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Underground > Radio & Music >

Racism in the Rock Press, part 10001

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Regrettable Juvenilia

11:45 / 06.08.03

In the latest issue of the NME (which I know I should stop even flicking through, but it's like a carcrash), a review of R Kelly's new single 'Snake' caught my eye. I didn't expect the review to be positive, but I was unprepared for the degree of barefaced bigotry to be found in the following extract (slightly paraphrased, as I wasn't going to pay money for that filth and it's not archived online - if anyone can transcribe it word for word, I'd be grateful):

"[H]e describes the bedroom antics of himself and his girl as 'like two gorillas in the jungle, making love', which may be the most literal simile ever."

My jaw is still on the floor. I know this has been covered before, but what the fuck? Seriously, HOW the FUCK can they get away with printing this?

A

12:22 / 06.08.03

The critic could have meant it was a literal simile because male gorillas are generally a lot larger than female gorillas, and R. Kelly is generally a lot larger than the 14 to 15 year old girls he is (allegedly) fond of.

Otherwise, it does seem rather disturbing.

12:46 / 06.08.03

its' coz the NME has switched from its negroid paradigm of last years gansta fixation to the current honkey loving home made 'new rock revoltion'.

Last year they were openly callin guitar bands 'white boys' and raving about how hippedy hop was the music of the future.

Now they calling Our Kelly a monkey boy. Just like they used to call Ian Brown.

14:33 / 06.08.03

What was the context od that quote? It strikes me the writer could have been having a go at R Kelly for being crude or dumb or something, in which case it would still be a spectacularly misguided choice of words, but could be more along the lines of a personal insult rather than out-n-out racism..

Which I realise is clutching at straws, but I find it hard to believe that the NME, which has always tried to put forward a "yeah, we're really down with hiphop and r'n'b, us!" attitude (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary), would publish something like that..

The Natural Way

15:03 / 06.08.03

Yeah, I'm fairly convinced the NME hasn't suddenly gone out-and-out bigoted. I imagine it's just a poor choice of words. Very poor. Kickings should ensue.

ONLY NICE THINGS

22:02 / 06.08.03

Well, no. I imagine that the point is that the simile is describing two entities making love as like two entities making love. I doubt that the reviewer was drawing attention to R. Kelly's primate nature, only that it is a simile in the same way that "this red bus is red like a red mug" is. There is no metonymic element.

It's not Derrida, but it's not necessarily racist.

Tryphena Absent

09:15 / 07.08.03

I don't actually understand where you see racism in that comment. It's just a music review in NME, I hardly think that they limit stupid phrases like that to R Kelly and the Rara hip hop junkie kids. Anyone who creates a song like 'I believe I can fly' is fair game for the worst press in the world.

Jack The Bodiless

11:28 / 07.08.03

Yeah... it's just really bad writing.

But let's find some more examples, as that's part of the raison d'etre of this thread... TrashTalkNMEPatrolGO!

Haus of Mystery

16:06 / 07.08.03

It is a fantastically innappropriate piece of writing though. They should have cracked a few kiddy fiddler gags.

23:13 / 07.08.03

Are people really having trouble why you'd think claiming a black guy fucking his girl is like a gorilla fucking its mate is racist?

10:09 / 08.08.03

Well, yes... because I'd doubt that's really what it means. While it may be quite a careless thing to say (though perhaps mostly because people will misinterpret it like this), claiming that R Kelly and girl are like gorilla and mate isn't saying, "Black men and girls are like gorillas and their mates."

No-one was ever accused of anti-white racism for calling Ian Brown a monkey (something I'd consider to be a pretty fair comparison). Attacking one person isn't exactly attacking everyone of the same race.

Jack The Bodiless

10:22 / 08.08.03

Crunch: see the Haus' post above.

Regrettable Juvenilia

15:07 / 08.08.03

No-one was ever accused of anti-white racism for calling Ian Brown a monkey (something I'd consider to be a pretty fair comparison).

Lordy. Maybe this is because there hasn't been a tradition of racial abuse which labels white men as monkeys? Anyone who thinks the two examples are comparable is, to put it politely, living in a bubble, willingly or otherwise.

I think an awful lot of people here need to see this in context - not just in the context of how the white rock press writes about contemporary black pop (although it's worth noting that contrary to what Big Dave says, the NME has consistently contained extremely dodgy attitudes towards black artists and genres for as long as I've been reading it, even when it was also paying lip service to hip-hop, r&b etc), but in the general context of white racial attitudes towards black men - footballers having bananas thrown onto the pitch, etc.

Mind you, even out of context I'm with Crunchy here: I think it's self-evident. Haus, I think your own linguistic accuracy is obscuring the writer's intentions here.

Anna: I don't accept for one moment the idea even if there's a racial element to the insult, the fact that he's been responsible for a bad song (or however many) makes R Kelly 'fair game', and I suspect neither do you. By the same rationale, all the misogynistic critiques of Christina Aguilera imaginable could be justified by 'Beautiful'.

Of course, things get really interesting when you think about why R Kelly's comparing himself to a gorilla anyway - actually, there's plenty of precedent for the NME's response, since I've seen reviews of rap albums before that basically said "these ignorant niggers keep calling each other 'nigger' - they're not wrong".

The Natural Way

16:26 / 08.08.03

But...I don't know, don't you believe in giving people the benefit of the doubt? Making an intentional comparison between R Kelly's "blackness" and "gorilla-ness", well, that's SO fucking racist it beggars belief. That can't be what the writer meant, can it?

At least I bloody hope not.

Tryphena Absent

20:14 / 08.08.03

I think it's just as naive to assume that the reviewer knew it would be taken as racist as it is to assume that (s)he didn't. Yes there's a history behind that remark (mostly colonial books on 'races around the world') that some people wouldn't know if 1)they'd not seen those books or 2)they'd grown up in a white, middle class and sheltered area and thus hadn't seen this kind of racism. Now recall that this is the NME we're talking about. I think it's important that you see this comment in its immediate context rather than as part of a long racial history and I think you're failing to do so.

If you read my post again you'll see that I don't accept that it was a purposefully racist comment thus I am certainly not accepting that Christina may be referred to in a misogynistic way. You could however compare her to an orange (as she is currently that colour) or possibly a hamster because her cheeks are quite puffy. I would also like to point out how low it was to bring Aguilera in to this as a number of people here know I can't think when the Dirrty video comes on TV and even the thought of her red knickers messes with my mind. Back to the point I'd just like to add that R Kelly is in fact physically rather gorilla like and anyone stupid enough to release that song deserves to be compared to a primate in the brains department anyway.

Tryphena Absent

20:17 / 08.08.03

And feel free to insult Christina all you want. We all know she's wasting herself away doing songs like Beautiful when she could be grinding those little bitch hips about like the lovely dirrrrtty rascal she truly is.

23:23 / 09.08.03

Yeah but she's finally seen the light and is releasing 'Can't Hold Us Down' as a single so all is once more RIGHT in the world.

I still think the reviewer is either a) an actively racist fuckwit or b) such a lazy fuckwit he missed the smack-you-in-the-head obvious racist overtones of what he was writing, i.e., a passively racist fuckwit.

13:43 / 10.08.03

I flicked through that edition of NME too, as it seemed to have a rare occurence of two good pieces in it, and that comment seemed odd, I must admit.

But I didn't see a picture byline of the writer, if I recall correctly.

So I'm not trolling or trying to start a fight, just wondering if you are relying on prior knowledge of the writer or if you have assumed the colour of their skin is white as they work at the NME?

Tryphena Absent

15:05 / 10.08.03

b) such a lazy fuckwit he missed the smack-you-in-the-head obvious racist overtones of what he was writing, i.e., a passively racist fuckwit.

1)It's not smack you in the head obvious unless you understand the context thus we should be blaming the editorial staff because the writer isn't necessarily to blame.
2)I don't think the racist overtones of the comment necessarily mean the writer is passively racist just ignorant of a part of British cultural history.

17:29 / 10.08.03

Back to the point I'd just like to add that R Kelly is in fact physically rather gorilla like...

Thats sooo dodgy, especially in the middle of this conversation.

Old brown-eye is back

21:07 / 10.08.03

Anna, I'm having a heck of a time getting to the idea that the writer could have no knowledge of this delightful little aspect of English cultural history, even despite the fact he works for the NME. Cosy middle class upbringing or not, I think we can assume that he might have been to the cinema, watched the telly or maybe even lived in the real world at some point. What is possible is that having made his home in media fuckwit land, he somehow believes that people (especially readers of the NME) just don't think like *that* anymore, and therefore there's no way that his review could be read in *that* way. Horrendously deluded and very stupid in other words, but not rascist.

The really interesting thing here - as Flyboy pointed out - is the fact that old R is being so free with the gorilla metaphors in the first place.

21:24 / 10.08.03

Haus, I think your own linguistic accuracy is obscuring the writer's intentions here.

Whereas you know the writer's intention? Asked him, did you?

And Not Me Again is spot on with the question of the writer's race - does anybody actually know what it is, or are we making assumptions in our dash to be holier than thou?

Old brown-eye is back

21:52 / 10.08.03

Surely the writer's intention was to sound as clever and hilarious as he or she so obviously is. LLBIMG - given that practically all the acts covered in the NME are white and so is its readership, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume most of it's staff is as well. (Historically I can only think of two non-white writers working on the indie weeklies, at least when I was reading them - Dele Fadele and Neil Kulkani.)

The writer certainly could be non-white, of course. Would the review be any less moronic if they were? Is this some kind of crazy re-appropriation of the monkey thing?

The Natural Way

23:13 / 10.08.03

Anna, I'm having a heck of a time getting to the idea that the writer could have no knowledge of this delightful little aspect of English cultural history, even despite the fact he works for the NME. Cosy middle class upbringing or not, I think we can assume that he might have been to the cinema, watched the telly or maybe even lived in the real world at some point. What is possible is that having made his home in media fuckwit land, he somehow believes that people (especially readers of the NME) just don't think like *that* anymore, and therefore there's no way that his review could be read in *that* way. Horrendously deluded and very stupid in other words, but not rascist.

I actually cobbled together a post almost exactly like this yesterday, but, reading through it, it appeared that it made no sense. And so I deleted it and went to bed.

Thanks for putting the shape of my head across so very clearly and exactly.

It has been profitable, but I am sad to say I'm discontinuing the mind-meld now.

Pig out.

01:18 / 11.08.03

Surely the writer's intention

I snipped the rest, because this bit makes clear any statement is baseless. You don't know.

given that practically all the acts covered in the NME are white and so is its readership, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume most of it's staff is as well

NME probably has demographic information for its advertisers. But unless you've actually seen this, I don't see why it's a "given." And unless you know the racial composition of the NME staff (and more specifically this particular reviewer), your assumptions are worse than useless.

Would the review be any less moronic if they were? Is this some kind of crazy re-appropriation of the monkey thing?

Did the review use the word monkey, or are you projecting? Someone else pointed out that R Kelly has played around with the word gorilla. But gee, that couldn't possibly be what the reviewer is riffing on, could it? I mean, how could we get self-righteous then?

A

04:09 / 11.08.03

R. Kelly.

Michael the gorilla.

I have no idea if this helps or not. Maybe I should have found photos of them making love.

Tryphena Absent

07:49 / 11.08.03

I think you're putting the blame in the wrong place. You're blaming one person who it could have passed by, if you're going to blame than put it on the editorial staff who certainly should have picked up on it.

Cosy middle class upbringing or not, I think we can assume that he might have been to the cinema, watched the telly or maybe even lived in the real world at some point

Oh please! If you have a cosy enough middle class upbringing this can pass you by rather easily. Watching TV or going to the cinema doesn't mean that you're aware of these little snippets of culture at all and you're a fool if you think it does. People do not necessarily pick up on these things. I think you're all looking at this in entirely the wrong context and if you're going to blame someone for a comment that can be perceived as racist than you shouldn't put it on one person who may have missed it but on the general staff of the magazine who definitely should have got rid of the thing.

Bio K9 I think Count Adam has put my point forward rather admirably. You see my intention is in now way racist. If I thought you looked like a gorilla than I'd have no problem saying so despite your colour or racial background. I think R Kelly does look quite gorilla like, I think Tom Jones has a face shaped like a peach and I think Cliff Richard is scrawny and gay.

The NME dislikes R Kelly not because of his race but because he is sad. They like Missy Elliott because she is cool. They dislike and like people in order to sell to their demographic. So take it and don't read the trash.

Old brown-eye is back

08:52 / 11.08.03

"Surely the writer's intention..." No, I can't be sure of the writer's intention anymore than I can be sure of yours. Certain things - a vague knowledge of NME style, a tenuous grasp of human nature, having to review shit myself - allow me to make what's known as an educated guess. Have to say though, I was being a bit flippant with that one.

"NME probably has demographic information for its advertisers...."

Again you're right, it was remiss of me to make such a statement without checking my facts first, but it was late and again I decided to rely on the power of what I like to call common sense. Last indie gig you went to - pretty much all Caucasian, wasn't it?

"Would the review be any less moronic if they were?"

An answer, please. Have you actually read the article, by the way?

Anna, you're right that the sub should have spotted it, but I don't see how the fact that he didn't takes any of the blame away from the writer. Anyone playing with that imagery has to expect to get called on it, or suddenly we're blaming Hitler's negligent editor for Mein Kampf. As for this guy's closeted upbringing - intelligent people pick up on these things and writers for the NME should definitely fucking pick up on these things. If he's that stupendously ignorant, perhaps he's in the wrong job.

Tryphena Absent

09:06 / 11.08.03

Yeah well I'm not going to bother with this argument anymore because it's ridiculous. 1)We don't know who wrote it so all we're doing is speculating. 2)I don't actually give a toss because I wouldn't read the NME in the shop never mind pay for that trash and 3)R Kelly's a wanker and he is sad even if I secretly like Ignition. Oh and he looks like a gorilla!

The Natural Way

10:36 / 11.08.03

Oh please! If you have a cosy enough middle class upbringing this can pass you by rather easily. Watching TV or going to the cinema doesn't mean that you're aware of these little snippets of culture at all and you're a fool if you think it does.

What the fuck? You don't need to know the specifics of the Victorian's habit of comparing negroid facial characteristics with apes to know that calling a black man a gorilla could be construed as racist. I think this "cosy middle class world" yr going on about, where nobody knows the slightest thing about what constitutes a racial slur, is all in yr mind. I don't know anyone - and that's ANYONE - who wouldn't think it was a dodgy comparison to make, middle class or otherwise.

Tryphena Absent

11:26 / 11.08.03

Welcome to Chorleywood, upper middle class Hertfordshire, edge of the tube map commuter territory. There were three Asian kids in my year and that was the extent of racial minority. I moved to this cosy little world when I was thirteen and it was a hell of an eye opener, one you obviously haven't had. There are places where these things don't register, not even because people are passively racist but because they have had no exposure to racism, to minority groups, to anything really. Just because you've never been there doesn't mean they're not right in front of you. In the third year a girl in my class went around using the word Paki and I was the only person who noticed- no one else used it, no one even ignored it, it literally didn't register.

I think it is a dodgy comparison but I am talking about the intent and the actual knowledge that people possess not some fantasy world where everyone knows everything. Now I've bloody had enough, can everyone please just leave me alone because I don't care and I actually really think this is utterly pointless.

Old brown-eye is back

11:55 / 11.08.03

Hang on. If TV has taught me anything, it's that the less you know about something - ie the less exposed you are to it - the more ignorant and fearful of that something you're going to become. You think you live in hicksville? I come from Chichester and went to college in Farnham, both of which had very few black or Asian inhabitants and both of which (especially Farnham) are considerably to the right of La Pen in terms of how they view people that are not white. What's so special about Chorlywood that it became this shangri-la where rascism quite literally does not exist, even as a concept?

Sorry to go on, like.

The Natural Way

12:19 / 11.08.03

You think that's bad, mate, I come from Burwash. Know Farnham very well - Dad lives in Tilford.

I don't think there was a single kid belonging to a minority group in my year apart from Johnny Pang. And, yeah, there probably were kids who didn't know "paki" was a particularly racist term (although they were in a minority), but, by the time they hit adulthood, I'm convinced they did. And, anyway, I was having a go at my 16 yr old cousin for something like this the other day.... He's middle class and he uses the term like its going out of style and so, obviously, do all his mates, but, y'know, I think it's a bit more complicated than "they don't know it's offensive". When pressed, it seems these guys DO know, but the word's become so deeply entrenched in their everyday vocab that they can perform a kind of double-think and to all intents and purposes just forget about that side of it.

Look, Anna, I'm not saying it doesn't or can't happen, but the likelihood that a journalist at the NME is unaware that "black" and "gorilla" shouldn't be uttered in the same breath is ridiculous. And I repeat (one last time): you don't need to be aware of an historical precedent in any direct way to understand that that sort of thing's offensive. I didn't know about the Victorians etc. for years, but I'd heard wog=ape jokes.

12:56 / 11.08.03

could be construed

This is the problem with this whole thread. Perhaps the racists here are the ones who are insisting there's only one thing the author could have intended?

Old brown-eye is back

13:17 / 11.08.03

I think we're beyond calling him a rascist at this point, merely inept, ignorant or maybe even both. Lets imagine for a second the writer of the review is actually black - how does that change things and how should we read it differently. LLBIMG, what do you actually think?

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