Midrange Weekly July 5

Your Weekly Round Up On What’s Got The Midrange Staff’s Attention

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Hello team and welcome back to Midrange Weekly. Over the past week Canada Day has come and gone, and just as that is absolutely not something to be celebrated right now, we’ll dispense with the inane jokes for the intro this week. The idea of celebrating a nation that is currently embroiled in litigating its own stunningly racist and genocidal history doesn't sit right for a lot of us. We can observe Canada Day, sure. Take the day off. Go to the beach if you like. But when your neighbour is suffering, you sure as hell don’t throw a party; we’re going to go with a similar conceit this week before we dive into things. With that, let’s take a peak at some of news that has us pulling our hair out recently.

 

We Need A Form Of Critical Race Theory In Canada

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When 215 unmarked graves of indigenous children were found at a now defunct residential school in Kamloops several weeks ago, leaders from their communities and those across Canada assured us they would not be the last. They were right. Over the course of a month over a thousand similar graves have been found en masse. Our contiguous map of Canada is blotted out with these crime scenes at this point. The statistical frequency of these genocidal incidents seem at least anecdotally on par with the onslaught of mass shootings in America. Yet with the later we no longer feign surprise or horror- not really. Instead we go through the cynical and derisive routine of condemning America’s broken social fabric and pathetically gridlocked legislative system that is clearly impotent to do anything about it. With the genocide of indigenous children, we pretend this is a shocking and new revelation.

Indeed this is new for a lot us- that’s the problem from a certain perspective. Certainly the idea of becoming numb to this news as routine is a terrible hypothetical to ponder, but being taken completely off guard by it represents a moral failing of its own. You ask your average caucasian Canadian citizen and they truly are disoriented by the sheer number of indigenous youth that were assaulted, malnourished, murdered, and their bodies hidden away. We genuinely reach for questions like why and how did this happen. Why was the Catholic Church, a virulent cesspool of corruption and exploitation of youths across the world mandated with jurisdictional oversight of indigenous children in what were only nominally educational institutions? How is this not more thoroughly ingrained into the history of Canada at a scholastic level? That we struggle with these questions represents a failure at every level of Canadian identity, from a cultural level, a policy level, an institutional level, and a personal level. 

It’s that last question that I want to dwell on, and why I brought up the analogue to America’s own similar failings. The last several weeks in America have seen state and municipal governments bend over backwards to ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory in their country. In what amounts to barely veiled propagation of white supremacist rhetoric, law makers engender bad faith arguments with bullshit like CRT is anti white, or CRT will make white kids feel bad. It’s all a flimsy and prosaic attempt to burry the racist biases embedded in their national and cultural infrastructure. The recent revelations of indigenous genocide in Canada, that once again should not be viewed as recent developments, is a sobering reminder that Canada is no better in this regard. Looking back on my curriculum for Canadian history in grade school elides on nothing more than basically a Hudson’s Bay Company advertisement; a propagandistic time line on the evolving path ways of the fur trade and the nation that sprung up in its wake. There wasn’t much more to what I was taught. I’m sure scholastic standards have made at least a modicum of movement towards more progressive standards, but we need an overhaul of how Canadian history is taught in schools. Not just at a graduate level where CRT takes place in the States, but at an early age when biases can still be countered by historical honesty. 

We need to have this information embedded into our long lasting academic acumen, not just our instagram feeds for a week. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of the infographics people are circulating in hopes of elucidating or just in solidarity strike me as earnest attempts at communicating the enormity of all of this. But it shouldn’t be the job of a bunch of people on social media to handle this. This is the job of our provincial and federal government, and those that oversee our academic institutions. The intellectual frame work of CRT in America as it pertains to the black experience over centuries of life in the States serves as a structural framework that can and should be adapted to teach all of us about the indigenous experience in Canada. The history of their contributions, how they were exploited, their historical and modern day relationship with a hostile government, and how these historical contexts permeate the education, judicial, financial, and corrective systems of our nation are all frustratingly obscured in the classroom. Statistically it’s not hard to see the effects of institutional racism in our country with regard to indigenous people, but we need a level of acuity and intersectionality within our education system on these matters for us to understand the larger picture. All over the country members of the various indigenous communities are sick of us being so gallingly late to the game on understanding this and the rest of us should be too. 

America’s political system has been annexed by insurrectionists, dead end culture warriors and straight up racists. They have little hope of institutionalizing a more nuanced and accurate understanding of their own cultural atrocities. I can’t say I have much optimism for our own nation when it comes to our politicians but our legislative process has not yet been hijacked to such a deleterious effect. It’s time to rethink how our schools work in this regard, and then it’s time to go back to school. -Tristan

 

Don’t Let The Worst Villain In The Britney Scandal Off The Hook

We are now in our second week of what seems like the second recent iteration of once again litigating the ethical and personal assaults brought upon to Britney Spears by her draconian conservatorship. From our various armchairs, soapboxes, and moral high horses we bemoan and decry the lack of autonomy a grown, and severely exploited, person has over their life, their finances, even their own body. As the dimensions of evil and those that perpetrate such malignancy comes into sharper focus the passing of blame and shirking of responsibility under the guise of masquerading as granular contextualization of has ramped up. With revelations as shocking and dystopian as being unable to remove an IUD from herself being just some of what Spears has disclosed in a recent legal review of her conservatorship, the sickening sense of injustice and a palpable urge to mitigate such a thing has swept pop culture discourse once again. Even more deliriously evil is that all the lawyers, doctors, and experts who would argue against releasing Britney from such a byzantine and socially dubious situation are all being paid through her fortune. The more we learn the more surreal it seems. People are angry on Spears’ behalf. 

Other people like her father Jamie Spears are trying to get ahead of the narrative metastasizing around him that he is a monster for actively seeking such an arrangement for his daughter at the behest of nothing more cynical than his own financial agenda. Stating that he has very little to do with the bureaucratic administration of the conservatorship, the elder Spears stated that the day to day atrocities his daughter is subjected to are under the purview of a Jodi Montgomery. Montgomery however points out (accurately) that he only took over the morally onerous position in 2019, a full decade after the pop star’s subjugation to state adjudicators began in earnest. Ever since the initial round of Free Britney momentum perforated main stream pop zeitgeist with a documentary earlier this year, everyone was been searching for villains to detest in this story. Indeed, there is no lacking of pernicious individuals that seem happy to stoop to the lowest levels of perfidy to steal a young artist’s money in one of the most institutionally hostile ways imaginable.        

What’s missing from this obfuscated network of malice is an institution that has done more harm to Britney than any government stooge or mendacious family figure, and that’s of course the media. Every publication that writes a story about the tragic circumstances Spears has internalized for over a decade has contributed to and compounded those circumstances. With Spears celebrity on the decline in the late 2000s nearly every pop rag in print or online was giddy at watching- more like invasively extracting- moments of mental instability and trauma she experienced. This should not shock or surprise any of us. After all this media ecosystem that lives and dies by the ascendance and nadir of celebrity dominance is literally responsibly for running Princess Diana into the ground, to her death. They have learned absolutely nothing from their abhorrent conduct in her fatal car wreck. Rather than internalizing and reflecting on their odious night crawler practices, they doubled down on them with Britney, the former princess of pop. 

They stalked and hounded her, yes; but were also willing and eager accomplices in vicious character assignation that further contributed to her mental instability and then had the temerity to state they were neutral observers of what they fully asserted to be a public affair. When Justin Timberlake wanted to juice the hype for his upcoming solo album in 2002, his entire marketing campaign centred around the idea his former romance Spears being tarnished due to her alleged infidelity. His video Cry Me A River explicitly suggests that Spears cheated on him, breaking his innocent heart and that we should feel so, so sorry for him. Much Music and MTV looped the video into perpetuity and ubiquity, normalizing the fiction that she was a callous wraith to be villainized. No one pushed back on this.

Allegedly higher forms of media journalism were no better, exercising appalling standards on journalistic jurisprudence or observing a person’s right to privacy. In a now infamous interview with a supposed vanguard of journalistic integrity, Diane Sawyer blindsided Spears with accusations of affairs as forgone conclusions despite no evidence existing beyond Timberlake’s marketing machine. The media turned on Spears because it was a prudent and convenient narrative in the simplistic and obtuse binaries of covering celebrity in the 90s and early 2000s. Now that such discourse is rendered through a more nuanced degree of dimensions, they all wish to lament they horrid conditions Spears seems unable to extricate herself from. It’s their fault too. Look to publications like Jezebel who last week wrote a piece on the ironic and absurd tragedy of having to covering a news event like a person begging to have her life back, who years prior jokingly mused that that same person needed a lobotomy. There is zero self-reflection, the very same deficiency they accused of Timberlake when he released his own half-hearted statement of contrition. A taxonomy of similar hypocrisy can be read here if you have the stomach for more. It’s narratively useful to paint Spears as a victim for these publications at the moment. Remember that the next time the ABCs, TMZ, or whatever gossip rag is in vogue right now absolutely drags another child pop star. It’s the same lesson they just refuse to learn. -Tristan

 

Things From The Internet We Liked (And One We Didn’t)

 

Black Belt Eagle Scout should be the face of modern indigenous pop

As a lot of us in Canada re examine what our relationship with and treatment of indigenous communities should be moving forward, a really easy and simple step is to just check out more of the art they make. Not just in the sense of learning a valuable lesson in the wake of tragedy, but as part of our every day pop culture media consumption. The art of minority groups is not there just to educate us, it’s there to simply be really good also! Case and point, this excellent rock ballad burner from Katherine Paul- AKA Black Belt Eagle Scout- from the Swinomish/Iñupiat nation and based out of Oregon. Titled I Said I Wouldn’t Write This Song, the track has some wicked high fidelity guitars and smooth as silk vocals with remarkable audible depth. Check It out.

 

Climate Change Has Opened A Portal To Hell

You’ve likely seen it by now. You may have questioned if it was real. It’s Real. In the Gulf Of Mexico a ruptured pipe line from a near by oil rig has literally set the ocean on fire. Here’s the footage.

This looks like something from a Sci Fi film. What stage capitalism are we at when the ocean is on fire? Remind us again how we need to slowly implement incremental market based solutions to mitigate climate change? Remember how Exxon spent a generation buying off politicians to fight climate science so they could keep up their unregulated sacking of the planet? Well here we are. It’s going to get real awkward explaining this one to our grandchildren if we even make it that far. Anyways here’s a funny take on it to lighten the mood.

 

Chris Paul Is Finally Going To The NBA Finals, Let’s Give Him Some Love

The best point guard to play in the NBA these past 15 years is finally going to the promised land. A player who is Jamie’s height (we’re both 186cm) can possibly put the final stamp on an illustrious hall of fame career with four more wins on the NBA’s biggest stage. This has been a long time coming, something we never saw happening when he was traded to Phoenix this past off season. But, here we are. The Suns are for real and it is mostly due in large part to his genius, his leadership and his stellar play. This video did come out one month ago, but we feel now is the perfect time to share it.

 

Just Some Of The Most Terrifying Skydiving Footage You’ll Ever See

As if this stuff wasn’t terrifying enough already. This footage make Point Break look mild. Give it a watch and hold on to your butts.

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MIDRANGE WEEKLYdavid mcleod ringuetteIndigenous, Canada, Britney Spears, Black Belt Eagle Scout, Climate Change, Chris PaulComment