Accountability in Music • Page 387

well fuck Young Thug is transphobic

 

Nnnnnoooooo, damnit

 

wtfffff

 

It’s gone

 

Gross

 

does he say some transphobic shit and immediately half undercut? Yikes regardless

 

The 1975 name-drops Pinegrove in their new song. Gross but not surprising.

 

it .... is not a positive name drop lol

 

Personally I don’t think it should’ve been put in at all? But if people disagree then that’s fine obviously.

 

it also might make a few people who don’t know anything regarding evan look into it.

 

Sure. I just don’t personally feel comfortable with him promoting them on his Insta story a few weeks ago then referring to what he did as “weird stuff” but like I said, if people disagree that’s fine. I just don’t think it was necessary.

 

I didn’t realize he was promoting them, if so, that is kind of a weird look.

 

I think he posted a song of theirs on his story along with a brand new one. Pretty sure it was discussed here because I don’t follow him.

 

Referring to sexual assault allegations as 'weird stuff', regardless of his stance on the band, is pretty damn distasteful, though.

 

A character in the narrative of the song referred to it as “weird stuff”. Not commenting on the morality of mentioning the band, but I think when discussing it it’s a notable distinction.

 

This is extremely disappointing.

 

Correct me if I’m wrong, but the allegations were never called sexual assault by the alleged survivor, right?

 

Yeah I was always under the impression that the situation was not "sexual assault"

 

The video also features the “moon man” meme at the end, which is pretty explicitly tied to white supremacist and alt-right groups online.

Moon Man

 

I misspoke, it was actually sexual coercion. Goes beyond 'weird stuff' though.

 

Not only this, but in the narrative of the song I read it as the "weird stuff" being a reference to everything that happened with that band and the online "stuff" surrounding how it came out and all that came next not a reference specifically to the act.

 

the video has several memes co-opted by the alt-right in it, I am guessing it is intentional, but I'm not sure why.

 

From the press release:

For the official video, the band once again teamed up with director Ben Ditto and co-director / lead artist Jon Emmony, who worked together on their 2019 video “People.” A dystopian narrative about narcissism, isolation, incel culture and the divisions created by social media, the video questions if there is space for meaningful connections within technology.

“It was truly inspiring to work with The 1975 on this project, combining digital craft with true emotion and a subversive and multilayered narrative,” says Ditto. “Matty and I have a shared fascination with the underbelly of Internet culture and how that impacts modern life, and we looked to address this from several directions and created an engaging and beautiful piece of filmmaking to contain these messages and their performance in a revolutionary way.”

In the short film, lead singer Matty Healy visits Mindshower, a digital detox center, where he encounters a variety of characters – all taken from reddit / 4chan meme subculture – and his band mates. Working with artist Jon Emmony, Mimic Productions recreated The 1975 as digital humans, clad in simulated digital costumes. Detailed 3-D scans – includingscans of all mouth movements – were used to create avatars for each member. Body and facial motion capture were utilized to record their performance.

 

Regardless of intent: a band full of white people filling a music video with memes with racist connotations without even interrogating them is a remarkably stupid decision at best. A band full of cis men releasing a song with a lyric referring to a different band’s sexual coercion accusations as “weird stuff” is remarkably ill-conceived. Matty says and does such stupid things so frequently that I don’t really have the patience for them anymore.