MEDIA ROOTS — In John Cusack’s 2008 movie, War, Inc., an outrageous pop star, singing and dancing, is situated in the middle of all this chaos and criminogenic environment, addled with occupying corporations, zealous military forces, and war-torn absurdity.   Giving real-life meaning to the War, Inc. pop star, real-life pop star Katy Perry seems to be fearlessly treading the boundaries of mindless military propaganda.  Or is Katy Perry innocently just havin’ a good time?

In Katy Perry’s dramatic new video for her corporate record label—the same label Radiohead is on, by the way—Capitol under EMI under Citigroup—her character has an epiphany when she sees a bumper sticker on a bulletin board:

“All women are created equal
But then some become Marines”

I suppose any artist daring enough to flirt with military imagery must either be an incredibly courageous artistic genius or a misguided tool.  If numbers say anything, Katy Perry’s “Part of Me” video already has over 39 million views.  But, clearly, that military joke isn’t funny anymore.  And Naomi Wolf, who has done her fair share of dirt on behalf of women’s rights and human rights, wasn’t laughing either.  Even boycotts are being called against Katy Perry. 

“When you shine in the public eye, my dear
Please remember these nights…”

Messina

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READER SUPPORTED — Who knew that an opinion about pop music video could get Fox News so worked up? Recently, I wrote that I was appalled by Katy Perry’s new video for the No 1 hit song, “Part of Me”. In it, the narrative has the singer discover a boyfriend’s infidelity; she responds to this by cutting her hair and – heading for basic training to become a Marine.

The creepy parts of the video, in my mind, are many: girl power is represented as what Perry accomplishes in the rigors of basic training. Feminine impulses toward romantic revenge are depicted as rightly channeled into getting armed and being shipped to some mystery Afghanistan-like set overseas, locked and loaded. Trade in your bad boyfriend for a hot AK-47!

The whole videography of the scenes at Camp Pendleton – in which Perry crawls through an imaginary minefield, trains underwater, learns she can do the impossible, etc – is straight out of Leni Riefenstahl: the same angled, heroizing upward shots, the same fetishization of physical power, of gleaming armaments, and of the rigor and mechanism of human beings cohering into living militarized units.

There is something else about the video: it feels … like an ad; specifically, a focus-grouped, consumer-tested ad to attract more women to join the Marines. Real artistic productions, whether bad or good, are messier, quirkier, more subjective. I am familiar with the way political ads get researched and filmed (it was part of what I advised on in my time as a political consultant), and this looks like a political ad put together by DC PR insiders – like, say, the Pentagon communications team – after expensive market research has been done. In political advertising, every single image and message is focus group tested. I would bet that someone did some research on the hypothetical of a marriage or relationship breakup as a catalyst for women’s military enlistment, given an economy in which the military offers low-income women some of the few options for advancement in a context in which a breadwinner may have decamped.

So I wrote that I felt that this was a piece of “war propaganda” and that, if Perry had received money or message guidance directly from the military to make the video, she should disclose that information. It might be inferred from the fact that she filmed at the USMC’s California base, Camp Pendleton, that this would have contributed at least several tens of thousand of dollars in support – in the form of free sets, use of equipment, personnel time and, possibly, food and housing; it takes a lot of people a fair amount of time to make such a video. Now, to be fair, while journalists are expected to disclose any such conflicts, I have absolutely no evidence of any such transaction, and artists are subject to no such expectation. (Albeit, this would be a subsidy that you, the taxpayer, have underwritten.)

Read more about Katy Perry and the Military-Pop-Cultural Complex.

© 2012 Reader Supported News

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Katy Perry — Part of Me

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Tool — Part of Me

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Photo by Flickr user machechyp 

MEDIA ROOTS — In order to move from a liberal capitalist society, organised around elite interests, to a socialist political and economic system run by and for working people, the problem of false consciousness among the USA’s working-class must be confronted, argues Dr. Jeremy Cloward of Diablo Valley College in his paper entitled “The State, Class And False Consciousness Within the American Working Class.”

Messina

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PROJECT CENSORED — In the United States the American working class has seen itself become increasingly involved in fighting imperialistic wars abroad, financing a growing military budget, and losing its social safety net at home yet at the same time regularly acting politically inconsistent with their own class interests.  This has been to the gain of US-based multinational corporations and to the detriment of working people.  Until the working class in the United States realizes that the predominantly corporate-controlled state does not serve their personal and class interests they will not see any significant improvement in their lives.   On the contrary, as long as working people continue to support the two major parties they can expect to see many more years of corporate dominance of the United States political, economic and social system.  The primary issue that working people must address to resolve this problem is the question of false consciousness.

False Consciousness                         

False consciousness is a term derived from the Marxist tradition which identifies a state of mind of an individual or a group of people who neither understand their class interests nor act politically consistent with those concerns.  Karl Marx, himself, did not use the term false consciousness.  However, many who are intellectually aligned with the Marxist tradition trace the concepts’ origin back to a theory first developed by Marx known as commodity fetishism.  Commodity fetishism is the idea that people place a value on commodities apart from the ones which they intrinsically possess.  For example, a diamond, once it becomes a commodity, is not simply a rock with the properties of a rock but instead an object that people value and admire as if the rock possessed some built-in power which makes it different and more valuable than any other rock.

False consciousness as a concept was first used by Marx’s friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels in July of 1893 in a letter to Franz Mehring.  While writing about the concept of historical materialism he claimed that “ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, indeed, but with a false consciousness. The real motives impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise it would not be an ideological process at all.”[2]  Thus Engels, in two brief sentences coins the term and argues that false consciousness and ideology (i.e., worldview) are intellectual constructs.

Read more about The State, Class, and False Consciousness.

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Photo by Flickr user Steve Rhodes

RT TV — One out of every 100 citizens in the US is behind bars, and most of them are minorities. The United States has 5 percent of the world’s population but holds one-quarter of the world’s prisoners. The prison industrial complex has a vested interest in keeping people locked up, and Wells Fargo is one of the companies that is profiting for the practice and pushing for legislation that will maximize their profits.

Russ Baker, editor-in-chief for WhoWhatWhy, joins Abby Martin to give his take on private prisons.

Axel Caballero, founder of Cuentame, joins Abby Martin to speak about the prison industrial complex.

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Also check out the related Media Roots article Wells Fargo Profits From Private Prisons.

Messina

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Photo by flickr user mocvdleung

RT TV – On Friday, student protesters confronted police in Montreal, Canada. Riot police used stun grenades, pepper spray and batons to beat student protesters in the city’ downtown. The outrage comes from anger over rising tuition costs in the country. A crowd of protesters attempted to interrupt a speech by Premier Jean Charest. Citizen journalist Bernard Desgagne joins us for the breaking update.

Abby Martin interviews citizen journalist Bernard Desgagne about the recent riots.

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Photo by flickr user Hozinja