{"id":19030,"date":"2014-08-16T06:00:54","date_gmt":"2014-08-16T10:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=19030"},"modified":"2014-08-15T13:11:11","modified_gmt":"2014-08-15T17:11:11","slug":"i-fought-the-laws-of-economic-rationality-i-won","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2014\/08\/16\/i-fought-the-laws-of-economic-rationality-i-won\/","title":{"rendered":"I Fought the Laws of Economic Rationality, &amp; I Won"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>This is a cross-post from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.its-her-factory.com\/2014\/08\/a-few-thoughts-on-katy-perrys-this-is-how-we-do\/\" target=\"_blank\">Its Her Factory<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7RMQksXpQSk\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The neoliberal subject is supposed to make economically rational calculations about how she spends her time, her money, and her energy. Do I spend my time working, or would it I get a better return doing something else, like sleeping or going out? Partying hard and going gaga might be a good investment if it helps you work smarter and more efficiently, if it builds your brand, if you need a release, and so on. But the effect of this is that every decision&#8211;even the decision to have fun, or the decisions you make about what is fun, while having fun&#8211;is now work. It\u2019s not that you\u2019re choosing to do have fun instead of do work, but that having fun its own type of work. If you\u2019re lucky, you get the return on that investment. If you\u2019re less lucky, that return goes to someone else (e.g., I\u2019ve talked about the way clubbing has become a type of outsourced labor <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2014\/07\/25\/the-quantified-dj-set-work-hard-play-hard\/\">here<\/a> at Cyborgology).<\/p>\n<p>In this context, Katy Perry\u2019s new single \u201cThis Is How We Do\u201d sounds like a defense of the wanton disregard for economic rationality. In the bridge (and sounding like she\u2019s doing her best to channel P!nk), Perry praises a bunch of economically irrational activities in the form of shout-outs to<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The ladies at breakfast&#8230;in last night\u2019s dress<\/p>\n<p>All you kids who still have their cars at the club valet&#8230;and its Tuesday<\/p>\n<p>All you kids buying bottle service with your rent money<\/p>\n<p>All you people going to bed with a 10, and waking up with a 2<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The last two&#8211;spending money on overpriced booze rather than housing, and sleeping with someone who is quantitatively inattractive&#8211;really resonate with the idea of economic calculation. All of these decisions are economically irrational because they give you diminishing returns. Imagine the disappointment (and, perhaps, shame or self-disgust) of waking up next to that person you realize you\u2019re not attracted to at all.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s also a musical representation of miscalculation at the end of the song. The last iteration of the chorus sounds like it\u2019s going to conclude with a fade-out. But at about 2:56 in the YouTube video posted to Perry\u2019s official account, Perry says \u201cWait, what? Bring the beat back,\u201d and we get about half a minute more of instrumental coda. In bringing the beat back, the song goes past the point of diminishing returns&#8211;it\u2019s really likely, IMO, that this last 30 seconds will get cut in radio airplay. Even in the video this section feels like filler&#8211;Perry walks to the background and lies down in the dark as animated ice cream cones twerk in the foreground. So, both the lyrics and the composition give examples of economic irrationality, that is, of pushing something fun past its point of diminishing returns.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of arguing for the <i>benefits<\/i> of such irrationality, for its positive contributions to individual or social life, the song argues for its normalcy, for its lack of perceptible effect. It doesn\u2019t treat over-the-top partying like something that\u2019s ecstatic or extraordinarily pleasurable, but something that\u2019s mundane. In effect, \u201cThis Is\u201d defends economic irrationality as non-disruptive, either to society or to \u201cour\u201d ability to function in it.<\/p>\n<p>You can hear this defense strategy in the song\u2019s music. Especially with the slowed-down sample of the song\u2019s title, \u201cThis Is How We Do\u201d sounds like Perry\u2019s answer to Miley\u2019s sizurpy \u201cWe Can\u2019t Stop.\u201d Perry\u2019s song has a similarly muted soar, and what I\u2019ve argued <a href=\"http:\/\/thenewinquiry.com\/essays\/wound-down-inside\/\">here<\/a> is its concomitant first-person-plural perspective. But what\u2019s really interesting is what Perry sings over that muted soar: she repeats the phrase \u201cit\u2019s no big deal\u201d four times. The song phones in its soars because they\u2019re no big deal. While such irrationality might feel overwhelming to people who don\u2019t \u201cdo\u201d like us, from \u201cour\u201d perspective we\u2019re so habituated to it this irrationality barely even rises to the level of perception. What some think is irrational excess is, for us, just another day.<\/p>\n<p>The song\u2019s structure reflects the regularization of otherwise irregular excess. The two NBD soars aren\u2019t even the song\u2019s main climax&#8211;<i>they\u2019re just the chorus<\/i>&#8230;a regular, repeated part of the song. The biggest musical moment is at the end of the bridge, when Perry finally puts some support behind her voice and wails \u201cRENT MO-NAY\u201d; this is followed by some sounds of a cheering, whistling crowd (and, um, a really puzzling picture of Aretha Franklin singing at the first Obama inaugural. I get the R-E-S-P-E-C-T analogy, but, um, otherwise the video\u2019s use of this image just seems gratuitous and racist). There\u2019s like a hyper-abbreviated soar in the last few beats of the bridge to lead us back to the final iteration of the chorus, a sort of pale echo of the earlier soars.<\/p>\n<p><strong><strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/strong>Such economic irrationality is \u201cno big deal\u201d only when it\u2019s performed by specific kinds of bodies in very particular circumstances. Just think for a minute about the absolutely huge deal made about \u201cwelfare queens\u201d&#8211;implicitly black women who make supposedly economically irrational decisions like buying alcohol, beauty services, or even junk food. According to this anti-welfare perspective, such purchases are bad returns on taxpayer investment because they are wasteful&#8211;they bring enjoyment and relief to black women, rather than the (generally white) \u2018taxpayer.\u2019 \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/groupthink.jezebel.com\/awesome-takedown-of-stupid-welfare-memes-1484820371\">This<\/a> Jezebel post shows plenty of examples of these anti-welfare memes, and does a decent take-down of them.<strong><strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The ability to fuck up and not be punished is like the definition of privilege (e.g., men getting away with rape, whites getting away with murder, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=jbCqwl2geQg\">I Fought the Law and I Won<\/a>,\u201d etc etc). So perhaps what \u201cThis Is How We Do\u201d is really about is affirming the privilege of those whose economically irrational behavior passes as \u201cno big deal\u201d?<\/p>\n<p><strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><br \/>\nOh, and p.s.: don\u2019t even get me started on the racist appropriation in the video.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a cross-post from Its Her Factory. &nbsp; \u00a0 The neoliberal subject is supposed to make economically rational calculations about how she spends her time, her money, and her energy. Do I spend my time working, or would it I get a better return doing something else, like sleeping or going out? Partying hard [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1929,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9967],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1929"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19030"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19031,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19030\/revisions\/19031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}