I co-chaired a panel called “Bitches Get Things Done” at the 2008 Flow Conference. At it, professional smartie Jonathan Gray made a really interesting point about how animation creates a strange and complex relationship with the body, perhaps distancing or distorting our conceptions of girl characters’ femininity and femaleness. He was specifically talking about Lisa Simpson; I keep thinking about Connie on King of the Hill, specifically in season four’s “Aisle 8A” when she gets her first period. I also keep wondering what’s going on with the common practice of female actors voicing pubescent boy characters. Hmmm.
For the purposes of this post, though, I was compelled by some animated music videos, all accompanying songs by female singer-songwriters, and how animation may create compelling relationships with the song, the voice, and the videos’ narrative. Here, we have a stop-motion music video that uses fabrics, buttons, thread, sea shells, starfish, and domestic items to tell a story, an animation music video where a girl cuts open animals to put diamonds in their hearts from her ear, and a live action-animation hybrid that tells the story of a young woman using sparrows (literally and metaphorically) as a means of travel and personal growth. Click on the artist’s name and enjoy.
Joanna Newsom
“Bridges and Balloons” The Milk-Eyed Mender
Directed by Jovana Sarver
Tara Jane O’Neil
“A Vertiginous One” A Ways Away
Directed by Zak Margolis
Neko Case
“Maybe Sparrow” Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
Directed by Julie and Paul Morstad
Sometimes a movie just finds you right when you wanna see it. I felt this way the other night watching Alex Sichel’s only movie, 1997′s All Over Me. Five minutes into this poignant story (written by Alex’s sister Sylvia) about a young girl coming out, crushing on her friend, learning about homophobia, finding love, and thrashing on her guitar, I was hooked.
It didn’t hurt that the movie makes good use of Babes in Toyland and Sleater-Kinney.
I originally put this one in my Netflix queue because Leisha Hailey is in it. She has hot pink hair and plays in a band led by Helium’s Mary Timony called Coochie Pop. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I love her. I met her once when a friend was building her house in Marfa and she was as nice as I was paralyzed with awe. I think I was about 11 when I heard “You Suck,” a song she recorded as one-half of The Murmurs. I also really like their cover to the theme for H.R. Pufnstuf from the ultra-90s alterna compilation Saturday Morning: Cartoons’ Greatest Hits. They were two girls with Manic Panic hair, acoustic guitars, and helium voices that swore a lot, often in harmony.
How can you not love her?; film still of Leisha Hailey's Lucy
And, then there’s all the other stuff she’s done. The Yoplait ads that a lot of people have slammed but that she and I argue are super-queer (especially this one). Her electro project Uh Huh Her (taken from the PJ Harvey album of same name). She was also consistently my favorite part of The L Word, playing sarcastic, loyal, proudly bisexual wordsmith and deejay Alice Pieszecki.
Anyway, Hailey’s the love interest in this one. And does she ever meet cute with the movie’s protagonist. They exchange flirtatious glances in a guitar store. Hearts.
The story itself focuses on Claude (not Claudette, even though that’s her given name), a fifteen-year-old, working class baby dyke who loves knee-length shorts, her guitar, and her best friend Ellen (played by be-credded Imitation of Christ impresario Tara Subkoff) who is in serious denial about her friend’s true feelings (and possibly her own).
All around Claude, people are correcting her, trying to convince her that she likes boys, telling her to dress more feminine, putting lipstick on her. It’s particularly hurtful that the worst enforcers of heteronormativity in her life are also the two closest female presences — Ellen and her single mother, Anne (played by Ann Dowd, who plays Cookie Kelly, a similarly unsympathetic mother, in Freaks and Geeks).
It doesn’t help matters that Claude is totally in love with her best friend, who has ambivalent feelings about their relationship. Ellen seems to be aware of Claude’s attraction, and in two instances (momentary) reciprocates physically, but quickly dismisses these moments, running away from them so as to get closer to Mark, her dangerous, homophobic, possessive, violent boyfriend who may have killed a young gay man in the neighborhood. He’s played to type by Cole Hauser, who may be a lovely individual, but has a low monotone and looks like a red-headed potato and thus seems pitch-perfect to play angry young chauvinists.
When Ellen isn’t running to Mark, she’s abusing drugs and drinking. Add to that her (anorexic?) skinniness and blondeness and you have a girl trying very hard to be rebellious and subversive but who actually plays right into staid notions of straight, white, patriarchal society. And while she always reaches out to Claude in need — notedly through music, as both girls play the guitar — she is just as quick to push her away.
Meanwhile, Claude can’t really abide by straightness or patriarchy. There’s no room for her without completely destroying her spirit. Actress Alison Folland (who I thought was heart-breaking in To Die For) makes Claude both nervous and sedate, on edge but starting to make peace and embrace her lesbianism, recognizing that a life in the closet is far graver than the initial scariness of coming out.
As a result of recognizing her burgeoning sexuality, Claude starts breaking from Ellen, making a few queer friends in the process. A pleasant surprise in the movie is the presence of Wilson Cruz. He plays Jesse, who works with Claude at the neighborhood pizza parlor. As many know, he played Ricky Vasquez on My So-Called Life, one of the first and more fully realized gay teens on television. In some ways, he’s not playing too dissimilar a character here — the gay friend — but, like Ricky, is also a quiet, pensive, damaged but resilient young man. And one key way that he is not just playing the gay friend is that he is the gay friend to a young lesbian, thus promoting the idea that members of the LGBT community can be friends and allies across orientations.
Claude also gets involved with Lucy, a local musician played by Leisha Hailey. While Lucy’s age is never explicitly stated, it is revealed that she lives at home with her dad, who is often away, implying that she’s about Claude age. Claude meets Lucy at her band’s concert, blown away by her talent. Yet, she’s able to play the chivalrous dyke and buy Lucy a drink. She then goes home with her to hang out and listen to records, while Ellen camps out with Mark in Claude’s bedroom. Claude puts on one album (presumably Patti Smith’s Radio Ethiopia), and has the following emotional scene.
While I have ideological problems with Patti Smith’s gender configurations and how essentializing and normativitizing (male) rock historians can be of her work (particularly Horses), I was completely moved by this scene. By my count, there’s two things going on here: Claude is in anguish over Ellen and she is starting to confront her fear and anxiety of being gay (“Should I pursue a path so twisted? Should I crawl defeated and gifted? Should I go the length of a river?”).
Importantly, Claude isn’t galvanized after this scene or by this song (indeed, perhaps some would argue, in this movie, as she never has a big coming-out moment; the closest moments are at the end — one is implied, the other wordless). Through the rest of the movie, she struggles and evolves while learning to own and articulate her feelings for Lucy and confront the impossibly for her and Ellen to be together. Yet, Claude is becoming aware and is learning to develop and assert herself, potentially holding a guitar in one hand and Lucy’s hand in the other. No small feat for a fifteen-year-old lesbian teenager.
Today you’re 52 and you’re still rockin’, which you’ve been doing since around 1976. That’s roughly 33 years of rockin’ — over half of your lifetime. Born Susan Ballion, you got your start as part of the Bromley Contingent, the famous Sex Pistols fan group. You snarled at icky Bill Grundy on the day the air turned blue.
Siouxsie during her days as part of the Bromley Contingent
You created a distinct look for yourself — militaristic, caustic, cold, tough, unimpressed, aggressively sexual, fetishistic. There was nothing light or cute about you. You also created a space for British women in punk — not the only one, as folks like The Slits, The Raincoats, Delta 5, and Poly Styrene and Lora Logic of X-Ray Spex were also forging their own creative territories — but a distinct space. A space made of steel and barbed wire that cautioned anyone who dare fuck with you.
Her actual nipples were probably covered with bondage tape
You also played with the boys, which is important. Of course, it’s not necessary to play with the boys, but you spent the majority of your career (including your formative years) with The Banshees, a coterie of goth-punk boys, including long-time friend (and fellow member of the Bromley Contingent) Steve Severin and ex-husband Budgie. Yet, you always seem capable to work with them and not be directed by them. You’ve also worked with guys as disparate as Morrissey, Basement Jaxx, John Cale, and film composer Angelo Badalamenti on interesting projects. In short, you’ve proven yourself a vital collaborative partner.
Oh, and you can totally pulverize a song. Let’s listen to your rendition of “The Lord’s Prayer.”
Now, there are things that are troublesome about your career. While I like the song “Hong Kong Garden,” I do in spite of how racially problematic it is. While I love “Cities in Dust,” I still feel weird about the pseudo-Eastern instrumentation. In fact, you have a thorny relationship with race, consistently toying with Orientalism.
Plus, you know, your original look was pretty fascistic. You certainly weren’t alone among your colleagues to play with Nazi references and imagery. But yeah, it’s problematic.
And some people may have a problem with how you glammed up when you got older in an attempt to make your image and music more accessible. I personally don’t have much of a problem with it, because I still think your songs were beautiful and atmospheric and you were always kind of a pop star (you know, like The Cure). Plus you always wore theatrical make-up — you just broadened your color palette. And it may be easy to say that your look became more normative, but I also think there’s room to consider you as a female drag queen.
And, of course, you’re still with us. After a decade or so making albums with other people, you released your first solo album MantaRay in 2007. I hope you have some more music in you.
Oh, and also, you’re the person who wrote “Suburban Relapse.” So, I’ll always love you for that.
So, in honor of you still being alive and still touring and recording, I refuse to the dishes or the laundry tonight, as I know you’d ask “what for?”
My friend Susan gets the credit for turning me on (Christ, another pun!) to the Tenori-On. It’s a neat, little hand-held electronic instrument that’s easy to use and lets you create entire soundscapes with just a few inspired clicks of the right switches. And if you add the LED light system at the bottom, it’s kinda like you’re playing a Lite Brite.
Little Boots and the Tenori-On, live in concert; photo taken by Paul Gregory for Lense Eye
This brings me to Victoria Hesketh, who performs under the name Little Boots, a British electronic-based singer-songwriter, whose primary instrument is the Tenori-On. Maybe you also know that Joe Goddard of Hot Chip and Greg Kurstin of The Bird and the Bee serve as her producers. Maybe you heard her single “Stuck on Repeat” (it was one Pitchfork’s Top 100 Singles of 2008).
But I don’t wanna suggest that Little Boots needs the guidance and approval of primarily male producers and music press to get ahead. Like many electro female recording artists at the moment (yes, including Lady Gaga), Little Boots is reconfiguring 80s synth pop. And this new little gadget is helping her do just that. Here she is covering Hot Chip’s “Ready for the Floor.”
For one, I like how immediate playing the Tenori-On seems. I don’t wanna be condescending and suggest that it’s simple and thus only dummy amateurs can pick it up, but to me there’s something sorta punk about how anybody could poke around on it to create songs and that it isn’t available only to trained instrumentalists and virtuosos.
(As an aside, the Tenori-On, which made its debut at SIGGRAPH in 2005, is still pretty expensive — a new one’ll set you back a grand, a used one’s starting price averages at $500 — so perhaps only art-school, trust-fund punks can afford it for now. Maybe as the instrument becomes more popular and widely-used, the asking price will decrease.)
For another, unlike punk, which tends to rely on three chords, I like how limitless the compositional possibilities are to the Tenori-On. It seems like you could start in one musical direction and then, with a few clicks and pushes, go through several musical tangents and end up somewhere completely unexpected.
I also like that the Tenori-On makes music composition seem accessible and efficient for the user, which is great for female instrumentalists like Little Boots who can be their own backing band, as well as a tremendous opportunity for women and girls to become more comfortable and savvy with technology. Add to that its compact, lightweight design and it seems like easy to transport from bedroom to backpack to bus stop to backseat to gig.
Incidentally, I have an Omnichord. If any ladies wanna jam, let me know.
I don’t know about ya’ll, but I’m super-excited about The Limits of Control, Jim Jarmusch’s new film, which I’ll be seeing in an hour or so. Jarmusch gets a lot of credit for deliberate pacing, powerful visuals, sense of space and setting, spare and believeable dialogue, a humane sense of irony, getting deft and underplayed performances from actors, making silence crack with electricity, underplaying charged moments that sometimes burst.
Oh, and as an aside, he’s pretty dreamy. No hipster boy can mess with Jim.
Hello lover!; image taken from the Guardian UK
Of course, one thing I think he does exceptionally well is use music. He’s woven in music from folks as disparate as Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Holly Golightly, RZA, Tom Waits, Neil Young, Mulatu Astatke, and many others, in ways that seem so right as to be obvious when Jarmusch slid them in and made them essential. I uttered an audible “duh” when I heard that he’s using Boris, an ambient-noise outfit, for his new one.
But what about Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins? Personally, I’d go with Carl Perkins — a great guitar player, a classic songwriter (he wrote “Blue Suede Shoes”), and a class act of a Southern gentleman that didn’t get destroyed by Colonel Tom Parker. But young Japanese lovers Mitsuko and her boyfriend Jun (played by Youki Kudoh and Masatoshi Nagase) constantly bicker about this in Mystery Train, Jarmusch’s 1989 movie that tells three stories about visitors, drifters, and locals who are loosely connected with one another. Mitsuko and her opinion will be the focus in this post.
Mitsuko loves Elvis. Way more than any of us can ever understand. Including her boyfriend, who is kind of a jerk about it. To Jun, Carl Perkins is clearly better, even though, ironically (or perhaps in response to his girlfriend’s obsession), he styles himself exactly like the King. He even tries to approximate Elvis’s mythic cool, attempting to be elliptical, impenetrable, and unapproachable, even at the risk of spoiling their trip and contradicting himself when arguing with Mitsuko, which he does often.
Embarrassingly for Jun, he tends to be wrong, perhaps Jarmusch’s attempt at critiquing the masculine masquerade inherent in much of hipster culture. Jun is wrong about what time their train is to arrive in Memphis (they are two days early). He is wrong about how to get to Graceland, but is quick to act like he knows where he’s going, only to be put out and annoyed with his girlfriend, who is chipper, personable, and ready to learn about the city that discovered Elvis.
I think it would be easy to crutch on staid notions of pan-Asian infantilized female sexuality and configure Mitsuko, with her quirky fashion sense, high voice, and girlish frame, as another example of this well-worn trope. But I think there’s more going on.
For one, unlike her partner, she is not afraid to be wrong or, perhaps more accurately, to learn. She’s open to what Memphis has to offer them, its geography, its history, its culture. She attempts to exchange in English with locals, handling the purchase of their hotel room. She is open and warm to other folks they encounter, including the African American gentleman at the train station (played by legendary R&B singer Rufus Thomas), who asks for a light for his cigarette in Japanese. And even when she doesn’t understand what everyone is telling her (a classic scene involving a motormouth Tennessean woman with a thick Southern accent showing a tour group around Sun Studio immediately comes to mind), she’s always willing to admit what she doesn’t know and learn.
She’s also able to create her own look. Mitsuko’s costumes are a bric-a-brac of blank American cool. She’s got her leather jacket, with the seemingly random but perhaps self-descriptive phrase “Mister Baby” scrawled across the back in red. She’s often applying lipstick, oscillating between mod white and rockabilly red (she puts some on Jun as well). She’s got a fuzzy leopard mini-backpack (perhaps setting the trend for Cher Horowitz and her friends six years later). She’s got a cherry-red suitcase she and Jun carry together with a stick. And she’s got a prized collection of t-shirts, each with a distinct graphic print (her favorite seems to be a white one with a black silk-screened image of big-eyed puppy). All of this tied together with a mop of hair messily gathered in a high ponytail, which she’s quick to defend when Jun makes a cruel and ironic comment about how some women care too much about how their hair looks during sex.
She’s also a bit of a media scholar, at one point peering at two photos and noticing that Madonna looks like Elvis. Jun rolls her eyes at the mere mention of the Material Girl and dismisses his astute girlfriend’s comments out of hand, deeming them ridiculous and perhaps assuming that, to his girlfriend, Elvis is everywhere (indeed, some may argue that he is).
While it may be easy to say that Jun represents the unfortunate stereotype of the stubborn, backward, ineffectual Asian male and his companion an impressionable, assimilable plaything, I think there’s more to it with this couple. With Jun, I think there’s a fear of being wrong. With Mitsuko, I think there’s a hunger for the unknown. Given that their relationship is new (Mitsuko mentions only having slept with Jun eleven times, suggesting that this is a young couple on their first vacation together), I think they’re still establishing their relationship.
Which brings us to their final scene, packing up and moving to the next destination. Jun steals a set of towels, trying to dupe Mitsuko into thinking that towels are included in the cost of the room. As the towels won’t fit in the suitcase, he suggests that she get rid of some of her t-shirts. Refusing, she defiantly puts on all five. The couple leave, with us not knowing where they’ll go next. I like to think it’s Graceland.
In Lisa A. Lewis’s article, “Being Discovered: The Emergence of Female Address on MTV” she states that female-address music videos (music videos where females are subjects instead of objects) hinge on the interaction of access signs with discovery signs. Access signs visually appropriate representations of girls and women engaging in experiences or environments traditionally associated with boys and men (street culture, for example).
Discovery signs, on the other hand, construct images of girls and women engaging in activities traditionally gendered as feminine without boys and men, often in an attempt to reclaim or subvert these spaces and practices. Today, I offer the bedroom and its associative images to be classified as discovery signs, via the following music videos.
The Gossip
“Listen Up!” Standing in the Way of Control
Directed by Morgen Dye
Cibo Matto
“Sugar Water” Viva! La Woman
Directed by Michel Gondry
For today’s post, I’m gonna try to bring together both the music and the geek, via the librarian.
So, I love information sciences and sometimes think I should go back and get an info sciences degree. Perhaps like many academics, I’ve long wanted to run a library, particularly a music library. Either that, or I’d love to work as a music archivist. I’d kill to work on something like the Hiphop Archive.
While I gravitate toward archival work (it is my job), librarians rule the world as far as I’m concerned. If you wanna find out about anything, you’ve gotta go through them. And they usually know more than anybody. They’re also benevolent creatures, as they create order.
Of course, librarians have been cultivating cool cred for some time. Like New York Times writer Kara Jesella, this reminded me of Party Girl, the 1995 movie starring Parker Posey as, Mary, an NYC party girl turned librarian. While I maintain that the movie ends terribly, I like everything else about it.
I especially like the scene where Mary devises an ingenious record filing system organized by specific and overlapping dance sub-genres for Leo, her deejay friend. See? Librarians are cool. They can organize your record collection. I appreciate this scene, as I’m in the process of creating a database for my books, records, CDs, DVDs, and VHS tapes. It’s a task. The scene is both funny and awesome, and since I can’t find it on the Interwebz, I’d encourage seeing the movie for just this scene, if interested.
Oh, and I also like this scene (start it around 1:12 if you haven’t already seen the movie). Who doesn’t love a montage?
Things I like about this clip.
1. Mary talks to herself when she’s figuring out where things are. I do this too, especially when I refile stuff at work. Sometimes I also do this while putting on an accent.
2. Mary dances at work, reconfiguring a totally mundane environment into something more fanastical and fun. I dance at work too (also, we seem to have learned our moves from the same person — Lady Miss Kier of Deee-Lite; between Lady Miss Kier, Joy Division’s Ian Curtis, and TLC, you have the complete inventory of my dance repertoire).
3. I seriously heart the song “If You Believe” by Chantay Savage.
4. Mary learns the hell out of the Dewey Decimel System. You should take heed.
X; from left to right: Billy Zoom, DJ Bonebrake, Exene Cervenka, John Doe
Thinking about Debbi in Repo Man, I remembered Exene Cervenka, another West Coast punk lady who scraped around in the 1980s. I saw X: The Unheard Music recently and highly recommend it. Simply put, it’s a documentary about L.A. punk pioneers, X, which was fronted by Cervenka and John Doe. It was released in 1986, Rent it, buy it, steal it, add it to your Netflix queue, whatever.
Despite its straight-forward premise, I really appreciate the documentary’s mixed media approach. Eschewing the standard talking head format, director W.T. Morgan weaves together concert footage, staged material, interviews, band rehearsals and recording sessions, tours of L.A. neighborhoods and venues, and direct-to-the-camera recollections from the band and some of the relevant people in their lives who worked with them. Oh, and Ray Manzerek.
I enjoyed the way in which the various ways in which the band were documented was put together, with clips often dialoging or juxtaposing with one another. For example, at one point, drummer DJ Bonebrake watches pre-recorded clips on a television in a rehearsal space, interrupting the images and sound as he changes the channel.
We also get lots of Exene, who has one of the most commanding presences in rock. We get interviews. Live performances. Recording sessions. Writing sessions with Doe (who she was probably divorced from at the time of filming). Tours through the dilapidated dressing rooms and bathrooms of punk clubs like the Masque. Candid discussions of her sister’s death. Footage of her scrawling in a journal.
But for me, the best part is the silent short in the middle of the film. Filmed in black and white, it tells the story of a ghost, played by Cervenka, and her solitary, ephemeral travels. This segment is a fascinating moment of rupture. But I think it also speaks to the ways in which females are absented in music culture and how they can (and must) manipulate, subvert, and comment on this marginalized status. There’s no doubt to me that this part of Cervenka helps inform the bullshitless banshee poet she was in the 1980s and remains to be today.
I was a choirgirl. From sixth grade until I started grad school, I was in some kind of singing ensemble. When I was a teenager, I was in all of my high school’s musicals and hoped to one day be on Broadway. Chamber choir. Church choir. Pop choir. Texas All-State Choir. Concert and Sight-Reading. Solo and Ensemble. Voice lessons. Recitals. Running clinics for my mom’s junior high ensembles. E-T-C. This was my life.
It’s perhaps no surprise that I have a bit of a vested interest in Glee, Fox’s new TV series that focuses on a high school glee club in Ohio. The network ran the pilot after American Idol last night. Here are my thoughts.
First, the pros:
1. I will watch Jane Lynch in anything. She’s awesomely funny and brings some butch swagger to every project. She’s already my favorite thing about the show. I love her take on the tough, unimpressed cheerleading coach.
2. I love that Mercedes, the full-figured African American glee clubber, demands to sing lead and refuses to be in the background. The actress, Amber Riley, can really sing! I also like that she’s quick to announce whiteness, referring to the ensemble’s jock ringer as “Justin Timberlake”. Oh, and she wears cute outfits. I especially liked her sailor outfit at the end of the pilot when she insists on managing the glee club’s wardrobe. I was in charge of our choral program’s wardrobe senior year. I anticipate hilarity to ensue.
3. I think Kurt, the gay boy in glee club, has potential. He is stereotypical, but shows promise as a complex character. Some might think it’s cliched to have a gay teen in glee club but, eh, I knew three gay guys who were in the musicals, including my first boyfriend. It’s a safe space for some of them. Also, I liked Kurt’s rendition of “Mr. Cellophane” from Chicago because a) it’s ironic, as he’s totally not — he’s out and proud and b) it’s poignant, because he’s bullied and unpopular.
4. They totally nailed the characterization of Rachel Berry, the glee club’s aspiring ingenue. She’s determined, alert, ruthlessly perky, consumately professional, and more than a little insecure. And actress Lea Michele, a Broadway veteran, has got pipes!
And then the cons:
1. I can do without director Will Schuester’s totally unnecessary love triangle between his materialistic, castrating wife and Emma Pillsbury, the perfectionist guidance counselor with the cute haircut and wardrobe. UGH. SO OVER LOVE TRIANGLES. If they cut this, Mr. Schuester could actually be shown directing the glee club.
2. Since this is TV, the characterization of glee club is a little far-fetched. These kids have a full band, which seems too expensive. Our pop choir was accompanied by our harried choir director on piano. And a fancy rival school has the girls in a flirty polka-dotted dress when they sing Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab” that seems too expensive and flashy for the average high school show choir. Especially since I’m imagining the girls in this emsemble to have multiple outfits. We just had one black and gold dress and jacket, bless us.
3. I doubt the average high school show choir could get away with singing a song like “Rehab” anyway because of the “mature” subject matter. Again, TV is fantastical.
4. While I like Mercedes and Kurt, they’re pretty broad and tokenistic. As is Tina C., the Asian American girl who, apart from a stutter, has absolutely no defining characteristic. Oh, she does sing Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl” for her audition. I can do with never hearing this song again.
5. Finn, the football star with the gift of song is even more boring than Chris Klein in American Pie. But these guys usually are.
6. Speaking of Finn, I don’t remember choir membership being such a form of social suicide. We had male and female jocks in choir. Several members of our cheerleading squad were featured dancers in the musicals. It wasn’t so much the refuge for the school’s social outcasts as the show chooses to depict it.
7. I don’t love the singing. Overall, it’s very pop. Too nasal, too pinched, too thin. Breath support should come from the diaphram instead of the chest. The singers should drop their jaws and round their mouths. But, it came on after American Idol, so it doesn’t surprise me. Singing has to be commercial here.
Still some work to do, but I’m willing to spend a bit more time with it in the fall.
Debbi's last stand; image taken from moviebadgirls.com
Last night, I went to an Alex Cox-less screening of Repo Man, the 1984 classic about Otto, a young L.A. punk played by Emilio Estevez, who gets involved in the wild, legally specious world of auto repossession. It was my first time seeing it, and it kinda blew my mind the way They Live did. Killer commentary on mindless American capitalism. Rad music. Geniusly dumb dialogue. Surprisingly great lunkhead performances from the leads. Fighting.
Oh, and a one-up on They Live: women of color kicking ass! There’s Marlene, who handles the money at Helping Hand Acceptance Corporation. She bashes a chair over a federal agent’s head when the FBI starts following them (best not to reveal too much, but UFO activity is a factor).
And no woman kicks more ass than Debbi, the lone female in Otto’s old gang who doesn’t take anyone’s mess, including from the other dudes. While the dudes are mainly talk, Debbi seems to be far more interested in action, and garners surprising results in her last scene.
Also, her look is awesome — like Annabella Lwin of Bow Wow Wow by way of Grace Jones, but post-apocalyptic.
And also a bit post-racial. Not a term I care for, but I find Debbi’s racial ambiguity very interesting. Given actress Jennifer Balgobin’s surname, my guess is that she is of South Asian (perhaps Indian) descent. But I wouldn’t say her racial identity is clear, thus suggesting that she may occupy several identities. This becomes all the more complicated by her accent, which is a bit British, a bit Valley Girl. Though in California, Debbi doesn’t seem to have any interest in assimilating. That she’s a punk of color — a bit of an anomaly, especially given the subculture’s troubled history with race relations — is not to be overlooked.
Sigh. If only more hipster girls were willing to butch up their look in such a masculinist fashion. L.A. is becoming a cool city in the wake of Brooklyn backlash, but something tells me that many bright young things would not be willing to shave their heads and don ski masks and metallic trench coats.
That said, I can’t help but wonder of women like Amber Rose, Kanye West’s coutured companion, were influenced by Debbi. Given her bleached buzz cut, I wouldn’t be surprised. Yet, something tells me Rose’s look would still be too runway for this road warrior’s taste.
