I'm not saying she is an unattractive woman. Frankly I find her music so vacant that I never bothered to look at her much. But really, in theater, you can make anybody look like anything. If a person fantasizes about that, they may have something else going on.

Lots of women have nice legs. When you put the woman in a stripper outfit and then shoot a camera angle up towards her crotch, that does highlight the legs.

backed her up.

ETA: Which says to me it was good art -- everyone saw something different.

I'm just putting my POV out there.

It's just like criticisms of the president. If someone says he's a damned socialist, I tune him out. If someone's complaining because he isn't a socialist, now I'm ready to listen.

to sell the performer. This is the only explanation for the current crop of pop stars.

Video killed the radio star, now competing with porn is running the video star ragged.

Having a stage presence and notoriety that goes beyond the art itself is nothing new. Niccolò Paganini mixed talent with a larger than life personality. And there's always going to be a bias towards physical beauty. Humans are simple creatures and given the choice between two performers of equal talent, we'll obsess over the prettier one. We're simple and predictable that way.

Why should this bother me, this fake and broken culture? Don't like it, don't watch it, right? Smokers tried this line on me and it fails for the same reason. It's omnipresent, omnipervasive, and like running the smoker's gauntlet outside the lobby, you still reek of it in passing. I'm choking on second-hand culture and it's killing me.

The current bunch that has to run vocals through all kinds of filters, effects, and enhancers...just fucking can't carry a tune. If they weren't shakin' booty or showing cleavage, noone would pay attention. Hey, I don't mind if they make millions off gullible saps, just don't include me.

sex has been used for a long long time to sell singers, actors, etc

the definition of what is sexy is the only thing that has changed

in the past, an ankle was considered risque where today it takes a nipple slip to make the news

I'll go to a strip joint.
I want to hear the nice voice of someone who knows how to use it. Brittany, et al, just make assorted shrieks and moans run through filters and effects...that doesn't take any talent. And if they had any vocal talent, they wouldn't need to strip to hold the audience's attention. Just my opinion.

that's the first color picture of him i've seen.

It may not be the type of thing you want children to see, but what responsible parent still lets their child watch the halftime show after Nipplegate? There was nothing pornographic about the performance at all, and the exposiveness of the outfits is severely being overplayed. No one complains about cheerleaders or swimmers wearing outfits that are even more revealing. Beyonce's also certainly not the first dancer on national television with sexually suggestive dance moves. I prefer rock music, but this is one of the best halftime shows in recent memory, and The Who had one of the worst (it would have been 100 times better if Roger Daltrey and his barely existent vocal cords did not show up). Beyonce is a great singer and great dancer and she performed well in a well-choreographed show, one that probably didn't include children as the target audience. If people are outraged about children seeing this, then keep the children away from the television, or change the channel during halftime.

I do remember a time when female singers could actually just sing,

everything is over the top now, unfortunately.

to real locally owned restaurants (for the most parts) and his enthusiasm was infectious.

His own cooking efforts have left me a little more cold.

Bryant

Those are the kinds of things you could guess about given his stage persona but man. I wish Bill Hicks were still around to give us a rant.

It was the first time I'd heard Beyonce's music. She did a beautiful rendition of Etta Jame's "At Last" during the 2009 Inaugural. And I'm told she did a great rendition of the "Star Spangled Banner" in this Inauguration, but I don't seek versions of that song no matter how strong the recommendations.

To the point of this OP, however, her body did nothing special for me. I didn't see her as pornographic, of that I'm certain. Oh, she's beautiful, no doubt, but her beauty was not enough for me to desire to stay with the music, which I didn't particularly care for. Maybe another night it might be different -- my tastes are not etched in stone -- but yesterday evening just wasn't the moment for her and I.

Or the same outfit, as long as the moves weren't so lurid?

It's a Super Bowl halftime show. There have been exactly 0 good ones. There have been -10 aesthetically pleasing ones - yes, they're so bad they've pushed the number negative.

It's something the media does because the media thinks it's important. It's something that everyone else either puts up with, fast-forwards through, or uses as an opportunity to refresh their dip and beverage.

It has as much power as we chose to give it. So don't give it power.

It's about the aesthetics. Hell, even if nobody was on stage there's still the awful music we'd be hearing.

Imelda May does some good stuff.

As I said, there have been exactly zero halftime shows that would satisfy you. It's a shitty environment for putting on a show. And consider that exactly none of your examples are of halftime shows.

It's about a 30 minute window one night a year. You're claiming you need to become a hermit to avoid it. Why the hell are you giving it so much power over your life?

I cannot get over the number of people posting pages and pages about their OPINION on Beyonce. Really? lol! Ridiculous, too, how they get into arguments with others who comment.

People calling it porn, which it wasn't. Please.

Have any of them ever BEEN to the ballet? lol! You think Beyonce was underdressed? Ha!

To each his own. We still have a choice in this country don't we?

But I do try to socialize instead of being a hermit. And these are the places people socialize. So when people say "Hey, let's go out to x," I can either shut up and go along or stay at my house like a hermit.

Some friends are more into the idea of staying in with homecooked food and good music. Those nights I enjoy more.

Anyway, I was starting from the super bowel and moving into a broader critique of pop culture. As KMFDM said, We fear that pop culture Is the only kind of culture we're ever gonna have.

I don't need to use one, as it seldom gets turned on anyway.

I fully understand the point of the OP and agree with the statement. That said, I noted no such dance routine on Downton Abbey last night when we watched it. Must have missed the Super Whatever it was.

it's a slippery slope from the fox trot to pole dancing

wise assessment of the issue.

which I thought were well put and pretty interesting.

I don't think your comment has anything to do with what the OP penned.

You and the OP were far more comfortable with the 1950's.

Too bad. Guess what... This is a new century and all that.

Myself, I think we can blame it all on global warming.

Here's a boring solution: We have a slew of really talented HS bands in this country and I think they deserve the spotlight much more than already super rich ladies.

Time to back off from the individual entertainer thing. IMO anyway.

nt and even younger girls in tiaras, in front of billions of tv eyes every day, doing moves designed, at least at one time, to get hydraulic responses in close physical proximity to certain gender specific aspects of human anatomy . . . while others come here and bitch, self importantly, about the Sandy Hook children seeking & sharing some modicum of human healing in the broken glare of a Super venue.

Is any of that Beyonce's fault? No. She should not be slut shamed, but that doesn't mean that we can't/must NOT talk honestly about variations in what behaviors mean, especially when those behaviors claim somekind of right to the biggest stages of all.

I do get angry when I feel sex is being used in a manipulative fashion. Happy, enthusiastic fucking is a beautiful thing and the more the merrier. Take pictures if you want. Human sexuality is a beautiful thing and should be celebrated.

But to use it as a cheap ploy to sell shit and transparently manipulate the audience is obscenity.

It's a mischaracterization of my point to say I want a return to sexual repression. That's the last thing I want. But if I haven't made my point clear sufficiently with all these posts, there's nothing else doing.

I'm not a prude either, but I am concerned about how well behaviors work for their intended purposes. It's difficult to express that thought around here and elsewhere, without getting accused of slut-shaming.

I'm a Liberal, so reservations about natural, "victim-less", behaviors don't come to me easily, but these are points I can't allow myself to deny.

Not all sexy behavior is slutty, nor is all of it innocent vitality; what people, men and women, need in order to free themselves is to be able to differentiate which is which in given situations. Instead, it appears that we are getting somekind of blanket assumption that anything other than praising liberated women, no matter how sexy they are behaving, is slut shaming.

I think that's an "emo prog" (emotional progressive) assumption and I understand its theoretical value in the processes of "liberation", but I simply have personal differences with the assumptions that all of us can just simply indulge whatever our emotional impulses are safely and with the assumption that "freedom" entitles us to blame others for their vulnerabilities to our behaviors. People, both women and men, get in over their heads and the results of that are not just zeroed out whenever someone decides that something went too far.

Sorry, if I didn't make this clear earlier. I've been encountering that "slut shaming" accusation here and elsewhere and it's acquiring a certain amount of social/political pressure and I don't think it's going to be all that helpful to most people to make the assumptions attached to that accusation. Some sexy behavior is innocent, some isn't. In either case, innocent or not, rape is NOT justified. Rape IS rape. I'm am not interested in shaming anyone. I am not about calling anyone a slut. Maybe some people are doing that. Maybe some are slut shaming more or less in error, or from more vindictive motives. That stuff isn't helpful either. However, none of that should stop us from exploring the truth honestly and it is a truth about freedom that it isn't free. The price of freedom is responsibility, responsibility for the reasonable consequences of one's actions to one's self and to others. If one doesn't pay that price, responsibility, one is not free, so women have a responsibility to be aware of what they are communicating, especially if it can be misunderstood. If we don't accept our responsibilities for power, we will not only not succeed in freeing ourselves, and hence others, we will find ourselves even more deeply enslaved to the most recent versions of the same old oppressors in ourselves and in others.

Didn't see it, I can imagine what it would be like. Fit boy toy, shaved and waxed, strutting his stuff in undies? More obscenity. Acceptable if selling a workout routine or porn but cheapened and degraded when used for unrelated commerce.

She was performing.

All performers sell their image. That's what she's putting out on stage. And that same image, carefully constructed, is used to sell related products. Does she have a clothing or fragrance line yet? That's common.

Advertisers use music to sell shit that isn't music. They use mountain scenery to sell shit that isn't a mountain. They use humor to sell shit that isn't funny.

Your argument comes down to "I don't like THING-X being used to sell PRODUCT-Y; therefore the use of THING-X to sell PRODUCT-Y is degrading." That's an fallacious argument from aesthetics.


It may or may not be degrading, but your dislike of it is irrelevant.

While K.D. Lang is a multi-millionaire

I agree with the unnecessary overkill of porning everything in entertainment. I love my porn as well (not as much as I used to; today's porn is more of the outrageous rather than the storyline), but there's no need to go all balls out with porn on everything. It makes no sense.

It's been 40 minutes, time for Sookie to get her tits out. But wait, equal time here. Lafayette sex scene coming up. None of it is organic to the story at this point, it's just formula.

Game of Thrones actually has an hbo vp of sex telling them where they can stick in more naked women. Not making it up.

I've got the power.

But I doubt anyone with access to the net is unaware of these shows.

True Blood lost the story thread in season 3 and fell to pieces with 4. Sad. First two seasons were good in a trashy, guilty pleasure sort of way. Last I heard, it's pretty much self-parody.

I don't watch television, don't have cable or satellite, and DU is the only general discussion site I hang out on. I never look at "Entertainment" news, I don't know what's on HBO, and I'm not sure who Beyonce or Katy Perry are.

It's actually kind of interesting. Typical projection where people think of God as being just like themselves. The Authority is a Theocracy with Church and State combined. They derive their authority from the claim that they are following the will of Lilith who they claim was a vampire and who was created in God's image who was also a vampire. Humans according to their religion were put here as food and that's all. Much like the way religious people consider animals to be here for us to use as we see fit so there is no guilt as you string up a pig and cut it's throat to bleed it out before slicing it up into yummy ribs for the BBQ.

Add to that the fact that The Authority is trying to control a population of what is literally a bunch of blood thirsty killers so it's tactics match that brutality. Vampires fear The Authority as it has the power of life and death over anything they consider to be an offense.

BTW: The main writer of the show said he modelled "The Guardian" after the nightmare idea of Rick Santorum as President.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/18/rick-santorum-true-blood-vampire_n_1605347.html

They're really diverging from the books which is good in a way since the books lost their way. I stopped reading because the writer had no idea where she was going.

Lafayette died in the first book, it was a surprise for him to still be alive in the show. Jason was given far more character development and became more of a person. Tara was a white nobody in the books. So making her go lesbian wasn't out of character from the books but seemed more like a stunt on the show. It wasn't anything that was foreshadowed or a part of the character we saw and so seemed less like a progression and more like a ratings stunt.

That is a funny sort of balancing act. Of course they're trying to come up with drama that's interesting and keeping you watching but there's a difference between problems and developments that feel natural for the show and stuff that feels imposed for a ratings stunt. That's the problem with writing by committee.

Most shows go through a slump period. Same with books these days since they're always a series. When you are introduced to the characters they are brand new and you learn of them and their situation. Creators at this point are loathe to mess with success so you end up with a kind of aimlessness where they try to simulate drama without changing anything. They just keep stringing things along until cancelation.

They keep the audience on the edge of their seat until the next episode or season.

Lafayette is one of the coolest characters on TV. He was introduced as a drug dealer and then it was revealed the only reason he was doing it was to give his mom the best care available. He is a student of many sources of wisdom from all cultures and quotes from everything from the Bible to Inuit. He is comfortable with being gay and respected by the other characters. The show also shows that the Deep South is NOT just a bunch of racists. As a matter of fact, those types are seen as a bunch of backward, ignorant losers who are becoming a rarity.

I am outraged at the mischaracterization of sugar, lard, and frying in the OP. They are honoured, valuable parts of many cuisines.

I am, however, completely supportive of the labelling of Guy Fiero as loud, crass, brash, and self-absorbed. The man's a tool.

As I said, they're not so bad in and of themselves but, in the hands of an abuser like Guy, they're used to pander to and bludgeon our tastebuds by turn. That's the comparison I'm going for with sex. Is sex great? Of course it is. Can a sexy song be good? Oh, hell, yeah. You can have a sultry jazz singer who smokes up the joint with a flutter of her eyelashes, you can have an amazing burlesque striptease or you can have someone who's billed as a singer slapping on the makeup and putting on the stripper outfit to try to distract from her lack of ability.

Most of these latter criticisms aren't aimed at Beyonce so much as the younger crew of pop tarts, your Keshas and Perries, Pussycat Dolls, etc. At least acts like Rock Bitch were more up front about their intentions. They were a sexually-liberated, evangelical pagan troupe that mixed rock with live sex acts on stage. A bit hardcore for my taste but, given that no major label would sign them, you at least know they're doing what they're doing because they want to, not because some AR weasel had it focus-grouped.

In a way, it's also like comedy. Some of my favorite comedians can be vulgar but it takes even more skill to do a clean act. Clean and bad is easy, we see it all the time. Clean and funny? Oh, that's tough. A bad comedian will retreat into vulgarity but not find anything worth talking about there. And therefore any shock or impact he might have is ruined by overdoing it.

Putting sex in everything is like beer-battering and deep-frying everything and tossing bacon on it. Yeah, we all love fried, we all love bacon, but do you have to wrap that twinkie in bacon and fry it up for breakfast? For christ's sake, man!

The Short-Cut Cook is the hopeless man's best way to get started in adult domestic life. If you can feed yourself and others well and sensibly, you have a chance to live well.

Guy Fiero doesn't bother me; I think he has genuine affection for his subjects and they appreciate it. Not much in the way of useful learning though. Give me Jacques and his daughter on PBS anytime.

nt

and I could not agree more.