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Posted by treacle | April 12, 2007 12:22 PM
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What's the point of a gossip columnist reporting on week-old news that wasn't Slog-worthy to begin with? Can we replace Adrian (and Chris Crocker) with that hot Gawker chick?

Posted by Pointless. | April 12, 2007 12:39 PM
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I can't for Slog to tell us the results of the Anna Nicole baby daddy paternity test tomorrow! I'm glad somebody in Seattle has their finger on the pulse.

Posted by jackie treehorn | April 12, 2007 12:46 PM
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@2, @3: LOL

However, I object to this being filed under Trash. This cover is f'n hysterical, even if in a meta-commentary kind of way.

Posted by torrentprime | April 12, 2007 12:57 PM
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At least someone realizes how sad this song really is!

Posted by thecandyqueen | April 12, 2007 1:13 PM
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@ 2

don't EVER call me a gossip columnist. EV. ER.

Posted by adrian! | April 12, 2007 3:21 PM
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"The first problem is maybe the fact that, for a parody, it's amazingly unfunny and uninspired. They key to a good parody is to showcase the original material in a way that both exaggerates and, here's the key, refreshes the absurdities in such a way that they becomes at once new and familiar to us. The general idea would to be to present as something familiar in a way that is perhaps unfamiliar, thus using that tension to create humor and perhaps reveal some of the "hidden" mechanisms and agendas of the original materials. The Alanis video does the first -- switching out the high production values for an ill-hung sheet, but I'm at a loss at what her point might be. That, without the high gloss, it's kind of a stupid song? I mean, it's a dance track. That the lyrics are sort of inane is a secret to absolutely no one. And Alanis seems particularly smug about conveying this earth-shattering revelation to us.

Not to mention, and maybe I'm wrong about this, but isn't the original track a parody of the "I sexy, you buy me stuff, sexy sexy, look at my ass" genre of hip-hop anyway? If I'm right about that, I would have to say that it is a far superior parody than what Alanis has managed to achieve, which is completely unsurprising given her shaky grasp of irony.

Beyond the fact that it's sort of, you know, stupid, I've read that it's being lauded as a feminist intervention against, well, I guess the idea proposed by a lot of women in hip-hop and rap that a sort of self-objectification is in fact a liberating display of women taking charge of their own sexuality. While I agree that this notion isn't entirely unproblematic and certainly Fergie would not be my immediate choice for a feminist spokesperson, I am extremely suspicious with the cover's implication that it's entirely mislead and that feminism in music must therefore be expressed by the sort of Alanis/Lilith Fair set -- over-earnest singer/songwriters who are very "serious" and "high brow" and predominantly white. I don't know that I necessarily buy that this is the actual intention of the video -- I'm not sure it's self-aware enough for that -- but it has been read in this way and this opens up another arena for discourse regarding this parody beyond the fact that it's boring and stupid.

I mean, Alanis' supposed dissatisfaction with the original song is that the lyrics aren't very good. Which, okay, they're not particularly thought-provoking, but Alanis has herself produced such gems as "Thank U," which seems to be a random roll-call of words with "thank you" before it, and the entire Jagged Little Pill album. Sure, I owned that album, but I was 11 and I also thought Anne Rice would form a sentence at the time, so. Beyond being somewhat hypocritical, it suggests to me the problem isn't that the lyrics aren't good -- in fact, given their genre-appropriate nature, I would suggest they're far better than some of Alanis' own offerings -- but that they're indicative of a certain, oh, "urban" set. I mean, at an immediately visual level, the whole video is a bunch of white people mocking a hip-hop track, dolled up in "urban" costume. Throw in there that everyone also manages to look stereotypically white trash, and we begin treading some very treacherous socioeconomic, in additional to racial and sexual territory.

I don't want to get into that too much because I have neither the time nor desire to do a close reading of the video, but those are some of my immediate reactions. The video, over all, is superior and smug, and implies a high-brow/low-brow divide along certain generic and social grids that I think it too blithely pretends don't exist. Not that a parody has to be a careful deconstruction of whatever, but it should have some level of self-awareness. I feel like Alanis is too busy asking us to tell her how clever she is to examine some of glaringly problematic implications of her video, which is not in fact at all clever nor in itself interesting.

In conclusion: shut up Alanis."

Posted by My Friend's Analysis | April 12, 2007 7:17 PM
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sorry, but i think your friend is just kind of dumb.
alanis is making fun of herself and fergie at the same time. the overwrought vocals that are her trademark seem just as ridiculous here as the "lumps" lyrics. i think your friend just hated her already, and couldn't get past that to "analyze".
i applaud alanis at a great april fool's joke, and shame on everyone who can't take one.

Posted by na na na | April 12, 2007 11:47 PM
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I think she's making fun of everyone, including her self and hell, I admit it - I'm a fan of both versions. Then again, I'm a gay homosexual and my music collection matches my orientation.

Also - Adrian makes me proud to be homo. Work it gurrrrrrl.

Posted by Roscha | April 13, 2007 8:21 AM

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