 protest song by Ice Cube, "Arrest the President" ( the title perhaps referring to  "Lock Her Up" ) is a potent example that bears watching on YOUTUBE. Sight and sound don't exactly match: what you see and hear are not the same. It was  confusing, therefore, for this critic to listen to the lyrics, which were lengthy. For example, "When I drop the mic it hit the floor like Thor ( That's right ). ...Y'all know what it is, y'all know what it was (Yeah ). Y'all know what it shall be."
    Like Springsteen's and King's songs, we assume Cube's words are allegories although they can be hard to interpret for some people who are from a different era or culture. The video's visuals make sense more easily: a  montage of clips showing iconic Trump stills with Putin, police attacking young blacks, close-ups of Ice Cube. Of all the elements in the song, however, it is the music itself that is most mesmerizing, pulsating and relenting.
     To appreciate "Arrest the President," watch the film " Straight Outta Compton" ( 2015 ), a biopic featuring the ups and downs of Ice Cube and his musical group, N.W.A. In many ways, the movie is a rite of passage which we have seen before. It also gives the viewers an insight into rapping and its purposes, its mixture of violence and social protest and its misunderstanding of how the two elements work.
     Although not perfect, we like Ice Cube  and his group in the movie, including Dr. Dre and Eazy-E. They are not a bunch of hooligans . They are committed to their art.
     We need more campaign protest songs on YOUTUBE. "Arrest the President " is a good start and a new way of looking at media.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THE BEST OF 2018; WHERE SETTING IS THE REAL STAR

Now that it's the end of the year, media critics are submitting their favorite films and TV shows of 2018. Which then soon starts  an avalanche of international  awards, like The Golden Globes and Academy Awards. It's interesting to see if our own personal " bests" win any of those awards. They should. After all,  we select special works that people may neglect, not recognizing that they are extraordinary?  We  critics, in other words, have better aesthetic taste than the so- called  media "judges" who are considered primarily representatives of popular culture, not "art."  What's more, we critics don't, hopefully, single out winning media for political reasons ( ie. It's Joe Smith's turn to garner a  best actor award because he's getting old ).     While describing what media critics are and are not, I have often wondered what characteristics we do consider when picking the "Best." The obvious criteria  include
Read more

FAKE NEWS: THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH

     The expression FAKE NEWS has become a popular and important one in today's political arena. Yet Fake News has been around for a long time, going back to the idea of "Yellow Journalism" coined in the mid 1890s (where it meant little or no well-researched news). Annenberg School's Dr. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a well-known rhetorical scholar, is probably one of  the only persons to make sense of it in its present context.  She labeled the term an OXYMORON ( " contradictory terms appearing in conjunction with each other")  and she was right on the button. In other words, "Fake" is not real; "News" is  authentic.       Analyzing the term further, It is the nature of TRUTH that defines fake news.      One characterization is truth's ambiguity.  What truth is to one person may not be so to another individual. It seem to this critic that truth may be equated with personal perceptions:  "the mental process through which we int
Read more

Short Words

The importance of words in this politically-charged environment gets more and more obvious every day. President Trump's expressions in press conferences, interviews and  tweets are engaging as  well as enraging. Anyway you look at it, his words are certainly pervasive.      However, we must not forget that a President's  words serve varied  purposes, becoming part of America's historical  and cultural legacies:  from speeches like Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address,"  to short sentences ( quotes ).  Consider such quotes from President  Obama: "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon;"  and "Everytime I think about those kids, it gets me mad."  The first expression initiated a national conversation on race; the second, regarding  Newtown's school shooting, spurred intense interaction on gun control.      Both quotes demonstrate Obama's personal emotional connection to the subject matter: respectively, gun violence in both insta
Read more