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- shadowpuppetmaster - May 06 2008 | video
holy fucking shizz.
one of the most incendiary music videos i've ever seen.
unless i missed some sort of immanent critique or satire going on (which i kind of doubt), this is basically a big name french group giving a big "fuck you in the eye" to French life, and in the name of the youth of the banlieu.
certainly, the comparison to Clockwork Orange mentioned several times by French and American people in the comments section is warranted.
i'm interested in people's opinions of this. did you like it? what did you think of the portrayal of violence?
is this akin to riot porn, albeit without the insidious "progressive agenda" that is used to legitimate the fetishism of it?
or is this a valid political message?Quoted: Official clip of Justice : Stress©2008 Justice - Ed Banger Records - Kourtrajmé
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so i found nealist throwing his two cents around on this on Chifg forumz, and decided to quote it here without permission:
"^^^Yeah, I'm a little worried about the possible glorification of the recent surge in gang activity in Paris over the last few years (the phenomenon I think this video is referencing). Especially during public events (like the recent celebration of May Day or the recent wave of mass student protests in Paris), disenfranchised youth will come into the city and commit small acts of violence and theft against random people such as the ones seen in this video. Given the amount of ethnic tensions already buzzing in this city, the gangs make it more difficult for workers' causes to be recognized (particularly when they involve issues of ethnicity, such as the case of the sans papiers, the people without papers). They also provide more fodder for conservatives in the national government. The presentation of such youth in the video, while seemingly ambivalent (is the Justice cross on their backs ironic? Or is the duo giving their seal of approval?) still presents them without pointing to the socio-political backdrop of their emergence. That backdrop is made up of things like the increasing marginalization of immigrant and minority ethnic groups to the banlieues, particularly those of the North, due to increasing costs of living and gentrification. It's the absence of this backdrop that worries me."
fo-givaness.....pullease.
fo-givaness granted
I was just about to do that myself. Anyways, reading that again, it may be that your average french viewer will know exactly what's going on with this video. That is, maybe they will see this and think "Ah! The entire pretense for this phenomenon is X, Y, and Z!" But I sort of doubt it because it can be so easily dismissed with the lack of critical presentation (i.e., with the lack of politicization). Anyways, this video is just a glorification of gang violence. I don't think that it is too far from G-rap in the way it treats violence, the way it depicts women, and in the way that transgression is left at an unproblematized level of presentation. The only thing that might be worth positively commenting on is the fact that, while youth gangs from the balieues tend to steal when they come into the city, here private property is pretty much destroyed as soon as it's obtained. But then again, the early treatment of the woman on the bench would then seem to suggest that women are private property, And then there's the fact that the class status of many (if not all) of the 'victims' in the video is left unclarified.
video sucks for all the reasons stated. i'm not really inclined to say much more about it, except i wish i hadn't seen it and i wish i didn't have to hear about these mediocre hack musicians anymore.
Definitely some aspects of G-rap in there but really with a different twist I think. Accumulation/aggrandizement vs. self-destruction. The boom mike guy is set on fire and the camera is bashed in, I am not quite sure that g-rap really goes that route. I am no g-rap expert but I think there are both similarities and differences here. But I will have to agree: at worst a political line of death blowing itself apart, at most micro-fascist gang violence poorly glorified as a form of resistance (with irony?):
On an anecdotal note: DJ'ing the pink party at the Campbell club this year this song was requested. I played it...fucking killed the dance floor. I will never make that mistake again.