ILM thread in progress about Christgau's MIA articles, which are more or less responses to the Reynolds article.

Because I respect your desire not to read ILM, here's what I wrote by way of response:

The article takes a sort of interesting "third way" approach--focusing on the authenticity/legitimacy of her political position instead of her persona, and he does actually address the album itself, albeit in a not particularly interesting way.

Still, I'm not entirely happy we're STILL focusing on the goddamned political content of the album, nor am I entirely convinced that an engagement with Sri Lankan history is necessary to fully experience Arular. Maybe this is the over-educated politics major in me talking, but it's not that hard to grasp the outlines of the conflict, and that's all that's really necessary to know what's going on, since MIA's project is broader than that one situation. But a response to Reynolds' piece was highly necessary, so yay.

I'm also not entirely convinced of the accuracy of his interpretation, but we can leave that for later.

And, agreed that the quotes are very, very useful if we want to continue this discussion. Sins of the father etc.
posted by Mike B. at 5:32 PM 0 comments