Gemma Teller Morrow, baddest bitch; image courtesy of latimes.com
I recently blew through the first two seasons of Sons of Anarchy, the FX series about SAMCRO, an outlaw biker gang based in the fictional Northern California town of Charming. I didn’t care if it was a retelling of Macbeth. But other things did pique my interest.
For one, between Wendy O’Brien casting Sons and Camille H. Patton and Christal Karge’s work on Justified, dammit if FX doesn’t want to make a home for former Deadwood players. Two actors from Deadwood factor prominently in Sons‘ first two seasons. Paula Malcolmson, who I love as Trixie, shows up in the third season (no spoilsies). If Robin Weigert and Kim Dickens show up in season four as the president and old lady of a rival gang, I will fall apart. Dykes on Bikes! Make that show happen!
Following how casting directors continue to be haunted by the specter of HBO original programming’s peak years, I was pleasantly surprised to see Drea de Matteo in Sons‘ first season as Wendy, the reformed heroin addict/baby mama to SAMCRO prince Jax Teller. She was the heart of The Sopranos and it’s nice to see her in something good instead of Prey for Rock & Roll and Dueces Wild.
To dovetail casting issues into masculine camp, was Henry Rollins ever well-suited to play the brainless muscle for a white supremacist business owner looking to put the stranglehold on Charming? When I watch Sons, I tend to feel like Britta in that Community episode where she watches Winger fight a mustachioed Anthony Michael Hall: every time a biker hugs a brother, I’m just waiting for them to make out. Obviously Rollins is no stranger to queer ‘shipping.
Young Hank Garfield, using his bicep as a billboard; image courtesy of sfweekly.com
As someone who eats queer machismo (is there any other kind?) like so much candy, I love the theme song, ”This Life,” by Curtis Stiger and the Forest Rangers. Only in the context of the opening credits, of course. For one, it was written for the show. For another, I have little use for the song’s wangdangdoodlery on its own. But I’d imagine that the Sons would listen to this while fixing up bikes in their garage and pump their fists to the lyrical propaganda. Of course the ‘CRO doesn’t fly in a perfect line, but the Sons have to believe it does.
The musical selections on the show is pretty interesting. Music supervisors Bob Thiele, Jr. and Michelle Kuznetsky sneak in a considerable amount of indie-friendly rawk. A lot of Black Keys in the first season. A Devendra Banhart cut in the second season. Some Don Cab. And of course Black Flag’s former front man gets to follow RZA’s example and show off the band’s logo from time to time.
Two pop classics are prominently featured in Sons. Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man” ties up a scene in season one. The Rolling Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday” underscores an especially harrowing scene involving Katey Sagal’s character that sets up the climax for season two. They are sung by the actress. As Sons uses pop music as a narrative device–following The Sopranos‘ sterling example–this puts Sagal in something of a unique position. She gets to create one of the defining female characters in recent American television and comment on what’s happening to her.
This gets to the real reason I watched Sons: Katey Sagal is Lady Macbeth. I’ve been a casual fan for years. I liked her voice work as Leela on Futurama. Plus, like my dad, I could never understand why Peg Bundy is deemed unattractive by her husband when it’s obvious that Sagal is a stone fox.
Sagal is pretty incredible as Gemma Teller Morrow on Sons–by turns conniving, haunted, loyal, sexy, vulnerable to aging, resilient, and hard. SAMCRO dictates that her station is as old lady to biker king Clay Morrow and queen to biker prince Jax, but she’s more Tony Soprano than Carmela.
Gemma’s relationships with some female characters are starting to develop in compelling ways. I’m hoping Cherry reappears in season three. Gemma begrudgingly respects Tara Knowles (Maggie Siff, Fashion Club President Rachel Menken to Mad Men viewers), a doctor who rekindles an old romance with Jax following her return to Charming. Knowles’ past delinquencies also suggest that she may have quite a bit in common with Gemma.
The writing improved considerably after the first season as well, so I didn’t have to suffer through Gemma admonishing Tara that a handgun isn’t something you just throw in your purse and forget about like a used tampon. Um, writing staff: I don’t know a woman who’d absent-mindedly throw a bloody tampon back in her bag. Just sayin’. Maybe they’ll intervene with Gemma’s relationship with ballbusting ATF agent June Stahl (Ally Walker), as they seem to move toward at the end of the second season. In season one, they have an antagonistic exchange that’s a few undone buttons away from a softcore scene. Also, if wardrobe could find a pair of pants that do Walker justice, that’d be cool.
While I don’t assume Sons creator Kurt Sutter is an ardent feminist, I think it’s cool that he created such a complex role for his wife to play. Depending on how you read the series, you could argue that Gemma is the show’s protagonist. As Sagal notes in an AV Club interview, she primarily worked in comedy prior to taking on this role. Also, given the dearth of well-drawn female characters, especially for women over 25, Sagal’s performance is pretty exceptional. It’s also why I hope actresses like Connie Britton, Khandi Alexander, Edie Falco, and Jennifer Beals–maturing foxiness aside–keep booking acting jobs.
That Sagal’s experience as a backup singer and solo artist are put to use alongside her acting skills in Sons suggest that her contributions are not only vital, but central. Here’s hoping Sagal’s character picks up a mic (draped with scarves) at some point in the fourth season. Biker skirmishes are essentially musical interludes anyway, so why not have actual rock chicks singing? I bet Tara can accompany Gemma on guitar. This blogger requests a cover of “Night Train.”
In other news, I wrote a review for Ruth Nicole Brown’s wonderful Black Girlhood Celebration: Toward a Hip-Hop Feminist Pedagogy for Scratched Vinyl. Check it out.
If you’re really close to me, this is the most uneventful reveal ever. I have a knack for saying I’ll keep mum about something but it never exactly works that way. Yet I felt like I should make it official, since I told my boss and my parents and most close friends: I’m moving to Madison in late July, just after my 28th birthday. I accepted an offer from the Media and Cultural Studies program and will be a PhD student come September. I’m thrilled to finally start becoming a badass feminist professor and to do so in a program I regard so highly.
I wrote Feminist Music Geek’s first official entry two years ago today. Friends know that I got my MA in media studies at UT Austin in May 2008 and started this blog following a round of rejections from PhD programs. The idea for the blog actually formed as I was finishing up my thesis, and I was encouraged by friends who followed me on LiveJournal (where I wrote posts that would be right at home here). But when I knew I wouldn’t be going on for a PhD in the immediate future, I had no excuse not to start it.
When I started Feminist Music Geek, I knew that I really wanted to be a feminist media studies professor someday and had to evolve as a scholar. My application could be much stronger, and I decided to create a space for myself to explore ideas related to my subject of study. Writing has long been a reliable way for me to clarify or challenge my opinions, and running a blog could potentially get me in touch with people and volley ideas. I knew who I could be. My thesis adviser was a good mentor and model for someone who believed in education equity, social justice, feminism, media activism, and literacy and used her position in the academy to work toward this. I wanted to follow this example, and believed this blog could help me get there. However, I didn’t start it to get into grad school. I created it because I needed it to exist.
I was lucky enough to work on the UT campus, and thus took advantage of the libraries and various free resources available to me. I also started teaching music history workshops with my friend Kristen, who I met in graduate school. I’d pick up some guest lectures. I also went to conferences, even when I was afraid that no one would listen to my ideas because I was an independent scholar and grad school reject. As the blog evolved, so did I. Specifically, I became especially interested in musical convergence and a deeper understanding of how industrial and textual concerns inform how music traverses multiple media platforms. I used to say that Alexandra Patsavas took my job. Now I think she’ll help write my dissertation.
Actually, I still think she took my job. Which is why I’d still like to work as a music supervisor in some capacity.
I was wholly unprepared for what this blog became. Relative to the substantial efforts of some of my blogger peers, my aspirations for Feminist Music Geek have always been small. Flow was a good working template for me. But I just thought maybe some of my friends would read it. When I began getting 200 hits a day from people I didn’t know, it got a little weird. My daily traffic spiked considerably since then, but the excitement of seeing that there are readers remains fresh. Each time I post an entry, reply to a comment, contend an argument, correspond with a reader, do an interview, or receive a forwarded item about something I might be interested in, I’m thrilled to be in dialog with folks who care about interpreting music culture from a feminist purview. Some of my colleagues followed suit soon after and started blogs. I don’t credit myself with being the impetus, but would like to think I encouraged them to create a public forum for their ideas.
But as I kept going, I took to heart that facing rejection was hardly the end of the world. If anything, it could be the start of something else. Roughly one year after I started this blog, I began writing for Bitch. There’s no mystery as to how it happened. I saw a tweet that they were looking for someone to blog about television. I proposed looking at the intersection of television and music, an outgrowth of posts like the one I did about Peggy Olsen singing “Bye Bye Birdie.” They were on board. However, it was my second time pitching to them. Eight months before, I drafted an e-mail teeming with half-formed ideas I thought they’d like. Much like the statement of purpose I offered in 2008, it was too broad and vague. My second attempt demonstrated specific intent and a clear personal voice. This made the difference. More to the point, firing off the e-mail was not so scary. Literally, the worst that could happen was that they’d say no. Hardly a reason not to reach out, as they could just as easily say yes.
I’m curious about how this blog will evolve as I reenter the academy. Throughout its run, I’ve worked full-time as an archival aide. I’ve stolen writing time when possible, but have juggled this form of fun time with other responsibilities. As a result, I haven’t written for as many publications as I’d like. I’m jazzed about the possibility of contributing to Antenna and In Media Res. I also would like to, you know, get stuff published in a journal. I’m interested in what colleagues like Annie Petersen and Myles McNutt have done as academic bloggers. I’m challenged by brilliant folks like s.e. smith, LaToya Peterson, Jessica Yee, and the contributors to Womanist Musings, who question feminism and the academic industrial complex I am entering into. I hope to balance professional ambitions with more direct forms of political action, as well as continue to write. I’d love to work with them in some capacity, and they can always count me as an ally.
I’m also anticipating what this blog will look like away from Austin. This is an outgrowth of concern over what I’ll be like away from here. I’ve moved six times within the city, but only claimed residence in Houston prior to starting as a freshman at UT. Frankly, I don’t know what January is going to feel like in Madison. However, I’ve endured my share of humid summers to know that I’m willing to find out.
But this blog is called Feminist Music Geek, and Austin did a lot to make me one. I have no intention of cutting ties with this place or the dear friends who live here, and I’ll always come back for SXSW. I thought I’d close with some songs that are represent my time in Austin and will, much like this warm city of porch drinkers, critical queers, tough-chick rock bands, and professional Democrats, stay close to my heart. It’ll hurt like hell to write this come July, so let’s do it now.
My friend Caitlin recently posted ”You Are Invited” on my Facebook profile when she heard I got into Madison, because she’s a good person. I could pick a lot of Dismemberment Plan songs, as the band’s last two albums (and Björk’s Homogenic) pretty much define 18 and 19 for me. “The Other Side” was the first and last song I played on my radio show at KVRX. “Following Through” recalls much of the romantic angst I carried for a boy during the first year and a half of college. “The City” and “Time Bomb” speak to it more deeply, which makes them harder to withstand. But this song reminds me of a city that didn’t need metaphysical devices to make me feel included.
For about two years, I smoked pot every day. Credit my roommate Amy, a whip-smart survivor who I was close friends with throughout high school and three of my four years in undergrad. She liked her weed, in no small part because she was stressed from holding down multiple part-time jobs to finance her way through school. We fell out of touch senior year despite living together, mainly for petty reasons. Though we grew apart, we still keep in touch. I’ll always think fondly about hanging in our West Campus apartment, watching Dawson’s Creek reruns and Michel Gondry videos, talking shit, eating her oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, giggling, and listening to music. She reviewed Mount Sims’ Ultra Sex when she volunteered for KVRX and it was often the background music for our quality time.
I was in the middle of a fling with some guy when I fell in love with the original version of this song. However, I saw TV on the Radio open for Zykos with a much more important person. The things I remember from that night are: 1) this band could be huge and will be great and 2) the person driving me home doesn’t say much, but he laughs at all my jokes and makes me feel at ease.
I still live with this guy, and he’s moving with me. I love him with all I have and am very proud of him. We have a whole catalog of songs that evoke our relationship, but Visionaries’ “If You Can’t Say Love” probably comes the closest to being “our song.” We’re not married, but you can’t steal this one for your wedding. It’s ours. It’s us.
My feminist music geek awakening happened when KVRX twined with Alliance for a Feminist Option. I attribute this to becoming friends with Brea, who deejayed ”The Girl In the Band” (later renamed “I Like You As a Friend”). There were other women at KVRX whose shows I liked, most notably “Downbeat for Danger,” “Making Babies and Wearing Pants,” and “The Lonely Girls’ Co-op” and, later, “Asides and B-Sides” and “Breakfast of Champions.” But Brea was a lightning rod of activity with platinum dreads to match. I was pretty intimidated by her crew, who organized Ladyfest. I wanted to volunteer, but lurked on their Web site instead. Actually, I’m pretty sure Brea recruited me to come to an AFO meeting because she liked my show. I would have been way too scared to attend otherwise, even though I did interview a member over the phone for a school assignment.
Anyway, getting involved was tremendously influential and I’m proud to claim all of these amazing women as friends. They taught me a lot. My first semester with them was a crash course in queer identification, critical race theory, DIY event planning, veganism, anarchism, and collective organizing. Brea also taught me how to shop for groceries during our six-month stint as roommates. Through befriending the group, I learned that feminists like to dance. The movement requires all you have, including your hips and ass (not separate from the person, of course). Most meetings would end with us dancing in Brea, Catherine, and Chu’s living room. “Hey Ya” was inescapable at the time. Brea could lip sync The Sounds’ “Rock ‘N’ Roll” perfectly. Brea and Chu did the “Galang” dance at every party. But Le Tigre’s “Deceptacon” best encapsulates who we are. Note that the song is participatory. Stomp on that linoleum floor!
Oh, and since Brea was a deejay for hire at basically any grassroots event or house party, I’ll take this moment to announce that I inherited her deejay equipment and will gladly provide music for your happening. Does Madison need tunes for Take Back the Night? I’m your girl.
I saw a lot of great shows for free during my tenure as a college radio deejay. Deerhoof supporting Milkman. Prefuse 73 supporting One Word Extinguisher with DJ Nobody. But one of the best shows I’ve ever seen was Electrelane opening for Le Tigre on my 22nd birthday.
After graduating in 2005, I stuck around and applied to grad school. I also got a job as an editor and voiceover talent at an e-learning company that subsidized grad school (along with a TAship and an RAship–I didn’t sleep much). The gig was fine until my department was outsourced a month before I completed my MA, so I quit. My boss was really patient and would do fun things like take us out for snow cones. Plus he was hilarious, which explains how he could write a comic strip, become a local radio personality, and help launch a successful sketch comedy troupe. He also didn’t seem to mind that I’d listen to music all the time, even playing it faintly under the courses I was working on (actually, he probably minded a lot–maybe he just didn’t know). I especially liked that I didn’t have to take the job home with me. The mp3 server was pretty sweet too. I discovered Girl Talk and Oneida, and came to treasure Jorge Ben’s A Tábua De Esmeralda. I had no idea how difficult it was to find this uplifting 1974 record until my boyfriend procured a copy from Uruguay for my 23rd birthday. I’m so glad I share cat parenting duties with that guy.
I started grad school in 2006. By the end of the first semester, my relationship with my roommate fell apart. This was tricky business as 1) I don’t know anyone who completes grad school without slamming a lot of doors and crying in the bath tub, 2) my boyfriend had just moved in with us, 3) we shared a friend group, and 4) we were both feminists, and it’s hard to figure out how to continue to participate in a movement with someone who should be your sister but you don’t actually like that much. But for a time, we had a happy home. There’s a lot of songs that remind me of this abbreviated period of domestic harmony, but Animal Collective’s “Did You See the Words” comes the closest. I do regret that we didn’t get a band together like all the boys around us did. Luckily Follow That Bird, The Carrots, and Finally Punk were putting on shows.
Grad school remains the most demanding thing I’ve done thus far. The intellectual rigor is one thing. Making friends with really smart people is another endeavor entirely, particularly when your default mode is shyness. During the first year, I was completely intimidated by my cohort. Over time, I made friends. I also saw the Slits. I didn’t see the Gossip, even though Caitlin asked me if I was going to after a screening for the Feminist TV Criticism course we took together. Eventually I realized that I lucked into a cohort with a lot of nice feminists who baked vegan treats and supported Kill Rock Stars. I don’t have many songs that remind me of this period, primarily because writing a thesis while working full-time kept me from listening to much new music. But when I turned in something to my adviser, I played Battles’ “Atlas.”
However, we all know that M.I.A.’s Kaladominated 2007. And I felt so cool pretending to be tuff as I cranked “Paper Planes” on the stereo while trekking up MoPac. The doors were always locked for some reason.
From here, most of the stuff that reminds me of home made appearances on this blog. Kristen did pitch a post on Janet Jackson’s influence on her as a feminist. It never materialized, though she has an open invitation from me. But Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” factored prominently in the design of our music history workshops for Girls Rock Camp. Pop music was never the bad object to us, particularly when creating an inclusive curriculum that celebrated contributions from (among other identity groups) women and girls of color. I’m curious how our friendship will make sense of geographical distance, but confident we’ll figure it out. Despite having to puzzle through how to be friends after growing apart professionally, I have yet to find a better collaborator and feminist role model.
Oh, and Hercules and Love Affair’s “Athene” conjures many happy memories from 2008 and 2009.
There are plenty of other songs I could include, and might put on various mixes for the drive north. At some point in the near future, I’ll start a podcast series to accompany this blog and maybe I’ll include them. I’ll also revisit archived entries and remember being won over by tUnE-yArDs, Joanna Newsom, and Patti Smith, seeing the Shondes, Thao Nguyen, Gossip, Dessa, Christeene, and Screaming Females and putting on rocker girl movie nights, an event I hope finds a new home. Wherever I am, I know I’ll carry pleasant memories of dance parties, high humidity, and breakfast tacos. I’m a Texan by birth, but an Austinite forever.
Ya’ll, I’m beyond over fielding comments for my Odd Future post.
Feminist Music Geek will enjoy its second anniversary this Wednesday. It’s a bummer that the blog entry with the most traction in the site’s brief history is about a group whose most ardent fans seem to demonstrate little interest in feminism (or respecting feminists). As a result, I’ve had to wade through a lot of condescending rape equivocation and toxic snark, exclusively from first-time commenters who don’t care about what I’m trying to accomplish here. Occasionally someone will provide thoughtful commentary. More often folks will dash off diatribes about how Odd Future are misunderstood artistic geniuses and that I don’t “get it”. Then there are the comments that roughly equal in number what has been published that you will never see. Since this blog’s inception, I’ve deliberately chosen not to give audience to hateful trolling. If you have something insightful to say, you have my attention. If you just want to vomit opinions to affirm your own supremacy, your trash gets trashed.
Before I published the Odd Future post, I couldn’t count on all ten fingers the instances when I chose not to post a comment. I assumed that the name of my blog was an immediate deterrent. Who’s going to write some misogynistic bullshit on a relatively obscure feminist blog when they don’t know me and probably think I’m on my period? Isn’t there a wash cloth to relieve oneself into instead?
Apparently a lot of people feel compelled to comment. By comment, I mean I’ve been invited to tend to various members or instructed to return to the kitchen or informed that I was a twat like all feminists or that feminists and gays just like to bitch about things. At least once a day since it went live, I’ve had to decide whether to reply to a comment in order to defend my turf and drop much-needed feminist science or just roll my eyes and press delete, knowing that this rage dump is the only time I’ll receive a message from some stranger who probably stumbled onto my blog while Googling images of Tyler, the Creator. It’s gotten really old. While I don’t like shutting down conversation, I am so sick of seeing unread messages containing the subject header “[Feminist Music Geek] Please moderate: “Assessing an Odd Future with Syd tha Kyd” in my inbox and wondering what misspelled invective awaits me.
Perhaps most disheartening is how few people want to talk about Syd. Despite her inclusion in the entry’s title, I dropped her in rather clumsily at the end of the post. I wanted to discuss her role more thoroughly in the comments section. A couple of people want to talk about her. Considerably more are set on telling me that I need to listen to this Earlwolf track and STFU.
Actually, no. What’s most dispiriting is that I know that these squabbles don’t actually matter. This world has considerably larger problems than this.
Also, I published the thing nearly two months ago. I haven’t given Odd Future’s music much thought. If I’m proven wrong and the group unseats Kanye in two years time, I’ll continue to focus on artists who are exciting me at the moment. At present, there are a lot of good things happening in my life and, frankly, I’d rather be dancing instead of knitting my brow and firing off a rebuttal.
I recently revisited the Le Tigre remix EP, which includes Analog Tara‘s take on “Très Bien.” I also read Ruth Nicole Brown’s great Black Girlhood Celebration. Brown evaluates the success of SOLHOT, an after-school program for black girls she founded in Champaign, Illinois that is informed by hip hop feminism and takes seriously the significance of dance and corporeal expression. I missed Lady Kier when she came to Austin last week, but I did enjoy my friend Erik’s recent set at Chain Drive and look forward to catching Scratched Vinyl founder Chi Chi spin at Cherrywood next month. I can’t stop listening to Odyssey’s “Native New Yorker” after I heard it sampled in Von Pea’s “The Yorker.” And I keep imagining strapping on some platform shoes with the Chances crew up in Chicago. In honor of Electro Feminisms, Emily Manuel’s current blog series for Bitch Magazine, I thought I’d post some songs that get this life-long disco fan moving. Why don’t you dance with me? I’m not no limburger.
Yesterday morning, my partner and I watched Michael Winterbottom’s 9 Songs. It kind of ruined the rest of the day. I spent most of it transcribing a long interview, which may be almost as zesty an activity as the sex scenes that buttress the movie’s low-grade concert footage. I recommend it to no one. It may also strengthen the argument that Winterbottom is a misogynist.
Only boring people are bored--9 Songs' Matt and Lisa; image courtesy of bfi.org.uk
People probably remember this 2004 feature for the unsimulated sex scenes between lead actors Kieran O’Brien and Margot Stilley. It’s about a British climatogolist (Matt, played by O’Brien) and an American exchange student (Lisa, Stilley’s first film role) who meet at the Brixton Academy during a Black Rebel Motorcycle Club concert (already a bad start). Lisa attends the gig with a girlfriend we never see again and launches into a year-long affair with Matt until she moves back to the states. In their time together, they engage in sex that isn’t as kinky as they think it is and see a bunch of bands that mean about as much to them as their own joyless bodies twining together.
I think the concerts they attend clue us in to what kind of people they are. They see mediocre rock bands, almost entirely peopled by white men with the occasional token white woman, that are designed to galvanize A&R men and music publications. These are bands label representatives try to push on college radio and alterna weeklies (true story: when I was at KVRX, Franz Ferdinand’s first record sat on the shelf for about six months until a deejay who spent a semester in England reviewed it). Bands like the Dandy Warhols and the Von Bondies ultimately signify rock’s rebellious energy as much as a Union Jack bath mat from Urban Outfitters represents England. They’re about as connected to rock as Steven Tyler’s leather pants.
At the risk of sounding like a music snob, these bands are made for people who don’t care about music (I remember what Genesis P-Orridge said about the Dandies in DiG! and I hope he’s embarrassed by where he chose to plant his flag). They’re buzz bands that can gather a large crowd in a stately concert hall because the audience knows that one song that was featured in a commercial. Among that throng is the couple in 9 Songs. It’s evident by how little they actually engage with the music. They’re in the back, talking and kissing. They aren’t in the front, singing every word.
It’s also made apparent by what venues they frequent. By my count, there are three concert spaces represented in 9 Songs. All of them are large. I don’t want to suggest that you can only truly experience music in an intimate, dingy club. I don’t believe in an authentic musical experience, regardless of venue size. However, their distance from the stage and their passive reception of the music say a great deal about who these people are and how they cannot engage with people, even when at their most physically intimate. All of this is just something to do.
I’ll pause to mention that tickets to these shows are probably expensive, at least relative to a free house party or a $10 cover at some small club. This speaks to Matt’s economic standing and implies that Lisa, a college student who works part-time at a bar, is probably supported by a family who can afford to finance a twentysomething’s year abroad. It’s also a lot of money to blow on bands you don’t care about. To get snobbier, they’re probably like those SXSW attendees who wave around the badges they bought, only to make out through James Blake’s set.
Setting up my feminist disgust with the movie, it’s important to mention that Lisa is a sex tourist. In one scene, she rattles off a list of international men she’s had, identifying them by country instead of by name. Of her conquests, one was one from Argentina, another from Brazil, and a German when she was in high school. I don’t mention this to slut shame. I bring this up because she’s a white woman who likes to pilfer from the cultural traditions of various racial and ethnic groups and has the means to do so. She plays Salif Keita while snorting cocaine and getting ready to go out. She teaches Matt how to salsa dance, noting that you have to put your ass into it. She would assuredly get defensive if you called her out as a racist for all this jet-set poaching.
I had so many prurient questions for Stilley during my viewing. Principally, I wanted to know what it was like filming the sex scenes with an all-male crew and if the sex itself was at all gratifying. It’s really not my business and I don’t want to assume Stilley felt disenfranchised. However, the power dynamics in place during 9 Songs‘ production are staggeringly out of balance. This was Stilley’s first film role, following a modeling career. O’Brien, however, had been a film actor a few years longer and previously played a supporting character in Winterbottom’s 24-Hour Party People.
Winterbottom also wrote the screenplay, and thus characterized Lisa as arrogant, flippant, and privileged. She is also written as disloyal and emasculating, wounding Matt with her proclivities for female strippers and vibrators. When you read this into a film career that includes controversial fare like Winterbottom’s recent adaptation of The Killer Inside Me, the suggestion that Winterbottom doesn’t like women is troubling. At the very least he’s clueless about them and unwilling to check his chauvinistic tendencies. The 69-minute running time and the inclusion of a money shot don’t help here either.
Intentionality was my biggest concern during the screening of this disaster. Are we supposed to think this couple is boring? My hunch is that we’re meant to empathize with Matt, the narrator, which only distances us from the villanous, objectified Lisa. But is the sex supposed to be mechanical and alienating? And, if so, what’s the point? Wouldn’t it be more interesting to see two people make an initial connection, have exciting sex, but ultimately are incompatible? I’m not sure if incorporating this into the story would improve 9 Songs, but it certainly couldn’t make it worse.
Recently, I cut off all my hair again. Mainly, I cut it as a queer fan gesture. It takes after a mentor’s decision to buy an army jacket after John Bender ignited her libido during a screening of The Breakfast Club. She wanted to become him as much as be with him. I can relate.
Photo I took of Jana Hunter during SXSW
I was taken with Jana Hunter’s stage presence during the Lower Dens show I caught at SXSW. She insinuated herself into the proceedings–the outdoor venue, the all-male backing band, the armada of cool hunters–with unassuming grace. I’d imagine being that skilled as a guitar player means you don’t have to show off. My hunch is that her haircut gave her some confidence too. Her light brown hair was shaved short on the sides and tousled at the crown, with bangs draping over the right side of her forehead. This was something of a pleasant surprise, as many of the photos I’d seen of her featured her with longer hair, sometimes dyed blonde. She totally turned me on. What especially caught my attention was how much she isn’t a normative female front woman. She is a leader and featured musician in her band. But she isn’t especially performative onstage which, coupled with her sunglasses and cavernous voice, leant mystery. She is androgynous, self-possessed, and seemingly in ownership of a secret. Hot.
It helps that Twin Hand Movement was one of the sexiest records of last year. This is high praise, as I tend to shy away from rock when in search of mood music. Before and after My Bloody Valentine, a lot of rock bands use walls of guitar distortion and slippery boy-girl harmonies as shorthand for fucking, which is fine. I’m not denying that “Moon” and “Soft As Snow (But Warm Inside)” don’t make me want to get someone pregnant. But what sets Movement apart is how it evokes the panoramic scope of long-distance driving. Lower Dens create music vast enough for the listener to get lost in various kinds of contemplation. It is both the road and the randy car ride.
So the assured woman with the dexterous fingers and the close crop is responsible for music that makes me feel this way? Oof. Get out the electric razor.
I should mention that though I like playing with clothes and signifiers, I don’t invest much in a beauty regimen. I respect that there is a developing industry for organic and/or vegan beauty products and am glad other friends are helping it along. I just have no interest in buying into it. I don’t like playing with my hair. So any haircut of mine has to work without a blow dryer, gel, or hairspray. I hate applying cosmetics to my face and feeling them on my skin in equal measure, which means that No Makeup Day carried on for me like any other. This probably informs how I organize my wardrobe, which is largely assembled from friends’ hand-me-downs, thrifted items, and pieces I’ve had since high school. The less waste I’m responsible for, the happier I am.
Self portrait
I’ll refrain from turning this post into that essay on space I had to write for a graduate theory course (no citations from that wife strangler Althusser). However, I’ll note that I got my $25 cut at the Bird’s by my house and that the mix playing during my appointment coincided too damn neatly with my intent and hipster positioning. Playing Ladytron is one thing. The Blow’s “How Naked Are We Going to Get” elicits a raised eyebrow. But “Beautiful Boyz”–CocoRosie’s duet with Antony about Jean Genet and other “critical queers”–came on, I briefly wondered if the universe knew I was writing a blog post about cutting my hair to express queer feelings about Jana Hunter. The physical proximity to my hairdresser as she was shaving the back of my head created a delightful frisson as well. But since she is a professional, I will keep that reverie to myself.
I cut my hair for a few more reasons. Chief among them was that I wanted to use my hair to reassert my own queer identity. Assuredly, short hair doesn’t make women queer. You can get all Veronica Lake with it and still be queer. But short hair creates visibility. At the very least, it might function as something akin to the “safe space” sticker I’ll have on my office door when I’m a professor. However I can make plain that I’m an ally and fight against homophobia and transphobia, I will. Furthermore, even though I’ve been in a relationship with a man for several years, I don’t identify as straight. Suede’s Brett Anderson once identified himself as a bisexual man who has yet to have a homosexual experience. I lean slightly to the left of that crude definition. Yet I also have trouble using the term “partner.” It seems like an appropriation, however well-intended.
My haircut also upends gendered expectations. Short haired women still bother some people, particularly because long hair is a symbol of conventional white femininity. I learned this when I shaved my head back in 2006. Co-workers behaved quite differently around me after I did it. Following the introductory double takes and furtive glances, there was a formality and rigidity demonstrated by some male peers that hadn’t been there before. It’s clear that I was no longer attractive to some men because of the cut. Some people explicitly bemoaned the loss of my chin-length hair. Others asked if I meant to do it, perhaps wondering if a mischievous wad of gum was the reason I only had half an inch of hair covering my pate. Most people asked if my partner liked it, as if that mattered.
I wanted to reassert this queer identity in the wake of some major changes that await me, as well as some upcoming “girly” events. Skirt-a-Thon begins today. It’s a yearly event headed up by Kristen at Dear Black Woman,. I always participate, in part because the rule about not repeating skirts and dresses during the work week cuts down on my laundry. This year, I wanted to challenge the femme-y nature of the proceedings with a spiked, shaved ‘do.
Furthermore, I am attending four weddings this year. I have as little interest in cashing in on heterosexual privilege as I do for throwing a party to celebrate my relationship. Marriage excludes queer brothers and sisters. The systems that organize American health care and insurance unfairly reward married couples and nuclear families. Weddings can prompt rampant, immoral consumerism. Mainstream feminism’s attempts to reclaim marriage seem to speak more to the movement’s embedded class and/or racial privilege than in any vested interest in dismantling the patriarchy. But while I get hella judge-y about marriage, I’m fine with supporting friends who choose to enter into it. However, this means I won’t sport wedding-ready ringlets. It may mean I’ll need to invest in a suit. Faye Dunaway may personify the evils of liberal feminism in Network, but dammit if don’t want every pantsuit in her closet.
Work, Diane Christensen; image courtesy of beautybombshells.wordpress.com
So, yes. I cut my hair as much for Jana Hunter as for myself. Some may scoff at my belief that this is a political act, which is fine. However, if you’re looking for a critical queer willing to rally and organize on behalf of LGBTQI rights, I hope the haircut is a tip-off that I’m a receptive audience.
