Feminist Music Geek

From left; John Cusack as Rob and Iben Hjejle as Laura

I kinda got wound down with some respiratory thing late Saturday night (after an awesome GRCA showcase, during a friend’s at-home screening of  another John Cusack movie, The Thin Red Line). I slept a bit yesterday, but still felt wobbly. So I figured what better day than today to trundle out Stephen Frears’s 2000 movie High Fidelity, one of my favorites. And forgive me, but I haven’t had time to revisit Nick Horby’s book yet, so my recollections of the book are a bit foggy.

Back in college when I was developing friend groups in accordance with my feminist beliefs, I would make a mental note of what dudes thought about the end of the movie High Fidelity. If they thought Rob’s girlfriend Laura was a bitch and were sad that they got back together at the story’s end, then I knew we could never really be cool. We could maybe have casual conversation at parties, but that would be the extent of our familiarity. To me, not getting Laura meant that they didn’t understand the purpose of the story (man-child learns how to be good enough for his girlfriend) and didn’t get me. They’d also probably be the kind of dudes who’d get sidelined by women like Laura in ten years time.

That is to say, then, that I don’t think of High Fidelity as a guy’s movie. For one, I don’t really believe in gendering any kind of cultural text, genre, or mode in such broad terms — seems as sure a way to uphold gender binaries and essentialized notions of masculinity and femininity as ever. For another, while I know that it is a movie about guys — music nerds and their fetishes, phobias, class anxieties, sexual insecurities, and the lives they try to live both within and outside these markers — I’ve always related to Rob and his fellow shop-keeps Dick and Barry (played expertly by Todd Louiso and Jack Black, in his break-out role). As Rob says about his customers, I’d feel bad about the male characters in the movie if I wasn’t, you know, kind of one of them.

I’m definitely one of them, and my ability to relate to Rob has only strengthened as I’ve gotten older. I’m definitely neurotic and worried about the future (sometimes to the point of paralysis, though I think much more temporarily than Rob). I compare myself to others. I have big class anxieties that seem to deepen as I age, the more aware I become of some of my peers’ classed origins, and the more I worry about my financial modesty in comparison to some of my friends with “careers” (or at least nicer jobs that afford them time and resources for creative projects). I also think about and discuss records. A lot. Sometimes turning them in to labor-intensive mix CDs or compartmentalizing my thoughts in list form, as this blog evinces.

Rob does have a one-up on me. He owns a record store, something he often takes for granted (even forgetting to include it in a list of dream jobs that Laura is quick to amend). I could totally live in Championship Vinyl. I’d totally have a record store if I had the scratch (if in Chicago, so much the better). My go-to name is “Discourses” and I’d imagine also having a small bookstore, self-defense workshop classes, local benefit showcases, and after-hours, female-only “drop the needle” sessions where ladies could listen to Can’s Tago Mago without having some dude drone on to them about why it’s important and how they couldn’t believe they haven’t heard the album before.

And yet. There are of course limits to my empathy for Rob and Co. For one, in an attempt at closure from his break-up with Laura, Rob decides to catch up with the women in his top-five break-up list, in effect reducing women to items on a chart (a pop chart, if we throw in the Boss as his inspiration).

Also, while I’ve always felt most comfortable gabbing about records, and a lot of times that means gabbing about records with guys, I’ve long been aware of how the conversations can point at the limitations of male-female interactions. I’m a feminist first, so whatever I may know about music will always be filtered through that lens. That can make me a buzzkill to some and a bore to others. Also, I’ve noticed that sometimes guys fear offending me, and sometimes seem to censor their opinions. And sometimes, guys just seem to talk more openly without a woman present. Lots of times, despite my shared interests and peered level of fluency, I’ve been ignored or cut out of conversations for some unknown reason, but I can’t help but wonder if being female is part of it, despite intention. This isn’t a common occurence, but it does happen and I’m sure you know how it makes me feel. I’m sure you know how it’s shaped my politics.

Also, I think Rob cannot buy the rare singles collection off the bitter, wronged divorcée of a record collector (played by Beverly D’Angelo) for gendered reasons. I totally could. I wish this scene had stayed in the movie. It’s one of my favorite parts of the book.

And sometimes, I just reach an impasse. What’s the fucking point about talking about records for hours? Where does it get us? How does it evolve us? Where do we move from it? Do we create? Do we open up another six-pack? What are we doing?

And that’s why I think I love Laura the most. Not necessarily because of who I am, but of who I’d like to be.

Laura, to be blunt, has her shit together. She’s a lawyer, so she’s established her career. I hope to do this one day as an academic. She’s also comfortable with who she is. As Rob himself notes, it’s in “how she walks around — it’s like, she doesn’t care how she looks or what she projects and it’s not that she doesn’t care it’s that she’s not affected, I guess. And that gives her grace.” She also has little interest in upholding traditional norms. While she’s not opposed to being a mother, she doesn’t have any interest in marriage. This provides me with comfort. And while she wants Rob to challenge himself (she pushes him into organizing a CD release party at the end of the story), she won’t wait forever for him to grow up.

Laura’s ultra-supportive friend Liz, played by the inimitable Joan Cusack, also provides me comfort. Liz lets Rob have it when she finds out that Rob cheated on Laura, his infidelity contributed to Laura terminating their unborn child, owes her money, and admits to Laura that he was ready to move on from her. While Rob has his side, I like that Liz doesn’t abide by his immaturity and lets him have it. My dear friend Jamie is cut from similar cloth. This also provides me comfort.

Importantly, as both characterization and the main drive of the narrative, while she has her shit together, she’s not particularly interested in waiting on someone who doesn’t. And I think this professional drive and lack of sentimentality is why some people (including an ex-boyfriend) have cast Laura as a bitch. I, of course, think that this speaks to the potential threat that a smart, capable, ambitious woman may have over some men, particularly men who know (perhaps however much they may deny) that they don’t deserve women like Laura. I think the smart men are the men who get why Rob can’t shake Laura and have to figure out a way to let her in (or accept her back into their lives, as Laura asks Rob to get back together with her).

Curiously, many of the dudes I’ve known who don’t like Laura love themselves some Caroline, the cute, bubbly rock journalist who loves Stereolab and stokes Rob’s ego with an interview for her newspaper column, prompting him to make another mix tape before wondering when he’s going to stop moving on from woman to woman, tape to tape, and commit to the person he really loves.

Now, it’s really easy to pit them against one another, if you’re so inclined to put women in competition (which, ugh, please stop). I, for one, harbor no ill will toward Caroline. I kinda feel like Caroline is on the same track as Laura (professional, if funky, adult lady who’s finding her own place in the world). I even think the movie is making this argument when they are placed in the same shot during the final scene, with Caroline in front of Laura, and Laura in front of Rob. It may be easy to read the composition as evidence that Laura “won,” but I’m more inclined to think of the two women as peers, in continuum with one another. I don’t seem to recall them talking to one another in the book, but I always hope that they got a chance to meet and talk with each other.

Caroline Fortis, played by Natasha Gregson Wagner

There are other women in Rob’s life. There’s Marie de Salle (played by Lisa Bonet), the elusive singer-songwriter with whom Rob has a one-night stand and who totally has his number (she also apparently has a song called “Eartha Kitt x 2″ about her and her ex dividing up her record collection that I wish were real). There’s Penny Hardwick (played by Joelle Carter), the movie critic Rob dated in high school who reveals some upsetting information when reminding him about who rejected who. There are also less nuanced ex-girlfriend characters — the cruel Charlie Nichols (played by Catherine Zeta Jones) and the needy Sarah Kendrew (played by Lili Taylor). And there are frequenters of the record store that I wish we knew better — like Sara Gilbert’s Annaugh Moss or the Asian American woman who asks Rob where the “Soul” section is in the store. And of course there’s Liz, Laura’s best friend, who’s willing to tell off Rob on her lunch break before striding back to the office.

But most importantly, there’s always Laura.