Anybody else had enough of this sad clown pity party?

Pigg said
While doing research for a class, I came across this call for papers from a new journal entitled Journal of Language and Discrimination:

Reveal Spoiler

Call for Papers
New Journal: Journal of Language and Discrimination (JLD)
The new Journal of Language and Discrimination will be launched in 2017 with Equinox.
Discrimination is an important research topic in a large number of diverse but related fields, including linguistics, law, anthropology, sociology and psychology. This complex, multidisciplinary research topic often has a strong focus and concern with language. The new Journal of Language and Discrimination aims to bring together a multidisciplinary synergy of approaches on discrimination as a complex linguistic and non-linguistic phenomenon. In bringing together different research strands that focus on discrimination, the journal hopes to serve as a catalyst for innovation and play a pivotal role in establishing interdisciplinary language and discrimination research worldwide.
The editors of JLAD invite papers that reflect the diversity of possible approaches in relation to language and discrimination. The aim is to include work with a wide array of approaches that reflect the diversity and recent developments of research on language and discrimination.
Topics may include but are not limited to:
- Reflections on the research that has been done on discrimination in your field, and the direction in which research could or should develop
- Discussions on broadening the field versus constraining academic subject areas
- Consideration of definitions of discrimination, and the benefits and disadvantages of using this term for our research
- Theoretical and methodological considerations in interdisciplinary research
- Case studies from different fields that relate to language and discrimination
- Qualitative analyses on language and discrimination

 

Here's a link to the journals website for more information:

https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/JLD/index

 

Juggalos have their own specific jargon (how many other people use the word "neden"?) and face discrimination whether from the government or from peers. I think if we put our heads together, we could come up with a badass idea for a research article. I would even be willing to do a majority of the research and writing of said article. However, I am in my last semester of classes currently and am swamped, so I doubt we would be able to make the April 15th cutoff for papers. The journal will be biannually with issues in May and November. That gives us some time. J said the Juggalo March is to show the world that we aren't a joke. An article about juggalos and by juggalos in an academic journal is a wonderful way to drive that point home. Who's with me?

Here are some issues or ideas that I have come up with in the time I wrote this post:

Code-switching as a juggalo

The irony of calling clowns a joke

The historical role of the "fool" in presenting uncomfortable truths

Class portrayal in the canon of the Insane Clown Posse

 

Maybe it's a pipe dream, but I honestly think we could have enough intelligent motherfuckers on this forum to get this shit done.  

Tell me what to do and I'll do it. 

It's always interested me that people either take Juggalos as a joke or think that they're being serious, depending on their punchline. Their inconsistency bothers me.

“No clowns were funny. That was the whole purpose of a clown. People laughed at clowns, but only out of nervousness. The point of clowns was that, after watching them, anything else that happened seemed enjoyable.” -Terry Pratchett. 

^it was the first thing that popped into my head when I read your post.^

Also it sounds like they are looking for papers on the way language and discrimination intersect not in group language of groups that are discriminated against. 

Like a discussion of the language of black lives matter v all lives matter instead of a discussion on AAVE idioms. I could be wrong though.

Miracles was hardly supposed to be their "super deep" song. It was a light hearted appreciation of the mundane.

Not sure if I'll do any good but i want to help.

There's lots of other icp songs that are way way way deeper. 

They were being goofy. There are beautiful parts of the song. Two things can be true at once.

Music is magic pure and clean, you can hear it and feel it but it can't be seen.

And music is a lot like love it's all a feeling. It'll fill a room from the floor to the ceiling.

Those are beautiful lyrics if you ask me. And the sentiment is sincere. And common in all forms of art. 

I don't really mind people thinking they're a joke. It's something I've gotten used to in the roughly 20 years I been bumping them. But it does get old having people questioning my legitimacy as a student over their perception of a band that's been around for almost 30 years based on one line of a light hearted appreciation for the mundane.

Fwiw there are research papers about all sorts of pop culture icons from harry potter to Spider-Man to tales from the crypt to the Beatles to pro sports and beyond, so adding icp to that list isn't that absurd or outrageous. 

And lastly, icp were the first people to tell me that I mattered so yeah, I'd like to tell people that they matter.

scruffy said
well then, you got far bigger problems then tryin to convince juggalos to not be fans of icp, dontcha?  

to say nothin of how insignificant literally every other activity is, given.  talkin up the geniusness of kanye west, as a random example.  

  

if what you say is true, lucem, i sure hope you arent bothering to pay your bills.  waste of your time.  

  

[edit]  damn bloody typo fix.    

Lol, that's a sad attempt at trying to prove a point. I never tried to convince juggalos not to be fans of ICP.

I talk up the geniusness of Kanye West because I think it's funny as fuck.

Yeah, please try and desperately explain to me how paying my bills to have shit that matters to me is as much of a waste of time as begging people to respect a band I like.

People NEVER question me over my musical preference after they get to know me. And I have NEVER tried to defend why I ever listened to ICP. Or tried to paint them as this brilliant group of beauty and profound messages when they are not. In fact, I think a lot of people respect me because I don't beg for validation.

Noah Fence said
I didn't say they were deep. I said they were beautiful and I think they are.

There's a book by Richard Dawkins, who despite his racism is pretty smart, which talks about the miracle of the mundane in much the same way that miracles does. He even talks about rainbows, magnets, and the variety of life on earth thanks to evolution. It's illustrated by one of my favorite artists.

Miracles is their version of a very common sentiment. You get out of it what you put into it. They're goofy. They're uneducated. They're vulgar. That doesn't mean their work isn't valid. 

It is classist to think that only well articulated points are valid. And really, let's look at the lyric you posted:

Fucking Rainbows after it rains / there's enough miracles here to blow your brains

What exactly is wrong with that? Vulgarity? Um. You used vulgar words in your post. Should I not take your post seriously?

Or is it in the examination of something mundane? Okay. If you can't appreciate the mundane then of course you wouldn't like a song that celebrates it. 

Is it the idiom of blowing brains? It's a figure of speech used often. You have probably used it yourself, or others close to it.

Is it the juxtaposition of the mundane and the idiom that talks of being shocked? That's how juxtaposition is supposed to work.

Finally you can choose to not believe me but that's on you.

Yes, we are talking about perception. But no I am not talking about them mattering -to me-. I'm talking about them mattering culturally. They nurtured the scene that spawned you, that held up and promoted a lot of other artists. From tech n9ne to shitty ass kmk to Whitney Peyton and many, many other artists who are able to live off their music. I'm talking about the people I've known who came into this shit on drugs and being suicidal and who got off that shit and learned to better manage their emotional problems.

And I'm talking about the wider cultural world, especially the arts world, which can look at what icp have built outside of the fine arts world and apply it to their own work and understanding of art history and interpretation. And spirituality. And marketing.

That they are often goofy and vulgar doesn't mean their work is less thoughtful or well crafted. Shit.

They used to say that basquiat (who regularly misspelled words or added penises to his drawings and who often drew / painted very unconventionally, and who started in graf art) shouldn't be taken seriously in the art world because he wss ignorant, vulgar, and crude. Now his paintings are some of the most sought after in the world.

Are icp basquiat? Nah. But they are significant in their own right in a lot of ways. Whether people want to accept it or not. 

And writing papers about them probably won't change that much but it will be precedence for other people to take them seriously in an intellectual context and contribute to the growth of our scene.  

I think it's classist to assume that their vocabulary and inability to present an idea in an elegant manner is because of their class.

And yes, no matter how this over used concept is painted it's still a generic concept completely summed up with a corny facebook meme shared by somebody who hardly even celebrates the message. The idea is basic. So it's not deep. It's not profound. And it's not presented beautifully. I don't think using specific words destroys any message. Except for anus. But in this context it completely destroys any beauty they were trying to present. Not only that but it's a super basic rhyme scheme using corny and over used lines that you get from any basic ass rapper you can find on sound cloud. And the fucked up thing is you are defending it like it should be held to the standard of profoundly well thought out lyrics that artists actually poured time and soul into it. With the low standard you are setting then why aren't you celebrating lyrics like "Damn, that bitch is fine!!! Wanna fuck her from behind" You think that shit is misogynistic because he says bitch? But that would just be classist because that's just how his culture talks. It's a lyric about appreciating the beauty of a woman's body and openly portraying your sexuality with no shame yet I highly doubt you ever see it as that. Why? Because it's a fucking terrible lyric. And you're trying to paint fucking terrible lyrics as something more when they are not. Because they mean something to you, you are trying to change people's perception of the culture, song, group so you can feel validated. Oh, and the sad fucking fact that you want to compare that song to Richard Dawkins appreciation of the world around us despite the lack of mystery when they said in the song that scientists, like Richard Dawkins, ruins the magic by uncovering they mystery.

And you wanna know how I know Miracles was a half assed trash song? Because they have done the same concept before but better.

And the thing that actually annoys me is not the fact that you want this culture to be validated. It's that you are going to try as hard as you can to paint terrible lyrics as something more than just terrible lyrics. You are not being completely honest. It's like when people were trying to defend their violent songs like Night of the .44 with songs like Thy Unveiling. Nah, fuck you, I like violent dark fucked up shit, so what? It's a song about killing people.

Or maybe I'm just on my man period today. But like a very manly man period.