I’m helping out with Cinemakids this weekend. I’m gonna help a group of kids and pre-teens – some of whom might not have picked up a camera before tomorrow — work through the process of shooting their own movie. Exciting!
In tribute to these rad, creative beings who I’m about to meet, alongside other like-minded individuals (this is as good a moment as any to point you in the direction of I’m The Fox, an interactive ‘zine put together by alumna of GRCA), I thought I’d post this delightful performance from Capital Children’s Choir of Lily Allen’s “Chinese.”
Bonus points for picking a song from a sassy pop star about the joys and comforts derived from mother-daughter bonding and for being arranged by a lady.
Laura Nyro; image courtesy of worldofkane.blogspot.com
The late Laura Nyro, the lady for whom I devote today’s post was a real voice for women coming of age in the latter half of the 1960s, performing at such hallowed, storied festivals as the Monterrey Pop Festival. Many of her peers admired her clear voice and challenging bric-a-brac jazzy pop compositions, some of which were covered by people like The 5th Dimension. Joni Mitchell considered her one of her few female musical contemporaries. Steves as diverse as The Blues Project’s Steve Katz to composer Stephen Sondheim loved “Stoned Soul Picnic,” the former of whom argued that it should be America’s national anthem. Move over, Francis Scott Key!
Yet how come I’ve only listened to her recently, after years of only hearing her name? How come my partner, whose parents were totally of the love generation (while my mother was not), had never even heard of her? Maybe you haven’t either.
In Sheila Weller’s book Girls Like Us, the author supposes that the reasons for Nyro’s obscurity are two-fold: 1. Her music was too complicated. 2. She wasn’t pretty.
As I know Weller is critical of these reasons, please read my next sentence as being removed from being critical toward the author. These reasons are total bullshit. Her music was too complicated? I find that hard to believe — I mean, were they more complicated than Joni Mitchell’s? If Nyro had gotten started around the time of, say, a Patti Smith or a Kate Bush, I don’t think this would have been an issue for her. Because of a Laura Nyro, someone like Joanna Newsom can wield a harp for long stretches while singing abstract narratives in a voice that recalls Lisa Simpson.
By the way, while Newsom is admittedly a rad harp player, I’ve warmed from “the emperor is naked” to “yeah, fine.” Ys was good. That said, I can do a pretty mean impression of her, and will launch into it with a gentle nudge.
The second reason, while more logical in terms of how mass culture is filtered through and framed by patriarchy, makes more sense. Nyro wasn’t pretty. What is really meant by this statement is that Nyro was normal looking, with an in-between body type. She wasn’t stick-thin and built for the mini-dresses and tight jeans created with a Joni Mitchell or a Michelle Phillips in mind. She also wasn’t fat like Cass Elliot, who was often cast as the earth mother before her death (when she has since become, by turns, a tragedy or a punch line).
But Nyro wasn’t pretty? Bullshit. Just watch her sing. Hear and watch. It’s amazing what doing an activity that clearly enlivens and excites you will do to your face, especially when the activity is as of-the-body as singing. For this exercise I elect the song I’d like to consider for our national anthem, “Save the Country.” Enjoy.
Someone To Drive You Home cover, Rough Trade 2006/2007; image courtesy of pitchfork.com
Two areas I don’t recall covering in the blog so far are 1) bands whose songs focus on cinephilia and 2) female musicians who use their visual arts training in the service of their bands. Today, we can focus on both by considering The Long Blondes’ debut full-length Someone To Drive You Home and lead singer Kate Jackson’s artwork for said album.
So I’m new to this band, who I guess are no longer a band. That’s a bummer, but at least I’ve had fun pumping this album at full volume in my car this past week as the skies became increasingly overcast. And singing at full volume. As my friend Brea mentioned in her entry about records that made her a feminist, it’s important for women and girls to find singers whose vocal ranges match their own. It’s really true. Perhaps we could think of it as double-identification — being able to relate to a female singer’s persona as conveyed through her lyrics, performance style, fashion sense or whatever on one level and being able to replicate, mirror, or blend her tone, pitch, and timbre with your own. However we want to theorize it, I’m glad that my notes can work with Jackson’s strong, supple alto.
Matching a singer’s range also makes shouting easier. I love Animal Collective, but screaming along to Avey Tare doesn’t make any sense for me. We can try and make it queer or whatever, but it really just feels silly and strained to my throat and ears. Screaming “Edie Sedgwick! Anna Karina! Arlene Dahl!” along with Jackson, on the other hand, makes perfect sense.
Edie Sedgwick; image courtesy of fashionista.com
The opening track, appropriately titled “Lust In the Movies,” is a good transition into the defunct band’s cinephilic leanings. Indeed, the movies are everywhere. Specifically movies from the post-war era, a considerable amount of them of the film noir tradition or have some kind of sinister edge, while others are campy b-movies that have since cashed in on retro chic.
Imagined film snob boys corrupt willing schoolgirls with Russ Meyer films in “Fulwood Babylon.” Girls want to be cool enough for the movies that play in film snob boys’ heads in “Lust in the Movies.” A boy and a girl compare themselves to C.C. Baxter, The Apartment‘s love-lorn protagonist in “You Could Have Both.” Obscure references to British celebrities of the 1940s and 1950s like Hattie Jacques and Peter Rogers thread through break-up narratives like “Five Ways to End It.” Greta Garbo is looked upon with envy (and irony?) as the woman who snagged all the handsome men in “Never to Be Repeated.” “Only Lovers Left Alive” is inspired by Fred Zinnemann’s From Here to Eternity, a romantic sentiment perhaps echoed in Jackson’s sleeve art, which references Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern’s frenzied lovers in David Lynch’s Wild at Heart.
As many of these movies are classic Hollywood, iconographic art house, and/or have the Criterion stamp of approval, we might call them films instead of movies, if the writer of this blog held fast to making such a distinction.
Now, we could get into a discussion of what this means in terms of preference and why more clearly feminist classics don’t get shout-outs like, say, Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows, Agnès Varda’s Cléo de 5 à 7, or Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Maybe they haven’t seen these movies. Maybe they thought the last movie I mentioned was boring (the 200-minute running time has kept me from seeing it, though it is in my Netflix queue). However, I’d hazard to guess that the Russ Meyer reference in “Fulwood Babylon” might be done with a bit of feminist cheek, and while I have trouble reading the nuances of intentional camp in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, I’m sure my friend Curran would smile and nod in recognition of the reference.
And yet. I find how film references are used in these songs to be particularly interesting. For one, I think especially in “Lust in the Movies” and “Fulwood Babylon,” a critique is being made by Kate (and her chorus of singing fans) against the sorts of boys who live in movies (perhaps including Dorian Cox, a former Long Blonde who co-wrote the majority of the album with Jackson). These boys are too busy looking for Edie Sedgwick, Anna Karina, and Arlene Dahl to notice the real woman in front of them. Fools.
For another, I find the blurring between fantasy and reality, the projected and the lived, the fantastical and the mundane heartening and relateable. Many of these songs are not actually about being in the movies, but wishing you could be or pretending you are to get over a failed relationship, get through your boring day job, get ready for a night out, get in the car to leave town, or simply get through your 20s.
There’s some humanity in these songs, particularly between women and girls. Two lonely girls flee their humdrum lives together in “Separated By Motorways.” A spurned lover hopes her ex’s new love fares better than she did after the break-up in “Heaven Help the New Girl.” A twentysomething tells a 19-year-old girl that she doesn’t need to resort to mutilation to get through that stupid, cursed age in “Once and Never Again,” a solidarity anthem so catchy that I just requested it be added to the Karaoke Underground song list.
And while the movies being referenced aren’t explicitly feminist (or argued and/or championed as such by theoretically florid film scholars), I’d argue that there’s much going on with the female movie icons that Jackson’s and her songs’ protagonists (which may be iterations of herself) identify. Having brought up Sedgwick, Karina, Dahl, Garbo, this is where I’ll fold in Jackson’s spare, mysterious cover. The woman in the cover is recognizable to many as Bonnie Parker, as played by Faye Dunaway in Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde, a divisive and galvanizing movie that marked a sea change in American cinema, upped the ante for screen violence, reflected the shift in generational values, presupposed the turbulent year that would be 1968, and made thousands of women cut and straighten their hair into sleek bobs by Dunaway’s influence. It might have made them want to tote guns, fire bullets, and rob banks too. In short, this was seen as a dangerous film that still holds some influence as a countercultural text that appeals to men and women.
Some of those women may still be shuffling through their 20s, figuring it out. They might not be compelled to rob a bank, but they might be tempted to quit their job, or at least bitch about work at the local bar. Hopefully they won’t bitch about each other as much, as this cattiness is evident on the album and something I’d like us to rise above. But there’s something nice about being reassured that someone, whether a movie character or a friend, will be there to drive you home. Even if your car is riddled with bullet holes.
All this talk about who said what at the VMAs made me hungry for some actual music videos (if you haven’t heard what everyone else has been talking about, just read fourfour‘s assessment). And after all this discussion about Beyoncé’s ”Single Ladies” music video, Janet and Madonna’s tributes to Michael, P!nk’s suggestive performance, and the pop spectacle that is Lady Gaga, I started to get all sentimental for two great music videos that cement themselves firmly as gender-queer video performances. Interestingly enough, Scottish women are responsible for both of them. Feast your eyes on Annie Lennox’s man-as-a-woman-as-a-man drag performance in The Eurythmics’ “I Need a Man” and Shirley Manson’s utter disregard for public restrooms as gendered spaces in “Androgyny.” Click on the artists’ names and enjoy!
The Eurythmics
“I Need a Man” Savage
Directed by Sophie Muller
Garbage
“Androgyny” BeautifulGarbage
Directed by Don Cameron
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls poster; image courtesy of wikipedia.org
So, I saw Russ Meyer’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls last summer (thanks again to my friend Curran). I meant to write about it, but kinda didn’t know what to say. I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about the sordid tale of mixed-race girl band The Kelly Affair making it big by changing their name to The Carrie Nations and losing their minds in the big city. I do know that I liked it more than Mark Robson’s Valley of the Dolls, adapted from Jacqueline Susann’s wildly successful pulp novel about a group of girls who seek fame and instead wrestle with debilitating addictions, which just left me numb and bummed.
The unrelated sequel’s campiness, stodgy dialogue, illogical plot development, crazed characterization of Los Angeles, and parade of late 60s tacky couture made it an ideal movie to watch while drinking and cackling with friends. And I was pleasantly surprised by Roger Ebert purple, at times oddly perceptive, dialogue and how it synced up with Meyer’s arresting imagery. And having read a write-up about Meyer muse Tura Satana from Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, I know that some Meyer icons have a feminist following.
And yet. I think seeing this movie with friends and laughing at it from an ironically detached position was key to my enjoyment. Without them, I think I might have been saddened by the movie’s clearly regressive gender and sexual politics. The director was in love with big, bare breasts? Duh. Lead singer/grifter Kelly MacNamara uses her wiles to get ahead in show business? Shocking. Bassist Pet Danforth is coerced into lesbianism by predatory, be-taloned fashion designer Roxanne, only to be killed in a mansion orgy that apparently was based on the Manson Family murders? Yeesh. The fact that the orgy is orchestrated and the murders executed by The Carrie Nations’ Phil Spector-like producer Z-Man, who reveals himself to be transgendered? Double yeesh. The fact that surviving members McNamara and drummer Casey Anderson distance themselves from their hedonistic past through marriage? Fail.
One thing I will give the movie full credit for is awesome music. If The Kelly Affair were a band (I prefer this name over The Carrie Nations), I’d totally listen to them. I love Lynn Carey’s voice, who fills in for “actress” Dolly Read. And others seem to agree. The Pipettes re-created the scene where the girls get discovered at an industry party in their video for “Pull Shapes.” Feel free to watch it alongside the original scene.
Cover of Changing Tunes; image courtesy of musicweb-international.com
Since a lot of folks (including many friends) are back in school, I thought I’d do another book report. Tonight, I’ll jot down my notes on Changing Tunes: The Use of Pre-existing Music in Film. Just as my friend Kit pointed me in the direction of this useful, diverse anthology, I thought I’d do the same, especially for any other burgeoning feminist soundtrack/score enthusiasts there may be. Term paper deadlines will come closer than you think.
As Robynn Stilwell was one of the co-editors of the collection who penned the particular essay Kit recommended to me, what better place to start? After all, her piece is called ”Vinyl Communion: The Record as Ritual Object in Girls’ Rites-of-Passage Films.” Here, Stilwell looks at four movies featuring girl protagonists and preoccupied with such themes, two of which I’ve yet to see (Little Voice and Heavenly Creatures) and two of which are all-time favorites (Ghost World and The Virgin Suicides). As Stilwell’s reading of Little Voice aligns with Pamela Robertson’s, I will refer you to a previous entry where Robertson’s essay is discussed. And while I would’ve liked more development of each text (hell, I could read a whole book on each of these movies) and would have appreciated some movies that consider the mediated representations of vinyl practices from girls of color, I still found Stilwell’s insights valueable. And obviously, I’m going to need to watch all these movies.
To Stilwell, Ghost World‘sEnid believes that vinyl, and its technological apparatus, has no instrinsic value as an object. In one scene, she pretends to break her record collector friend Seymour’s vintage LP. She also has no interest in creating an authentic listening experience, playing old vinyl releases on a 33 1/3 record player that were meant to be played on a 78. Instead, Enid turns to record-playing for its transportive and transformative qualities. She wants a form of escape from her suburban SoCal surroundings, trying on punk, retro, and gothic fashions and turning to Bollywood, Indian rock music, and blues singer Skip James’s hauntingly androgynous tenor in “Devil Got My Woman.”
With Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures, itself based on the Pauline Parker-Juliet Hulme murder, the schoolgirls’ fandom for tenor Mario Lanza serves as a buffer for true homosexual feelings, a development that Stilwell explains by using late theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick‘s notion of the homosocial triangle.
Thus, in order to own those feelings, Pauline and Juliet must disavow themselves from Lanza, burning their records to aver these feelings in the process.
Record burning is considered in a much different context in Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides, instead constructed as authoritative punishment rather than a declaration of one’s identity. The Lisbon girls, a mysterious and cloistered quintet, consider records to be a form of communication between one another and to the neighbor boys with whom they’ve been forbidden to interact with by their parents. Songs like Heart’s “Magic Man” and “Crazy on You” speak on their behalf, conveying the lust and sexual agency that girls feel and Lux Lisbon acts upon for high school heartthrob Trip Fontaine. Thus, mother Lisbon’s command that Lux burn her rock records after Trip Fontaine sleeps with and abandons her on the football field after the Homecoming game suggests a tragic loss of voice, demanding that she align with soft rock male singer-songwriters like Gilbert O’Sullivan and Todd Rundgren instead of continuing to listen to libidinous cock rock bands like Aerosmith.
With Vanessa Knights ‘ “Queer Pleasures: The Bolero, Camp, and Almodóvar,” we have a consideration of how Pedro Almodóvar asserted a queer identity in his earlier films, utilizing the campy potential of bolero, as well as acknowledging the contributions bolero singers like La Lupe have given to queer fan culture, particularly among gay men.
While Almodóvar may have more often utilized Cuban musicians’ contributions to movies made within a strictly Spanish context, Phil Powrie’s “The Fabulous Destiny of the Accordion in French Cinema” considers the accordian, originally an Italian musical instrument, as a French national symbol. He considers the accordian’s heroic period between 1930 and 1960 and how the instrument was used as an audiovisual marker of utopian community in movies like René Clair’s Sous les toits de Paris. While Powrie does not make it clear, I hazard to guess that there may be some connection, however tenuous, between this period and the chanteuse réaliste movies Kelley Conway has discussed elsewhere.
By 1949, Powrie notes that movies like Jacques Tati’s Jour de Fête were commenting on the decline of the accordian’s ubiquity in French culture as the country shifted from a working-class country with a strong sense of history to a modern society with tremendous interest in other cultures and a particular interest in American life. This is a point Powrie argues that Tati makes aurally, as Jo Lefevre’s accordian opens and closes a film about a character who tries to emulate American customs, cued through the film’s use of swing music.
The move away from the accordian’s aural connotation of national identity is evident in 80s French cinema. The accordian instead becomes a visual, unheard marker of community demise in movies like Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Diva. From the 1990s on, the accordian has become a post-modern instrument for French cinema to Powrie, suggesting both a utopian ideal and evident of self-aware nostalgia, most evident in Yann Tiersen’s score for Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amélie.
And finally, we have Ronald Rodman’s “The Popular Song as Leitmotif in 1990s Film,” which considers how the use of theme music written for specific characters in classical music and film can be translated into contemporary film’s use of popular music and how leitmotif is used as a connotative signifier. This seems like a tremendously useful exercise that I’ll make sure to remember when I get to be a boss professor lady.
Rodman considers Pulp Fiction and Trainspotting, two successful movies made noteworthy, in part, because of their exclusive use of popular music. With Pulp Fiction, protagonist hit man Vince Vega becomes associated with surf rock and Elvis as a means of connoting his class and white ethnic cultural positioning as an Italian American with a working-class background. In Trainspotting, Scottish heroin addict Mark Renton is associated with art-damaged, anti-establishment classic rockers like Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, and David Bowie, before getting clean and making his classed ascent into the bourgeoisie, which is highlighted by his musical association with Brit pop and popular techno.
While I appreciate Rodman’s argument for Trainspotting, I do wonder what he’d make of the wave of regional pictures in the UK during the 1990s and early 2000s. Just as Trainspotting focuses on Edinburgh, so to did 24-Hour Party People depicted Manchester’s singularity. That said, I do value Rodman’s effort to reconsider how popular music functions similarly to classical music in movies, and look forward to reading more on the interplay from similarly-invested scholars. Please feed me titles if you’re so inclined.
I don’t know what it’s like where you live, but it’s been cooling off and getting overcast in Austin as we head into the fall. I for one, could not be happier. We’ve had months of three-digit temperatures, the heat forming itself into my nifty foot tan and bleaching the plush Garfield on my car window. I celebrated by frequenting Cheapo Discs after work, adding some key titles from Daft Punk, Ariel Pink, Kate Bush, and Black Dice to my collection, along with snagging Air’s 10,000 Hz Legend, one of the funniest albums by a French pop group that boasts one of the prettiest songs Beck ever recorded (“Vagabond”) and my favorite song by the Gallic duo (“Radio #1″).
The punks of Jubilee; image courtesy of stephanievegh.ca
The electrically depressive weather and investment in discarding and collecting our culture’s trash recalls the late Derek Jarman’s Jubilee, a movie I watched last night with Kristen and Curran (we missed Susan, who also usually watches movies with us). I credit Curran, a future queer punk PhD, for introducing me to the movie in the first place and can’t wait to read about it in his dissertation. Released in 1977, it was Jarman’s second movie, and my first viewing of his feature work. I had a passing familiarity of Jarman, as he also made music videos for acts like Suede, The Smiths, and The Pet Shop Boys. For example:
In addition, apparently he and Tilda Swinton were good friends and often worked together, so I think I’ll start with Edward II. You can read Swinton’s touching, lengthy tribute to Jarman.
So, I kinda can’t get over Jubilee. It was kind of amazing, but I don’t think I have a real handle on its plot. I can tell you these things. Queen Elizabeth I is transported to 1977 England, around the time of Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee and the country’s considerable economic downturn. From there, the movie preoccupies itself with mixed-gender group of punks linked in varying degrees to one another. They’re played by real British punks of the era (Jordan, Adam Ant, Toyah Wilcox), real queer British punks of the era (Linda Spurrier, Ian Charleson), and one quintessential American queer punk icon (the inimitable Wayne/Jayne County). They live in squalor. They steal cars. They play board games. They quote from historical tomes. They attempt to have pop careers, if only to destroy The Top of the Pops. They love each other, sometimes; that is, when they aren’t killing or getting killed by police.
As a document of its era, the movie is pretty significant. Brian Eno composed the score. Siouxsie and The Banshees appear on the telly. Adam and the Ants audition for a record company. While a bunch of kids attend a disco orgy, The Slits smash up a car. And Jayne County sings to herself in one amazing green room.
And yet it had a theatrical release in the UK, which I can’t imagine how that happened but can fully believe people’s non-plussed response to it. I mean, how do you process the scene where Amyl Nitrate (Jordan) performs her pop “hit” “Rule Britannia” for record mogul/madman Borgia Ginz, played by the phenomenal Orlando?
That said, I found the movie constructively, at times rapturously, difficult. How else to feel but to gape at all of the strong female punks, many of whom abide by defiantly non-normative beauty standards who take pride in their pock marks, acne, fleshy thighs, and cellulite dimples? Or Adam Ant’s feminine beauty? Or the sculpted, smoothed, Greco-Roman-bodied men who one imagines Jarman cast with a loving eye? Or the romantic impulses of the mixed-gender queer trio — two of whom identify each other as brothers? Or the upsetting deaths of the movie’s queer characters (including a particularly brutal, seemingly pointless murder of County — talk about killing your idols!)? Or the blinding whiteness, which, by absence, brings to mind England’s issues with nationalist, segregational racial politics? Or the fast-and-loose timeline? Or the preoccupation with classic art and literature amid and outside London’s urban decay? Or queering up the interactions in such a way so as to trigger punk’s oft-obscured homophobia (apparently Sex proprietrix/designer Vivienne Westwood issued a homophobic missive in response to the movie).
But if punk taught us anything, messy can be beautiful, good, and constructive. This is a movie that revels in this idea. Do make time for it. Just presume that you’ll need to see it twice.
So, I’m assuming we’ve all seen Charo perform Rihanna’s “Please Don’t Stop the Music” on the latest Jerry Lewis’s MDA telethon. At least three different friends of mine posted the performance on Facebook. In case you haven’t seen it (or are addicted to it, like me), here you go.
Note: If you don’t need dottering old Jerry Lewis punctuating the performance with a stupid erection joke — and who does? – stop the clip at 4:02.
Now, I don’t want to cut off a discussion about what it might mean for a woman to cover another woman’s song. I don’t want to get away from the campy magic of this performance and how it factors into Charo’s public image (zany 50-something Spanish pop star sex kitten). I really don’t want to take us away from that image, as it’s wonderful (even if it admittedly has had some work done). Seriously? The male back-up dancers? The seamless transition from English to Spanish to English? The draggy campy slapstickiness of it all? The genuine joy this female sex symbol has in playing the clown? THE INSISTENCE THAT WE DANCE? The closest thing I’ve seen as raptureously queer lately is Drew Barrymore and Ellen Page’s feelings for each other in their cover story for October’s Marie Claire. Why would I want to tarnish that? If anything, I think more pop stars could stand to be this unselfconscious and happy. I can only hope Beyoncé is this fun at 58.
However, my friend David was quick to remind me that Charo is a helluva guitar player. A classical flamenco guitar player at that. And it goes without saying that the guitar is often configured as a dude’s instrument. Thus, I think we’d be wise to remember who our awesome female guitarists are, especially when they seem normatively, perhaps grotesquely, feminine. In short, I’d like her campiness to co-exist with her beautiful tone and impeccable technique. I think Charo might like that too. She did name her last album Charo and Guitar, after all.
And with that in mind, some live performances. If you know of others, please share.
So, I don’t want to be back at the office today either. But I have a solution that I’m borrowing from my friend Ginny’s recent blog entry. Let’s bump some 90s dance music and turn the cubicle, library, or home office into our own dance club. Crystal Waters is gonna help us get through this. Thanks, Ginny. You are a genius.
In addition, might I suggest her song “Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless)“? If it’s good enough for Bobby Hill’s plus-size fashion show on King of the Hill, it’s good enough for all of us. Bonus points for catching that the song is sampled in T.I.’s “Why You Wanna?” Also, since I just saw Priscilla Queen of the Desert, why don’t we throw in CeCe Peniston’s “Finally“?
Daria thinks this is all so typical; image courtesy of doree.tumblr.com
So, Daria is coming out on DVD next year. This is very exciting news. My only hope is that it comes out on my birthday, like The State did this year. Is it weird that I’m stoked about the future sick day that will enable marathon viewing? I’m also excited at the prospects of having friends over to watch it. I might even have to dress up as Ms. Morgendorffer for Halloween. Yes, I’m that excited.
Daria came into my life thanks to Beavis and Butthead (the one show my mother wouldn’t let me watch so I had to follow it obsessively). She was the bored, rebellious girl who hung out with them when she needed amusement. But I really fell in love with her when she got her own whip-smart show in 1997, created by Beavis alum Glenn Eichler and Susie Lewis Lynn. In it, our titular heroine plotted schemes with like-minded best friend Jane Lane, clashed with her popular sister Quinn, and rebelled feminist-style against the high school machine. Often, Daria and Jane would work together, thus exhibiting that girls could have subversive, productive, supportive homosocial friendships. Daria also clashed with a hip female magazine editor who is clearly modeled after Jane Pratt. I’ll have to watch that one again too.
Jane and Daria, having none of it; image courtesy of listal.com
Kathy M. Newman reminded me why I loved this show when I read her essay in Prime Time Animation: Television Animation and American Culturewhile chilling in the Nasher Sculpture Center garden this weekend. Newman brings up Daria’s primarily harmonious relationship with Jane, which I wonder if it is queerable upon reviewing. I also like her discussion about how the show uses irony in a myriad of ways — it employed a movement-based form like animation to convey suburban high school stasis, it used animation to create a rare girl character who was often desexualized, it suggested nihilism in a teenage character who was actually quite politically motivated and proactive, and it showcased socially marginalized characters who were often empowered and more interesting than their more popular counterparts. It even suggested that characters could grow, mature, or deviate in ways that belied its flat, outlined visual style. Witness moments when Quinn wanted to be more than just pretty and popular. Or any closing credit sequence, when the characters were usually configured in tableaux that often referenced figures and/or moments in popular culture that seemingly had little in common with the characters in those poses.
In addition, I wonder how popular music and sound will play in all of this. How will my theory-head process the diegetic use of pop songs written and performed by real people being listened to and commented on by un-real characters? Hmmm.
To ramp up excitement, let’s revisit “You’re Standing On My Neck” by Splendora, the show’s theme song. Unfortunately, I cannot find the original opening credit sequence. Until the DVDs become available, enjoy this fan-made montage that features the original song in its entirety plus several closing credit tableaux.
