As the title states, I'm not done talking about Lorde just yet, but I didn't want to weigh down my other post by wandering off topic.
Starting where we left off in my previous post, in my eyes Royals is like a glaring red mark on what is otherwise a pretty stellar track record. It seems especially so when you consider that Lorde has covered similar topics multiple times, and she did it better, and without being racist or otherwise offensive.
The most obvious comparison is the song Team, her third single to be released. This song is what Royals wanted to be: a song about how Lorde and her friends don't care that they're poor, because they make the best of it and have fun anyway. Hell, she even mentions how she's tired of a mainstream trend in this one as well, but this time around her representative line is one that's ubiquitous in anything you could label as 'club' or 'party' music - the phrase 'throw your hands in the air' doesn't really specify any genre or group of artists. "I'm kind of over being told to throw my hands up in the air" has a similarly nonchalant tone, but this one comes across as much more ambivalent and breezy, as opposed to the more sneering and condescending 'we're not caught up in your love affair'. I have no trouble imagining a playful shrug as she throws out the words, "so there".
White Teeth Teens is another that I thought of. I feel like I can't bring up this song without bringing up The Love Club, from the eponymous EP (which is no longer available, to my knowledge, but the song in on the deluxe version of the album). This is only because these two songs are really similar; I'd almost say eerily so if they weren't by the same artist. White Teeth Teens could almost be seen as a remake or retelling of The Love Club - it has the same themes and a similar story, but, in my opinion, is much more fluid and coherent as a narrative. The Love Club kind of jumps around with telling what's happened to Lorde, while White Teeth Teens happens in chronological order and has discernible settings and scenes.
Like Royals, White Teeth Teens concerns Lorde and rich folks, but whereas Royals flippantly insults the way you choose to spend your money in its quest to show how much Lorde doesn't care about said rich folks, White Teeth Teens sits you down and describes a series of events with the aforementioned clique - basically, it shows instead of telling. There is also a change in premise that works to this song's advantage - Lorde is with them, which lends to her credibility as a narrator. Royals!Lorde doesn't seem like the kind of person who's ever had a conversation with a rich person, let alone befriended one. White Teeth Teen!Lorde is relaying this info to you first hand, and therefore it feels more genuine.
This song is also subtle. While it's obvious that she's in a clique (something that happens in like 70% of her songs that include more than one other character), Lorde never comes right out and says that it's a clique of rich kids. You're trusted to glean this information from the language she uses to talk about them. She refers to the leader of the clique as the Empress, for example. The fact that they're even called the White Teeth Teens speaks to this: their teeth are so white that they glow, which means that they aren't just using whitening strips and good brushing techniques; they're getting them professionally done, something it costs good money to do.
Lastly, and this is one of my favorite parts, this song has the nerve to have a plot twist in the form of a reveal. After taking you on a journey through a night with these kids as they drink and preen and seemingly wreak some havoc, Lorde pulls the listener aside and informs you that she's not actually a White Teeth Teen. And it really is constructed that way - listen for yourself. At about 2:17 in, her voice starts singing "and everything worked out so good/I wear the robe like no one could" repeatedly, and over this Lorde starts talking directly to the listener, using the word 'you' for the first time, saying that she has 'something big' to tell us. She then goes on to say that she never really fit in with them because it's 'in the blood'.
This is something that comes up in Royals too, and one of the reasons I related the two - they share the idea that this isn't something you can really come into, instead having to inherit it. Lorde could never truly be a White Teeth Teen - or a Royal, for that matter - because she doesn't come from the same crop. However, the hip-hop indicators in Royals render this point nonsensical, since a large number of black rappers (including Jay Z and 50 Cent, two of the ones she most closely implicated) came from close to nothing before they got big. In White Teeth Teens it makes a lot more sense, because she's not just talking about being born into money, but also being raised in an entirely different culture from ones that those of us less fortunate are.
These last few lines manage to throw a new trope onto the song that cast the rest of it into an entirely different light. Suddenly, Lorde's reliability as a narrator is called into question. She says straight up that she 'tried to join, but never did', so what events is she relating in the verses? Are they from when she tried to join? Or did she make it all up? She's still a liar either way - in the former because she uses the word 'us' in the chorus, which tricks you into thinking she's one of them, and in the latter because she made the whole thing up. It's hard to settle on either of these, though, because of that constantly repeating line playing in the background. Is that a statement of denial now, because she never got in? It doesn't seem that way, judging by the mood of the song, but it could definitely be read that way in both cases. Did it only exist to cement the idea of Lorde being a White Teeth Teen in our heads before she pulled the rug out from under us? Was she tricking us this entire time? The possibilites pile up the more you examine it.
That being said, the explanation that came to me while listening is that Lorde is lying, just not to us. She's in the clique, but she lacks the pedigree, and is pretending to be something she's not. I think this neatly explains a lot of aspects of the song - why it's in first person, the use of we in relation to the clique, etc. This idea came to me because of the admission. Like I said above, it seems to be done in the form of an aside, but with the two theories I posited above, that doesn't make much sense. If you look at it this way, however, it's like that because she's telling us a secret - the biggest of her secrets in fact. It even explains the lines she's speaking over: they're there because they represent the facade, that she belongs (i wear the robe like no one could), and this is being projected toward the rest of the clique while she breaks the fourth wall to speak to us, hence while it's in the background. The return of the chorus after this is her putting the fourth wall back up and resuming her place, her secret safe with us, and from the rest of the crew.
It's stuff like this that makes me wonder if Royals was included on the full album outside for any reason besides its popularity. It really has no place amongst stuff like this and Buzzcut Season and Ribs; it just falls flat in comparison. Why listen to something that's implicit in the oppression of a marginalized people when you can listen to a layered story like this?
the original long blog. now on wordpress.
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
how lorde slipped up in royals, or: i finally figured out why i stopped listening to this song despite it not bothering me that much initially
I know I'm late to the game (on a formal post, anyway), but while I was in the shower this morning I had a revelation.
So, as some of you already know, Lorde's uber-popular song Royals hit some sour notes back when it started to get really big, for reasons of, "us black folks are getting really tired of white folks telling us that rap culture is materialistic without understanding why it's that way". I've always agreed with this stance, but I used to argue that, compared to some other forays into this area, Royals was the tamest one I'd seen, mostly because of the song's very laid back, almost apathetic, attitude. Despite this, I still stopped listening to the song, because something about it bothered me. I was never able to quite put my finger on it, until today.
I do stand by what I'd said about the song's mood - there's nothing even a little bit aggressive about this song - but there is something a bit insidious lurking beneath it's chill surface. At a glance, the parts of the song that make you cry foul are the things she lists off as what "everybody's like" - particularly the Maybach, Cristal, diamonds on your 'timepiece', and the gold teeth (and possibly the grey goose). She could have chosen anything, and pretty much did for literally everything else (tigers on a gold leash?), but instead she chose to include these hip-hop indicators - products that frequently appear in rap music by black artists. The real problem, and the thing that turns this song racist, is the line "we're not caught up in your love affair".
Um,
See, here's the thing: without that line, the song could easily be (and was meant to be, i'm sure) one about how Lorde and her friends don't care to be rich, don't want to be rich, and have fun even though they aren't rich, even with the hip-hop indicators. However, the combination of those and the aforementioned line changes everything - suddenly, she's talking down to these people - not just shallow rich people or even 'fame whores', but also black rappers, group of people made up mostly of people who were dirt poor before they got enough money to even begin to think about any of those things. The idea of 'rap materialism' is one that tends to forget that small fact. Are there rappers that are materialistic? Yeah, definitely, but do they need Lorde, or any other white person, to tell them that? No.
And it's not like there's really anyway we could look around this, because the stuff she chose to call out is pretty specific. Go listen to a Jay Z bragging song, preferably from the mid-2000s. Or a 50 Cent song from around the same period. She very nearly called these guys out by name. Do I think that Lorde knew what she was implicating when she wrote this? Probably not; most white people don't get they don't have a place criticizing aspects of black culture. Hell, a lot of non-black people don't understand that rap is a part of black culture and not just a music genre. But that doesn't mean we can excuse this from Lorde, or anyone else.
And this song could have been saved. Had Lorde kept on with whatever motivated her to mention tigers on a gold leash and listed other outlandish, nearly cartoonish rich people antics, the line about not getting 'caught up in your love affair' could have worked. What should have been a fun, harmless song gets relegated to a trash bin full of condescending lectures toward the wrong people, all because of ten words and a single line. It's a shame that such a talented storyteller has this blemish on her record because she's yet another white person who doesn't know what white privilege is (and even worse because only a few of us see it this way).
So, as some of you already know, Lorde's uber-popular song Royals hit some sour notes back when it started to get really big, for reasons of, "us black folks are getting really tired of white folks telling us that rap culture is materialistic without understanding why it's that way". I've always agreed with this stance, but I used to argue that, compared to some other forays into this area, Royals was the tamest one I'd seen, mostly because of the song's very laid back, almost apathetic, attitude. Despite this, I still stopped listening to the song, because something about it bothered me. I was never able to quite put my finger on it, until today.
I do stand by what I'd said about the song's mood - there's nothing even a little bit aggressive about this song - but there is something a bit insidious lurking beneath it's chill surface. At a glance, the parts of the song that make you cry foul are the things she lists off as what "everybody's like" - particularly the Maybach, Cristal, diamonds on your 'timepiece', and the gold teeth (and possibly the grey goose). She could have chosen anything, and pretty much did for literally everything else (tigers on a gold leash?), but instead she chose to include these hip-hop indicators - products that frequently appear in rap music by black artists. The real problem, and the thing that turns this song racist, is the line "we're not caught up in your love affair".
Um,
See, here's the thing: without that line, the song could easily be (and was meant to be, i'm sure) one about how Lorde and her friends don't care to be rich, don't want to be rich, and have fun even though they aren't rich, even with the hip-hop indicators. However, the combination of those and the aforementioned line changes everything - suddenly, she's talking down to these people - not just shallow rich people or even 'fame whores', but also black rappers, group of people made up mostly of people who were dirt poor before they got enough money to even begin to think about any of those things. The idea of 'rap materialism' is one that tends to forget that small fact. Are there rappers that are materialistic? Yeah, definitely, but do they need Lorde, or any other white person, to tell them that? No.
And it's not like there's really anyway we could look around this, because the stuff she chose to call out is pretty specific. Go listen to a Jay Z bragging song, preferably from the mid-2000s. Or a 50 Cent song from around the same period. She very nearly called these guys out by name. Do I think that Lorde knew what she was implicating when she wrote this? Probably not; most white people don't get they don't have a place criticizing aspects of black culture. Hell, a lot of non-black people don't understand that rap is a part of black culture and not just a music genre. But that doesn't mean we can excuse this from Lorde, or anyone else.
And this song could have been saved. Had Lorde kept on with whatever motivated her to mention tigers on a gold leash and listed other outlandish, nearly cartoonish rich people antics, the line about not getting 'caught up in your love affair' could have worked. What should have been a fun, harmless song gets relegated to a trash bin full of condescending lectures toward the wrong people, all because of ten words and a single line. It's a shame that such a talented storyteller has this blemish on her record because she's yet another white person who doesn't know what white privilege is (and even worse because only a few of us see it this way).
Sunday, October 26, 2014
LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean - a review
So, guess who's fresh off of yet another LEGO game?
LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean was released in 2011 (ten days before the release of the fourth film, On Stranger Tides) for all platforms. Differences between the handheld games and the console and PC versions are per usual. The copy I'm reviewing is for the 360, though I own the PC version as well (my computer doesn't run it well, hence why i bought it for console).
Unlike Batman 2 and Marvel Superheroes, LEGO PotC doesn't have an original plot; instead, the game utilizes the plots of the movies. The game is split up into four parts, each based on one of the four films, and every one of those parts has five levels (called chapters in-game) to play through, covering the major events of each movie. Due to the nature of the films (especially the fourth one), this game has the feeling of having four separate plots rather than one continuous story that spans all of its levels, despite the fact that the first three movies all link together.
I want to get out my complaints, since I have relatively few of them. The number one is, of course, the lack of female characters. This game has 16 girls out of 79 playable characters overall, which lands it right between Batman 2 and Marvel Superheroes in terms of ratios. However, this game has a one particularly infuriating difference than the last two. Like LEGO Harry Potter, and I assume some other games, characters with different costumes are considered as separate playable characters in the game. Due to that, the number of individual playable girls drops down to 9. Nine. Elizabeth, by herself, makes up over a third of the playable female characters due to costume changes. What fresh hell is this? And I understand that a lot of it has to do with the fact that there are a distinct lack of women in the film series this game is based on (unlike the last two, which just cherry picked small amounts out of literally hundreds of characters), but then I direct my question to them: where are the girls??? This is especially mind boggling because they even included side characters like Giselle and Scarlett, and bit parts like Lian and Park, the twins that appeared in the beginning of At World's End. Adding Tamara, the blonde mermaid from On Stranger Tides (and a character I kind of wanted to play) wouldn't even hep much. It's downright ridiculous how under represented we are in media, honestly.
Beyond that one, terribly huge stain on the game (and the film series), everything else is pretty perfect. Coming back to this after spending weeks playing the lovely but maddening Batman 2 made me remember what it was like to play a LEGO game and feel relaxed. No really; I played this game one day to calm me down after I'd gotten all stressed out about something I was writing at the time. The game is absolutely beautiful and does the films justice. They also had one of my favorite things about LEGO games based on movies: the original scores, which really helped set the mood. They even mixed up some of tracks in a way that enhanced the experience - for example, using Jack Sparrow's theme, which didn't come along until the second film (I know!) in the Smuggler's Den level from the first part of the game. The ambient noise in this game is stellar as well* (stand inside of the miniature version of Tia Dalma's shack in the hub with the music turned off. It's wonderful, and surprisingly creepy). Speaking of the hub, since this game is pre-Batman 2, the hub isn't open world, but that doesn't take away from the game at all. Though small, it's surprisingly engaging. Also, this game's bonus level is a miniaturized version of the game's boss levels formulated to mimic the original ride, complete with A Pirate's Life For Me playing in the background. It's absolutely adorable.
I totally recommend this game, especially if you're a fan of the LEGO game and especially especially if you love the films. It's a definite must play for me.
* Playing LEGO games with the sound off is something I started doing during my last replay of LEGO Marvel Superheroes, just because I wanted to know what the city sounded like. I recommend doing it if you're the kind of person who doesn't mind quiet; it can actually be quite soothing.
LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean was released in 2011 (ten days before the release of the fourth film, On Stranger Tides) for all platforms. Differences between the handheld games and the console and PC versions are per usual. The copy I'm reviewing is for the 360, though I own the PC version as well (my computer doesn't run it well, hence why i bought it for console).
Unlike Batman 2 and Marvel Superheroes, LEGO PotC doesn't have an original plot; instead, the game utilizes the plots of the movies. The game is split up into four parts, each based on one of the four films, and every one of those parts has five levels (called chapters in-game) to play through, covering the major events of each movie. Due to the nature of the films (especially the fourth one), this game has the feeling of having four separate plots rather than one continuous story that spans all of its levels, despite the fact that the first three movies all link together.
I want to get out my complaints, since I have relatively few of them. The number one is, of course, the lack of female characters. This game has 16 girls out of 79 playable characters overall, which lands it right between Batman 2 and Marvel Superheroes in terms of ratios. However, this game has a one particularly infuriating difference than the last two. Like LEGO Harry Potter, and I assume some other games, characters with different costumes are considered as separate playable characters in the game. Due to that, the number of individual playable girls drops down to 9. Nine. Elizabeth, by herself, makes up over a third of the playable female characters due to costume changes. What fresh hell is this? And I understand that a lot of it has to do with the fact that there are a distinct lack of women in the film series this game is based on (unlike the last two, which just cherry picked small amounts out of literally hundreds of characters), but then I direct my question to them: where are the girls??? This is especially mind boggling because they even included side characters like Giselle and Scarlett, and bit parts like Lian and Park, the twins that appeared in the beginning of At World's End. Adding Tamara, the blonde mermaid from On Stranger Tides (and a character I kind of wanted to play) wouldn't even hep much. It's downright ridiculous how under represented we are in media, honestly.
Beyond that one, terribly huge stain on the game (and the film series), everything else is pretty perfect. Coming back to this after spending weeks playing the lovely but maddening Batman 2 made me remember what it was like to play a LEGO game and feel relaxed. No really; I played this game one day to calm me down after I'd gotten all stressed out about something I was writing at the time. The game is absolutely beautiful and does the films justice. They also had one of my favorite things about LEGO games based on movies: the original scores, which really helped set the mood. They even mixed up some of tracks in a way that enhanced the experience - for example, using Jack Sparrow's theme, which didn't come along until the second film (I know!) in the Smuggler's Den level from the first part of the game. The ambient noise in this game is stellar as well* (stand inside of the miniature version of Tia Dalma's shack in the hub with the music turned off. It's wonderful, and surprisingly creepy). Speaking of the hub, since this game is pre-Batman 2, the hub isn't open world, but that doesn't take away from the game at all. Though small, it's surprisingly engaging. Also, this game's bonus level is a miniaturized version of the game's boss levels formulated to mimic the original ride, complete with A Pirate's Life For Me playing in the background. It's absolutely adorable.
I totally recommend this game, especially if you're a fan of the LEGO game and especially especially if you love the films. It's a definite must play for me.
* Playing LEGO games with the sound off is something I started doing during my last replay of LEGO Marvel Superheroes, just because I wanted to know what the city sounded like. I recommend doing it if you're the kind of person who doesn't mind quiet; it can actually be quite soothing.
Friday, October 17, 2014
LEGO Batman 2: DC Superheroes - a review
So i finished yet another LEGO video game. okay, i'm 99% done another LEGO video game (I only have one more level and one last character to get before I finish). So let's talk about that.
LEGO Batman 2: DC Superheroes came out in 2012 for all platforms. As per usual, the version for handheld systems most likely is different from the console and computer versions. I have the versions for 360 and the Wii, but the former is the one i'm currently playing. This game has the distinction of being the first LEGO game to have full voice acting and an open world hub.
The story goes as follows. Lex Luthor is in town for an award ceremony for Man of the Year, the other nominee of which is Bruce Wayne. Bruce wins, but the Joker crashes the ceremony and starts wreaking havoc along with the Riddler, Harley Quinn, and Two-Face. Batman takes care of everything and all of the villains are thrown into Arkham Asylum, but later they're broken out by Lex. He's made a device that can break black objects (these are special and normally indestructible in-universe) and he offers to let the Joker use it to destroy Batman's stuff if he helps him in his presidential campaign. Chaos ensues and Batman is forced (though he had plenty of time to ask) to team up with Superman, and later the rest of the Justice League, for help.
Okay so this game... it's not bad. I don't think it's bad at all, really, but there was something about it that grated on my nerves sometimes. I think that part of it is that it was the first open world, so it has a lot of mechanics that are similar to something like LEGO Marvel Superheroes, but they aren't nearly as streamlined. It is very clearly a step between something like that and earlier games like Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean. As a result it comes off as being more difficult than either of those games. Personally, the game also dragged at times; I literally did not know when this thing was supposed to end, even though it has fifteen levels like Marvel Superheroes. I feel like I would have enjoyed this game a lot more if I had played it before I'd played Marvel Superheroes honestly, because whenever i ran into one of these things I had that in the back of my mind.
That being said, this game also lacks female characters. In the main game the only playable girl is Wonder Woman, and she doesn't even show up until the penultimate level, along with the rest of the Justice League barring Supes. Vicki Vale is featured in the bumpers between the levels doing news reports (which were funny and cute), and Catwoman and Poison Ivy show up as enemies early in the game that you don't even really fight. Harley does get a boss battle at the least. Out of the 50 playable characters there are only 11 girls, The number bumps up to 17 out of 60 if you include DLC only characters. That's sad, even if you consider the fact that the ratio of girls to boys is larger than something with more characters like Marvel Superheroes. There are a ton of great women in DC comics, so where are they all? This keeps happening and it's not cool.
A few final dislikes: the fact that you can't unlock Supergirl until you've beaten the game completely is horse hockey. The flying vehicles are hard to drive, which is something that bothers me about most of these. There are only 3 playable PoC in this game and they are all men and two of them are villains (dlc gives you three more, with two of them being women, thankfully).
Okay, so good things now. This game is GORGEOUS. It pulls most of its inspiration from Tim Burton's Batman films, and that was a good move. I enjoyed exploring the hub (also EVERYTHING IS HUGE it does become offputting sometimes but I'm okay with it). It also uses Danny Elfman's score, which really helped the mood along. I'm actually a fan of how interchangeable some of the characters are (for example, Superman and General Zod and Supergirl all have the same movesets). It allows you to change up who you do in free play without sacrificing important stuff you need, which was something I wanted once I decided to only play as villains at one point. At the same time I like how a lot of characters had a unique thing that others couldn't do (at least not without help). The John Williams Superman theme plays when Superman flies and that's super cute. Also Harley Quinn is the cutest character, period.
Overall I still recommend that you play this, despite my many problems with it. I did end up having more fun than not.
(i rarely do this, but if you're wondering, my next LEGO review is most likely going to be PotC. Harry otter will come along some time too, but it won't be for a while.)
LEGO Batman 2: DC Superheroes came out in 2012 for all platforms. As per usual, the version for handheld systems most likely is different from the console and computer versions. I have the versions for 360 and the Wii, but the former is the one i'm currently playing. This game has the distinction of being the first LEGO game to have full voice acting and an open world hub.
The story goes as follows. Lex Luthor is in town for an award ceremony for Man of the Year, the other nominee of which is Bruce Wayne. Bruce wins, but the Joker crashes the ceremony and starts wreaking havoc along with the Riddler, Harley Quinn, and Two-Face. Batman takes care of everything and all of the villains are thrown into Arkham Asylum, but later they're broken out by Lex. He's made a device that can break black objects (these are special and normally indestructible in-universe) and he offers to let the Joker use it to destroy Batman's stuff if he helps him in his presidential campaign. Chaos ensues and Batman is forced (though he had plenty of time to ask) to team up with Superman, and later the rest of the Justice League, for help.
Okay so this game... it's not bad. I don't think it's bad at all, really, but there was something about it that grated on my nerves sometimes. I think that part of it is that it was the first open world, so it has a lot of mechanics that are similar to something like LEGO Marvel Superheroes, but they aren't nearly as streamlined. It is very clearly a step between something like that and earlier games like Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean. As a result it comes off as being more difficult than either of those games. Personally, the game also dragged at times; I literally did not know when this thing was supposed to end, even though it has fifteen levels like Marvel Superheroes. I feel like I would have enjoyed this game a lot more if I had played it before I'd played Marvel Superheroes honestly, because whenever i ran into one of these things I had that in the back of my mind.
That being said, this game also lacks female characters. In the main game the only playable girl is Wonder Woman, and she doesn't even show up until the penultimate level, along with the rest of the Justice League barring Supes. Vicki Vale is featured in the bumpers between the levels doing news reports (which were funny and cute), and Catwoman and Poison Ivy show up as enemies early in the game that you don't even really fight. Harley does get a boss battle at the least. Out of the 50 playable characters there are only 11 girls, The number bumps up to 17 out of 60 if you include DLC only characters. That's sad, even if you consider the fact that the ratio of girls to boys is larger than something with more characters like Marvel Superheroes. There are a ton of great women in DC comics, so where are they all? This keeps happening and it's not cool.
A few final dislikes: the fact that you can't unlock Supergirl until you've beaten the game completely is horse hockey. The flying vehicles are hard to drive, which is something that bothers me about most of these. There are only 3 playable PoC in this game and they are all men and two of them are villains (dlc gives you three more, with two of them being women, thankfully).
Okay, so good things now. This game is GORGEOUS. It pulls most of its inspiration from Tim Burton's Batman films, and that was a good move. I enjoyed exploring the hub (also EVERYTHING IS HUGE it does become offputting sometimes but I'm okay with it). It also uses Danny Elfman's score, which really helped the mood along. I'm actually a fan of how interchangeable some of the characters are (for example, Superman and General Zod and Supergirl all have the same movesets). It allows you to change up who you do in free play without sacrificing important stuff you need, which was something I wanted once I decided to only play as villains at one point. At the same time I like how a lot of characters had a unique thing that others couldn't do (at least not without help). The John Williams Superman theme plays when Superman flies and that's super cute. Also Harley Quinn is the cutest character, period.
Overall I still recommend that you play this, despite my many problems with it. I did end up having more fun than not.
(i rarely do this, but if you're wondering, my next LEGO review is most likely going to be PotC. Harry otter will come along some time too, but it won't be for a while.)
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