Today would’ve been Selena Quintanilla-Pérez’s 39th birthday. I was pleased to discover it was being celebrated when I went to the Bob Bullock Museum earlier today to meet up with my partner’s mother, a middle school principal in the Fort Worth area who chaperoned a school trip. My partner and I stopped by the free event, which was put together by the museum, Texas Monthly, and 107.7 La Jefa. It was thrilling to see the tejano star’s legacy celebrated with food, dancing, and multiple crafts stations.As a Texan, I’m familiar with Selena’s legacy. While she may not be as recognized in other parts of the world beyond the competent biopic starring Jennifer Lopez, she remains huge in the south, particularly within Mexican American communities. As I grew up in a town with a considerable Hispanic population, I heard her music on the radio and saw her videos on television. I helped create an aerobic routine to “La Carcacha” for seventh grade P.E. class. I even felt some of the cultural impact in her death, which occurred at the hands of a fan just as she was about to cross over as a pop star. The loss of Kurt Cobain the year before was tragic, but I never forgot what Selena’s career, her murder, and the promise it extinguished meant to many of my classmates. Your newsstands may have circulated the 1995 issue of People with the cast of Friends on the cover, but Texans got the one that paid tribute to the slain pop star.So I’m glad her legacy lives on. San Antonio’s Girl In a Coma cover “Si Una Vez” at shows. Kristen and I make sure to include her in our music history workshops, and she’s been well received. If today’s event is any indication, a new generation of Texans are celebrating the singer and her impact.
Late yesterday afternoon before Jessica Hopper tweeted about Off Chances’ awesome podcast series, I saw another tweet from Reel Grrls about their spring break music video camp. Ever a music video lover, I was excited to see what the girls came up with. I’m seriously loving The Next Door Neighbors’ “Liars” video. Their sound reminds me of The Knife too.
Helping girls make their own music videos is something I’d like to do with our girls at GRCA, though Schmillion prove they don’t need my help putting together awesome clips. I’m also inspired by Kristen at Act Your Age‘s resolve to pick up a camera and become a bad-ass filmmaker. Not to put her on the spot, but I have some music video ideas I want to get together.
If you have any burgeoning girl filmmakers in your life who live in the Austin area, Femme Film Texas is holding the 2010 Film Camp for Girls June 19-27th. Registration ends May 21st. We’re rolling, people!
This time next week, I’ll be presenting a conference paper at Console-ing Passions. Thus, between it and my stint at Bitch, I’m a little stretched at the moment. I do have a personal goal to rewatch Times Square this weekend and put together a post. Ever the student, I thought it would be fun to spotlight two ladies who are teaching me how to do some cool things. Maybe they can help you too, especially if you’re looking to whale on Eddie Van Halen’s guitar solos in Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” or learn the moves to Janelle Monáe’s “Tightrope.”
Here’s Kelly Rosenthal walking us through how to shred on “Beat It.”
And here’s Ladia Yates teaching us how to tip on the tightrope.
Today’s “Tuning In” entry focuses on Kiely Williams’s bummer of a new single and video, which basically celebrates the sexual prowess of a date rapist. Ugh.
Loretta Lynn; image courtesy of likeawhisper.wordpress.com
I know we’re all still mourning the recent loss of Dixie Carter, whose inimitable Julia Sugarbaker was an early feminist role model on this Southern girl. But let’s not forget that today is another Southern dame’s birthday. Loretta Lynn is 76, and I’m very grateful. Though not without its problems, I remain a fan of Coal Miner’s Daughter and Sissy Spacek’s Oscar-winning turn as Lynn.
Sissy Spacek as Loretta Lynn; image courtesy of wikimedia.org
I love that voice and I’ve always appreciated that she — like Dolly Parton — celebrated her humble roots.
Of course, their folksiness feeds into how country music constructs itself to be music for the people. Thus, I’ve always treasured Lynn’s political contributions to popular music. This woman recorded “The Pill,” one of the first popular songs about birth control, back in 1972 before its 1975 release. While it initially received controversy for seemingly contradicting country music’s values, it was embraced by the mainstream and remains a standard. In 1966, she also recorded “Dear Uncle Sam,” a protest song about the Vietnam War sung from the perspective of a soldier’s wife, which she has since performed in response to the Iraq War. She also continues to work with younger artists, most notably White Stripes’ frontman Jack White on 2004′s Van Lear Rose.
And I’ve always appreciated how Lynn could respect other people’s perspectives while holding true to her own. Note the grace with which she brokered peace between Darlene Connor’s vegetarianism and her mother’s entrepreneurial spirit in the Amy Sherman-Palladino penned “Lanford Daze” episode of Roseanne when the Lunch Box tabled at a local food fair. Lynn even got a loose meat sandwich out of it. While I don’t like the female competition in “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man),” I do love that Roseanne and Lynn sing it together. Play us off!
Lizzy Caplan, Hot Tub Time Machine's manic pixie dream girl; image courtesy of tv.yahoo.com
Last week, Caitlin at Dark Room sent me an e-mail about how Lizzy Caplan plays a music journalist in Hot Tub Time Machine. As the subject header referred to her as a manic pixie dream girl, I didn’t hold out much hope for any development of her character. Caitlin had earlier mentioned on her blog that she was planning on seeing Hot Tub Time Machine despite being pretty positive that it was just another dudes night out picture because Crispin Glover is in it.
I was planning on seeing it because it’s called Hot Tub Time Machine. It’s the best genius-stoopid movie title I’ve heard since Snakes on a Plane, which I also saw during it’s theatrical run. Matter of fact, I was in Raccoons on Space Shuttle,one of Mascot Wedding‘s very funny shorts. See if you can spot me. I’ll help you out: I’m wearing a wig and I’m “acting.”
As for the movie itself, it brings time travel into another jerky bro movie, with all of its anxieties about homosexuality, women, and race where a bunch of sad sacks somehow (undeservedly) come out ahead in the end. I won’t defend my viewing of it apart from it was a dumb comedy with some silly moments that was fun to watch while drinking a beer and eating a burger with my friends.
Except there is the music geek aspect of it, which I actually wasn’t aware of until Caitlin told me. And Lizzy Caplan played one of my favorite characters in Mean Girls and I wish I saw her in more things.
Lizzy Caplan as Janice Ian in Mean Girls; image courtesy of fanpop.com
Caplan plays April, a journalist for Spin Magazine, once the cooler alternative to the more established Rolling Stone, as well as an up-start by the movie’s timeline, which flashes back from the present to 1986, a year after the publication’s founding. She’s on assignment covering Poison, who are headlining a music festival at the ski lodge where the group of friends are staying. You know she’s cool because she clearly hates Poison, sneaks into unoccupied cabins, and is wearing a floppy hat with a flower cut-out.
But mainly, she’s just the wacky love interest for John Cusack’s Adam. She’s on board with this stranger’s story about being transported to the past, despite appearing at once too old for her to the audience and too young for her in the story’s timeline. She also refuses to give Adam her number in hopes that their paths will cross someday, which is basically the plot to Serendipity, a romantic comedy Cusack starred in with Kate Beckinsale.
Which brings us to Cusack’s function in the movie. While Rob Corddry steals the show as insufferable cad Lou and Craig Robinson winningly underplays Nick, it’s really Cusack’s movie. In addition to serving as one of the movie’s producers, long-time friend and co-writer Steve Pink directs what is ultimately an homage to Cusack’s Better Off Dead.
Plus, having Cusack play a character who falls in love with a music geek really only serves to bolster his own on-screen persona as a music-savvy underdog. This is an image that’s been perpetuated at least as far back as when Lloyd Dobler lifted a boombox blaring Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” to win back Diane Court in Say Anything . . .
John Cusack in Say Anything. . .; image courtesy of accesshollywood.com
While this image has carried on into movies like Grosse Pointe Blank and High Fidelity, at least his love interests in those movies were peer music geeks and interesting women. We get a female music geek in Hot Tub Time Machine. Pity we don’t actually find out anything about her.
Cover to New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh) (Universal Motown 2010); image courtesy of wikimedia.org
Erykah Badu’s latest offering is one of the year’s most anticipated releases for me. A long-time fan, Mama’s Gunchanged my perception of the world. Carrying on the artist’s tradition of bridging personal reflection with political awareness, 2008′s New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) evinced the work of a maturing artist and mother with an insurrectionist’s heart. Released during the twilight of the Bush Administration and somewhat of a musical departure with its use of digital composition and recording software, Badu linked the political climate to the addiction and disease that destroyed many people of color during the “greed is good” Reagan years. Sometimes, as with TV on the Radio’s 2008 release, Dear Science, Badu suggested possibilities for change. But most of these moments came from within and not out of hoping a political leader would make any profound difference for the citizenry.
While 4th World War should be judged on its own merits, another reason it was so interesting was that it was the first installment of a two-part series. And if this album was so forward-thinking and challenging, what lies ahead in part two?
The answer will be the focus of this entry. Released at the end of March, New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh) was preceded by a controversial music video for lead single “Window Seat.” My first introduction to the song was about a week prior to the video’s release. She performed the song with The Roots on Jimmy Fallon, and I was pumped.
Some reviewers have been disheartened by this album, which basically focuses on a disintegrating romatic relationship. Jody Rosen claims it’s too consciously strange at times and is lacking in many actual songs, which is a claim I think you could make about 4th World War upon first listen. Jessica Hopper believes the album’s inward focus lacks the energy and cultural relevance that propelled the series’ first offering.
While I’m an admirer of both critics, I think Oliver Wang‘s assessment most closely mirrors my thoughts. While 4th World War may have been more outwardly political and Return of the Ankh more personally reflective and at times self-pitying, I find Badu to be consistent, and her newest release only bolsters my opinion. Going back to Baduizm and including Worldwide Underground, Badu’s oft-overlooked follow-up to Mama’s Gun, all of her albums contain moments of self-reflection and political consciousness (sometimes in the same song, as on “Other Side of the Game,” “…& On,” and “Danger”) celebrations of love, and outpourings of grief (Mama’s Gun‘s ”Orange Moon,” “In Love With You,” and “Green Eyes”). Her albums are also punctuated with skits and asides that suggest that Badu is at once strange, silly, and smart (“Afro” and “Amerykahn Promise,” for starters).
All of these moments can be found here. There’s reflections on the personal and professional juggling that Badu tires of in “Window Seat.” “Turn Me Away (Get MuNNY)” focuses on capitalism in ways that to me recall Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings protest “Money” and P!nk’s ”Stupid Girls,” which mockingly indicts status-obsessed starlets. But these concerns have always been in Badu’s mind.
Album opener “20 Feet Tall” features Badu reminding herself that she is strong enough to get over her heartache. Studio riff “You Loving Me” is an example of Badu’s self-deprecating humor that may have been cut from another artist’s album out of a need to showcase more polished, ”important” work. And closer ”Out My Mind, Just In Time” recalls the wordplay and drama of “Green Eyes” though is messier, more emotionally conflicted, and ends in discordance that recalls Joanna Newsom’s “Does Not Suffice,” from another great 2010 break-up record, Have One on Me. I also think the last track is a promise of things to come: Badu may be wounded for now, but she’s got unfinished business to tend to.
And while 4th World War wasn’t as lavish a production, all of her albums show a clear indebtedness to funk, soul, and jazz in their arrangements. They also feature hip hop’s common practice of sampling (revisit “Love of My Life (An Ode to Hip Hop)” or take a look at her production team for clearer evidence of Badu’s fandom). As Wang points out in his review, samples provide multiple layers of meaning that gesture toward the time in which Badu came of age as well as her influences and personal history.
I’d also like to reclaim the break-up album a bit, as women have made art out of them, processing personal feelings with little filter and suggesting how power dynamics are gendered in heterosexual couples. Joni Mitchell did it with Blue. Björk did it with Homogenic.As with Mama’s Gun,I think Badu is continuing in that tradition.
Cover of Joni Mitchell's Blue (Reprise, 1971); image courtesy of wikipedia.org
Finally, while its contents may lack obvious political content, I think Badu and Kyledidthis created visually stunning and connotatively loaded album art. On the cover, Badu is drawn as a robot — perhaps the robot girl she sings as in “Turn Me Away (Get MuNNY)”. Black female artists have referenced the cyborg and the android in their work, notably Missy Elliott, Lil Kim, and Janelle Monáe. Cultural critic Steven Shaviro neatly unpacks the potential connotations of Elliott and Kim identifying as cyborgs in his essay “Supa Dupa Fly: Black Women as Cyborgs in Hiphop Videos.” In a culture that privileges whiteness and still clings to racist ideologies, whether consciously or not, black women especially have been dehumanized because of presumptions about their sexuality and pressures to abide by Anglo/Eurocentric beauty standards.
Robot Badu confronts her potential audience on the cover, her gaze direct. Human Badu emerges from her skull, naked, sitting in grass, holding a tuning fork, and under a tree with branches that spell her name. Surrounding the robot is the flora that continues to grow amidst human-made weapons, airplanes, government buildings, and foreclosed houses that accompanied images of dead babies, fast food, television, and drugs on 4th World War‘s cover. While nature is long associated with female identity, Badu acknowledges her continual presence in both worlds. This album’s growing on me, and evidence that one of pop music’s most original artists is herself still evolving.
Neko Case as Cheyenne Cinnamon (middle); image courtesy of antilabelblog.com
A week into my stint with Bitch and I think I’ve officially got the hang of it. In today’s entry for “Tuning In”, I focus on Neko Case starring in the Cheyenne Cinnamon pilot for Adult Swim. Check it out.
