Feminist Music Geek

As you all know, it’s summer. For many, a fun and sticky time. A time that involves drinking, BBQ, and pool parties. I checked all three off my list this weekend. Hope you did too.

Because it’s summer, and it’s a fun and sticky time, I’ve been listening to Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s Orange on the regular, which my partner and I found in a discount bin. A song like album opener “Bellbottoms” should explain why.

The first time I heard the JSBX (now going by Blues Explosion) was on the Tibetan Freedom Concert album (the same one Cibo Matto is on). Spencer was doing his Elvis schtick, going over real stupid with banter like “When we’re talking about freeing Tibet, we’re talking about . . . LOOOOOOOOVVVVVVE.” The first time I saw them was their video for “Dang!” (another Orange single) on Beavis and Butthead. I can’t find a version from the show, but you can imagine their reaction. A lot of screaming. A lot of “Yes! Yes! Yes!!!” I felt similarly. I still do. This video is crazy.

But what does all this have to do with Winona Ryder? Indeed, what do three sweaty guys have to do with this blog?

The second time I saw JSBX was in the music video for “Talk About the Blues.” The band goes on a heist while actors play them in performance. Guitarist Judah Bauer is played by Giovanni Ribisi. Drummer Russell Simins is played by John C. Reilly. And frontman Jon Spencer is played by someone who a more glib person than I might call Gen X’s Audrey Hepburn. Yes, Ms. Winona Ryder.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I love the concept of a female lip syncing a man’s song in a music video. If I directed, say, LCD Soundsystem’s music videos, I’d have a woman or a girl pantomiming for James Murphy every time. Imagine how much better a song like “Losing My Edge” would be if the music video showed a teenage girl lip syncing some neurotic guy’s monologue about how old he is and how much he knows about music in deadpan. See what I mean? YouTube sensation.

To me, having a female actor stand in for a male singer destabilizes what for many is a clear marker of gender — the voice — and renders that voice inauthentic or alien or wrong. It also makes more explicit and parodic the performative aspects of rockist male posturing and, you know, performing in a music video. This of course is itself a process of faking authenticity — trying to con the TV audience into believing that the recorded voice is any way connected to the soundlessness that the video’s performers are actually (not) producing. Having a woman in a man’s place pronounces the artifice at work. Her presence also potentially comments of the limited space for female participation in music culture by contending the exnomination of masculinity through heightening man’s visual (but not aural) absence. In short, it’s gender fuckery.

This is further enforced by how Winona is dressed and styled. While she already looks a little bit like Spencer (similar coloring and willowy figure), having her replicate his dress, posture, and performance style makes the con more convincing. I also think that having Ryder play the lead singer is important — making a clear case for the feminized presence of the frontman in rock music (indeed, the other two actors are male). Perhaps casting Ryder also feeds into Terri Sutton’s assertion that alternative rock’s masculinity in the mid-1990s was embodied by “soft boys” who were sensitive, androgynous, and awkward. When you open her chapter in Trouble Girls: The Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock, who should appear on the first page? A picture of JSBX.

Obviously, there’s a clear indebtedness to drag going on. However, this tactic doesn’t always yield transgressive or progressive results in music video. For example, model Gemma Ward’s performance in the music video for John Mayer’s “Daughters” creeps me out because her childlike appearance (along with Mayer’s authorial presence in black and white, lip syncing and playing his guitar) seems to further enforce the song’s patriarchal bent. And even in “Talk About the Blues,” I’m never wholly convinced that Ryder’s drag is successful. I never forget her breasts, for example. I also wish that she was playing her guitar instead of using it as a prop, as Ribisi and Reilly are both clearly playing their instruments.

But I think the effort is important, and should not be overlooked. So keep your eyes and ears open for female actors in music videos. Especially when their bodies don’t match up with the voices supposedly coming out of their mouths.