Rebecca Black’s Friday is Just as Good as Anything on the Radio

Gangfight.

The craze regarding Rebecca Black’s self-published music video Friday is sort of old news at this point, but since I live in a perpetual time-warp, I figured it would be OK to write about it.

When it was first published online, everyone was talking about it, and not in a good way. People were jeering at the shittiness of her singing, the ridiculously mundane lyrics, and the general ineptitude of the whole thing. I don’t disagree. I mean, she isn’t a good singer, the lyrics are terrible, and it was largely a rather lame affair. Although, the general naivete of the song itself was paradoxically refreshing.

However, I will give her this: the production quality was actually good. For a self-produced music video, the thing looked professional. It had nice film quality, good audio quality, and looked as if they had put some thought into the lighting, production, staging, special effects, etc. Plus, she managed to find a semi-legit rapper to be featured. Overall, Rebecca’s Black’s music video is 1000 times better than your own shitty YouTube audition tape featuring you crooning along with your out of tune acoustic guitar.

When people first heard her song online they said, “LOL THIS SONG SUCKS THIS GIRL IS STUPID LOL!” But if they had heard the exact same song on the radio they would have said, “LOL HOLY SHIT THIS SONG ROCKS! I NEED TO GO BUY THE SINGLE, DOWNLOAD THE ITUNES VERSION, BUY THE FULL ALBUM, AND IMPORT THE BOOTLEG VERSION FROM JAPAN! I LOVE REBECCA BLACK LOL!” When people hear independent music on the internet, they are immediately critical. But when they hear it on the radio, they automatically give it a ton of credit it may not deserve just because it’s on the radio, and therefore “popular.”

Facebook Movie – The Social Network – dismissive wanking motion

I recently had the (dis)pleasure of watching the critically jizzed upon film, The Social Network. Essentially, it’s just The Facebook Movie, or perhaps more accurately, The Thefacebook Movie, although it should really be called, Filling Two Hours with Mark Zuckberg’s Passive-Aggressive Bullshit. Seriously, what the fuck was this movie supposed to be about?

I guess it’s supposed to tell the story of the founding of internet juggernaut Facebook. But it’s not really about that. Actually, very little time is spent on Facebook itself. Half the movie is spent watching Zuckerberg obsess about how to create/improve his website, and the other half is spent in depositions as Zuckerberg defends himself against two simultaneous lawsuits. Obviously, you can’t make a movie about the actual Facebook webpage, but there could have been a more interesting angle for the filmmakers to take. Actually, either angle alone would have been fine, they should have just picked one or the other and gone with that, instead of taking this schizophrenic approach, trying to cram both stories into a two hour running time. Neither version works nearly as well as it could.

I appreciate that Zuckerberg is not a hero in this movie. It is a rare thing for a Hollywood movie to actually have a morally ambiguous, or perhaps villainous, central character. They could have gone the cliche route and have the movie be about cuddly Zuckerberg’s triumph against adversity to become a multi-billionaire. But they didn’t, so at least they succeeded in that aspect. Unfortunately, they still managed to drop the ball, because, let’s face it, most Hollywood screenwriters are idiots.

Zuckerberg’s personality is given to us at face value. He passive-aggressively interacts with people, he shadily sides with Napster Dude to cockblock his former business partner Eduardo, and he speaks like an abrasive jerk to people he feels are beneath him (i.e. everyone). Zuckerberg’s motivations are left completely up to the imagination of the viewers. A more in-depth look at his psyche is not offered up. Most likely this is because the writer exhausted all of his creative juices dreaming up ridiculous scenes where computer programmers do shots while having underground coding competitions. God forbid they try to actually EXPLORE the main character’s motivations and social failings. Does he have Asperberger’s? Was he abused as a child? Is he stuck in a bi-curious phase? We’ll never know. The way things are presented, we are expected to accept that Zuckerberg’s character is a total douche just because he is a total douche (maybe that works in real life, but not in movies). That’s weak ass writing. I would expect nothing less from Hollywood assholes.