The Return of a Genre Nobody Asked For

Machine Gun Kelly is on a mission to ‘bring back pop-punk.’ Can guitar sounds make a comeback after the
total ubiquity of hip hop and rap?
From the Dispatches at NO FUN Magazine.

In Part I, we looked at Kid Cudi’s internet-breaking dress moment on Saturday Night Live (SNL) earlier this month. In Part II, we go further with the SNL musical guests, having noticed something brewing in (American) pop music that hasn’t happened in a long time. It’s strange that the common link here is SNL. Why would a long-running (maybe outdated) comedy sketch and variety show potentially be a present signal, a radar, of what is manifesting within pop music? Though perhaps the question is rather, why not?

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Kid Cudi wears a dress. Breaks the internet.

A cultural commentary on Kid Cudi’s dress appearance on SNL and new indicators towards what’s brewing in pop music.

From the Dispatches at NO FUN Magazine.

Kid Cudi showed up on Saturday Night Live (SNL) in a dress, and the internet exploded. Presumably this was exciting because it was a man, in a dress. There is a long history of American popular culture misrepresenting trans people with harmful stereotypes, tropes, and appropriating ballroom culture, etc. This appearance by Cudi (or Cudder as he is fondly called by fans) felt like a re-run of a tonne of problems seen before (for an intro to the missteps of American film and TV in portrayals of trans lives see Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen, a documentary by Sam Feder that premiered at Sundance in 2020 before being purchased by Netflix.)

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Interview with a Designer at Calvin Klein

Cameron Foden is Senior Denim Designer at Calvin Klein. We spoke on the developments of his job and noticable impacts on the fashion industry so far, under the circumstances of COVID-19.

 

22nd MARCH, 2020

(Ruth, pictured left) So, fashion…

(Cameron, pictured right) So, fashion. Obviously this is going to be very, very interesting. How all aspects; so a) consumerism as a whole, and b) fashion itself, will be effected. The luxury goods industry is going to be devastated, especially as people re-evaluate their priorities and their spending. With so much uncertainty people are going to have a complete change in their spending habits. I don’t think we can even begin to comprehend yet what it’s going to look like. Some people are saying we are looking at half a year (for recovery), other people are saying we are looking at up to two. Let’s see where we end up be next week, or next month. I suspect prospects are only going to look more and more grim.

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