{"id":1352,"date":"2020-10-11T04:38:40","date_gmt":"2020-10-11T04:38:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sammysworld.org\/?page_id=1352"},"modified":"2021-05-18T13:13:52","modified_gmt":"2021-05-18T13:13:52","slug":"standing-on-the-corner","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sammysworld.org\/standing-on-the-corner\/","title":{"rendered":"The SOTC Art Ensemble’s Rebellious Confusion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Founded in the early 2010s, Standing on the Corner makes music that spews frustrated confusion back into the face of the oppressive force that creates it.<\/strong> (ABOVE<\/strong><\/em>: <\/strong>From the music video for \u201cSahBabii \/\\ Now, Nation End, 38:15\u201d off 2017\u2019s\u00a0“Red Burns”<\/em><\/em>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the fictional 1933 afternoon that saw budding film actress Ann Darrow snatched from the high-rise hotel room she found temporary refuge in, dragged atop the Empire State Building by Kong<\/em>, the monstrous runaway beast freshly escaped from a Broadway theatre, and forced to witness – from the antenna of what was planet Earth\u2019s tallest building – the all-out fighter jet shootout that killed her estranged captor, two dynamics were at play. On one side of it, you had Carl Denham, the ambitious filmmaker. He took it upon himself to venture far overseas, onto the grounds of a native-occupied Skull Island<\/em> in hopes of capturing the colossal being rumored to dwell there. Denham was known for filming in wild and exotic terrains. Skull Island, to him, was in no way as significant for its people as it was for its creature<\/em>, the mythical life he could prove the existence of once and for all; the mysteriously interesting animal whose intrigue was just grand enough to make its bondage put cash in the pocket. So Denham\u2019s ambition shone through the fates of what natives stood between him and his goal. When, after a long-enduring chase culminated in his promising young star actress being rescued from the clutches of this beast (now knocked unconscious with a gas bomb), and the entire crew were headed back to America to flaunt their catch, Skull Island<\/em> was left in ruins. The shambles were equally physical and structural. With all the rampaging, shooting, fighting — violent conquest — that got an unconscious Kong<\/em> on the boat back to America, his homeland visibly succumbed to warfare. At the anatomical level, Kong<\/em> was the natives\u2019 God. When the ambitious filmmaker arrived, the very first thing all passengers witnessed of Skull Island<\/em> was the formal sacrifice of a woman unto the creature. He was who they prayed to, who they bowed to, where their infrastructure found its roots. Denham kidnapped the people\u2019s religion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet, the second dynamic at play was the one circling Kong <\/em>himself. Beastliness, mythology, and monstrosity aside, he was a natural being. He was not man-made, nor was he accustomed to the things of Western mankind. All he knew was primitive. His sole experience with people was of having dominion over them. In place of skyscrapers, automobiles, and live audiences, he lived amongst trees, liana vines, submissive servants. And in the last days of his life, suddenly forced into a completely opposite lifestyle to the one he grew up in – now a shackled, name-tagged Broadway spectacle amidst a man-made urban environment of human beings who did not worship him – there was a point where rightful frustration boiled over. But to his captors, his confusion was wrong. He spent his final waking moments bullet-riddled, plummeting from the top of the Empire State Building.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSAMUEL HYLAND<\/h5>\n\n\n\n