The Press Box - How Not to Talk About ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ and Ava DuVernay | Damage Control (Ep. 441)

Episode Date: March 15, 2018

This week on 'Damage Control,' The Ringer’s Justin Charity and K. Austin Collins discuss critics’ confusing handling of Ava DuVernay’s ‘A Wrinkle In Time’ (1:17), why wishing for black artists to have opportunities to make mediocre work is flawed thinking (19:44), and the cultural-appropriation accusations against Bruno Mars (21:39). More from The Ringer: ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ Is a Noble Failure The ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ Exit Survey Subscribe to 'The Recappables' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey guys, this is Justin Charity from Damage Control. On this week's episode, we're going to be talking about the new Disney movie, A Wrinkle in Time, directed by Averde-Vernay. So we want you to check out Cam's review of the movie on The Ringer.com. And also, make sure you listen to the new Ringer podcast, The Recapables, covering the current season of Atlanta. The Recapables drops a new episode every Thursday. You can find them wherever you subscribe to podcasts.

All right, now on to Damage Control. I'm Justin Charity. And I'm Cameron Collins. Welcome to Damage Control on the Channel 33 Network, a podcast where we unpack what upsets, excites, and divides us in popular culture. Today we're talking about Bruno Mars, the Puerto Rican, Filipino, Hawaiian, Ukrainian, Asian, et cetera,

pop star who has suddenly become the subject of a difficult conversation about pop music, black music, and cultural appropriation. We're going to get through it. But first, we're going to talk about Disney's latest big budget release, a wrinkle in time, a movie that is founded at the box office. frustrated a lot of critics and stuck its director, Ava DuVernay, at the heart of a high-stakes

discussion of black filmmakers working in the studio system. We are in search of warriors. Your father has done an extraordinary thing, but he may be in danger. Your father's alive. We believe he is, and the only one who can find him is you. You're kidding. Last week, Disney released Ava DuVernay's A wrinkle in time. an adaptation of Madeline Lengel's classic 1962 novels starring, among others,

the young actress Storm Reid, who's great, by the way, Gugu and Batharra, Chris Pine, Mindy Kaling, Reese Witherspoon, and you get a car, Oprah! Oprah! The movie, it should be said, is notable historically for being the first Hollywood movie directed by a black woman to have a budget of over $100 million. So that's a genuine milestone. Perhaps accordingly, though, there's been an interesting shadow conversation

about the question of how we talk critically about this, by most accounts, not very good movie. You saw it, you agree that it's... I think it's a decent movie is the thing. Interesting. Well, the movie has a 41% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is a green splat. Just get the chalkout line ready. But there have been other conversations.

Marie Claire ran a piece called A Rinkle in Time isn't a great movie, but that's completely irrelevant, which sort of sums up a lot of the ways in which we have been wearing kid gloves, a little bit in regard to how to talk about whether or not this movie is any good, given who made it, given who it is quote unquote for. And I just wanted to talk to you about this kind of conversation that we seem to be having regarding big historic projects by minority artists, how we talk about historical exclusion and then finally inclusion, but maybe the art isn't good. Cam, I like that phrase you shadow conversation. I think this is a podcast about shadow conversation. in general.

Conceptually, that's what damage control is. But, but, you know, particularly because you, you know, you've done music criticism, and I think this has come up there as well. Right. I've faced, like, years ago, I faced a similar conundrum. Like, Kendrick Lamar released to Pimp a Butterfly, right? Where there is this sort of... No, that is, that is not a similar conundrum.

It is. No, no, no, no. But in terms of the phenomenon you're describing, right? It's like this critical, this critical phenomenon whereby an artist that appeals to a lot of critical sensibilities releases an artwork that we decide is sort of challenging and that is sort of off like of conventional commercial sensibilities and there's a sort of rallying around it that seems to that seems to more so appreciate the artwork as a summation of a bunch of things that it represents more than it sort of seems to be engaging with the artwork as

just a successful evocative piece of art. Right. And that's sort of this conversation, in so much as there's a shadow conversation about a wrinkle in time, right? A kid's movie is every critic wants to point out is that it's a kids movie. There's a lot of talking about the movie as something that you really just got to be a kid to get it, you know? It's just that adults, they won't understand it.

If adults don't like it, it makes sense because it's just coded for children and children will love it. And that's a weird way to think about kids movies in so much as like adults have all seen kids movies. Right. And also like I'm an adult who watch Malana. I'm an adult who, you know what I mean? It's like, hey, God darn it. I know what a good kids movie looks like.

Sure, sure. I know what a conventionally great kids movie looks like. Sure. And people, critics seem to be sort of shielding Ava DuVernay from an assessment along those lines of like an adult having a pretty sure. straightforward take on whether there are problems with the wrinkle in time structurally, narratively, in terms of its characterizations. I don't know. Like, do you think it's about, it seems to me that it's a, it's a protection of Ava DuVernay herself

specifically. Yeah. Well, you know, it's complicated because when Selma came out, I also felt that there was a weird way in which critics were talking about that movie in terms of its importance to history. history in terms of, you know, her importance, and these things are just to double underline this, important. It is important that Ivede Verne kind of went beyond the studio system to make Salma, like, took a script that wasn't heard, rejected even having like a screenwriter credit in order to be able to make this movie, even though she basically rehalled, overhauled that

screenplay and should have gotten a credit for it. You know, those things all matter. But Selma is a good movie. It's a really good movie. It's a movie that I like. It's a movie that I care about. There's a way in which reading a lot of the criticism, you wouldn't know what made it a good movie. Look for the extent to which critics were really talking about

the aesthetics of this movie. Like there's a way in which we have to talk about how we don't talk about the work of prominent black and other artists, women artists as art. we talk about them as historical pivot points, as log lines for demographic diversity in the industry, as they become means for criticism to sort of reverse its history of not caring about work by black women, of not caring about work by, you know, minorities, et cetera. They become means for publications to finally hire a black freelancer to write a piece. Right. But they become data points.

Right. It's a data point. But what about the movie? Like for me, like with you, I think there are actually some really interesting things about wrinkle in time. I don't think the movie works, but I think it's a fascinating blockbuster product. Let's get into that because, okay, so Selma, good movie. Yes. A wrinkle in time.

Let's talk about that, you know what I mean? Because I don't want to do what I think a lot of the other criticism is doing, with the exception of your piece on TheRinger.com about a wrinkle in time. I want to talk a bit about the movie to help people sort of understand. why the reaction, the critical reception of the movie is maybe so uncomfortable. Yes. I mean, have you read the book? I haven't it.

No, no, no, no. The book, I read it as a kid. And the book is, I think, monumental for many people. Again, it came out in 1962. And there's been really great writing about what that book in particular has meant to kind of little girls, little girls who like science. It is a, you know, a female heroine at the center. It is not, I would say, explicitly feminist in the way that maybe if we're

were written today, it would have to be in order to make that case. It is more interesting in that it, you know, it is a female hero, but it's got all this biblical context and it's just a good book. But DeVerny's take on it is interesting because she diversifies it in a way, you know, the original certainly would not, if you were casting the movie back in 1962, you would not have had Storm Reed as the little girl, the center, right? Yeah, there's one thing that's really probable about the movie. So me, right, as a person who has not read the book, even when I was sitting in the theater,

I had this sense of, oh, there are decisions being made. There are decisions. I can tell that this is, this has a director's, like, thumb on it. Yes, very pointedly diverse, but I think more notably, frankly, it has got 21st century empowerment rhetoric. Yeah. So you attach Oprah to the project. It is basically to me, like, and it's very Oprah.

It's very, we're going to take. take some of the quotes of Mindy Kaling's character, for example. It's a character that sort of speaks in quotes. We're going to add Hamilton. We're going to add Outcast. We're going to make it more you go girl than the book was. And I'm not saying any of this is bad. I think it's a decision.

And I think it's a pointed one and one that it's very much a movie that knows that it's the first of its kind. This is a $100 million movie aimed at Black Girls. So it is doing important work in that regard. But I think. I think it is possible to watch this movie and think, okay, it's a little confused. You know, there are some holes in the script. There's some emotional arcs that don't make sense.

There's an extent to which the empowerment arc of it all sort of trumps everything about it that would otherwise befit logic. Yeah, or even characterization. Or even characterization. And those are all, as a critic for me, that's interesting because it's a blockbuster. It's interesting to see the extent to which a blockbuck meant to bend logic to conform to sort of a mass appeal. And it's interesting to see a Disney movie trying to target black girls in the guise of

something like mass appeal, because that is just not what studios have tended to mean by mass appeal. And that is interesting, and that is important. But the movie has a 41% rotten for a reason. I think it's just like it's a troubled movie. Why, though, are we getting pieces that say it doesn't. matter whether or not it's good. I'm curious about this.

Yeah, it's almost like it's a, it almost feels like an instant, even though those pieces a lot of the time sort of deploy children or the idea of children as a human shield for the movie. It almost feels like it's not giving kids enough credit either. Right. Like you, like I've been a kid who's been like, I didn't like this movie or I did like this movie. You know what I mean?

It's sort of, it is crediting children with a lack of discernment about wonder. which ironically feels like a very adult thing to do, right? It's to sort of like simplify the mind of like a young adult to being like to having no discernment or taste whatsoever. Yeah. Which is not exactly how being a kid works. Totally, totally. It just seems that's the weird thing in the criticism of the movie is that it's trying to posit a lot of things about how children think of art versus how adults think of art. Yes.

But that criticism just doesn't seem like it understands. children very well or movies very well right and a thing about the criticism of the movie is that we live in an era where a lot of critics are mutual follows with eva de verney on twitter right and i do think this is a factor i think there's an soft power eva du ferne's soft power on twitter yeah and i don't think that's why she follows critics on twitter i think she follows critics on twitter i think she was following critics on twitter before she got that's like she's a former publicist right and she's like a person who likes movies right but i think there's an extent to which there's we live in a culture of criticism where you have to be careful. You feel like you have to be careful. I don't know why the fear of God is in people that she might unfollow you on Twitter. God.

Damn, I know that ruins your career. But like, there's that. But there's also just, I think people find it hard to totally get the teeth out on something because this isn't just a movie. Like you can't disentangle it from who we're saying the movie is for. Right. So if you attack the movie, you're attacking Black girls. You're attacking Ebid D'Bernay.

And I think there's also an element of if this movie doesn't do well, what does that mean for her prospects making other large movies? Because historically, if, like, a woman, like, makes a big budget movie that doesn't do well, it takes a minute. Like, it took a minute for Catherine Bigelow to recover from K-19, The Widowmaker. Elaine May never recovered from Ishtar. and Elaine May is one of the best American directors ever and one of the best screenwriters ever and that ended her directorial career. Things like that absolutely happened.

But still, I feel like if you think the movie's trash, I don't know, you know, like... Yeah, well, okay, here's what I'll say. As hard as it is to uncouple all of that stuff, it's also in a review. Yeah. Even if you're a critic and you're going to this movie and you maybe just didn't like it that much,

but you're also trying to keep all of that historical context in mind and all that commercial context in mind. To me... In a way, it stinks just as much. Like, the review as a thing, as a piece of criticism, stinks just as much. If you imbue it with this sort of homework core, honestly, this is so important. You know what I mean? As if you had just written a pan.

Yes. So, I know, that's what seems like is ill-advised about it. It's like, I don't actually think critics are doing the movie favors by talking about it as if it's a, as if it's their kids' refrigerator scribbling. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I think it's condescending.

Yeah. You know, I think a lot of the pieces that were written on Salma were condescending, certainly on 12 Years of Slave were condescending. Like 12 Years a Slave, which was not by Avederey Barnett, was by Steve McQueen, but one best picture, very well-regarded movie. But I don't think you'd know from many of the reviews of that film, just what a weird movie it is. Steve McQueen is someone whose background is beyond just art house in art,

in art video installment. And a lot of that is in 12 years of slave. There's a strangeness to that movie where if you read a lot of the reviews, what you're mostly getting from a lot of reviews from many mainstream publications is not, this is a strange approach to this topic, and it's fascinating for that reason. What you're getting is this is a prestige picture that looks beautiful about slavery, that's doing a certain kind of historical work. And it is doing historical work. But we have a long take of someone hanging from a rope, like trying to be lynched in this movie. that people will mention but not wrestle with like in terms of the aesthetic weirdness of that. Right.

And it's weird because like for the longest time, Selma 12 years of sleep, those are movies that I avoided. And I avoided them from this sort of, I mean, I think black thinkers talk about this a lot in popular culture. But I had this sort of suspicion that these are homework movies in a way. And for the longest time, I just assumed that I was getting that vibe from the movie itself without even seeing it. And I think as more time passes, I'm realizing that the thing that creates that sense that sort of preemptively sours me on a movie. Or, again, it's that stench, that critical stench I'm referring to is coming from the criticism. It's coming from the discourse. And the fact that the discourse creates this sort of gloomy, condescending cloud around a thing that is actually more interesting than those critics are giving it credit for, even when they're trying to sort of do a weird boosterism about the movie.

Yeah, right. Yeah, I mean, a movie like Sama is like, you know, you just can't talk about Sama at like your regular civil rights movie because to me it is a movie that is aware of civil rights movies and aware of the way that they become great man movies in particular when you throw MLK in there. And this is adamantly a movie that's that's not just an MLK movie. It's a movie about process. It's a movie about publicity. It's like it's a movie that has images that are more interesting than the noble images you. get in the Norman-Jewson version of this story, the version of the story that would normally 20 years ago have been up for Oscars.

Like, it's a, it's a weirder movie than that. But you wouldn't know that from the criticism on it. I would say a similar thing about Arrnequin Time is that I think it's a weird movie. Ringle time is a weird movie for you. It definitely makes me super curious. It makes me super curious about the books. Like, I was, I saw it with a film, I saw it with Allison Wilmore at BuzzFeed. and that the whole time I was just sitting there

and thinking of the wind-up bird chronicle, which is like my favorite novel ever. It's just that there's a depiction of evil in Arrigal in time that just seems very like disembodied and psychedelic and it's just very interesting. And it's a sort of depiction of evil that I've never really seen in a kids movie. Right, right.

And it makes you, it sort of takes you out of a Judeo-Christian context for even thinking of what evil is supposed to mean and how it's supposed to manifest on a screen or on a page. And that's a super interesting thing about the movie that no criticism of it. Yeah. Well, because then there's this other, there's this other pool of criticism

that is aware of the extent to which a movie like A Rinkle in Time won't by many mainstream critics be talked about for its aesthetics that this other form of criticism will double down on the bad things about it or make assumptions about it that also don't fit the movie

because they're assuming it's just another bad kids movie. But again, Rinkle in Time, I think is worth seeing. I'm recommending it to people because it is strange. The first 20 minutes of this movie, the way that Ava DiVerni handles things like, your, school bullying,

like just the shot selection, the ways that we see these kids, the hero poses, this is all very odd. If you've seen this kind of movie before, you've not seen images that give you that sort of rote mechanical YA setup,

which is what it is, like in a way that's as odd as what this is. When by the time Reese Witherspoon shows up, in their house with like a toga on and just looking at their stuff. It's like, this is who, this movie is fucked up. What is going on?

She's just touching their things and this black family is like, what is this white lady doing? Remember the fact that like Mindy Kaling's first scene in the movie is sort of, she's beautifully framed in this strange house. Right. And then she has one line in the whole scene.

Otherwise it's just, she's sort of sitting in the scene as if nothing's actually. This sort of uphurial shots of her. Right. It's like, I mean, it's like a stoner movie for kids. Right. It's totally.

Yeah. And so why can't we, you know, this is just another thing, like, whether or not a wrinkle in time, like the Marie Claire headline of like, it doesn't matter that the movie's bad is, is in a way, right? Because what matters is how weird it is to me. But wrong because the content of that article was more. Like, it doesn't matter if it's bad because of who it's for. But I think that actually we should all want the standard to be high for movies that are targeted at young people, black people, women, Like this idea that it doesn't matter whether or not a movie is good just because it's serving, you know, an underserved audience does not jive with me because it seems that the assumption implicitly there is like we can't find anyone good to make these movies. So we're just going to go with the one.

And you'll just go with the crumbs. And I'm not calling her wrinkle in time crumbs. It is much more fascinating than that. Yes. But what I am saying is that that's what I'm hearing when people say that. Yeah, there's a prentitious. There is a critical line these days that I hear a lot. hear with increasing frequency and I don't like it.

And I wish people would stop saying it and I wish we would think about it. And the line is this. It's this idea that black people should get to make more mediocre art. Yeah. And like get to. Emphasis on the get to. It's like black people should get to make flops and they should get to make mediocre art.

And it's sort of I get the sentiment of it. But also I like to, I like art too much to will mediocre art into the world. And I also think that that's a, again, it's a sort of statement that while I, understand the good intentions that are animated by the statement, it also seems like a backhanded way to talk about black creators. Yeah, no, but because it's like, so rather than giving us a chance to make, you know, the moonlight, you just want us to make, you want us to be, you know, the Judapital. You want us to be the John Favre. Like, and it's just like, what we really need to be saying is black people, women, et cetera, et cetera, need to be able to make more movies.

It is inevitable that some of those movies will be mediocre because mediocrity is common. Right, but you shouldn't strive for me. But that's not what we're striving for. Right. That's not the end game. But yeah, like black people should get to make more mediocre, mediocre art in the sense that black people should get to make more art. Right.

That is the end game. And some of them are going to be meoker because, of course, they're mediocre black people. You know, we just talked about Donald Glover a couple weeks ago. I know I just I had to but but yeah it's complicated it's like we need to learn how to talk about we need to learn how to talk about black art still listen Ava made the 13th Ava de Verne is still great

Hollywood you better give that girl another $100 million and let her figure it out what Bruno Mars does is he takes pre-existing work and he just completely word for word recreates it extrapolates it he does not change it He does not improve upon it. He does not make it better. He's a karaoke singer.

He's a wedding singer. He's the person you hire to do Michael Jackson and Prince covers. Yet Bruno Mars has an album of the year Grammy, and Prince never won an album of the year. Wow. So how are you're going to say people that are originators, that are originators in the funk genre, that are originators in the R&B, the New Jack Swing,

Bobby Brown and New Edition don't have no album of the year Grammy. Bruno Mars got that Grammy because white people love him because he's not black, period. The issue is, We want our black culture from non-black bodies. Facts. And Bruno Mars is like, I'll give it to you. Facts.

Okay, so you just heard Saren Sensei in a clip from a video series by The Grapevine. A clip from that video series went viral this past weekend, inspiring a wave of critique of the artist in question, Bruno Mars. So I should say, six weeks ago at the Grammys, Bruno Mars beats Kendrick Lamar and Jay-Z for Album of the Year. His album 24-carat magic is a pretty familiar and characteristic blend of pop and funk and R&B influences and of all the retro flavors that we all associate with Bruno Mars smoothed out from modern pop sensibilities. I think it's a pretty good album and it's certainly a very popular album. But ever since Bruno Mars grabbed that album of the year at Jay and Kendrick's expense, he's basically come due.

for a debate about cultural appropriation and Bruno Mars' relationship with black music. In that clip, Saren Sincay accuses Bruno Mars of cultural appropriation on a few levels in his music, just in terms of what his influences are and what sounds he's working with, but also in his supposed racial ambiguity. So we should clarify that Bruno Mars, to a lot of people, because of his skin tone and because of his hair, I would say. Right. Looks like he could be a lot of ethnicities. Yeah.

And he, in fact, is a lot of ethnicities. He's Puerto Rican. He's Hispanic. He's Ukrainian. He's Hawaiian. He's the combination of every ethnicity on earth except African American. Right. So I'll tell you what.

Let's play. I want us to play a bit of the finesse remix from 24-carat magic. Cardi B is also on the song. I think the finesse remix is a really good potent example. example of Bruno's musical style and also this sense of him playing with genre and playing with sort of racial ambiguity and genre ambiguity. Right. Okay, so let's, we should play a point in comparison here.

I think a lot about boys to men when I hear finesse. Sure. Me too. Let's play Motown, Philly. Okay, so I'd say by design, Cam, those are pretty similar songs. Right. Right. Not in a Bruno Mars as a plagiarist sense, but just in a, he's clearly channeling a certain defunct era. New Jack Swing is a sound. Right. Totally. And that's the sound of the song. Yeah. And he clearly grew up on that sound. And he talks a lot about New Jack Swing artists. He talks a lot about basically all post-MJ.

Absolutely. Black artists. Post-Quincey post-MJ. I should note that several black musicians, including Charlie Wilson, several black. Several black critics, including myself, have rallied to defend Bruno from this particular line of criticism. This one hip-hop, sort of historian and critic that I like Davy Cook, wrote a really long, but I thought persuasive Facebook note about Bruno Mars. You got to love the Facebook criticism. No, his Facebook criticism is great. If you get like a real old head who's just smart and can let it rip on Facebook and get like tens of thousands of likes on it. Right. But his note begins with this.

Cultural appropriation is not a Puerto Rican Filipino kid named Bruno Mars coming up out of poverty and then a one in a million type move reaching stardom where he made noise dancing like James Brown or Michael Jackson over a Teddy Riley New Jack Swing inspired beat where he fully acknowledges his influences. Right. Which I think is an important part of the conversation about appropriation. Acknowledging one's influences is a key part of that conversation. in that what people generally, historically, at least as I understand it, like I've called appropriation, does not do that. Yeah. I mean, it's not always a sufficient condition, right? I mean, Iggy is sort of back in the day, post-Miley, right?

Like, he is, after Miley Cyrus, Iggy is the big cultural appropriation burglar. And she, for the longest time, tried to be like, well, if I talk about Tupac in interviews a lot and talk about how he inspired me to become a rapper, you know, that'll get people off my case. And it only made people more angry at Iggy Azalea, I think. Well, I think people were aware of the cynicism of that move. Right, right, right, totally. Here's the thing, though. I think a lot of people are asking the wrong question. And I think the question they're asking is, is Bruno Mars a cultural appropriator, right?

Right. I mean, that's certainly, that's the question Sarin-Sense is asking. I think the boring answer to that question is, well, yeah, he is. The real question is, why is that bad? How is that bad? what level of cultural appropriation is he guilty of? And how do we determine what appropriation is acceptable and constructive? Right.

Versus what kind of cultural appropriation is exploitative and destructive and unjust. Because I would say nearly by his own admission, short of using the actual word appropriation, Bruno Mars is super, super honest about the music that he loves and grew up on. Absolutely. And his channeling. but the thing that makes it not really scan is like boogeyman behavior is the fact that he I mean he works with black musicians like right Bruno Mars is not the only credit he's not

the only credit on 24 karat magic when it wins album of the year right he's not Elvis right like he's not this person who is totally stripping the black influences away and pretending that they don't exist absolutely and totally overwhelming and obscuring those influences like a lot of black artists are eating alongside Bruno Mars. Uh-huh. I can't help but see Bruno as a part of a wave of nostalgic art right now, nostalgia commercial art. That is the bottom line of commercialism in America right now.

It is nostalgia. And not to say that a music, it didn't exist before this moment. Obviously it did. But I must say up front that Siren Sincet's version of this argument is better than a lot of the piggybacked versions of this argument, it's better than a lot of the versions that came before. Because I think one of the specific complaints here that is worth thinking about

is the kind of success that Bruno is able to have that the artist that he's pulling from had to work for in a different way in order to get into the mainstream. There's absolutely a conversation to be had about how, like the things that Michael Jackson has to do in order to kind of get Grammy recognition. It's different than what Bruno apparently.

has to do. But still, I'm also like, yeah, but why are we bracing this on like the Grammy barometer? Like, I feel like can we can we all just say that like the Grammys are trash, that they're stupid, that that should not be the measurement of mainstream success. It is not mainstream success. You know, it's like, you can't compare on Michael Jackson for me because every, you're falling for the Okie Dove. The moment, the moment even, even if you are as sort of aggressive and outspoken and like radical as I think Sarin Sensei's positioning herself, the first. The fundamental undermining of her own position she does is being obsessed with the gramis and white people in the first place yeah right and it's like once that's your starting

gambit you you can only pass yourself off as you can only pass your argument rather off as so radical because it's implicit premise is that the the gramees have influence over my self-esteem and over like the esteem of the genre of music that realistically doesn't like it doesn't need it doesn't need the grame yeah i mean i mean particularly with a Grammys, it's like, you know, it's one thing to say, well, Spike Lee never won an Oscar because that, like, the way that the Oscars function in the movie conversation is different than the way the Grammy's function in the movie, in the music conversation, if you were to tell me how long it took, like, a Jackson to win a Grammy, I'd be like, oh, that's weird

because the rest of us were already on it. Right, totally. Yeah, we should clarify that, too. It's like, there's real, I feel like there's real money and opportunity tied up in the Oscars in a way that the Grammys, absolutely not. The Grammys are the most worthless of the major award. Just like, I mean, I don't care how many Grammys Beyonce has. It doesn't, it doesn't, you know, the Grammys were only meaningful to me when Lauren Hill won.

Yeah. And like the Grammys only reflect poorly on the Grammys, right? Frankly, frankly. But it is an interesting, you know, this argument is just interesting to me because I guess from where I'm sitting, like, it is, as you said, when we started, it's like, he is everything but black, I guess. But the fact that we have to go to ancestry.com to figure out that he's not. That is true. That is what he's not black? Actually, did you all know that before you looked at?

You know, it's just like, and I guess to like a great extent, it's like I think I don't want to just write it off of splitting hairs, but it's like he is so many more forms of minority than I. Yeah, he's not white. Right. More, even more than he's not black. He is free. It's like, it's like, what does this guy have to do to earn a seat at the day? table of sort of minority produced music. I get that we want to sort of protect the idea of like black American music. But I also, when you add like the music that someone grows up listening

to and we think about the ways that in every other sense we are obsessed with people's influences, we are obsessed with understanding how they came to sound the way they sound or perform the way that they perform. And now all of a sudden we're using that against the guy? I don't know. It's like, you know how I feel about this, which is that I wish that we weren't. Pending all this on Bruno Mars because I don't care about him. Yeah. If he is an appropriator, he is not an interesting appropriator because for me it's just nostalgic.

Somebody, somebody, I forget who put Bruno Mars' whole stees very neatly to me. And I like Bruno Mars. I actually like Bruno Mars a lot. They described him as really good at collage art. Like his music is collage art. Sure. Even the best collage art is basically just, it's collage art. And, you know, I'm fine with that characterization.

What I find frustrating is that the temperature of the conversation about cultural appropriation and all of those instances seems to fluctuate. And the nuance of those conversations seems to fluctuate. I'm trying to dice out how we got to this point. Because the nuance, again, that rush of nuance seems very sudden to me. You know, it is sudden. And we're also at a moment when we are congratulating, for example, a show like Atlanta for what people are calling it sort of, unique style, what I would call a pretty familiar white art house style. And we're like we, we congratulate amalgamation when it's minorities appropriating from whiteness. We damn a non-black

minority from appropriating from black art. I don't know that I'm, I don't know that I'm comfortable with this equation. Like I, I'm not interested in saying that a person of color cannot perform black music. Well, I'll tell you what, I think that they're, I think the real problem is that there are two different conversations that are sort of stapled together and no one ever unstaples. And I think there's a conversation about art and how sort of culture flows. Yes.

Yes, absolutely. And power. Right. Well, yeah. So, like, let's, let's put this in half. So there's how, you know, a black artist appropriating a style associated with whiteness, a white artist appropriating a black style, right? Like, if you have that as a conversation,

about art, it seems more fluid, right? Because it's sort of like black people watch things that black people make and that everyone else makes. And it's sort of ideas, ideas, and they flow, however they flow. Right. The second half of the conversation is about money. Yes. Right.

So if you're looking at something like Atlanta and you're looking at what are Donald Glover and hero, Mara's influences, you know, I look at Donald Glover and think he can appropriate whatever he wants because in the grand scheme of justice, in the grand scheme of American race relations, the score ultimately favors. white people. Right. Right. So that's what makes it less complicated. Whereas Bruno Mars, I feel like what Saren Sensei is getting at and what Bruno's detractors are getting at is that no matter how well-intentioned Bruno may be when he makes this music and when he talks about Teddy Riley, people perceive that Bruno Mars is taking money out of someone's mouth. Yes. And you know what I mean?

So that's where the fact that cultural appropriation is really a conversation about money, I think that's why it seems like the standards are uneven and kind of crass. But then you have people like Beyonce. Up front, huge fan. Please do not come after me. But she literally steals. Yeah. She literally steal.

I mean, I mean, just this weekend, as far as I know, this week, there was a Beyonce JZ image that is a reference to a Senegalese movie, Tuki Buki. And it's like, I don't think that the makers of Tuki Buki Buki. from the 70s are getting money for the fact that Beyonce and Jay-Z have very deliberately copped this image that I bet you if the image had never made it to film Twitter, we would not have noticed was an image that was deliberately copped. But that movie in itself is also a movie that copse the style of the French New Wave in order to tell an African story. Like these things are, these circuits of influence are complicated.

If we do want to make it about money, I think that we got to talk about power, et cetera, as not only a thing that black people don't have. You know, that black artists don't have. I just, I guess this conversation has always felt very sloppy to me, but it's always felt sloppy still in a way that does not make me want to come down hard on Bruno Mars. I don't want to act like we weren't hip to New Jack Swing. Like, we didn't do right by New Jack Swing. Like, this kid is only coming around and doing right by it and getting wide attention.

I don't care that white people didn't care about boys to men. I don't. I don't because we did. So what does it matter? Yeah, there's one point, my favorite part of Sarah Sitsa's critique is when she says, Bobby Brown didn't get an album in the year. It's like, but Bobby Brown, I mean, that's the thing. I'm trying to envision this world in which, like, everything is more just. It's this sort of alternative universe for Bobby Brown one album of the year.

It's like, no, he didn't. Herbie Hancock did. So, you know, like, I don't know. I don't, I don't know. All I can say about Bruno Mars is that if your, if your whole point of contention with this is the sanctity of black artists. And meanwhile, all of those black artists are pouring out of the woodwork to be like, no, he's good. Like, I'm, I'm, I'm, trust me. It's fine. That's fine. That's all, that's my dream world. My dream world is a world in which we got to talk about uptown funk and this will be the last I say,

but it's like, to me, the sign that Bruno was good was Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars, uptown funk, which was Bruno's really big like, this guy is a star now record. Yes. That, that record interpolates the hook from Trinidad James, all gold everything. One hit wonder, Trinidad James. I actually love Trinidad James. But one hit wonder, Trinidad James finances felt a shit after all gold everything. He got booted from his Def Jam record deal. But when Uptown Funk came up, he had a producer credit on it.

He had points on that song. He was making money off that song. Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson did right by that man. Yes. And that to me is the vision for what it means for there to be healthy cultural exchange and healthy cultural appropriation in pop music. Absolutely. All right. Well, having solved Bruno Mars and every other cultural appropriation debate in the history of pop music, I'm Justin Charity.

I'm Cameron Collins. And we'll see you again two weeks on damage control.