Posted on 02/11/2017 5:18:30 PM PST by markomalley
Culture critics have long hammered the Grammy Awards as tragically unhip. So CBS knew there was one way to get hip quickly: Sunday nights awards ceremonies will be their first show with a male trophy presenters and .a trans woman presenter.
Actor Derek Marrocco and transgender model Martina Robledo will hand out awards alongside the typical blonde model/actress Hollin Haley. APs Lynn Elber hailed the nod as breaking with hoary male-chauvinist tradition. Changing up the Grammy trophy presenters isnt window-dressing.
Robledo, whos from San Diego, said she was honored to join Caitlyn Jenner, Laverne Cox and other transgender people in the more-inclusive media spotlight. But she expects viewer reaction to her presence will be mixed.
I know its going to make some people uncomfortable and make others weep for joy, she said.
Im just going to step out there and strut and make sure I deliver my best, because theres people out there looking up to me.
That may include transgender boys and girls or other minorities, she said, calling them the people I want to speak for to let them know that there is a better world out there for us.
Washington Post music critic Chris Richards is one of those Grammy grumps, as he proved with a Sunday Arts piece headlined: A Grammys Pity Party: Kudos to the Recording Academy for honoring youthful voices, but why so many songs drip with white-boy melancholy and ego? The online headline is harsher: No Grammys for old men! And dont let these millennials win, either.
Richards argued himself into a pretzel, that somehow, "The deeper the Grammys sink into meaninglessness, the more meaningful our shouts become." The Grammy judges are giving the top awards to young whites, and not black "social justice" musicians:
Last February, Grammy voters chose Taylor Swifts 1989 as its album of the year over Kendrick Lamars To Pimp a Butterfly, and on Sunday, theyll be making a similar choice between soothing, white radio-pop and imaginative, black agitprop when Adeles 25 competes with Beyoncés Lemonade for the evenings most coveted prize.
Inside the paper, the headline was "Grammys Wallow in Millennial Misery." Richards gave a bit of credit that the awards aren't all thrown at artists past their prime, but....
Still, its hard to shake the feeling that this years voters are listening to young music through old ears. Thats because four songs nominated for the nights biggest trophies Lukas Grahams 7 Years, Mike Posners I Took a Pill in Ibiza, Twenty One Pilots Stressed Out, and Justin Biebers Love Yourself each seem to reinforce some of the most tedious stereotypes about millennials. These songs feel self-absorbed, superficial, entitled, whiny. Do older listeners hear that as authenticity? Let us discuss them now and never again....
Individually, these songs are little more than pesky melodic irritants, but together, they seem to be burnishing a new aesthetic of millennial white-boy melancholy a sound that has clearly resonated with the membership of the Recording Academy.
He's not wrong that a more seasoned critic can easily dismiss teen-appeal acts like Bieber or Twenty One Pilots as Lite. But part of it is explicitly racial: "Self-pity wont float a ballad if the vocalist doesnt sound genuinely wounded. Self-absorption is more magnetic when its scandalizing (see: Kanye West) than when its austere." Richards even compared these young whipper-snappers to the late Andy Rooney, the caricature of the grumpy white grandpa (now that's taking the fight to CBS):
And if whining about these whiners makes you feel as if youve suddenly been possessed by the roving spirit of Andy Rooney, its important to remember that there are still armies of young maestros forging ambitious, self-aware music out of hope, fury, freedom and desire. Some are competing for best new artist on Sunday night (Chance the Rapper, Maren Morris), some will compete for lesser prizes, (Lil Yachty, Gallant), some were unceremoniously snubbed (YG, Alessia Cara, Young Thug), and one wisely decided to boycott the Grammys outright (Frank Ocean).
Richards is championing the black millennials, like Yachty, YG, and Young Thug, who at 25 has had "six children by four women." Ocean bit the Grammy hand in just the right way to thrill journalists: he compared himself to Colin Kaepernick taking a knee. I think the infrastructure of the awarding system and the nomination system and screening system is dated, he said. Id rather this be my Colin Kaepernick moment for the Grammys than sit there in the audience.
I am still waiting on the earthquake to rid us of that blight.
I predict all time ratings lows.
I wonder how long before we “normals” will be hunted down and exterminated?
Crazy? We’re already well on the way to being redefined as the abby-normals — those nasty, intolerant, traditionalist people.
I give it ten years, tops.
Changing up the Grammy trophy presenters isnt window-dressing.
LOL! Is there a SINGLE ‘genuine’ thing about Hollywood? It’s Fantasy Land; it was designed to be an ESCAPE from everyday life while selling ‘stuff’ to the masses!
Self-important Posers, all!
It's all just socio-political theater, and not very good theater at that.
I'll pass. Just like I've passed for the last decades on the Tonys, the Oscars, the Dummies, and the Crummies.
This thread is perfect without pictures.
As for earthquakes ridding us of Hollywood, well, the volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo destroyed Olongopo in the Philippines back in June of 1991. They rebuilt the wretched place.
As long as there is Film Actors Guild we are stuck with Hollywood. Maybe pizzagate will get some of them locked up for a while, that’s the best hope I see, but it would just be like stomping a few ants in an anthill.
I wish a large meteorite would fall on the hall right when the show begins.
I guy can dream can’t he?
I remember when the Grammys featured Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
Going to see the “Grammies”? Can’t. Both died in 1966 and 1977 so unless I can get to their gravesites, I won’t be attending the “Grammies”.
PS: Both my grandmothers were much more decent human beings than some of the crap at this upcoming musical circle-jerk, and that’s a fact, Jack!
They keep doubling-down on identity politics, do they?
I wonder what is the percentage of “white boys” in the ranks of CBS’s upper management.
At least it looks like a woman.
The left is so evil. They parade this poor lost soul around like a circus freak, offering no hope for salvation, recovery or peace. “Look at us! Check out this freak! We can make her m dance and do tricks!” Horrific evil.
As “normal” people were marginalized since the Clinton administration in all facets of society, it has become very clear that the “bread-and-circuses” sector is increasingly reliant on low-information people as customers. TV, movies, sports - all are geared towards the kind of people who can sit for hours in front of a screen and be sold things: products, ideas, etc.
These awards shows, even the Super Bowl, are reflections of this; it was always clear that people who worked all day were growing further and further away from people who watched daytime TV, now a widening chasm is developing between people who watch TV and those who do just about anything else.
Normal people have been blamed for years for the mental illness of deviants (and related substance abuse and suicide issues); the fact is that no matter how much such freaks are “accepted”, they cannot ignore the simple biology that indicates there is something very wrong. I genuinely pity them, as I view them as mentally ill; when they politicize and attempt to normalize something so obviously crazy and immoral, I despise them.
Glad to say that I don’t know any of them. Most of the new music I listen to today isn’t even in English.
We aren’t missing anything.
The winners will be lip syncing autotune singers with backup dancers gyrating to distract the audience that they have no memorable songs.
I’ve seen breast implants on men, and they look like plastic bags under the skin. Guess that’s what happens when you’ve got no breasts (other than man boobs) to begin with. Laverne Cox has the worst looking implants in history.
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