Mercedes Sosa; image courtesy of roxytom.bluecircus.net
I regret that I didn’t know about Argentinian singer Mercedes Sosa until her I read about her passing this morning after multiple ailments, but when CNN refers to someone as “the voice of Latin America,” it catches your attention. As does reading that her prolific output of music reflected on the economic hardships of Latin American citizens and the political corruption of authoritarian leaders. In addition to her music, she served as UNICEF goodwill ambassador. Here she is singing with Joan Baez, a legendary feminist American folk musician who seems a kindred spirit.
And while Sosa became fairly obscure in the states, she inspired younger Latin American singers who later crossed over into the American mainstream.
So, knowing very little about Sosa her beautiful voice, I’m encouraged to find out more about her (after CNN, I referred to NPR). If you have any recommendations of books or documentaries or films where her work is featured, please share with us in the comments section. For now, let’s celebrate this wonderful talent and hope that others remember and follow her humane, politicized influence.
Saturday fight live -- Madonna pulls Lady Gaga's hair; image courtesy of assets.nydailynews.com
So, I just wanna make sure we all saw Madonna and Lada Gaga catfight in a skit on SNL last weekend. If not . . .
This skit is interesting, though not without its problems in terms of how conceptualizes female competition. For one, while normative notions of masculinity, racial supremacy, and heterosexually accessible lesbianism are ultimately endorsed at the end of the skit, it is interesting that, for one of the few times in either pop star’s career, a queerable black man enacts agency and authority rather than being controlled by these women. For another, it addresses and challenges inter-generational power struggles between women. It also suggests that perhaps Gaga — who shares or steals Madonna’s prediliction for Marie Antoinette-informed spectacle — is a much better fit for succession of the Material Girl’s mantle than Britney.
1. The skit takes place on a fictitious house music TV program called Deep House Dish, acknowledging both pop stars’ dance club origins.
2. That program is on MTV4, a clear slight at the music network that has made both video-centric performers’ careers, while at the same time dispensing of the network’s original 24-hour music video programming schedule to make more room for reality television.
3. With their bleach-blonde hair, olive complexions, and leather get-ups, these are Italian American pop stars that believe in queerable toughness over normative pretty femininity in the cultivation of sexy.
4. As feisty as she is with her idol, I wonder if Lady Gaga will be fighting some emerging pop icon the same way Madonna is now. Where Britney kissed Madonna’s ass, Gaga is ready to kick it. Kill yr idols, indeed.
Cover of The Girl's Guide to Rocking by Jessica Hopper (Workman, 2009); image courtesy of timeoutchicago.com
My friend Evan reminded me to give this book a read a few months ago and I finally got around to it. If you’re starting to put a band together, regardless of age, I highly recommend it.
This is an encouraging, user-friendly read written by a woman who has worked as both a critic, blogger, and musician (with some controversial riot grrrl cred — she was featured in a Newsweek article that ultimately resulted in the movement’s media shut-out). Hopper shares her experience the way a big sister or her cool friend would. She is helpful, practical, and candid, She offers personal anecdotes for how she learned the lessons she’s teaching and throws in necessary jargon while always explaining things clearly, sometimes with pretty pictures.
Hopper walks the reader through the entire process of being in a band, from picking out your instrument to getting lessons to starting a band to the song-writing process to the recording process to putting together promotional materials to booking gigs to touring to navigating legalese and accounting. In doing so, she gives really useful, concise advice on issues like how to pick out an instrument, draft a rehearsal schedule, muffle the sound of your instruments so you can practice at home, check in with your bandmates to insure high morale, determine whether or not you need a manager or producer, how to set up a band Web site, and how to put a flyer or a band bio together.
Though in essence a how-to book, I also appreciate that she recommends books about songwriting, music history, herstory, and musical movements, as well as movies and other supplemental material that will give readers a larger, more comprehensive understanding of how their efforts fit into the popular music’s historical context.
I also like that Hopper makes room for alternate routes to being a musician. While the focus of this book is pretty rock-centric, Hopper is also encouraging of musicians who experiment with line-ups and instrumentation, choose to go solo, and look into performing in non-traditional venue spaces. In short, if you wanna be in a three-person Moog, turntable, and floor tomb ensemble that plays at your local laundromat, she believes in you. In fact, as she says in her book, if you’re a harmonica player who covers Radiohead songs, she’d definitely go to your gig.
One thing I would’ve liked a bit more consideration for (and am interested in reading about more thoroughly) is how to be a vocalist. There is discussion about voice through songwriting, gear, and recording, but I would’ve liked to know more about, say, how to play an instrument while singing at the same time (something neither me nor B.B. King knows how to do). I also would’ve liked more discussion on how a vocalist fits into a band. As they are providing instrumentation as well, it would’ve been nice to talk about how they need to hear the other instruments and if they need to tune with them.
That said, I still found this book helpful, pragmatic, and, above all, supportive. From your inaugural visit to the local guitar shop to completing your first tour and beyond, Hopper believes in you. With the holiday season coming up, this is an ideal gift to show that you believe in the emerging musician(s) in your life, whether they are your seven-year-old neighbor, your GRCA-going tweenage sister, or your 80-year-old grandmother.
So, before I go into my post about Anna Sui’s Gossip Girl-inspired Target collection that launched last summer, I’d like to first announce something totally superfluous but strangely encapsulating. I am down to the dregs of my Anna Sui Dolly Girl perfume. My mom bought it for me several birthdays ago and it is a delightfully flirty fragrance that I only wear when I need to feel publically sexy. If I went to your birthday party, going-away party, theme party, house-warming, wedding, or any other BIG EVENT, this is what I smelled like before I got sweaty and/or drunk. Priced at $35 and lasting over several years, it has definitely served me well.
Anna Sui's Dolly Girl; image courtesy of fragrancex.com
Delightfully flirty and publically sexy seems to be Gossip Girl‘s chief M.O. The CW teen drama, created by O.C. mastermind Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, is now in its third season and based on the popular tween book series of same name by Cecily von Ziegesar. It focuses on the soapy, bitchy, frothy excesses of a gaggle of teenaged haves and (to a lesser extent) have-nots and their parents in New York City. Importantly, its wardrobe is in essence a principal character, largely due to costume designer Eric Daman’s keen eye for established and emergent talent in contemporary fashion. The show has launched once-fledging talent like Blake Lively, who has appeared in pictorials for Vanity Fairand on the cover of Vogue. It has also scored previously unknown actresses like Leighton Meester into a spokeswoman deal with Reebok.
Vogue cover girl Blake Lively, February 2009; image courtesy of bryanboy.com
The show has proven itself bit of a taste-maker. How else to explain why this “silly” teen soap (with a considerable hip twentysomething following) got the coop of having Christian Dior’s Miss Dior Chérie advertisement air for the first time during the “Bonfire of the Vanity” episode? Oh, and let’s not overlook who directed the spot — Ms. Sofia Coppola, herself a hipster icon, fashionista, erstwhile clothing designer, sometimes design collaborator, and friend to folks like Marc Jacobs and, yes, Anna Sui.
BTW, I remember this really interesting feature Seventeen did back in 1993 with Sui, Coppola, and friends Zoe Cassavettes and Donovan Leitch, but cannot find it on the Interwebz. If curious, please contact your local library. When you find it, note the crocheted shawls, chokers, matte lipstick, and other hallmarks of early-90s fashion they’re wearing that are now making a comeback.
Bringing publications like Seventeeninto the discussion make inevitable the show’s fanbase and target audience, who tend to be pre-teen and tween girls. Thus, there’s probably a fair amount of aspiration that can be marketed toward (a euphemistic term for “exploited”). And while I feel kinda icky about the proceedings, especially since Sui’s Gossip Girl-inspired togs tend to be mid-range ($30-$70), I at least can recognize that these clothes are more affordable than, say, Louis Vuitton, or even some of the garments sold at mall retailers like Express, Banana Republic, and The Limited.
The market-driven desire to dress like a gossip girl suggests a particular cultural power, perhaps one not since seen since Carrie Bradshaw became a game-charging sartorialist (and Sarah Jessica Parker became her). The Gossip Girl cast’s on- and off-screen wardrobe (and, in Taylor Momsen’s case, the merging of the two) has also provided fodder for fashion blogs like Go Fug Yourself, much in the same way that producer Josh Schwartz’s name-making franchise The O.C. Gossip Girl has even taken its fashion-plate status toward self-reflexive ends. In the season two episode, “The Serena Also Rises,” a fashion show seating chart appears on screen, with Fug Girls Jessica Morgan and Heather Cocks’s names on it.
Thus, the show, like other Schwartz-helmed programs, is known for its intertextuality. So it seems fitting that a television show — particularly one as creative as marketing and distributing itself in an increasingly digitized and convergent media climate that young women have been especially adept at traversing, would try marketing its show through clothes. It’s a move with a bit of recent history (Grey’s Anatomy for New York & Company) and a bit of current cross-promotional play (Mad Men for Banana Republic, which Jonathan Gray has critiqued).
But having Sui team up with Target to design for Gossip Girl it is interesting, and smart in terms of the show’s investment in fashion, both as an industry and as a bridging cultural practice. Like Gossip Girl, Sui’s work has been characterized by her ongoing interests in popular music. Gossip Girl‘s music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas defines the show by its of-the-moment “indie” sound, which in turn gets referenced, idolized, and critiqued at length by the show’s characters in much the same way it was on The O.C..Likewise, Sui is often inspired by popular music — particularly 60s garage rock, 90s Britpop, riot grrrl, and mod culture — and incorporates the attitude and aesthetic into her designs.
Actress Emma Stone wearing Sui's mod babydoll dress, designed with Blair Waldorf in mind; image courtesy of thestarnews.info
Both the show and designer have a preoccupation with the 90s — for the show, it is an era that commercialized alternative rock and, for hip dad and former rocker Rufus Humphrey, it is an albatross. Sui might feel similarly about the era, which was her zenith period and was not repeated in the 2000s when peer designers like Marc Jacobs, Alexander McQueen, and Stella McCartney made the career move to be house designers for Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, and Chloé, respectively. Sui instead followed in the footsteps of designers like Betsey Johnson and continued to cultivate her brand from a slightly lower tier, opening boutiques around the world and continuing to create new collections, but largely outside of the elite world of haute couture. Likewise, Gossip Girl is not a big player on television with colossal ratings. It’s not on a big-four network or on a prestige cable channel like HBO.
(Note: Obviously, if one wants to read into Sui’s professional position her marginalized status as one of the few Asian American female clothing designers, there is ample room for this. Admittedly, I have not done so here, but would be very interested and encouraged by what others might have to say on the matter.)
But both designer and show have cultivated their kitschy, hip brands toward less-travelled though no-less-populist ends. Thus, it makes sense that Sui would link up with Gossip Girl (apparently, her favorite television show), and that they would link up with Target, a big box chain with affordable prices, a cooler and more ethical socioeconomic reputation than Wal-Mart, and a relationship with designers like Isaac Mizrahi, as well as M.I.A.’s former roommate Luella Bartley and Michelle Obama’s go-to guy Thakoon Panichgul who, like Sui, have created limited edition collections for the retailer.
Now, having already discussed the problematic nature of fixing a price range and marketing a clothing line toward an intended audience in such a blatant way, I’d like to close by casting a critical eye toward the clothes themselves.
A dress for Blair, Jenny, Serena, and Vanessa; image courtesy of mahoganyglam.com
One issue I have with the collection is how focused it is on dresses and skirts. While supposedly each outfit is designed with a particular gossip girl style in mind (specifically Serena’s boho chic, Blair’s classic glamour, Jenny’s runway punk, and clearly cast-aside Vanessa’s vaguely ethnic intellectual look), all of these items can easily be paired together because of their overt, unproblematized femininity.
Another issue, and one that Target faces with all limited collections, is whether big-name designers cater toward in-between or fat body types. The clothes’ sizes range from extra-small to extra-large, leaving out women and girls who are bigger. What is more, while these clothes appear to be well-made, many of the designs in Sui’s collection seems to principally flatter a long, lean body type. As a short, curvy girl who wears a size four (which, if we recall The Devil Wears Prada, is the new size six), I would have to belt pretty much all of these dresses so they wouldn’t look like gunnysacks on me (that is, the ones that aren’t so short that they would fail to flatter my thickly proportioned thighs). And don’t even get me started on how stumpy I’d look in a pair of checkered, bowed pedal pushers. NEXT!
I reject the pedal pushers on the right; image courtesy of fashionlooks.onsugar.com
So, while interesting in many other ways, I feel like Sui’s collection suggests that only certain shapes and classes get to be gossip girls when it comes to fashion. I don’t think we needed Target to tell us that, but I hope it inspires other women and girls to either make the styles their own or, better yet, start picking up the needle and thread and putting their own outfits together.
You know what? If Kristen Chenoweth, Lea Michele, and Liza Minnelli were in the periphery of yesterday’s Scarjo post, let’s make today’s post be all about them and their awesome pipes.
Kristen Chenoweth as April, hoping for that strike; image courtesy of tvovermind.com
Lea Michele's Rachel, striking gold at the bowling alley with glee clubber Finn; image courtesy of stayinginwithvlada.com
So, if you’re watching Glee, you might have been so excited to see a TV show that closed with a rousing rendition of Queen’s “Somebody To Love,” getting at least one person closer to her goal of seeing it performed by an entire dramatic ensemble like the “Wise Up” scene in Magnolia.
More importantly, you might have been won over by Chenoweth and Michele’s duet on “Maybe This Time.” (BTW, thanks Neesha for making me think to spotlight this scene.) Followers know the cruel irony of this song’s inclusion in a series as deceptively sad and desperate as this one. Chenoweth’s April Rhodes is a washed-up former glee clubber with a surprising amount of Jerri Blank’s warped charm. Michele’s Rachel Berry is a talented, go-gettin’ ingenue who is just barely hiding how profoundly lonely she is.
You may also recognize the show’s not-so-secret gift of making the sheer cathartic power and physical release of a pop song or musical number to make both the singer and the spectator transcend to a higher plane (for a more abstract example of how the corporeality of singing can reinvigorate both parties, I’ll point you toward the Patrick Daughters-directed music video for Grizzly Bear’s “Two Weeks,” wherein the four-piece are so overjoyed by the power of singing, their heads catch on fire as I get goosepimply).
If we dig a little deeper, the Minnelli reference comes in. “Maybe This Time” was originally written for Bob Fosse’s film adaptation of Kander and Ebb’s stage musical, Cabaret, which Rachel is starring in (and a real high school would almost certainly never stage, even though I begged our choir director for us to do it). The musical, adapted from Christopher Isherwood’s novel Goodbye to Berlin, involves the doomed romance between Cliff, an American journalist, and Sally Bowles, a blindly determined British showgirl who makes the decision to stay in 1930s Berlin just as Hitler is starting to get a chokehold on Germany while her partner flees back to the states. In the movie version, Bowles is American, and played with put-upon worldliness and brittle vulnerability by Liza Minnelli, who won the Oscar for Best Actress for her performance.
Admittedly, if the song Glee had chosen was “Cabaret,” which was in both the stage and film versions, Liza’s version of it would add another layer of readability, as it’s impossible for me to hear this version of the song, which is performed right at the moment when Bowles’s personal life is going to hell, and not think of Mama Judy Garland.
But I think these twin versions of “Maybe This Time” speak to a few key issues particularly poignant to women and girls’ relationship to musical theater and to the outside world: the gendered masquerade of happiness for the sake of upholding spectacle, the ability to stop time and transmorph because of the aural spectacle of your own voice, and the strength your voice has to keep you persevering. Because the push you’re looking for to get through the next set of insurmountable odds might be found by landing that high note.
