Shade Court Is Adjourned

October 10, 2015 12:00 PM

Last October, the Mostly Honorable Judge Kara Brown of Jezebel took up her gavel to make very official rulings on whether the concept of "shade" is being overused in the media. Last Friday, Judge Brown retired Shade Court, saying "I feel that I’ve done all I can for these people."

When defining "shade", Brown defers to Dorian Corey in the iconic Paris Is Burning: "Shade is, I don't tell you you're ugly but I don't have to tell you because you know you're ugly. And that's shade."

Brown focused on media reports of "So-and-so throws shade at such-and-such" rather than the shade itself, and generally judged whether something was shade based on subtlety ("If someone says 'major shade,' is almost certainly is not shade.") and plausible deniability ("Mariah Carey is a literal savant at this. That shady songbird will let you know exactly what she thinks of you without ever mentioning your name—the implication being that not only are you not even worthy of being referenced by Queen Mariah, there's a good chance she doesn't even remember your name.").

posted by Etrigan (27 comments total)

Clearly, I'm too old for this shit.
posted by symbioid at 12:18 PM on October 10, 2015 [22 favorites]

Well, Paris is Burning was filmed in the mid-to-late 1980s, so "shade" is decades old. It's only gotten (pop) media attention in the last few years (from what I've seen).
posted by filthy light thief at 12:26 PM on October 10, 2015 [4 favorites]

Symboid, as the sage sayeth, you took the words right out of my mouth.
posted by jonmc at 12:36 PM on October 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Aw, I'm sorry to see this. I LOVED Shade Court.
posted by purpleclover at 1:00 PM on October 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

So, shade is stylish snarking at someone?
posted by Samizdata at 1:03 PM on October 10, 2015

what about salty somebody do something about salty
posted by M Edward at 1:15 PM on October 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

So, shade is stylish snarking at someone?

I think this is something you have to have a PR firm to understand.
posted by madajb at 1:17 PM on October 10, 2015 [5 favorites]

I can't help but be reminded of an article I read once about former writers of Jezebel who ended up with burnout associated with the snark and cynicism they had to put into writing their posts.

I know that's not the reason for retiring shade court. But as I get older, there's more and more truth to what Daria's mom says about watching out because you'll just become the mask you're wearing.

what about salty somebody do something about salty
posted by

Put caramel on it, warm it up on the stove, and it's a wonderful ice cream topping!
posted by discopolo at 1:35 PM on October 10, 2015 [4 favorites]

Well, I have it made in the shade myself.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:37 PM on October 10, 2015

Here I thought shade was a type of ghost.
posted by Bovine Love at 1:41 PM on October 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

It's great that this author felt confident enough to write a column on a blog like this - good for her!
posted by Salvor Hardin at 1:57 PM on October 10, 2015 [37 favorites]

I think of Southerners and Midwesterners being the champions of this kind of insult. I have Southern relatives who can say things to me such that, weeks later, I'm still trying to figure out whether they were meant to be mean. "She told me that those shoes made my ankles look slim. Was I imagining things, or is she saying that my ankles usually look thick?" Or the whole pointed use of "interesting." What an interesting skirt! Your ideas about politics are so interesting! (Translation: you dress like a freak. You are a Communist and should go live in another country if you have so many problems with this one.)

Is this a guess culture thing, the whole very-thinly-veiled insult?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 2:10 PM on October 10, 2015 [12 favorites]

Salvor Hardin- I just flagged that as a fantastic comment.

Seriously- I did!
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 2:46 PM on October 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Clearly, I'm too old for this shit.

I agree. You're definitely too old.

(*snap)
posted by sexyrobot at 2:52 PM on October 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

So, shade is stylish snarking at someone?

No, that's being salty. Shade is-- for example, when someone asked Mariah Carey about Jennifer Lopez, she shook her head, shrugged, and said, "I don't know her." This, despite the fact that Carey had said something a lot more directly negative about Lopez in an interview fairy recently. The reporter was desperate to get a quote and asked Carey about Lopez again. And again, Carey said, "I don't know her." And put her sunglasses on and walked away.

/shade.
posted by headspace at 3:07 PM on October 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

Shade Court isn't about celebrating negativity. I think some of you are getting the wrong idea. Kara Brown used Shade Court to explore the way the media appropriated, misunderstood, and misused a particular word first associated with drag queens and then the black community. It took decades to travel to the mainstream and the inability of white corporate America's PR drones to understand and deploy the subtlety, condescension, and calculation of the word is an interesting reflection of their inability to understand the subtleties and calculatedness of their condescending appropriation. That's what makes "shade" more than "snarky" or "salty." That's what Kara's looking at.

But she's way funnier about it.
posted by Yoko Ono's Advice Column at 3:31 PM on October 10, 2015 [33 favorites]

True shade can make the receiver question the validity of their entire existence on this Earth while tapping into all their personal doubts. It's often a slow burn; if done correctly, you might not even realize you've been shaded until days later. You don't have to fully articulate the insult because the other person will be able to fill in the blanks based off of their own insecurities.

This is pretry good. If the insult is more direct, it could be a read - and if you have been watching your Paris is Burning, you know that shade came from reading.

You have to be careful with your definitions, though, because even a read has subtle qualities -cleverness, humor, an underlying sense of comeraderie- that distinguish it from being a straight up asshole.
posted by louche mustachio at 4:09 PM on October 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

That's what makes "shade" more than "snarky" or "salty." That's what Kara's looking at.

I was under the impression that the currently popular "salty" was more a reaction than an action - you might get salty at some perceived slight, or indeed from being snarked at or having shade thrown your way. The "saltiness" in question presumably being the salty tears you are copiously weeping.

There's salty language, of course, but that's a much older term, and is just more the offensive language one might associate with those in the sailing professions.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 4:19 PM on October 10, 2015

Shade Court isn't about celebrating negativity. I think some of you are getting the wrong idea. Kara Brown used Shade Court to explore the way the media appropriated, misunderstood, and misused a particular word first associated with drag queens and then the black community.

Fair enough. You're probably right, definitely about the finer nuances of the term getting lost being the point of shade court. I recuse myself from the thread because I've obviously got a chip on my shoulder in the general vicinity of the topic for personal reasons.
posted by saulgoodman at 4:23 PM on October 10, 2015

....appropriated, misunderstood, and misused a particular word first associated with drag queens and then the black community. It took decades to travel to the mainstream

Wait, hold on there, it took me almost until this comment to "get" what this was even about, so what, that make me even more clueless than "mainstream"? Not cool, just not even anti-cool.

But wait, serious question here, is "salty" an actual concept or just a construct within this post?
posted by sammyo at 4:56 PM on October 10, 2015

Is this some kind of advanced social math? I am baffled! Baffled!

(or is not getting it just part of being autistic?)
posted by a humble nudibranch at 5:51 PM on October 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Mariah Carey advertises some clickbait phone game, God of War or something like that. Dressed like Xena.
posted by Meatbomb at 6:28 PM on October 10, 2015

I seriously cried "NOOOOOOO" to the heavens when I saw that this week's Shade Court was its last. I loved it so much, and Kara Brown is my favorite Jezebel writer. Thanks for educating the world, Judge Brown.
posted by Nibbly Fang at 6:58 PM on October 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

madajb: "So, shade is stylish snarking at someone?

I think this is something you have to have a PR firm to understand."

Oh. Okay. Cheers for the enlightenment then.
posted by Samizdata at 8:38 PM on October 10, 2015

I have not been following Shade Court, but, I don't think her handbag example in the linked Jezebel article is shade. That's just being passive aggressive. True examples of shade - the best examples of shade - are not mere passive aggressive behavior. Shade is more sincere, p/a language tries too hard. That's why the Paris is Burning quote is the definition, nothing needs to be said, not even in the double-speak of passive aggression.
posted by stowaway at 9:08 PM on October 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Came across this example today in an article about the CSI finale:

DEADLINE: Was there any CSI actor you wanted for the finale and couldn’t get?
ZUIKER: No.

He was set up for it, but man, one word, and a short one at that, which completely negates the 15 years that George Eads spent on the show.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:30 PM on October 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

This is a magnificent column and I'm sorry to discover it just as it's over. I work on philosophy of language and one of the things I talk about is how making meaning lies not in explicit definitions of words but in context and implication, too, and that our control over the massive subterranean implications of language is what makes implicit meaning like shade possible. A classic instance of this is the shady implication of "voluntary" and its variations: voluntary on paper is about whether an action was free or not (and thus seems like it could be asked of any action, on principle), but in use it isn't neutral and tends to imply judgment ("do you think he wore that shirt voluntarily?")--and it's this gap between explicit and implicit meaning that lets us be all "I was just asking!" when we know full well that we were doing more than that. But now that I know that this is just the super dry philosophical version of shade I'm just going to start telling my students about celebrity gossip subtleties instead.
posted by felix grundy at 1:34 PM on October 11, 2015 [4 favorites]