With a 2 year old and one on the way, there’s not much time to keep in touch with pop culture. But over the break I’ve had lots of car time to listen to G105 (our local top 40 radio station) so I thought I’d compile a pop-culture musical check-in:
*It’s not particularly new, but Davis and I still crank up Kanye West’s “Golddigger” anytime it comes on the radio—and given the fact that G105 has about a 10-song playlist (like most top 40 stations) it’s on about every 27 minutes or so. The song somewhat satirically talks about women, particularly black women, who date rich black men in order to get pregnant and get child support. The last verse, though, touches a more serious subject. Kanye talks about a woman sticking with the same (poorer) man while he climbs the ladder—only to be left “for a white girl” once he makes it. This actually points to a more serious issue that lots of black women face: as society mows down black men, black women face a serious shortage of men that are quality material. Quality black men dating white women is a definite source of angst for black women, and given the issues they face, it makes sense.
*Weezer’s “Beverly Hills” is just a fun song (although I understand the video was shot at Playboy Mansion—I wouldn’t know, we don’t have cable!). I read last week that Weezer’s lead singer took a 2-year vow of celibacy that he recently finished up…and he’s decided to continue on. I’m not completely sure about his motives initially, but when asked if it had been hard to keep celibate all this time, the comment of this super-rich, fairly popular rock band lead singer was interesting. He said something to the effect of no, it hadn’t been that hard. Our generation has been so burned relationally that people are tired of the whole hook-up scene anyway...
*Greenday continues to be a good barometer for me of white, post-modern pop culture. Their songs are catchy, and there’s a good mix of honest and earnest angst along with ridiculous self-pitying drivel—again, a good barometer of white post-modern pop culture. The cynic in me sometimes listens to them and wonders how they can be so freakin’ depressed about everything given how much fame, money, and success they’ve accumulated along the way. Then the Spirit answers to the cynic and says: “Exactly.” In a generation that’s had everything except for the stuff that really matters, there’s nothing that orients the “stuff” around what is real and true. Bereft of roots, real community, and most of all the God who has come to get them, my generation and the next (to quote some old Caedmon’s Call) has everything it could want and nothing that it needs.
3 comments:
as an older brother of a quality white woman, I'd comment that quality white men aren't exactly falling from the sky, either. :-)
I love you Alex. You never cease to amaze me. I will write more when I'm coherent. I just got back from Atlanta 2005
So true man. The weird thing is that I have the stuff that matters and yet I live a life looking forr more. The pastor at liquid church in NJ said we live lives with clinched fists, grabbing a hold of everything that we can like a baby naturally does with their hands. We always want more. The truth is it is unatural for us to open our hands and give because we already have so much.
The irony is that the things we hold on to, you know the extra stuff, are ALWAYS, ALWAYS without exeption the things that cause us the most pain.
~Lord help us to live like this aint our home.
www.lifewithlarkin.blogspot.com
Post a Comment