The cast of Beverly Hills Teens (Jett is the one with the blonde palm tree and guitar, Switchboard is behind her in the jacuzzi wearing sunglasses and a pink bow); image courtesy of wikimedia.org
The other night at a mutual friend’s party, Alex of Pink Army played me a portion of an episode of the animated children’s program Beverly Hills Teens. It aired on syndication and was brought to American kids by DiC, who anticipated the allure of rich teens romping through Beverly Hills before Aaron Spelling by a few years. Apparently it only had one season in the can (1987-1988) but the 65 episodes were re-ran for some time. Five of these episodes are available in full to curious or nostalgic types on YouTube. Other friends at the party remembered it as well, serving as either a lead-in to Jem or following Duck Tales in the after-school line-up. Somehow it was not on my radar. Maybe it was because I was watching Out of This World instead.
Make no mistake: this show is really dumb. Hokey writing, predictable storylines, broadly-written stock characters, and so forth. Basically, each episode focuses on teen queens Larke Tanner and Bianca Dupree. Anyone who’s watched Gossip Girl or read an Archie comic can guess how any plot goes down. Snobby blue-blood brunette Dupree covets something of golden girl Tanner’s (her popularity, modeling career, or boyfriend Troy) and doesn’t get it.
Like Betty and Veronica and Larke and Bianca, Blair and Serena are blonde vs. brunette frenemies
The considerable supporting cast also brings to mind the Archie universe or the coterie of folks inhabiting the CW’s version of the UES. All-American Troy is Archie Andrews or Nate Archibald. Preppy Pierce Thorndyke III (love that name) is Reggie Mantle III or Chuck Bass. Token African American character Shanelle Spencer suggests a shallow notion of inclusiveness in the same way that Chuck Clayton, Nancy Woods, or Blair’s attendants of color do. Rocker Gig and surfer Radley provide some slacker cool in the wake of Jughead Jones’s insouciance that predates the hipster appeal of Dan Humphrey. You get it.
Gossip Girl: what happens when Archie Andrews meets Aaron Spelling, Stephanie Savage, and Josh Schwartz; image courtesy of feministe.us
However, I don’t want to write off this formulaic children’s cartoon without mentioning two characters that are completely in line with my research: rock chick Jett and nerdy informant Switchboard. Valley girl Jett may be Gig’s girlfriend, but they also play guitars in an outfit together. In fact, Jett sings the theme song. I suppose she could be somewhere between Jenny Humphrey and Josie McCoy, a satellite in the Archie universe.
Rachel Leigh Cook in the middle as the live-action version of Josie McCoy, flanked by drummer Melody Valentine (Tara Reid) and bassist Valerie Brown (Rosario Dawson); image courtesy of premiere.com
The character I relate to is Switchboard, a friend of Jett’s. The name’s great, for a start. And while she’s cast as a geek (glasses on!), her idiosyncratic, period-indicative fashion sense would be prescient for how hipster girls dress now. As a journalist who always has the scoop on everything that’s going on in this stratified world, it only lends to her credibility. And while she’s got a strange obsession with the boring popular girls, something tells me that she’d later channel that energy into something more subversive once she went to RISD or Mills College. Basically, I think this girl later goes on to launch Artforum‘s Web site. There’s no clear precursor to her in the Archie universe, but I think she may very well be Gossip Girl, if it isn’t Chuck.
It’s now clear that geeks have a tremendous amount of cultural sway, as books like Benjamin Nugent’s American Nerd: The Story of My People and the rise of Tina Fey suggest. I’d argue there’s a whole lot of whiteness going on with this construction of geek, as the characterization of classed whiteness offered by Stuff White People Like and the fascination with blipsters may also evince. That said, as a white girl geek, I’m still interested in cataloging those moment when nerdy girls and women exist in media culture, no matter how small or problematic. In honor of friend and fellow geek Catherine, who came to feminism through riot grrrl as a teenage outcast and gave me Nugent’s book for my 25th birthday, I’ll leave you with Lisa Loeb’s “Stay.” Catherine texted me yesterday that she was watching this video and discovered that Ms. Loeb (an Ivy League-educated Texan) designed her own eyewear collection. Naturally.
GAGGLE; image courtesy of emergingtalentawards.com
Last month, I mentioned that I started taking guitar lessons and hoped to incorporate my experience in chorus into a project that better reflected my interests in dance and post-punk. The Knife have recently expanded how I hear opera. But imagine my surprise when I was perusing this piece from The Guardian about the supposed lack of angry female music stars and read about an all-female British punk choir named GAGGLE. And I thought discovering post-punk female percussion ensemble like Pulsallama was exciting.
Amazing! I don’t know if this 22-piece ensemble has any inclinations to cross the pond, but I hope they make a stop in Austin.
I’m happy to announce that today I’m officially a guest blogger for Bitch. My entry on Gilmore Girls‘Lane Kim is up and ready for your perusal and comments. Tune in to “Tuning In” MWF for the next eight weeks in order to read this feminist’s thoughts on the intersections of television and music.
Hayley Stark, girl vigilante and Goldfrapp hater; image courtesy of nytimes.com
A few weeks back during lunch, I was sweating some things. I start blogging for Bitch tomorrow and will also be attending a conference later this month. While these are wonderful developments, I didn’t have any shorter entries in the queue for this blog. Ever helpful, Kristen at Act Your Age offered up the question “why doesn’t Ellen Page’s character like Goldfrapp in Hard Candy?” As she discussed this movie in her thesis on girl heroines in rape-revenge movies, I hope she’ll revisit it some time for her blog. But this was a question I had when I saw the movie and seemed like one I could answer here.
I saw this movie, apart from the star and subject matter, because it was English filmmaker David Slade’s directorial debut. While he may become a household name with Twilight: Eclipse, he caught my attention as a music video director. His moody aesthetic and high-contrast color palette in clips like Tori Amos’s “Strange Little Girls” indicate his style, as well as suggest that his interest in retelling Little Red Riding Hood preceded Hard Candy.
I didn’t like this 2006 psychological thriller when I first saw it. Upon review, some things caught my attention that were interesting. And I like the idea of a smart, resourceful girl vigilante tricking an older man she met in a chat room into a compromising situation so she can punish him for his pedophilic actions. However, I still maintain:
1. Hayley Stark seems too articulate, preachy, and savvy for me. She reads like a psychotic caricature of a PSA spokesperson instead of a complex, relateable 14-year-old girl. Page does a fine job with an essentially two-dimensional role, but the part is just as responsible for cultivating her self-aware persona as Juno would be later in her career.
2. Her personal motivations for torturing photographer Jeff Kohlver (Patrick Wilson, the actor who is almost Will Arnett) are never made clear, thus making her seem even more crazy.
3. The torture in this movie was — as Manohla Dargis pointed out in her review — unfortunately poignant upon its release. It’s also pretty boring, and makes up much of the movie’s content.
4. The movie’s use of violence in the service of its political message isn’t nearly as shocking as the hype led it to be perceived. Page’s character never commits any physical violence on her captive beyond repeatedly drugging him. Most of her abuse is psychological, ultimately culminating in him killing himself for her. However, this could be a really smart move for Stark — by having Kohlver off himself, it may remove her from implication.
But what does it mean that Stark’s character hates Goldfrapp? Earlier, before the torture begins at Kohlver’s swanky apartment, the two meet at a coffeeshop. Here and at his place before Stark drugs him, the two mention the Scottish electro outfit several times. Stark regrets not having seen them at their latest show, which Kohlver attended. He also swiped a bootleg mp3 of the concert, and promises to share it with Stark. Stark also talks about Zadie Smith and Jean Seberg, and Kohlver mentions her affinity for John Mayer and Coldplay.
In other words, Kohlver uses Stark’s demonstrative love of popular culture as a means of creating an illusory bond of shared preferences that he actually uses for the purposes of seduction and for holding power over her. But Stark is smart enough to pick up on this, suggesting that he faked an interest in these things during their online exchanges. She notes that he would often stop chatting with her for several minutes, possibly to look up these people who he may have pretended to know so as to impress her, and would copy and paste Amazon reviews into his messages to her.
When posing Kristen’s proposed question to our co-worker Rebekah, she suggested this might be a way for Stark’s character to impose authority over him by seeming more fluent in indie music culture than her victim. In other words, Stark is so cool that she already knows Goldfrapp well enough to find them outdated. This would certainly sync up with Ellen Page’s star persona as a hipster darling.
Alison Goldfrapp, who Haylee Stark and Ellen Page may or may not be "over"; image courtesy of idolator.com
I want to add a wrinkle. Because one thing that struck me upon revisiting this movie is how clearly queer Stark’s character is. I’d even go so far as to read Stark as a lesbian, though speculations of Page’s sexuality and Stark’s resemblance to lesbians who look like Justin Bieber may inform this reading. It’s very clear in Stark’s stilted delivery of faux-sexy verbal solicitations that she is faking an attraction for a man and possibly an entire sex category.
Of course, seduction is performative. This is evident in Kohlver’s transparent, predatory flirting style. But there’s an edge to Stark’s performance that suggests she does not embody it and will reject it. This reading is problematic, as it links her militancy with negative stereotypes about lesbian radicalism. And I’ll also point out the irony in Stark’s disdain for Goldfrapp, as the duo has a big gay following. Remember their gig at The Planet on The L-Word?
But I also think that Stark may be saying that by hating Goldfrapp, she hates Kohlver and all of the things with which he professes to identify. While her hate assuredly encompasses pedophilia and sexual abuse, her disdain may also extend to the act of heterosexual sex, as the cultural value placed upon it also oppresses people, including queer girls. If compliance with heterosexism involves using erotically-charged electro-pop to seduce or assault, it makes sense why some girls hate Goldfrapp too.
Movie poster for The Runaways; image courtesy of fanpop.com
I caught a screening of The Runaways with my dear friends Curran, Masashi, and Kristen at Act Your Age. How do I put this? . . . It was terrible.
It was off to a promising start with the movie’s first image: a drop of menstrual blood. It did a good job establishing the sunny malaise of 70s Southern California, but a hackneyed and incoherent script, weak characterization, and wooden acting were evident early on. Once the band went on their first tour, the movie ran off the rails and never recovered. As a casual fan of the group in question who hasn’t read lead singer Cherie Currie’s Neon Angel (the screenplay’s source material), I didn’t leave the theater with any gained insight. And as someone who teaches rock history to girls, I have no idea what they would get out off this movie. The band’s relevance as musical pioneers is assumed and thus given no context. Furthermore, the actresses are not often shown playing instruments or working as a unit. In fact, the movie mainly focuses on founder and guitarist Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) and lead singer Currie (Dakota Fanning), giving a little time to co-founder and drummer Sandy West (Stella Maeve), but obscuring Lita Ford (Scout Taylor-Compton) and Robin Blakemore (Alia Shawkat), an amalgam of the group’s many bassists.
The stars of the movie (missing is the rest of the band); image courtesy of fanpop.com
In short, I am at a loss as to the function of this movie. Who is this movie for? Why did it get made? Why is this story worth telling? As a feminist music geek, these questions are usually rhetorical. But as a jilted moviegoer two hours later, these were the questions I was left with.
I’ll elaborate more on my criticisms with the movie later in this post, but first I’d like to get in to the limits of the music biopic but why I still like watching them. Curran asked Kristen and me before the movie started what our expectations were. We said we thought there’d be some salvageable moments and maybe some good performances.
To be fair, that’s really all most music biopics deliver (I’m specifically talking about feature films here, but we could easily extend this to made-for-TV movies too). I’m not sure if any film genre scholars have written on music biopics (feel free to share any relevant texts in the comments section — I love a reading list). It seems like a genre worth evaluating, particularly since they’re often disappointing. As with all biopics, there’s always the matter of historical accuracy, warped by legends, differing accounts, flexible realities, and negotiated subjectivities. When these issues are compromised in music biopics, they often result in fans saying the filmmakers got it wrong.
What music fans hope to get out of a music biopic varies. Perhaps there’s hope of being faithful to the subject and source material. As someone who doesn’t mind when biopics play with history, I’m usually more interested in what aspects of their stories get highlighted and how the surrounding era is evoked, because music biopics are also period pieces. Above all, I’m interested in casting. Who is playing the musician in question?
As a film genre, music biopics are foremost star vehicles. The same can be said of biopics in general, as they can guarantee a lock for an Oscar win in the acting categories. Unlike traditional historical biographies though, music biopics tend not be the domain of directors looking to flex authorial muscle. Perhaps this has to do with value judgments placed upon rock music as being less culturally significant than, say, the life of Malcolm X, Lenny Bruce, or Jesus Christ. This doesn’t necessarily extend to concert features, as directors like Martin Scorsese and Jim Jarmusch have them on their résumés. But the majority of music biopics are driven by the star, not the director. Regularly, Oscar nominations are given to actors who play musicians, some of whom have even won the coveted prize. Marion Cotillard won most recently for her turn as Édith Piaf in La vie en rose. It was earned, in my opinion. Her devastating performance saved a movie marred by too many tracking shots of the subject suffering in private, pacing backstage, and then taking that pain with her in performance.
Tangentially related, but opinion varies as to whether the actor should sing. My take is that if the actor can pull off the singer’s style, okay. But in general, I actually prefer hearing the original source material. There’s much to be said for an actor who can do a convincing lip sync.
But music biopics tend to be unsatisfying in execution, even if the actors do a good job. The main reason for this, I think, has to do with the genre abiding by staid storytelling conventions and taking on too much of the subject’s biography. Some music biopics have defied expectations, playing with formal convention and myth as well as pursuing alternate perspectives from folks involved with other aspects of the music industry and fans. I’d credit Michael Winterbottom’s 24-Hour Party People and Todd Haynes’s Velvet Goldmine and I’m Not There with achieving this.
I also think there’s a lot of value in focusing on a key period in a musical act’s life or career and allow this time to give the subject his or her larger sociohistoric context. I liked Stephen Frears’s The Queen in large part because it narrows its sights on the brief period of time between the election of Prime Minister Tony Blair and the death of Princess Diana and resultant grief of her loss and let those events shape the character of Queen Elizabeth II. While I haven’t seen all of Gus Van Zant’s Last Days, I wonder if dwelling on Kurt Cobain’s final moments might say more about his distress than a retelling of the events that led to Nirvana’s meteoric rise.
After the musical act in question starts touring and usually begins tasting some fame, music biopics become boring and predictable. As a result, music biopics take out the electricity from the people who wrote songs to the soundtrack of our memories. They turn their lives into plodding accounts of what become crappy day jobs as routinized and dehumanizing as cubicle-dwelling but with less relateable struggles Behind the Music already exhausted. You can play? I can play too. Hey, we got a record deal! Our song is on the radio! Look, groupies and available drugs! Ugh, touring is boring. All the cities look the same. Oh wait, here come the struggles with fame and the weight of expectations. The fame has driven a wedge between me and my fans. More drugs and probably some questionable vanity purchases. Oh no, the band isn’t getting along. Factions! We can’t replicate the magic anymore. Vices! Overdoses, which result in two outcomes. There is death, and then a celebration of legacy. There is also rehab, which is usually followed by half-hearted reunions or anonymity, often accompanied by middle-aged paunch. YAWN.
And when you focus on boys who deal with these pressures through self-medication and illicit sex with women who aren’t their partners, only to seek redemption in a mistress, a second wife, or Jesus, I really have no sympathy. I will laugh at them however, which is why I’ll get around to seeing Walk Hard, a movie that pokes fun at these conventions.
But Floria Sigismondi’s movie proves that an all-girl proto-punk band can be just as boring as any man in rock music. And now, let’s launch into my problems with The Runaways.
1. The script. This is the movie’s biggest problem. Given that this is director Sigismondi’s first feature, it is also her first screenwriter credit. Early into the movie, I had flashes of Mark Romanek’s One-Hour Photo. Like Sigismondi, Romanek proved his mettle as an innovative music video director before he made directorial debut. And while that helped both directors establish an aesthetic style, it didn’t help develop their writing skills. Because . . . oh boy, is Sigismondi’s script marred with clunky dialogue, incoherent tonal shifts, and unfounded character motivation. So often, the movie launches into important developments with little explanation or context. How did the girls discover rock and roll for themselves? Why were there homelives unsatisfying? Why did the girls form a band? How they function as a unit? How did they handle detractors? How did they interact with other bands? What was their relationship with label employees, road crews, journalists, fans, and the number of folks they encountered? How popular were they in the United States? How popular were they abroad? Why were they so beloved in Japan? Perhaps this has to do with a reliance on the movie’s audience to know the band’s backstory. Perhaps this has to do with legal intervention as well, which might explain how little screen time Sandy West, Lita Ford, and the bassists get.
And sometimes Sigismondi’s career as a director encroaches too much on her work in this feature. Bathtubs becoming lagoons? Jett writing a song in a milk bath? Currie calling her sister at an abandoned phone booth in some random abandoned parking lot? It looks cool, but doesn’t really convey any information.
2. The movie isn’t gay enough. Now, to be fair, I was surprised at how gay it was — just like I was happy about Currie’s menstrual blood and Jett urinating on a sexist musician’s guitar. And while I think that Stewart is basically playing Jett as Shane McKutcheon from The L-Word, I believe her baby butch swagger. But a lot is hinted at and insinuated where fan and pro-sex feminist Susie Bright knew there were explicitly gay or queer things were happening at the time. And when Sigismondi pervades Jett and Currie’s sex scene with red lights, slow motion, close-ups on open mouths, off-kilter camera angles, and soft focus, it enforces Currie’s wastedness, thus perpetuating the notion that women and girls have to be inebriated to be intimate with one another. FAIL.
3. The matter of the leads. I don’t want to play the game of pitting one actress against another, as each part has its own demands. And both actresses are at a tenuous point at their career, transitioning from child stars to leading ladies. Interestingly, they’ve also been a part of the Twilight series and seem to be using the money they’ve earned from the franchise to subsidize less commercial fare like this movie.
In truth, I wasn’t wowed by either actress. To their credit, it’s hard to make lines like “I’m thinking with my cock” and “I thought we were your fucked-up family” beat the page. Furthermore, they’re given little motivation for their characters. What possesses Jett to pick up a guitar, much less link up with Svengali Kim Fowley? Why does Currie spiral into addiction and despair? For Currie, a negligent family with a history of substance abuse might be the reason, as might intimations that she was raped while on tour. But the actresses aren’t given much to work with. Jett scowls. Currie rolls her eyes like a Valley Girl. And neither of them convey for me the dynamism their characters possessed onstage.
4. Sexism and misogyny. Again, I was amazed that these issues were acknowledged at all, though they are crucial to the telling of this band’s story. Furthermore, it was interesting to see how the movie dealt with the public and the band’s conflicting feelings about their sexuality and agency over their own objectification as jailbait hellcat rebels. But the script puts too fine a point on how icky and regressive and threatening men were to young girls trying to break into the music industry. At the same time, it provides little context as to why these attitudes were prevalent and if The Runaways changed them at all and how. And why would these girls put up with Fowley’s abuse? Do age and gender have anything to do with it? Assuredly, but the movie doesn’t develop these issues further.
To actor Michael Shannon’s credit, I think he does a credible job with Fowley. As the movie tends to reduce the character to a series of random antics, feel free to watch his interview on Tom Snyder’s The Tomorrow Show. Note to how little Jett talks, how often she is interrupted and cut off, and how often Fowley speaks for her and the band. I think these interjections and silence speak volumes of the sort of industry sexism Jett had to deal with.
Having said all this, am I happy and pleasantly surprised that this movie got made? Yes. Do I wish it could be better? Of course. Do I think the story of The Runaways and a myriad of other bands should be told? Absolutely. I still recommend seeing this movie. And if it gets people interested in the members’ music and their history, along with the careers of the movie’s director and stars, even better. I’ll close with a recollection of a scene from the movie: Jett visits Currie in the hospital following the lead singer’s free-fall into addiction. Jett informs Currie that she read about an all-girl band forming in Korea. “They suck,” Jett maintains, ”but it’s still pretty cool.” My sentiments exactly.
If you want to get me interested in your band, calling yourselves “Screaming Females” is a pretty good start. If you can back it with talent, I’m yours.
I caught the New Jersey trio in question last night when they opened for Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, who save rock music every time they play. But I was anticipating Screaming Females, who I hadn’t seen before. They’ve been together for a few years and garnered attention from publications like The Tripwire. And there’s only one word to describe their tight, boisterous set at Emo’s: badass. Though clearly influenced by punk, there’s definitely a bit of classic rock to their sound, particularly in the dexterous guitar solos leader Marissa Paternoster shrugs off her G&L Stratocaster. To my ears, however, the influences seem intercepted by 90s alternative bands like Smashing Pumpkins and Weezer, who worshiped at the feet of Black Sabbath and Cheap Trick. This makes sense, as the members are in their early 20s.
And man oh man, was I ever blown away by Paternoster. Dressed like the prim sister of AC/DC’s Angus Young in an ankle-length black skirt and matching collared sweater, Paternoster took to the stage with cool detachment. A curtain of mod bangs shielded her eyes and she occasionally mumbled “banter” between songs. This could be the result of shyness, but it certainly didn’t read that way to the audience. If anything, it heightened the contrast between the sounds she brings to their songs. Thwarting the expectations of her diminutive stature, Paternoster wields a mighty ax, giving short newbie players like myself no excuse not to get those scales down. Furthermore, her voice is a deep, rich bellow. That she can seamlessly transition her singing voice into the unholy screams the band’s moniker suggest is no small feat, particularly when she oscillates between the two in a turn of phrase. And given the dark nature of many of the band’s songs, which often conjure brutal and unsettling images. “I’m not your cutie,” she seems to say to her audience. Juxtaposing her girlish look and the possessed quality of her performance style with her sexual orientation seems to indicate a desire to at once thwart expectations and leave them unexplained. “I’m totally melting your face, hosers. Enough said.”
But I don’t want to draw attention away from drummer Jarrett Dougherty and bassist King Mike, as they are just as valuable to the band’s volcanic sound. Also, I think there need to be more mixed gender bands forming, as well as bands whose members identify with multiple sexual orientations. And if they rock this hard, even better.
