Author Archives: Lara Porter

Posts by Lara Porter

Comments by Lara Porter

"Okay I love Keri Hilson, but "Pretty Girl Rock" is not about female empowerment. She straight up equates woman's power to be attractive, citing "don't hate me cuz I'm beautiful", also feeding into the stereotype that all women are essentially catty. In fact, throughout the music video she doesn't reenact strong female leaders but rather dresses up as other pop icons who essentially represent the same anti-feminist roles for women. Also, in general, pop artists don't tend to produce material with a intellectually consistent message. Most of the times their songs are written by other people. Both Keri Hilson songs represent the same message though, that hot girls being hot translates into hot music."
--( posted on Dec 13, 2010, commenting on the post Confusion from Keri Hilson )
 
"I just read that article in the New York Times this weekend! I found this piece incredibly apropos to our essay on snobbery. What's great about the 'Trocks is that they perform as if they were in a old Russian ballet school, similar to that of Najinsky. The all-male dancers take on the personas of dramatic ballerinas. I also thought that this piece directly connected to what Alexa later wrote about gay actors and homosexuality becoming more accepted with time, something that the leader of the 'Trocks thinks has directly influenced their popularity."
--( posted on Dec 13, 2010, commenting on the post Ballet, at any age or stage )
 
"This completely fascinates me, especially after analyzing Kriegel's "Graffiti: Tunnel Notes of a New Yorker" in Professor Davison's English class. The issue of graffiti as a personal statement in an "impersonal" urban setting is age old. It reminds me of those "[insert a name] wuz here"s I used to see on every field trip. There's a heartbreaking passage in the book White Teeth by Zadie Smith where an immigrant, Samad, write's a piece of graffiti that is later found by his son. I find that that particular act of art is a muffled cry against the overwhelming crush of mortality. The sense that no one knows me and no one will know when I no longer exist but maybe twenty years from now some one will see my name scratched into a park bench and somehow be aware of my existence. It's that urge to fight, however pathetically, against mortality and anonymity that drives our every day lives. To me, graffiti is always the strongest and most primal representation of this urge."
--( posted on Sep 20, 2010, commenting on the post An 8 Mile Signature )
 
"I loved this piece! I thought the the personal narratives added a lot. To me, this represented art and perspective that I don't usually see. I loved the mixture of personal voice with artistic expression. These photos made me realize that life is beautiful when you look at it through a new lens. It transformed the mundane into the art."
--( posted on Sep 8, 2010, commenting on the post Teenage Girls Explore Their Lives Through a Camera’s Eye )