It’s firework season.
Especially out here in LA, the fireworks have long since begun. From PCH to Figueroa and beyond, random pops echo through the streets at all hours of the night. Summertime fireworks aren’t a new thing to LA, but they’ve certainly reached a new level — lighting the skies practically every night since the quarantine began.
This has sparked various conspiracy theories, including claims that the LAPD is deliberately keeping Black and Brown communities sleep deprived to stoke agitation. I don’t buy it. But while agitation probably isn’t the intended result of a coordinated scheme, I think it’s a primary cause.
The Trump-Covid-Protest trifecta has left many with a strange feeling of boredom, exasperation, and frustration. Shooting explosives into the air is an easy (not to mention contagious) way to combat all of those feelings. In this sense, the fireworks function much like the other city-wide quarantine rituals — like rooftop howling and pot clanging. We’re still here, can you hear us?
We live in explosive times, after all. If I had to describe today’s cultural conversation in one word, that would be it. Explosive. And not in an isolated way, like a single stick of dynamite up in the mountains. But a chaotic onslaught — like bursts multiplying in a chain reaction, sometimes (rarely) harmonizing into something that vaguely resembles a narrative. It’s a loud and obnoxious symphony, but it’s one hell of a spectacle.
There’s a primal allure to it all. It’s the feeling our Neanderthal ancestors might’ve had while squatting around a fire. It should be dark out, but it’s not. You can see faces. Whether illuminated by skies of red, white, and blue, or just the blue light of phone screens, eyes are aglow. You can see them. And they can see you.
This week’s Filter Bubble Friday rounds up five pieces shining much-needed light on various facets of the American experience — two music videos, a short film, a podcast, and a speech. Don’t worry, the Katy Perry song isn’t one of them. Here’s to life, liberty, and the pursuit of explosive conversation.
Filter Bubble Friday #2
Surma — Wanna Be Basquiat
Music video (5 min)
The Chevrolet Bel Air, the neighborhood drug store, the white picket fence… What do these have in common? They’re icons of the so-called American Dream. This music video is composed of hundreds (maybe thousands?) of archival fragments from the 50s and 60s, appearing upon first glance to be a tribute to the era’s aesthetic. The haunting track underneath it all, however, signals it’s anything but. Around the halfway mark, it turns sharply away from the white picket fence to plunge into the belly of the American beast — the behemoth of postwar industrialization.
This masterpiece was crafted by João Pombeiro — the same guy who made the Back To Nature video I featured last week. I hit up João for some comments on this one:
I use CC Search and Flickr to find public domain and CC0 images. The videos come mostly from the Prelinger Archives (at archive.org). This helps to build the narrative, since it reflects American history (and west society) and its relation with economical and industrial growth. But the result of this progress is the destruction of everything. This ending is very Japanese but it works very well as a metaphor to what’s been happening in the world in the last few decades. Basically, the 20 century ideals, promises and expectations have failed us all.
One Nation Under
Short film (7 min)
Key word here: perspective. And in every sense of the word — perspective, as in point of view, optics, a way of seeing, and walking in someone else’s shoes. Set to the mise-en-scène of American hyper-capitalism, we hear rare commentary from the ground-level. It’s the concrete jungle and the glass ceiling rolled into one. Like the summertime fireworks, this film is an audiovisual expression of what it means to be seen and be heard.
Kendrick Lamar - For Free
Music video (2 min)
Haven’t seen this one yet? Now’s the time. It’s an interlude track from an album ago, Kendrick’s To Pimp A Butterfly. The whole record is worth a listen (or re-listen) right now, but here’s a nice starter.
After a grand opening scene with a saxophonist, a gospel choir, and Uncle Sam, it’s off to the races. As for the woman character, here’s what Genius has to say:
The relationship between Kendrick and the girl serves as a conceit for the way America has continually treated black people in an attempt to devalue their character and diminish their self-esteem.
Rapping over jazzy sounds from Terrace Martin (another favorite of mine), Kendrick challenges the common understanding of what it means to be “free” — reminiscent of Frederick Douglass’ What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?. And the last 30 seconds really heat up. Kendrick powers through some words prophetic of his turbo verse on King’s Dead from the Black Panther album.
Hey Kenny, my man, I know you're reading this. Whatcha working on these days? HMU.
What is Democracy?
Podcast (53 min)
A common retort to the glorification of American democracy goes as such: “We’re a republic, not a democracy, you idiot!” Well maybe I added that last part… But you’ve probably heard it before. It’s often used to discredit leftist faith in majority rule, framing it instead as “mob rule.” Astra Taylor — one of my intellectual heroes of the last year — takes this claim in a different direction.
Here’s a conversation between Taylor and MSNBC’s Chris Hayes. The two chat about her recent documentary What Is Democracy? and companion book Democracy May Not Exist But We’ll Miss it When It’s Gone. BIG ideas, casual vibes.
Here are Apple, Spotify, and YouTube versions of the podcast.
A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
Declaration…? (9 min)
Here’s a legendary piece of internet history. It’s a time capsule from the pivotal moment of 90s cyberculture. This screed was written by John Perry Barlow, cofounder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Grateful Dead lyricist. He was THE cyberlibertarian if there ever was one, for better or worse. Here’s his famous opening statement, a cornerstone in my remix film DREAM:
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone.
Pretty audacious, wouldn’t you say? These brazen remarks capture the early imagination of the digital frontier — before TikTok, Facebook, and even Google. The idea was that cyberspace needed no central governance, since beauty and order would naturally emerge from the contributions of hackers and fanatics. This myth propelled Silicon Valley for a decade or so, and even flavored my rosy understanding of the internet as a kid.
The idea has long since gone stale. But at the time, I can imagine it made sense. WIRED describes Barlow’s headspace as he wrote the speech at the 1996 World Economic Forum in Davos:
He was incensed at President Bill Clinton's decision the same day to sign the Communications Decency Act into law . . . So after a "fair amount of champagne" he left the dance floor and banged out the statement on his laptop in one of the hotel's side rooms.
It’s ironic that section 230 of the act signed in that day — which protects websites from lawsuits over their users’ behavior — has been repeatedly abused to the benefit of the very companies that emerged from Barlow’s era. Now, at a time when cyberspace has gone haywire, it seems government intervention may be the only path forward.
While this “declaration” has its blindspots, it embodies a spirit we could use a dose of right now — hope. Sadly, Barlow passed away a couple years ago, carrying to the grave any and all traces of residual techno-utopianism. It’ll be back again someday.
Until then, go outside and enjoy some fireworks.