Web Monitor
17:08 UK time, Thursday, 15 October 2009
A celebration of the riches of the web.
Today in Web Monitor: history-making amnesia, why blood-sucking is big and absent moral codes. Share your favourite bits of the web by sending them via the letters box.
• Sixties folk singer Joan Baez was present at Martin Luther King's famous "Free At Last" speech but it all seems a bit vague now:
"I don't know how far ahead one looks. But, at least, at my age, it was completely overwhelming. We were all sort of under a spell at that moment, and I don't know exactly what I was thinking. I know what I was feeling, that it was beyond glorious. But I don't know that I was thinking about American history."
• Just what is it about vampires that make them so popular at the moment? Stephen this time around vampires aren't about immigrants, religion or even AIDS (all are previous hypotheses). Vampires, according to Mache, have overwhelmed pop culture because young straight women fancy gay men:
"Our vampires are normal. They're not Goth, they're not scary, they're not even that weird... In the best-selling Undead series of MaryJanice Davidson, the Queen of the Vampires is a suburbanite named Betsy Taylor. Edward, the romantic hero of the Twilight series, is a sweet, screwed-up high school kid, and at the beginning of his relationship with Bella, she is attracted to him because he is strange, beautiful, and seemingly repulsed by her. This exact scenario happened several times in my high school between straight girls and gay guys who either hadn't figured out they were gay or were still in the closet. Twilight's fantasy is that the gorgeous gay guy can be your boyfriend, and for the slightly awkward teenage girls who consume the books and movies, that's the clincher."
• The blacked-up model on the controversial front cover of French Vogue doesn't surprise the journalist Elizabeth Gates. She's worked in fashion in everything from dressing models to tending to a socialite's pooch and she was most often the only black woman in sight:
"Fashion isn't about fairness. It isn't about being polite, kind, sweet natured or well behaved. Fashion is vicious and cut throat - and if you really love it (and want to succeed) it can be downright maddening. To be perfectly honest, I myself am often 'too nice' to be taken seriously in this industry. Kindness has no place here - and believe me, a little racism isn't affecting anyone who might hire a fashion hopeful (or fire one the next day). Fashion doesn't care if you're anorexic, bulimic or if you are 12 years old from a farm in Oregon without any idea about 'child labor laws'--and it certainly doesn't care about black history. I accepted that fact years ago. Fashion has no moral code."
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