Word: pop
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...great, but none is dull and together they confirm that the new South Africa is an exciting place to be a writer. The country's literary tradition has long been in white hands, but now black and mixed-race writers are clamoring to be heard. Move over, India (pop. 1 billion). South Africa (pop. 45 million) may well be the developing world's new literary superpower. Not bad for a country with 11 official languages and an education system still reeling from the inequities of the past - plus stubborn poverty, environmental degradation, corruption and an aids epidemic that has left...
SOULWAX NITE VERSIONS The Dewaele brothers are the founding members of Soulwax, a competent if unremarkable rock band; in their spare time they also work as 2 Many DJs, spinning out some of the catchiest electro-pop ever to hit a dance floor. Here, 2 Many DJs finally gets around to remixing Soulwax, and never mind the identity politics, it works to great effect. The pedestrian angst of Krack is recast with a tighter rhythm and a jubilant harmony; Miserable Girl is sped up to sound decidedly less like one. The rock soul of their originals remains, but they...
...naturally mix a cross-section of classes and ethnicities. Made up of short, numbered chapters that count down, like a bomb, rather than up, each focuses on one of the book's six major characters, then repeats the cycle. Each set begins with Ray Beam, a burnt-out pop star of ten years ago whose descent from debauched musical godling to weird, unproductive recluse resembles that of Axl Rose. He suddenly seems to find his muse in Lily, a young Hispanic-American woman whose side of the story bookends each chapter cycle. Initially hired as Ray's personal assistant, Lily...
...wrong guys. Meanwhile Phoebe, a teenager from the sticks, arrives at the diner where Caprice works in order to find the owner, her father who left her 15 years earlier. Lastly, and most memorably we have Steve, a creepy weirdo. While displaying an obsessive interest in pop music, particularly the work of Ray Beam, Steve slowly descends further and further into isolated madness...
Luckily, things have changed, and the purpose of art has expanded greatly. Consider the function of photography in the imagery of Vietnam or the Great Depression, or the role of Constructivist art in uniting millions of Russians. Pop art forces us to examine our absurd consumer society by parodying such a culture. Art is an immensely powerful tool in shaping the way in which society sees the world in a particular context and reflecting upon that context...