As we begin 2012 and I launch into the spring term next Monday, I’m excited about what the future holds. We’re all going to meet up at Scratched Vinyl editor Chi Chi’s deejay gig at Natt Spil next Thursday, right? But I thought I’d reflect just a bit on what I’ve been up to over the break. This post is part consumer guide, part tribute, all ramble.

What have I been up to? If you’ve been following my blog series for Bitch, you might guess I’ve been watching a lot of movies. That’s a fair assessment–it took me a good week to decompress from finals and watching flashing images on my television is always a nice way to spend an hour or two. I think I spent that whole week in my jammies. I’m hoping to stop into Chicago over the weekend to see Pariah, with which I hope to close out the series. I’m also picking at a seminar paper I am in the process of turning into a book chapter. Slow going. Finally, I revised my lecture notes and am in the process of changing up some of the course material for the public speaking class I teach. I really love the classroom and, after a semester running one, I have a lot of ideas for how to improve as an instructor.

There’s finally snow on the ground in Madison, which is still a novelty to me at this point. I’m just so damn happy I can play the Cocteau Twins’ “How to Bring a Blush to the Snow,” something I waited to do all semester. I’ve walked in the snow a few times and it felt like I was on the moon (but, you know, with gravity). Snow is neat, y’all. As a native Texan, I’ve never lived in it. But I don’t have any complaints (yet). When the sun is out and the earth is still, a snowy winter day takes on an almost alien beauty. As for the cold, I don’t feel it too bad (yet). Ice might run in my veins, I don’t know. The Norwegian in me is coming out for sure. But I’ll pass on the lutefisk.

I’ve been working through grief, I’ll be honest. I miss Esme, and I miss dearly my friends back in Austin with whom I was not able to comfort. Esme’s death also brought up unresolved feelings about my stepbrother, who died last summer in a car accident. They were both 29, loved rock, and had so much life left to give. I was out running errands one night before Christmas. Pearl Jam’s “Better Man” came on the radio. When I was in junior high, I thought the chorus was ”Can’t find the butter, ma’am”. I belted it out accordingly until my stepbrother clarified in deadpan, “the song is called ’Better Man’, Alyx.” Two days after New Year’s, my partner and I made a late-night run to drop off the rent and Elvis Costello’s “(What’s So Fun ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding” came on the radio. Both instances prompted me to blast the radio, sob, and wonder if in these moments the loved ones we’ve lost materialize to comfort us and help renew our memory of them. I don’t believe in heaven or a deity. I’m not sure what happens to our bodies when we die. Actually, I do. They decompose. But while I don’t believe in a proper afterlife, I do believe our spirits carry on in these kinds of moments after our bodies expire or are taken from us. I think they have to.

Shortly after Esme’s death, I missed a friend’s baby shower. I happily received lots of pictures and some text messages from the festivities. But if I still lived in Austin, I would have been there. I felt the weight of that absence too. This friend was the first of my college feminist grrrls to have a baby (twins, actually). I’m not really a baby person, at least I don’t think of myself as one. But given the recent losses and some hardships felt within that friend group from the past year, I surprised myself by how much I wished I had been there to help usher us into this new era.

I revisited Portlandia and that Washed Out record with the Cosmo photo on the cover. I’ve somewhat refined my assessment of the sketch comedy show and do think they’re doing quite a bit more world-building than I originally thought. I also think they could be meaner and eat the rich more than they do. As for Ernest Greene’s Sub Pop debut, it reminds me a bit of Moby. Not a criticism, but they should recut the “Amor Fati” video with Christina Ricci.

I’ve also read a lot, because sometimes cold weather is best experienced behind a parlor window while drinking cocoa. I read Girls Got Kicks and Alice Bag’s Violence Girl. Actually I was going to write a review of Bag’s memoir for this blog but Neal Fersko at Canonball beat me to it. He also articulated so well what I liked about it and what its limitations were (i.e., I wish the chapters were longer or that she focused on one phase of her life). So rather than write a review where I recommend that a woman add more content and detail to a 300-page memoir, I’ll point you toward Fersko’s review. But if you’re looking for some post-holiday gifts for the bois and grrrls in your life, buy them a copy of Violence Girl. And if they want to color in Cyndi Lauper’s hair (who doesn’t?), pair it with a copy of Girls Rock Camp Rhode Island’s Women Who Rock Coloring Book.

One of my professors recommends that you should spend vacation time reading. Read widely. Read stuff that doesn’t seem related to your work. Read the things you didn’t have time to read over the semester that sound interesting. So I also took in four “school” books and am currently thumbing through Zoot Suits and Second-Hand Dresses, a collection of scholarly essays and press criticism Angela McRobbie put together. I’m half-way through it now, and the anthology reads like someone cherry-picked the best essays from Pazz and Jop, This Recording, Grantland, Threadbared, Salon, Slate, The Hairpin, The Crunk Feminist Collective, Dusted, Pitchfork, Antenna, Flow, and Racialicious. In 1983, Jon Savage said that the man who once was Ziggy Stardust ”has always been careful, has always disdained mess–in his vulgar guise, in his avant-garde guise, even as a wasted rock star. If he is now, as a result, more popular than ever, then he’s a sign of the times–fastidiousness as a measure of the reduced scope of our choices.” Who doesn’t that apply to on the pop charts now? The chapters are short, zippy, and delightful British. Great bedtime reading.

Speaking of works of criticism, I nominated myself for 2012′s Best Music Writing collection. I’m a long-time fan of the series and decided to throw my hat in the ring. I nominated thirteen other pieces I loved from the past year, including pieces by Latoya Peterson, Bene Viera, Issac Miller, Nitsuh Abebe, Ann Powers, Ann Friedman, and Lindsay Zoladz. But I’m especially proud of my post on Bon Iver and the comparative analysis between P.J. Harvey and tUnE-yArDs, so I brazenly submitted them for review. I don’t know what my chances are of getting a piece selected, and would certainly like your support if you like what you read here last year, but there’s never any harm in putting your work out there.

I just returned from a three-day stint in Nashville. I missed Lana Del Rey’s poorly-received SNL performance but I did meet my two nephews. I shocked myself by how excited I was to spend time with them. At one point I was bored out of my mind, because babies sleep and blink and do the tiniest things that people think are amazing. I’m sure being an only child contributed to my boredom (pay attention to me!), as did my task-oriented nature (what are we doing?). But at the same time, watching them figure out who they were was kind of incredible. I’m not 100% sure if I want kids. Sometimes I want kids. Sometimes I just want to have the means to provide a comfortable life for kids. Most of the time, I think having a cat is enough. I’m always happy to be with my honey, with or without kids. So if the time never comes, I’m content with being a cool aunt. You know, the kind who teaches them words like “kyriarchy.”

My partner and I also visited the Country Music Hall of Fame, which is amazing. We saw Cindy Walker’s typewriter, a dress Wanda Jackson’s mother made for her, a spectrum of Nudie suits, Elvis Presley’s golden piano, a collection of custom-made instruments, Maybelle Carter and Emmylou Harris’ guitars, Minnie Pearl’s hat, and Parton’s handwritten lyrics to “Jolene.” I also liked that the permanent collection featured a short film on country’s political anthems. It included Loretta Lynn’s “The Pill” and Martina McBride’s “Independence Day,” a song and a video that still do me in.

My mind started to wander. After working in an archive, I constantly return to questions about how we package and narrativize information. But I also kept thinking about how the medium of television–variety shows, award ceremonies, music videos, cable networks–shape the history of country music, as well as the media labor involved. So I think there’s a project in there. What can I say? Media scholars don’t take breaks.

You can also stream Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence on Instant. Like the other two films, it’s about raising queer longing out of the subtextual realm. Yet it is very sad. It’s a great teaching aid to explain DADT, even though that’s not what the film is about. Reminds you what a long, strange film career David Bowie has had as an actor. And Ryuichi Sakamoto’s score lives up to its own reputation.

Still from "African Mayonnaise" video; image courtesy of tumblr.com

The song is about celebrity–the mutual dependence between star and fan, the malleability of image, the tricky business of turning a person into a constellation of symbols, the star’s contentious relationship with the camera, the acrid deliciousness of scandal. The video mirrors that concept in its attempts to create iconographic imagery and reveal that those images are made possible through surveillance. In addition to what PJ Raval and his crew shot and edited, the video also includes footage–mostly taken from smart phones–from fans and onlookers.

One of the major themes of the video–perhaps Christeene’s entire M.O.–is invasion. The video shows Christeene and her back-up dancers shimmying in front of the Austin Motel and sashaying through a food court, a supermarket, a barber shop, a hair salon, a gym, a patio bar, the UT South Mall, Starbucks, a Scientology center. Christeene also poses in front of the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe and is displayed on a television monitor placed in a chicken coop apparently belonging to the artist. I don’t see malevolence behind these moments of invasion, though some of the men do look uncomfortable about receiving dances from Christeene and her minions. I even think there’s potential moments for community formation. Certainly the dance party at the end of the video celebrates Austin’s queer scene. But I see such gestures of good will and inclusion in Christeene high-fiving a woman at the gym and waving to a young girl at the grocery store. I think the collaborative nature of the video’s shoot reflects this spirit as well. In taking a piece of Christeene, many people are part of the process of constructing her.

But the charged moments–what made the film infamous in friend circles before its premiere–were the scuffles with authority. Police officers escorted Christeene and the crew off the premises during the shoot at various locations. In particular, staff members at the Church of Scientology of Texas locked their doors and confiscated equipment. Folks also harassed the star and crew with hate speech. At least one person cried godless and I like that this moment is reframed as a joke about the stupidity and destructiveness of queerphobia. I think such moments of brutality and intolerance, and the willingness to share them and package them as part of a music video, are what’s so powerful about this clip. Celebrity may have power over us, but it’s useless without people using that platform to challenge larger social and institutional problems. It’s thrilling to watch a queer artist, dressed in unconvincing drag, confront such phobia in public. Christeene does it through humor and an invitation of inclusion, but the stakes are fucking high in the war against individual freedom. Cops might rough you up. People might yell at you because you tucked in your dick and flaunted your ass in public. Cult practitioners may take your stuff and make threats. It happens off-camera.

Christeene also reclaims space as a star. Stars often accommodate the context they’re in, particularly at red carpet events and photo shoots. Teams of people make them into whatever they need to be for a film premiere, magazine interview, or concert. Even stars photographed without makeup is a construction no different from a band breaking out an acoustic guitar to do an “unplugged” performance. Stripping down is as much an act as wearing a safe Armani gown. I don’t know if many would label Christeene a star. She’s not starring in an action movie based on a board game, though I’d love her to play Queen Frosteene in Candyland: The Reckoning. She’s not performing for a televised award show, though she’d show up in an outfit at least as eye-catching as Björk’s swan dress. She doesn’t have a hit album, though I think that might come. Have you heard her music? The production’s really good and the singles are ready for the clubs.

But Christeene is a star to me, perhaps in the way that Courtney Love and Sinéad O’Connor insisted upon their own fame and found an audience with their outsize talent and personality. Christeene wasn’t groomed for celebrity. Quite frankly, I don’t think she has interest in grooming of any kind. Yet she has become a star for some on the basis of her formidable imagination and her total ownership of this invented persona. It continues to blow my mind that Christeene and Rebecca Havemeyer share Paul Soileau’s body. Frankly, I’m intimidated by the kind of creative person who can breathe these beings into existence even if I’m thrilled that such a person can take pop iconography and make something truly punk out of it. That’s probably why I write about it instead.

But actually, the challenge to write about Christeene is also exciting for me. Lokeilani Kaimana might attest that it’s hard to do. A friend of mine at school recently did a job talk about sketch comedy and used Funny or Die as a case study. I wondered how a figure like Christeene, who used the site as a distribution platform, might disrupt how we conceptualize FoD’s viewership and comedy more broadly. I attempted to explain Christeene to the speaker and the audience, grasping at words like “bad drag,” “gold tooth,” and “rectum.”

She’s especially difficult to talk about in terms of race. I believe this is deliberate on the part of the artist, but no less dicey in execution. “African Mayonnaise” refers to the mixture of cum and fecal matter on a spent penis after anal sex. The use of the term “African” to connote darkness and shit is … yikes. Many might say it’s outright racist, and I’m not sure I have an argument against such an appraisal. In a lot of ways, Christeene’s dangerous play with race as a white drag performer reminds me of Nitsuh Abebe’s excellent piece on CocoRosie and artistic risk. There are certainly perils and limits to playing with race, not the least of which is alienating an audience.

I don’t want to applaud these artists and call them brave or misunderstood simply for making people angry or uncomfortable. I know their work might play into rather than challenge other people’s racist assumptions. But I think there’s something valuable to not only acknowledging that such assumptions exist in the culture, but that they must be confronted, mutated, and roughed up in the process (working with a gay filmmaker of color who was a cinematographer on Trouble the Water doesn’t hurt either). Anyone can make millions from an anthem about individuality and perseverance that makes vague claims toward and cynically leaches off of a queer audience. But it takes something more to position yourself as a star and base such fame on the abjection of stardom.

Some may make comparisons between Lady Gaga’s crutches and Christeene becoming someone else’s (or her own) santorum. For one, what an uninspired comparison. For another, celebrating one’s own abjection, framing it as explicitly queer, and making angry, giddy, political, participatory art out it feels a lot more transgressive to me than some of the music passing as such these days. She may never win a Grammy, but I’m no less challenged, outraged, and awestruck. Sounds like pop to me.