For example – The photo attached to this post I found on Pinterest. It came with the following caption.

Distinguished sociologist Erving Goffman noted that women in photographs are often portrayed in compromising or submissive situations such as having the head turned upwards to expose the neck or in a contorted stances often with light self-touching. Such poses invite the gaze of the viewer and make the subject of the photograph seem vulnerable and exposed to sexualization.

I have been creating a board, The Wildebees Gaze. A catalogue of images I could quickly find that I found sexy. A caveat is in order. Undoubtedly the fact that Pinterest is public has affected what I have Pinned. I do seek approval. The images are therefor influenced partly by what I think the broader public and the people I care about would not frown upon. So it’s not wholly a personal or pure sexual preference. But I think that downside actually makes a wider point I will try to make (later) rather well.

One of the often criticisms one hears of male sexuality is that it objectifies women.

I stand guilty as charged. I find women endlessly beautiful, as do I several parts of their anatomy. Talk about not seeing the whole person and the personality!

What I find fascinating however, is that even in the female dominated world of Pinterest (apparently over 80% of US users are female), there are so few sexualised images of men on there. Actually I am incorrect. There are plenty of boards of hot sexy men, but they show men being broody, moodish, arrogant, and almost always clothed. When the men are naked, and cock their heads slightly a-la Goffman, invariably the boards are created by gay men.

Straight women are apparently turned on by these pictures. Why don’t women objectify men in a similar fashion? And is that a good thing?

On the other hand, there is allot of pictures of women on Pinterest, women looking gorgeous, dominant, submissive, wanton, reclining, straddling, naked. Even the racy ones have women more as the subject than men. And most of them have been created by women themselves. My bet straight women.

This brings me to something else I have noticed on social media sites. First on Flickr and now on sites like Instagram: Women objectifying themselves via sexy pictures. What does this say about the male and female gaze in Western countries?

No related posts.

I don’t mind profanity. I love Wat kyk Jy, Rich Bitch, and the kinky trip that is Beat Boy. But this track is darker, aggressive in the extreme, and it has a section at the end which is rehash of a Mike Tyson derogatory outburst, which unlike previous tracks offer no cool counter points: the tongue in cheeck irony and pop catchiness.

Ninja has made a video to explain themselves. Hilarious. In case you don’t get it, the Simunye bit is a joke. South Africa has huge issues with race. And white blokes don’t call black ones nigger. Not unless they are looking for kak.

Anyway, here is video that Kameraad Penzhorn forwarded to me. It’s in yer face. In a liberating kind of way. It’s by Azealia Banks. And it bangs.

And this new collaboration between Adam Tempsta and South Africa’s Spoek is pretty cathy too.

Take note Die Antwoord, In the shock, dark and play with creepy crawly category we have this – but the music is – you guessed it…

Lastly I include this vid. The music is not quite my cup of tea, but I like the Ladies’s style. And the video was shot in my hood, picturesque Hackney.

Related deployments:

1. I’m a Ninja – Die Antwoord

Round these trendy parts it’s the magazine that any thinking progressive person, with an interest in digital media, must have on their shelves. That way, everybody knows your both left, smart and cutting edge. I have bought some copies myself.

But them I read the blurb on the back page. It’s a good a summary of everything that’s wrong with Mute and its hangers on as you could hope to find IMHO:

In late 1994, back in the days of dial-up modems and Netscape Navigator 1.0, Mute magazine announced its timely arrival. Dedicated to an analysis of culture and politics ‘after the net’, Mute has consistently challenged the grandiose claims of the communications revolution, debunking its utopian rhetoric and offering more critical perspectives.

Fifteen years on, Mute Publishing and Autonomedia are delighted to announce the publication of Proud to be Flesh: A Mute Magazine Anthology of Cultural Politics after the Net. The anthology selects representative articles from the magazine’s hugely diverse content to reprise some of its recurring themes. This expansive collection charts the perilous journey from Web 1.0 to 2.0, contesting the democratisation this transition implied and laying bare our incorporeal expectations; it exposes the ways in which the logic of technology intersects with that of art and music and, in turn and inevitably, with the logic of business; it heralds the rise of neoliberalism and condemns the human cost; it amplifies the murmurs of dissent and revels in the first signs of collapse.

In other words, a bunch of middle-class, navel gazing, pessimistic Europeans that love nothing more than intellectual masturbation, and that has only a passing acquaintance with the real impact of digital media, especially on the unwashed masses and the developing world.

A better title would have been Proud to be a snob.

It’s safe to say that the readers of Mute frown on Facebook and even Twitter. And many of them will loudly proclaim that neither had any role in the Arab spring or in empowering individuals in general.

I’m all for a critical appraisal of digital tech and especially the role of laissez faire economics. The world is in crisis precisely because neo liberal politics. This week’s changes to Facebook has indeed set off a few alarm bells.

But the Mute set seem to be predisposed to be against anything as banal as the social media status update.

The odd thing is except for a brief period before 1998 this group has been down on the potential of digital media. The more social and wide spread its adoption became, the more the ‘champions’ of digital democracy hated and slated it.

No related posts.

For those of you unfamilar with South Africa, Umshini Wam is a song dating back from the struggle against apartheid, a favourite of the current president Jacob Zuma. Roughly translatable as bring me my machine gun.

The short features Yolandi even singing a rendition of Die Stem, the old anthem of South Africa.

Both Yolandi and Ninja turn out excellent performances.

Working with Harmony Korine is an excellent choice. Next I hope they work with David Lynch. Now there’s one director that can capture the weirdness of South Africa.

No related posts.

Anyway, here is DIE ANTWOORD:

Wat kyk Jy is Afrikaans and literally translates to – What are you looking at

More specifically, it’s the menacing words you hear when you walk into a bar in Parys (Free State, not Texas) and you fix your gaze on one of the patrons for too long. In other words, it’s the last words your hear before you hit the floor.

Wat Kyk Jy is also the name of a website founded by Zef Meester Grif, way back in 2000 (if I’m not mistaken). He is the original Ninja.

There you have it. Happy now?

For the meaning of Zef, go here.

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Are they authentic? And more specifically. Do they rip off other people’s work?

We are all familiar with the first set of anti-Antwoord complaints. That they were disparaging Afrikaner culture. That they were appropriating and exploiting coloured culture. Snot, I said. They were a wonderful fusion of the two.

So just this week South African writer Gus Silber Tweeted about the powerful pics of South African poor whites, taken between the first and second world war. He also Tweeted

@RoyBlumenthal Sign of the times! Seems SA’s Poor Whites have always fascinated sociologists & documentary photographers.

To which I replied.

@gussilber it’s part of what fascinates the overseas about Die Antwoord. It speaks to the possibility an authentic African whiteness.

Yes Gus agreed:

@wildebees True, & they’ve played on it very smartly, by working with the photographer Roger Ballen as well.

Roger Ballen’s pics – did he exploit poor whites?

But there’s a new worry about Die Antwoord. The other day a pêl from New York asked me whether Die Antwoord worked with photograper Roger Ballen. She was involved in a lively debate about this on the Africa is Country Blog (well worth a read).

Yes I told her. As far as I know he worked with them on the Wat pomp julle video and much besides. I had wrote so myself long before – just when they were blowing up – I had it from a source close to them.

So I was a bit surprised when my New York friend sent me this follow up comment to the Roger Ballen claims.

I live in Norway far away from SA. In present time Roger Ballen exhibit in Oslo. After his artist talk I asked him a few questions about his relationship to Die Antwoord. He answered:”Intersting question, because I got an E-mail yesterday from this rap group, where they say that they appreciate my work. I don`t know Die Antwoord. I have never talked to these people. I hear that they are going to earn millions because of inspiration from my photos.” He didn`t know how to react! On one hand it`s nice that someone likes your work, on the other hand it feels a bit dirty not to ask for permission.

The commentor continued:

“Now, I was a bit confused about this answer, so I asked Die Antwoord on the FB fan page. Are you working together with Roger Ballen or are you just inspired by his work? The answer from Die Antwoord: They deleted my post!”

This week I also saw The social network flick. And it set me thinking about ideas, truth and ownership.

Now if above is true – that’s not cool.

On the other hand. Which artist does not use other artists as inspiration? In this cut and paste culture, in digital media but also everywhere else, people have mixed and matched styles they liked and increasingly so.

The author of the comment pointed at another facinating article she allegedly referred the angry Ballen to:

From Weird Al Yankovic to Chromeo, parody is not a new device in pop music. But what makes Die Antwoord so interesting is their ability to blur the distinctions between what’s real and what’s actually satire. The tension here between aspects novelty and what’s contemporary becomes quite fertile as a mode of production.

As a metaphor, Die Antwoord embodies the post-modern attitude by attacking the notion of a static or fixed symbol. Wether in literature, film, art, music, product design, etc, etc, the product in question is never completely original. Instead, it is always built from those cultural forms that preceded it. While this notion was most famously illustrated by Roland Barthes in Death of the Author, it was made truly tangible to my generation by Nicolas Bourriaud in Post Production. In it, he states “with music derived from sampling, the sample no longer represents anything more than a salient point in a shifting cartography. It is caught in a chain, and it’s meaning depends in part on its position in this chain.”

Nod, nod, nod.

I have a little secret. A lot of the hardcore Die Antwoord fans are aware of this mind. Mr. Ballen has to fall into the back of queue when it comes to major influences and even diewery.

Check this video. The Matrix SA style by Ne0 SA.

It contains by my reckoning, lyricks and passages that form part of at least five Die Antwoord songs – (not all of which made it onto $0$ Like my new best friend).

It’s not as if there is no hat tips. Die Antwoord actually name checks Ne0 SA in the orginal tracks that were free to download (not sure if $O$ maintains these refenrences.) UPDATE: Grif informs me that Die Antwoord also hat tips them in the sleeve of $O$. See comments below.

The video is itself a mix of the original Matrix movies and a Justin Timberlake parody of the Matrix movies and strictly speaking itself illegal. It features Ne0′s incredibly odd and hilarious potty-mouthed dialog. This is the fountain of what Rustum Kozain calls Die Antwoord’s ability to kak-praat:

“The one thing that is certain is that Die Antwoord opens up the space of double-speak, characteristic especially of slave society and known, from my ‘coloured’ background, as ‘kak-praat’ or ‘gat-krap’. The latter especially points to mischievous lying, something that anthropologists don’t get: the informant cannot be trusted because you don’t know, can never know, whether the informant is talking the truth or whether they’re krapping gat (scratching hole/arse/behind). “

And here is some more Die Antwoord influences. Zef sketse was a number of shows put on in and around Pretoria from 2002 to 2004. Often in collaboration with and attended by an enthusiastic Watkykjy ( Die Antwoord’s spiritual home – or buitekammertjie ) – crowd.

So are they bad ass for doing this?

In The Social Network the genius that is Mark Zuckerberg ends up paying $60mil to three student entrepeneurs who he kept on a leash for a month – pretending he is building them a social network – while he built Facebook.

The issue here is not whether Zuckerburg was inspired by them to build Facebook. He clearly was. The devil with developing good web tools are always in the details. The idea is one thing, the execution is another.

For me it’s obvious that Zuckerburg had the particular talent and understanding of user behaviour to build Facebook in the way he did to make it a global powerhouse. He did not need them. They needed him.

But he should have told them from the beginning that he was going to do it himself. Not nice Mark. Sies Ninja!?

So the borrowing with Ballen and Ne0 does not diminish the genius and drive of the creative cultural mash up that is Die Antwoord. Another two comments on The Africa is a Country blog reads:

Siener: last night I spent some time doing exactly that, Googling to find out more about Die Antwoord, having realised (for example with Ballen link) that I was misunderstanding a whole lot of stuff here. And I’m rather inclined to agree with you regarding the idea that Die Antwoord can somehow be seen in any way as a representation of the way white South Africans per se think. Clearly there is a whole lot more going on with Die Antwoord than at first may appear, and certainly from this blog post. I’ve been completely absorbed by what I have read about this group on the internet, and what it once again (for me, as an outsider) throws up about the complexity of South Africa (which I think I have often missed).

and this quote from Pam Sykes.

Very little in pop culture in the past five or ten years has made me think quite as hard as Die Antwoord has (and thanks Lara Pawson for the Roger Ballen lead, there is more for me to follow up). They deserve better than the reading that they “convey pretty superficial stereotypes about blackness that already over saturate global popular culture”. Because frankly, as someone who lives not too very far away from the streets they depicted in Zef Side, I find myself utterly unable to pin down what they’re doing. They’re playing way out on the fringes where whiteness and blackness and colouredness and watookal blur together and cease to have meaning. They’re rude and anarchic and gleeful — it makes my head hurt, and I love them for that.

Wow. It’s true.

To be able to have that impact. To make sense of and mash together the phenomenal complexities of South African culture, in word, visually and in music requires phenomenal talent, genius even. That while navigating treacherous political ground, and humungous stereo-types.

And what everybody seems to forget in these rather academic discussions is that in rap and in rave and a whole slew of other urban genres they sample and mash they do so with utmost street intelligence and musical nous. It’s not only tight, it’s slick, and it’s on the button musically. That is Die Antwoord.

If true it does cast some aspersions over the their ethics. But in line with his now more arrogant and aggressive persona, I’m sure Ninja will just shrug, and tune us we’re jaloers. You can’t beat them. Just join them.

Oh irony. The Watkykjy blog has been moaning about polish TV ripping off Die Antwoord. See the vid below:

The Africa is a Country commentator ends her comment on the following:

What would Roger Ballen be without the The Boardinghouse, and what would Die Antwoord be without Roger Ballen? Maybe the idea of a pure work is false?

UPDATE: The comment in question on Africa is a Country has not been confirmed as true – as I say in the post above as well. To reflect the uncertainty and the protest of the commentators I added a question mark to the heading of this post and the Sies Ninja. Be that as it may, it is besides the point I’m making. True or not true it does not reflect for me on their authorship or the greatness of their work.

Related deployments:

1. I’m a Ninja – Die Antwoord
2. America discovers Die Antwoord

Interestingly enough, my dad was born during the great depression, and died during the current crisis. He was by no means a perfect man. But he was reasoned and reasonable. I never heard or saw him treat any stranger with anything but respect, no matter who they were. He spoke isiZulu fluently.

In this video he talks about Tom van Vollenhoven as the greatest Springbok he ever saw play. Wikipedia has an interesting piece on him.

My dad was a verligte Nasionalis. He supported the reform of apartheid. He regarded it as both unjust and unsustainable. But he certainly never voted anything but Nationalist during apartheid as far as I am aware.

He once told us that we could learn a lot from everybody. Including those who “swept the streets”. On another occasion he told me he does not care what job I did when I grow up, as long as I do it well.

That summed him up quite well. He was’nt ostentatious or materialist.

After he completed his degree in medicine he worked for short time as a GP in Johannesburg. He hated it. He became friends with a number of jewish doctors. They advised him to specialise in orthopedics and to do so overseas, preferably in a place like Edinburgh. That way he could easily find a job anywhere. And warned the doctors, South Africa’s future was uncertain as white rule will increasingly come under strain.

My father duly completed his degree at Edinburgh, but he returned to South Africa straight after. Only to return overseas twice. Once for his honeymoon with my mom. And once for the World Cup rugby with me.

He met my mom at the University of Pretoria. He was driving a Porsche (the one occasion where he was flashy) and she had just been selected to be Lente Koniging (Spring Queen). All rather glamorous.

My dad became head of orthopedics for both the whites only Paardekraal hospital (now called Dr. Yosuf Dadoo) and the black Leratong hospital, a position he held for quite some time during the apartheid era. My dad was very proud of both these hospitals and the service they offered.

He often talked in disparaging tones of the new private Krugersdorp hospital that was built during the late 80′s. He called it “die piek paleis” (the pink palace) and declined offers to work there.

Shortly before he died he told me that both Leratong and Dr. Yosuf Dadoo are now in a terrible state. And its ironic, the last time I saw him alive he was a patient in the Pienk Paleis.

No related posts.

As for the content. There’s more phalluses than you can shake a stick at.

The Xhosa rapping in the middle will cause quite a stir. None more so for the anti-gay references. It is of course also about and against Xhosa circumcision rituals.

Evil Boy I have been told is a tattoo of Caspir the friendly ghost holding on to his own rather inflated member, often found on gang prison members and denotes somebody that is sexed crazed or a rapist.

Related deployments:

1. Die Antwoord – is it blackface?

Here’s the teaser. It’s called Unhinged and it looks interesting.

No related posts.

Related deployments:

1. The Wedding DJ’s ruk Soweto