{"id":5858,"date":"2009-07-17T16:23:40","date_gmt":"2009-07-17T21:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com?p=5858"},"modified":"2009-07-17T13:45:12","modified_gmt":"2009-07-17T18:45:12","slug":"food_for_though","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/17\/food_for_though\/","title":{"rendered":"Food For Thought: Riz MC’s “Sour Times”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via Pickled Politics<\/a>, a music video for a Brit-Asian rapper named Riz MC<\/a> (Riz Ahmed):<\/p>\n\n

<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/center><\/p>\n\n

And here is the little blurb about the video on YouTube:<\/p>\n\n

New Riz Music Video for ‘Sour Times’, created by a montage of clips of other people mouthing the lyrics. Collaborators include rappers Plan B, Scroobius Pip, actors Jim Sturgess, Tom Hardy, and musician Nitin Sawhney.<\/blockquote>\n\n

(Wait, who are all those people? I’d never heard of any of them besides Nitin Sawhney!)<\/p>\n\n

I don’t say that I agree 100% with the message in the song; I’m posting it as food for thought, rather than as an endorsement. But I do think he makes good points regarding the new tendency to brand terrorist attacks by date (7\/7, 26\/11, etc); there’s also a provocative push-back on the news-media’s obsession with catching Al-Qaeda “supervillains.” It is basically just an action-movie fantasy to think that they really matter.<\/p>\n\n

The part where I’m not sure I’m with Riz MC in “Sour Times” is the arguably sympathetic psychologizing of what drives people to commit terrorist acts. When you say “people do this because they’re marginalized by the system,” it’s a kind of justification (even if you take pains to point out, as Riz MC does, that it’s still wrong). Some people who’ve committed, or attempted to commit, acts of terrorism in western countries fit the profile of the angry immigrant screwed over by the system, but others do not.<\/p>\n\n

Still, it’s a complex song — with a lot of different ideas. It probably deserves some attention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via Pickled Politics, a music video for a Brit-Asian rapper named Riz MC (Riz Ahmed): And here is the little blurb about the video on YouTube: New Riz Music Video for ‘Sour Times’, created by a montage of clips of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5858"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5858\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}