#i mean THEY ALREADY ARE HEAVILY CRITIQUING THE GOVERNMENT AND POLICE FORCE HERE

[thewhizzyhead]

heyo this is your resident rambler bringing you updates from sapphic filipino twitter: darlentina has been featured on the "for sapphics" twitter account twice and both posts are racking up a lot of views and likes. it's been a week filled with a rollercoaster of darlentina content and we're already breaching the international sapphic stage that is the "for sapphics" twitter account. even more clips and shitpost edits outside of that are amassing hundreds of thousands of views. everyone, this is our pinoy queerbaiting era ala supercorp except that through the power of sheer gay spite, we are very rapidly pushing the production crew to a corner in the hopes that international queer pressure will make them drop the dude cop love interest in favor of what could be one of the most revolutionary twists in philippine mainstream media: making darna and valentina, canonical archenemies, the main romantic pairing and partners in crime in fighting against very thinly-veiled allegories to philippine political corruption

[goodbyenothanks-blog]

Irony, Shostakovich, and You: A Primer

The best way to hold onto something is to pay no attention to it. The things you love too much perish. You have to treat everything with irony, especially the things you hold dear. There's more of a chance then that they'll survive.

- Dmitri Shostakovich

Hello, kind internet traveler. I’m Ed, a.k.a. D.J. Ed, a.k.a. D.J. Tullius, a.k.a. that guy who’s always in way over his head. Today, I will, in fact, wade into a topic into which I basically have no expertise or clout.

Well, that’s partially a lie. I’m an ironic dude. Annoyingly so. Maybe you know someone who says everything with a tinge (in my case, a slathering) of sarcasm, who does sub-optimal things for the sake of having things sub-optimally, and who engages in old fads or trends just because they’re overdone or old. Look, here’s a few pictures of me dabbing!!! It’s so funny that I dabbed because dabbing is overdone and well beyond the cultural zeitgeist!!! Wow!!!

Dabbing at a photo shoot

Dabbing at Amalfi, Italy

Literally dabbing during a graded assignment

Sidebar: Irony

Humor me for a moment. Sometimes (clearly, when I am using my time to its FULLEST) I wonder about the essence of irony, and a few questions always pop into my head. First, I’ll need to define a term: nth-order irony. Performing an ironic act is itself first-order irony. Performing an ironic act ironically (that is to say, that you are sardonically performing an already ironic act for the irony of doing something ironic) is therefore second-order irony. Similar formulae follow for all theoretical n-order ironies. The following questions perplex me:

Can One Classify Their Own Irony?

Is it possible for someone to self-describe their own irony? This is a massive problem for me to solve. Who’s to say what you perceive as a deft and cutting third-order ironic statement on the state of detergent consumption isn’t perceived by someone else as a mere, lowly first-order ironic statement? I think my dabs are of a second-order: I’m dabbing to ironically emulate those who dab ironically. However, to a passerby, or to a casual viewer, would they pick up on my deeper meaning, or would they view me as simply a run-of-the mill dabber?

Is Irony Definitively Classifiable? 

And for that matter, does this difference in perspective even matter? Is it even possible to pin something as first, second, or third order ironic from an empirical standpoint? One person at this hypothetical IRONY INSTITUTE OF TOMORROW might see something as one classification, while another sagacious scientist states that she sees second order sarcasm, and then you quickly hypothesize that irony could perhaps live in a state of multiple simultaneous orders, or maybe that much like Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, if one knows the ironic message, one cannot know the layer or irony; if someone explicitly measures out their level of irony, then they have lost the true intent of their sardonic act.

How Deep Does Irony Go?

I’m convinced that there is an upper limit to n. There is honestly no way for someone, in my eyes, to exceed second-order irony. Second order irony, in my humble (??) opinion, is not particularly difficult to achieve, but at least in this writer’s (writer used loosely here) perspective, one would have to be reaching really hard to be ironic about ironically doing something ironically. Feel free to prove me wrong, though.

Can One Be Too Ironic?

Yeah, probably. This whole section about irony is certainly too ironic, and let us never forget this classic and DEEPLY unsettling second-order (at least I’m really really REALLY hoping it’s ironic irony) act over orange-brown meme juice.

Does Any of This Matter At All?

No.

Essentially, the previous section of the post. Oops. Praise be, Mahler Hammer. Praise be. (shoebox office shared this image with me don’t sue me)

And now that you’ve stopped reading, I can finally talk about what I have no business talking about. The man, the myth, the legend: Mitya. Or, as he’s better (but less adorably) known, Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich. Shostakovich is my favorite composer of classical music, and I feel like that’s in part because Shostakovich, too, was a pretty sarcastic fellow. But, he had many more reasons to be sarcastic than I. Too many moments in his life can only be reflected on with either profound depression or an aloof cynicism, and our boy Mitya chose both avenues at whim.

Imagine the following scenario: you’re a musician at the height of your fame. Nearly everybody loves you, and every new work you put out is heavily anticipated and intensely critiqued. Unfortunately, one person in particular really doesn’t care for your work, and he’s the despotic leader of your nation, who’s really stinkin’ good at having people killed. Next thing you know, his propaganda machine lays out a STINKPIECE about your music, and police officers are knocking at your door. You are forced to meet with one officer, and after some intense questioning you are tasked to return after the weekend. You, naturally, assume the worst and realize that the gulag and certain death in the lonely bitter Siberian wastes awaits you, knowing that if you try to flee, your entire family will suffer for your greed. You gravely return to the police station, asking for the officer that will surely arrest you for Crimes Against the State. Who? the unknown man in the station quickly replies. Oh, that dude? Haha, he got arrested for Crimes Against the State. All his appointments have been cleared, my man. Have a swell day.

haha.

This is just one episode in the Chronicles of Shostakovich, a man who lived daily with a fear of expressing himself too far outside the Soviet norms, while also being expected to provide the USSR with the world’s best musical compositions. This clashing duality, I think, fueled his (at times) ironic musical disposition.

Again, this isn’t to say that all of Shostakovich isn’t genuine or that his music as a whole is ironic, far from it. Shostakovich, as well as any other (in my opinion, better than any other) composer, can connote pure elation, despair, trepidation, anger, or any other feeling from the Human Emotional Palette. I think, however, because of his unique life-story and exemplary composing acumen, Shostakovich is extremely talented at displaying irony and sarcasm in music. I will now detail but a small handful of Shostakovich’s Ironies In Action:

Fifth Symphony: Finale

This one’s tricky, and a little bit of a reach, but hear me out on this one. I love the finale to this symphony. It’s one of my favorite symphonic finales. I particularly love the ending, the “finale” of the finale, for its subversion of what one expects from a finale. I think Gerard Schwarz explains what I mean by this better than I could, and he’s also right about Bernstein taking the ending way too fast! (PS: The blog post from which I got this mp3 is extremely interesting, informative, well worth a read, and also agrees with and expands upon Schwarz’s conclusion). The essential argument is that the banality and repetition of the A’s subverts the feeling of a triumphant ending. Shostakovich is intentionally overstating the triumph sarcastically, as if critiquing the apology he was forced to give on behalf of his own music (see incident above) and challenging the idea that perhaps his “practical, creative reply to just criticism” was a reply to something that Shostakovich himself perceived as “unjust.” (This also means that Bernstein’s doubled tempo removes Shostakovich’s musical sarcasm, yet another reason to just follow the darn tempo markings Dmitry wrote, Lenny!!!)

Sixth Symphony: Second and Third Movements

Luckily, these two are a bit more obviously ironic. This time I will trust in the word of the Mambo Master himself, but to summarize this video, Shostakovich is playing with two different ideas. His first movement is a spiritual “continuation” of Tchaikovsky’s 6th Symphony (which is also in B minor), as Shostakovich begins his symphony with a long, slow, heart-wrenching movement, just as Tchaikovsky ended his Sixth. Bernstein calls this first movement a “confessional,” and an entry in Shostakovich’s “private diary.” What does that make the other two movements? Bernstein claims (and I find no difficulty agreeing with him) that these two final movements are musical hypocrisy in action. They, on a surface level, explore light dances and fun times (as in the second movement) and a riveting circus (as in the third). That these two movements appear after the “confessional” of Shostakovich signals that these movements represent the facade of Russian society in 1939 (the year that Germany invaded Poland). The whimsical carefree world of dancing and of carnivals is far from what any part of the world was experiencing in 1939, and Shostakovich yet again is using his music to criticize both his own government and the musical expectations thrust upon him.

Anti-Formalist Rayok

I’ll conclude this brief introduction into the wide world of Shostakovich’s sarcasm and irony with a work that makes absolutely no pretense to be subtle or discreet. The Anti-Formalist Rayok was a work that Shostakovich wrote in secret and kept largely hidden, only performing it for trusted friends. The piece itself is an attack on the Zhdanov Doctrine and the idea of “anti-formalism.” In Soviet Russia, art was not to be made for the sake of making art, rather, it had to have some use or purpose in society at large. In the Anti-Formalist Rayok, Shostakovich, obviously affected by this enforced shift away from formalism, pokes fun at Zhdanov and other anti-formalists, and even directly quotes Zhdanov in some of his most outrageous and dangerous claims about formalist music. The music itself is light, vivacious, and fun, but the text and the connotations of the text certainly are not.

Santakovich.

Thanks for joining me on this short excursion through the irony and sarcasm of my all-time favorite composer. I never meant for this to be truly authoritative or meticulously fact-checked, so if you find a mistake, have a problem with something I said, or have more information about a particular topic, please PLEASE let me know. I’ll be excited to hear from you, and to learn more about my boy, Mitya. Also, before anyone asks, yeah, I did use Wikipedia to learn more about Zhdanov, Socialist realism, and the Anti-Formalist Rayok. I’ll reiterate that I am absolutely no expert in this field, and I wrote this for fun, and to introduce a Shostakovich outsider to the large, confusing, but amazing world of Soviet Harry Potter. To my knowledge, everything that I say is factual, and I listed my sources (check the underlined words!!) whenever I used them.

Hey, if you want to see me be out of my depth on a weekly basis, check out my radio show, The ƒ-hole, which airs every Friday at 10 AM on WMUC FM! This Friday, I’ll talk about Love (Love Love) in classical music, which is mostly an excuse to play Mahler’s Adagietto. I hope you tune in!

[kaseybadgley-blog]

Project 5

For my final project, I wanted to choose a social awareness campaign that not only is close to my life personally, but is close to a lot of people’s lives in the northeastern Ohio region. The opioid epidemic has been all encompassing in the United States, claiming more lives annually than murders and car accidents, but the heart of it is right here in the midwest and appalachia regions, particularly in Ohio and West Virginia. I think the way these campaigns are usually treated isn’t explicitly helpful for their target audience, and they go about displaying their point in a very misinformed and ill-thought out way conceptually. To further my point, I’ve specifically chosen the Know the Risks (Rxs) campaign that Cuyahoga county has launched recently as a PSA and outreach to know the risks of prescription opioids and heroin use. I think it embodies the typical tactics that are used to raise awareness for the opioid epidemic/heroin crisis.

One of the main reasons I think that most campaigns that are supposed to be informative and raise awareness about the opioid epidemic/heroin are ineffective is because they’re heavily centered in shame rather than compassion. The design and marketing reflects this greatly. We’ve seen this exemplified in the release of pictures of overdose victims pre-naloxone, in the way the media has used substance abuse to be divisive, or in how they’ve exploited overdose victims as a way to rocket police into martyrdom. The videography, design work, and sloganeering use shame governance and scare tactics rather than genuinely educational information to deter people from using drugs. I personally think weaponizing compassion and giving honest information and advertising resources that can help addicts is much more helpful.

Know the Risks (Rxs) is a multi-platform advertising campaign to raise awareness to the dangers of taking prescription opioids and how they can lead to heroin addiction. Joe Frolik, former aide to Cuyahoga County prosecutor Timothy J. Ginty, brought forward the idea to launch a campaign raising awareness to the dangers of prescription opioids as the wreak havoc on the area, which lead to the formation of the Opioid Marketing Taskforce. This task force included insight from the Attorney's Office of Northern Ohio spokesman, the communications specialist for the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office, and the director of system communications for MetroHealth. This task force, coupled with help from local advertising agencies Doner and Global Prairie, designed a complete campaign including informational videos, billboards, phone banks, and half-hour tv specials.

Designs in the Know the Risks (Rxs) campaign are mostly targeted to people who already use or young impressionable kids or teenagers who might use. They are characterized by the use of dark and ominous colors with a bright accent like red or orange, dramatic depictions of tools of use like syringes, spoons, pills, and rubber tubing, and imagery that elude to death like slumped over bodies, skulls and crossbones, and toe tags. This is very ineffective and useless because while the first thing that’s taught in programs that are tailor-made for heroin and opioid detox is that “not changing means death”, susceptible and impressionable children are desensitized to imagery of slumped-over bodies, and people who have already formed habits typically know the consequences of using, especially the extremes. This type of design work seems to be most well-received by the non-using public, and we see how they receive it and how it’s weaponized in shameful ways on social media platforms and in the news. It harkens back to the same tactics that were utilized in the useless, and ever-failing War on Drugs era.

The first piece of advertising work I’m going to critique is a piece that I saw being used multi-purposefully as a graphic for facebook and twitter posts, and also as a billboard on a larger scale. This piece depicts a person in distress, trapped inside what appears to be an oversized pill bottle. The bottle has a red and black sticker on it that reads “May Cause Addiction” with a syringe icon. I definitely see what they were going for, the concept that using prescription painkillers can trap you in addictions clutches. I personally think that using the grim, sorrowful angle is overdone and ineffective. I think that this piece was technically executed well, but is just a typical solution that’s been done a million times. I don’t think it’s useful because it doesn’t inform the reader when the phone bank is open or when the TV news segment is on. It just sends the message that opioids cause addiction, which is already a fairly known and advertised piece of information. Variants of this base criticism I have for each piece I’m going to mention.

The next piece I’m going to critique is a very brief, sixteen second video PSA that Know your Risks (Rxs) released that featured a singular, generic looking painkiller pill that zooms into a formation of pills in the shape of a skull. The pills then transform into a digital illustration of a skull, and beneath it, the text reads “Before you take prescription pills, know the risks”. I have similar criticisms of this one, except I don’t think this one is as technically efficient as the other one. Cleveland.com claimed it was a lot of donated time and effort, so I won’t be as particular about the technical skill, it just looks like student work to me. I also have the same conceptual criticisms as I do about the previous work.

The final piece I’m going to critique is a video that was released by Know the Risks (Rxs) that is a little over a minute long and told the story of a young man who was seemingly happy and ended up dying from heroin that was laced with fentanyl. His addiction started with a prescription to painkillers. I think it’s important to tell the story of people who suffer from addiction that are seemingly happy, successful, and functioning because it doesn’t happen often enough. Addicts are usually demonized and presented as junkies who let heroin turn them into worse versions of themselves, so I really appreciate that this piece was able to relate to a large demographic that is usually ignored. I think that this piece’s design work and videography was well done, arguably the best technical design work in their entire campaign in my opinion. The only criticism I really have of this one is that the informational stills only contain very basic, well-known information about opioids, which seems to defeat the purpose of what the man in the video says the campaign is for. However, I really enjoyed this piece, the design work is less grim and it’s closer to the message I think needs to be sent on the epidemic.

Overall, I think the Know the Risks (Rxs) campaign was well-intended, but they seemed to have piggy-backed the design off of existing movements that aren’t necessarily super successful in relating to users. I will always believe that knowledge is power and communication is an important vehicle for that, but I don’t think their campaign was cohesive and that they missed the mark on targeting the primary audience for education. I think that more harm reduction information needs to be shared, more resources for people who have become addicted need to be listed, and that the design work should be more consistently skilled and high quality. I hope a movement like this emerges in the Ohio Valley and north eastern ohio region because there is definitely a large deficit for it.