The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Friday, February 16, 2018 — 5
In retrospect, there was
little that would have predicted
the enormous reach of MGMT.
The American duo exploded
onto the scene in 2007 with
Oracular
Spectacular,
an
electropop tour de force that
artists have continued to bite
from a decade later. Oracular
paved the way for the cheerful
indie bands of later years, like
Grouplove and Passion Pit, and
that sound influenced a whole
range of genres. Frank Ocean
covered them; so did Katy
Perry.
That debut is still their
defining album, propelled by
the popularity of its singles.
Nearly every millennial will
recognize
the
simple
bass
line of “Electric Feel,” the
dance-party-ready “Kids,” the
exuberant opening chords on
“Time to Pretend.” If that was
your last point of contact with
the band, their newest, Little
Dark Age, will surprise with its
subtler soundscape. The huge
choruses and high pitched
vocals of their earlier years
are absent, replaced by more
fully formed, impressionistic
productions.
They
sound
closer to their ’80s electropop
predecessors — New Order,
Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode —
than ever before.
The title track was their first
single, released back in Oct.,
and it immediately signaled a
shift. The track starts quietly,
then builds into a dark march
of a chorus. There is a clear
goth lineage here, with distant
and moody vocals delivering
statements of hazy disaffection
like “Breathing in the dark” and
“I grieve in stereo.” Suddenly
that Bauhaus cover they did
back in 2011 makes a lot of
sense. MGMT have always
written sad songs; they’ve just
covered them up with a lot of
excited synths. On “Little Dark
Age,” their production matches
their brooding mood exactly.
The effect is one of the best
singles released by the band
since their debut, and a clear
stand out on the album. They’re
not a totally new band — just
more matured, growing into
themselves.
In reality, MGMT never
wanted
to
be
pop.
They
were aiming for the more
experimental
and
ambient
(hell, they have a song called
“Brian Eno”), but they didn’t
quite succeed, and so ended
up with a huge commercial
success on their hands. They’ve
thankfully realized that ’80s
revival is more their game. You
can hear this on the opener,
“She Works Out Too Much,” a
slightly creepy track about a
couple obsessed with working
out on which the band literally
welcomes us to the “shitshow”
in
verse
two
—
“Grab
a
comfortable seat,” they add.
It’s not all gloom. “Me and
Michael” is a flirty track about
friendship
so
powerful
it
reaches the romantic, and with
its driving bass, pretty synth
lines and ecstatic chorus, it’s
one of the most addicting on the
album, and a clear reference to
their synth-pop influencers.
It would be quite at home on a
Walkman.
There are moments on this
album which become tiring,
and it can be a bit repetitive.
By “James,” there’s a sense that
a different sound is needed to
cleanse the palette, but they
don’t reach that sound until
the closer, “Hand It Over,” a
slow-moving love song that
recalls Tame Impala in their
more pensive moments. On the
flip side, they’ve created one of
their most cohesive works in
probably a decade. That synth-
pop is currently having a huge
resurgence means that MGMT
are once again at the right place
at the right time. And all the
while, they’re still just doing
them.
MGMT refines its sound
with new ‘Little Dark Age’
MATT GALLATIN
Daily Arts Writer
COLUMBIA RECORDS
MUSIC ALBUM REVIEW
The late 2010s could appro-
priately be called, “The Age
of A24,” with major critical
acclaim following releases
such as “The Lobster,” “Moon-
light,” “Room” and “Lady
Bird.” With the new trailer for
one of the company’s first 2018
releases, “Hereditary,” it seems
like the indie studio has no
plans of slowing down.
One achievement is the
trailer’s ability to convey just
enough about the film’s plot to
intrigue without giving any-
thing away. Viewers finish the
trailer with a gist of what the
film is about — a creepy family
dealing with some less-than-
ideal common behaviors — but
don’t have quite enough infor-
mation to figure out how the
film will play out.
Scored to sparse, dissonant
strings and ominous plucking
sounds, the trailer does a tre-
mendous job of unsettling the
viewer from the start and, for
the rest of the runtime, draw-
ing that tension to an unbear-
ably chilling head. One of the
most jarring elements of the
trailer is the suddenness with
which everything seems to be
happening, seeing a shot of a
house in the daytime suddenly
pop into nighttime.
Perhaps the only concern
that arises from the trailer for
“Hereditary” is the possibility
that it won’t be representa-
tive of the tone and pace of
the film. The trailer for 2016’s
“The Witch” comes to mind
as an example of a trailer that
portrayed the film as a terrify-
ing thrill ride rather than the
slow-burn atmospheric chiller
it ended up being. “The Witch”
was still a great film, although
the disconnect between the
film audiences was advertised
and the film audiences saw
likely hurt its overall recep-
tion. The trailer for “Heredi-
tary” looks as if it could hit
similar beats.
– Max Michalsky,
Daily Arts Writer
TRAILER REVIEW: A24’S ‘HEREDITARY’
“Hereditary”
A24
A24
Little Dark Age
MGMT
Columbia Records
The issue of sexual assault
in
the
workplace
—
and
Hollywood specifically — feels
kaleidoscopic. By the time you
write about an aspect of it,
everyone’s focus has shifted
onto another angle. Another
scandal has suddenly aired,
and you have to update your
argument
and
stretch
your
perspective to make it elastic
enough to encompass all that you
want to say. It feels paradoxical:
Write about all of it, and you risk
sounding hopeless and banal,
offering nothing with nuance
or originality. Write about only
one part, and you risk sounding
reductive.
This is not a column about
the trajectory of the #MeToo
movement and the backlash
against
it
as
a
whole;
I
haven’t quite mapped out the
constellation I want to trace
there yet. This is a column about
the difference between reading
minds
and
turning
down
mashed potatoes politely at your
aunt’s house.
On
Jan.
14th,
Babe.net
published a story about an
anonymous woman’s date and
subsequent sexual encounter
with actor Aziz Ansari in Sept.
“Grace” felt that upon making it
back to his TriBeCa apartment
after their weird date, Ansari
repeatedly ignored her verbal
and non-verbal cues that she
was
highly
uncomfortable
and wanted him to stop his
behavior. She felt coerced and
violated, and told him so over
text afterwards, telling him to
be more mindful in the future.
He apologized but indicated
he felt everything was fun and
consensual. His outspoken and
lauded support of the #MeToo
and Time’s Up movements made
Grace want to tell her story.
Was it assault? Or bad sex?
This is the question that
preoccupied
and
obsessed
every conservative pop culture
pundit, every feminist and anti-
feminist in the blogosphere,
academics
and
TV
critics
alike.
The
website
Jezebel
published a rejoinder titled
“Babe, What are you Doing?”
noting that “a side effect of the
tidal wave of sexual assault and
harassment
reporting
since
Oct. is that, having been long
confined to explicitly feminist
outlets, reporting about sexual
impropriety is, all of a sudden,
considered
general-interest
prestige reporting.” Jezebel was
cynical about the fact that Babe
had approached Grace rather
than the other way around,
and condemned some of the
amateurish mistakes of the
inexperienced writer.
Babe majorly screwed up the
execution and writing of this
story. But regrettable as this
may be, what is almost worse
is how the botching of this
story bolstered one of the most
insidious false arguments that
people who defend the men in
stories like this one fall back on:
That we can’t expect or assume
men to be mind-readers.
Caitlin Flanagan dubbed the
Babe article “revenge porn,”
writing that the anonymous
woman and the author of the
article “may have destroyed
Ansari’s career, which is now
the punishment for every kind
of male sexual misconduct,
from the grotesque to the
disappointing.” On Jan. 15th,
Bari Weiss wrote an op-ed titled
“Aziz Ansari is Guilty. Of Not
Being a Mindreader.” Each of
these arguments are built on
pillars that aren’t as concrete
as their authors clearly believe
them to be, but that’s another
story — though for what it’s
worth, I think Jezebel’s article
is highly worth reading for how
it points out flaws in Flanagan’s
argument alone.
Many, like Tucker Carlson
and Ben Shapiro, argue that the
#MeToo movement is reaching
too far; that yes, sexual assault
is bad, but innocent men are
being dragged under for small
actions or not being able to
easily pick up on every clue. To
them, it is a wildfire spreading
out of control. The assumption
that men should always be able
to pick up on clues is expecting
too much. They are sympathetic
to the plight of single (well, not
always) men in this day and age:
The conflation of misreading
mixed signals and rape is
striking fear into the hearts of
all our warm-blooded American
males.
Part of what is so discomfiting
about stories like Ansari’s —
and Louis C.K.’s, incidentally
— is some of these guys have
crafted personas as men who
can understand and articulate
the nuanced ways in which men
diminish and dismiss women.
Their comedy often depends
on it. Until these stories come
out, they’re praised for their
awareness. If they can build
reputations, make money and
garner praise from being able
to pick up on subtle cues — how
can they be missing signals in
their own real life?
In 1999, Celia Kitzinger and
Hannah Frith (of Loughborough
University and University of
the West of England) wrote an
article titled “Just say no? The
use of conversation analysis
in
developing
a
feminist
perspective on sexual refusal.”
In it, they argue that refusals
in general — not just those
centered around sex — are
often complex conversational
interactions. In other words,
we are constantly in situations
in which we prefer to say no
rather than yes: turning down
an invitation to a party where
we know we won’t have fun,
passing on a lunch date with
a coworker we abhor, turning
down a second serving of your
lovely aunt’s horrible mashed
potatoes. We say things like,
“Oh I would, but I don’t know
many people there,” or “I’ve got
a lot of work to do, how about in
a few weeks?” or “Thanks, Aunt
Margaret, but I’m trying to cut
down on carbs.” For the most
part, we all understand how a
polite or evasive refusal works.
We give and get them all the
time.
The point of this article, in
1999, was that it should not
be necessary for a woman to
explicitly say “no” in order
for their refusal of a sex act
to be understood. The focus
on “just say no” implied that
other forms of refusal were
open to reasonable doubt, a
weakness that was and has been
exploited
historically
inside
and outside of the courtroom
in the dissmissal of women’s
testimonies about assault and
rape. They argued that the focus
on rape prevention shouldn’t
be so centered on refusal skills
or assertiveness training. (This
is a vast oversimplification of a
tightly written 24 pages full of
comprehensive research, but a
full pdf of it is available online).
While tactics like “just say
no” have since evolved into
mantras such as “yes means
yes,” (many of which have
culminated in the kind of
university affirmative consent
policies that are ridiculously
impossible to enforce), the point
still stands: The expectation
that men should be able to
pick up on obvious indicators
of discomfort — verbal or
nonverbal — is not going too far.
It’s an attempt to demystify the
boundaries of consent that seem
to be bewilderingly murky to so
many men in this area alone.
It would be foolish to think,
by the way, that the horror
over expecting men to pick up
on — and then acknowledge
and react accordingly — to
cues of discomfort has nothing
to do with the rich history
of
the
sexualization
and
romanticization of the explicit
lack of consent seen in the films
and TV shows we voraciously
consume as a nation. How
many film scenes can you think
of where a woman is yelling
at a man, who then stops
her by grabbing and kissing
her? How many times does
she then melt into his arms?
(Though vaguely outdated now,
I recommend a documentary
called “Miss Representation,”
a 2011 Sundance Film Festival
Official Selection that captures
how attitudes in the media
filters into and shapes our
collective
consciousness).
Besides, we understand hints,
suggestions and evasive ways
of communicating when they’re
meant to signify interest, rather
than a lack thereof: When
someone says I love you without
actually saying “I love you.” “If
you’re a bird, I’m a bird.” (“The
Notebook”). “As you wish.”
(“The Princess Bride”). You get
the point.
Perhaps the most visceral
image in Grace’s story is a
description of one of Ansari’s
repeated moves: sticking his
fingers into her mouth. If you
are in that close proximity to
another person’s body — so
intimately involved with them
— and you are unable to tell
they
aren’t
enthusiastically
into it, you shouldn’t be having
sex. So for the people who will
read this (and pieces like this)
and still protest about innocent
men
misreading
signals
—
chances are, if you’re really that
fantastically awful at reading
body language, you’re probably
not great in bed anyway.
Sophia Kaufman:
It’s time to take a hint
GENDER & MEDIA COLUMN
SOPHIA
KAUFMAN
The case of Aziz Ansari outside the #MeToo movement and
the implicit expectations of reading signs and taking a hint
The issue of
sexual assault in
the workplace —
and Hollywood
specifically — feels
kaleidoscopic. By
the time you write
about an aspect
of it, everyone’s
focus has shifted
onto another
angle
If you’re really
that fantastically
awful at reading
body language,
you’re probably
not great in bed
anyway
The American duo’s latest release marks a subtle resurgence