Beastie Boys open letter: "threat" was just a misunderstanding

boing
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For the original “Girls” to be a parody, it would need to parody something. It’s not, it’s a (somewhat) original work that doesn’t directly comment on another work. Some may make interpretation that it’s tongue-in-cheek satire, but that’s not the same. Parody and satire are not the same.

Also, I think the claim that “everything on Licensed to Ill is ironic / satire” is open to debate.

In the Beastie Boys’ anthology The Sounds of Science, Adam Horovitz wrote about “Song for the Man,” and how it was inspired by men he saw harassing a woman on the subway: “Sexism is deeply rooted in our history and society that waking up and stepping outside of it is like I’m watching ‘Night of the Living Dead Part Two’ all day every day. Listening to the lyrics of this song, one might say that the Beastie Boy ‘Fight for Your Right to Party’ guy is a hypocrite. Well, maybe; but in this fucked up world all you can hope for is change, and I’d rather be a hypocrite to you than a zombie forever.” Source.

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I too think this is a fascinating line of argument…but I’m not aware of any caselaw that supports it. If this goes to trial perhaps this theory will be tested.

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You’re right, I of course meant satire, which is different; in turn
nullifying that argument. Stupid brain.

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90

I don’t know if you noticed recently, but BB had a whole series of posts about an event sponsored by Ford. Unless you just didn’t visit during the time they were doing this, you couldn’t miss that a.) they were deeply involved and b.) the thing was sponsored by Ford.

They’re in advertising.

Or more to the point, they’re media people who are dependent on advertisers. Just like those damn media people Boing Boing readers seem to hate so much. And they do sponsored stories, which in the newspaper business we call an “advertorial”.

And I don’t get the hate for advertisers. They’re just people doing a job. I realize it’s not a STEM field, but all they’re doing is making a product or service look good for a customer. If the advertising agency is called upon to make Levitra look like something an older guy wants to take, is the agency evil, or is the client?

And on that note, I’ll just end, and I wish you luck in finding a career free of ethical dilemmas.

91

Well, Bill Hicks’ rant seemed to come from an anti-materialist, pro-human conviction that marketing ruins culture by commercializing and “putting dollar signs” on everything. Juxtapose it with his rant about rock stars of the 60’s vs. rock stars of the 80’s. He mentions George Michael doing a Pepsi commercial and then asks rhetorically whether Jimi Hendrix would ever have done a Pepsi commercial.

That said, Hicks’ act was very angry and it’s a little difficult to tell how much of that anger is sincere and how much of it is stage persona.

92

Erector set is a good idea. I was never happy with how even when attempting to break gender stereotypes, they still made Goldieblocks absurdly girlie looking.

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93

While I don’t know if it’s relevant to the scope of copyright law, and IANAL, I was under the distinct impression that basically everything is commercial activity. If you grow a plant in your backyard, don’t tell anyone about it, and eat that plant, you have participated in “interstate commerce” according to the SCOTUS (see Gonzales v. Raich). I’d be curious, considering the modern online economy, if “for commercial purposes” would become an irrelevant consideration given the current court’s standing.

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The Beastie Boys were conscripted into selling this corporation’s products.

It really is as simple as that.

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95

Yeah. That’s what is so baffling to me. It still looks like a pretty princess “for girls” toy!
Get these girls real engineering toys, not this polly pocket crap.
Building something like this

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Will teach a little girl a lot more about engineering and design than building one of these:
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96

Okay, so I was looking at this piece: GoldieBlox: Disrupting the pink aisle or just selling toys?

And it got me thinking about something. It mentions LEGO Friends as a terrible thing. Everybody seems to agree that LEGO Friends is the Worst Thing Ever Done To Girls. And yet, the same piece says this about GoldieBlox:

So I’m sympathetic to this post, written by Deborah Siegel, proposing that GoldieBlox is practicing “Trojan feminism.” The toys may depend on stereotypes to lure kids in, but they also tweak and reframe them.

And to me, that’s sort-of what LEGO Friends is about, too, which is why I didn’t feel at all bad about getting one of these for my kids:

It’s basically the same as this tub

but in different colors. (I’ve seen several critiques that claim that the former bucket doesn’t exist, btw) Grandparents and other family and friends have given my girls so much pink crap that they feel like they’re supposed to play with pink crap. And they like it. They’re not constrained to just build what the box says they’re supposed to build with it, unlike the log cabin set they got last Christmas and haven’t played with more than a couple of times since.

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aar_hodges may be referring to the comments on the Youtube video, which has the usual string of trolls and idiots posting trollish and idiotic comments.

Hey, if they end up losing and have to change the song, may I suggest one of the Goldberg Variations as an alternate?

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“…comments…YouTube…”

Ah, I see the problem.

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The problem is that most of those “real engineering toys” look like they are for boys. I would not be surprised if most of the advertising features only boys. It is okay for a girl to like pink and glitter. It is okay for a girl to want to build a princess castle. I agree, however, that marketing a toy to girls and limiting the options to the typical stereotypes is not very useful.

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Apologies for posting all these images and the clutter, but I think it’s necessary to address a critical point.
Each one of these are the first toy set that came up when typing in their respective name in amazon. I didn’t cherry pick these or anything. They are four of the most popular enduring building\engineering toys in the country. The only one that looks remotely geared to one gender is the erector set. I’m not pretending that there isn’t a gender bias in this sort of thing, but I don’t buy the argument that there aren’t excellent choices for girls who want good quality building toys.

K’nex

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Tinker Toy

Erector

Lego

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For Lego, they created a line of Legos specifically for girls called “Lego Friends”. From what I have read, the sets mainly involve things like cafes, beauty shops, and homes. The sets are populated by “ladyfigs”, which are taller and curvier than the standard “minifigs” (which are mostly male if they are clearly gendered). Basically, it seems like the Legos marketed towards girls are separated from all the other Lego City sets which strongly indicates that everything else is assumed to be “for boys”. BoingBoing has covered Lego and gender before: http://boingboing.net/2012/05/15/history-of-gendering-in-lego.html and http://boingboing.net/2011/12/14/134329.html

I am not sure if I would really look at K’nex and think “gender neutral”. Of the regular building sets, they have a lot that seem geared towards boys: Robo-Creatures (Robo-smash, Robo-sting, Robo-strike), Transport Chopper, 4-Wheel Drive Truck, Strike Force Bomber, Rally Sport Racer, and a K’NEXosaurus Rex. The amusement park ones seem fairly gender neutral. Of the “specialty” themes, I would have said that maybe the Thrill Rides was gender neutral, but of the eight that showed the front/back of the box, seven of them had boys pictured (the other had no kids shown). The Nascar line has at least one female racer, but she is one of the people who only apparently has one set to her name (some of the other guys have transporter rigs, pit crews, etc.). The Roary the Racing Car line does not feature any of the female characters from the show.

TinkerToys seems to do a better job and aiming to both boys and girls since their products have three with girls on the box versus five with boys on the box. The boys are on the transit building set, the vehicles building set, the “big top”/circus building set and the “SuperTink” building set (heroic adventures). One of the girls is on the animal building set, but another girl is on a box labelled “TinkerToys Pink” (build a castle, a flower, and a cat). I think, unfortunately, that if a little girl saw all these sets lined up, she would think that the pink box was aimed at her so by default all the others were aimed at boys.

I think it would be great if engineering toy brands:

(1) Did not indicate that only certain boxes were “for girls” by making one of them the “pink box”.
(2) Showed both boys and girls playing with the toys.
(3) Created a variety of sets (some geared towards stereotypical boys, some towards stereotypical girls, some gender neutral) but did not color-code the sets with stereotypical colors.
(4) Included multiple colors in all their sets instead of gender-neutral/“boy” colors for gender neutral and “boy” sets, but only “girl” colors for “girl” sets.

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102

I mostly agree with you, I just want to say a little quip.

I’ve always loved bike riding, ever since I was a little kid. For years, when I was elementary school-aged, I rode on my sister’s hand-me-down bike, which was purple, with pink seat and handlebar grips. It still worked the same as the other bikes I had in the years before and afterwards. I do get your point, but ultimately, you just kind of have to not care. Whether something is fitting for a kid to play with only depends on the opinion of the parent and the kid, not what the advertising campaign says, and not what color it is.

103

I was thinking about the TinkerToys when I wrote that:

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Notice how one is clearly not like the others?

One kids bike is pretty much like any other. Dolls and stuffed animals, however, are not very similar to engineering toys.

You really think that stereotypes do not affect kids?

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104

I couldn’t help but wonder if GoldieBlox is friends with the BBs and this was a big publicity stunt. If so, it’s fuckin’ brilliant.

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Isn’t this pretty much exactly what Goldieblox did? Made a building set using a color palette and figures specifically to entice little girls?

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I don’t disagree, but I note that all the little girls I know own Lego, all of them own at least one “girls” set as well as other sets and none of them seem to favour playing with exclusively “girls” bricks over the others.

Many little girls love pink and princesses and other cultural modes of femininity but not exclusively. Honestly, I think that these pink sets are marketed at grandparents, not at the children themselves.