Mayim Bialik on the cover of Sassy is a good as any image of girlhood that I had growing up; image courtesy of fashionista.com
Hello everyone. So, I’m giving a lecture on Friday with Kristen at Act Your Age for a friend’s class at UT on race and the media. We’ll be talking about whiteness and girlhood in contemporary American film, primarily because girls are often assumed or represented as white. We’re paying particular attention to Ellen Page and Zooey Deschanel’s turns in Juno and (500) Days of Summer, the latter text being held up as an instance of girlhood appropriation. After reading through Spin‘s 1997 Girl Issue and putting together clips and our PowerPoint presentation, apart from being overwhelmed by the whiteness, I was reminded of my girlhood.
In the interest of sharing, here are some clips from my youth, many of which we’ll be discussing. Please feel free to share. Also, as we’ll obviously be problematizing the exnomination of whiteness with regard to girlhood in our lecture, I’d also encourage people to challenge it themselves and offer mediated images of girls of color.
My knowledge of women in metal doesn't get much further than Kittie; image courtesy of everyjoe.com
Readers of this blog may notice a metal deficit. At present, Kristen at Act Your Age and I don’t have a metal section in our Girls Rock Camp music history workshop presentation. In all candor, I don’t know much about the genre, much less female contributors. It was never my thing. Having gotten to guitar late, I didn’t spend my adolescence poring over Guitar World and learning face-melting riffs. Old-school Metallica was never my shit, though I giggled mirthfully at their self-indulgent therapy sessions in Some Kind of Monster. New-school Mastadon isn’t either, though I do like their song for the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Movie.
Of course, I also got the sense that metal was teeming with queer tension well before I found out Judas Priest vocalist Rob Halford was gay or Patton Oswalt turned hair metal’s homoeroticism into a bit.
I’m not even really sure what metal is, as vanguard bands believed to influence the genre consider themselves hard rock. Black Sabbath, AC/DC, and Led Zeppelin don’t identify with the term, so I’m not sure what to make of it either. While I think the emergence of all-female cover bands like AC/DShe and Lez Zeppelin are interesting, I’m not sure if we can call them metal.
Now, I’ve been around metal in some capacity for quite some time. My older stepbrother was pretty into Guns N’ Roses growing up in the 80s. As they didn’t embrace the label, I wonder if Paradise Titty do. He later came around to Anthrax, who I will always associate with their appearance on Married With Children. The image of lead guitarist Dan Spitz’s Violator t-shirt is forever in my mind, along with other Depeche Mode fans who formed metal bands.
The band Rob Sheffield proclaims to be the snyth pop equivalent to Ozzy Osbourne; image courtesy of amoeba.com
From other male friends, I’ve developed an appreciation for bands like Slayer, who South Park taught me are especially useful in breaking up a hippie jam festival. Contemporary slowcore acts like Boris have been brought to my attention for their work in Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control. I’ve also read Chuck Klosterman’s Fargo Rock City and Mötley Crüe’s The Dirt. One left me with a sense of amused detachment. The other gave me nausea. I’ll let you guess which title did what.
I know there’s a lot of subgenres, but I can only really tell them apart by RPM. I can’t tell you much about them beyond speed metal and thrash are fast and doom and stoner metal are slow.
So, you could say that my biggest problem with metal is that I don’t know what it is. Thus, how am I supposed to reclaim the marginalized contributions of women and girls if I’m pretty sure Marnie Stern isn’t metal so much as hard rock for indie fans? Therein lies the rub. But I know that there are female metal fans like Laina Dawes, who wrote about the controversy surrounding Burzum frontman and staunch anti-Semite Varg Vikernes’s recent cover for Decibel Magazine on her blog Writing is Fighting. I’ll continue to follow blogs like Feminist Headbanger and The Black Girl Into Heavy Metal and see if I can come to any further conclusions. For now, I’ll briefly outline in videos who I know.
As a child in the late 1980s, I saw these videos from Vixen and former Runaways guitarist Lita Ford.
During my teen years, Kittie developed a following. This was their big hit, and I really liked the vocals on it.
I’m familiar with Jada Pinkett-Smith’s band Wicked Wisdom, who sound like a metal band to me. However, some folks discredit the band’s efforts because of the front woman’s celebrity status and that the group didn’t “pay their dues” on the touring circuit. Seems like racist sniveling to me.
Who are you listening to? Who should I be listening to?
Yesterday, Kristen at Act Your Age and I did our music history workshop for Girls Rock Camp Austin. This is our second year to do it, and we’re proud to be facilitating the workshop for Girls Rock Camp Houston later this summer. This time, we slightly updated the version of the workshop we did for the Girls Now! conference last fall and organized it by genre. Happily, the girls respond well to images, clips, and mix CDs. I always like to recount what I learned (as you can read here and here), so here we go.
1. Be willing to improvise. Kristen and I had some interactive projects planned, but the technology required for such activities wasn’t available, so we had to adapt accordingly. This involved taking deep breaths and telling each other that the workshops were going to be fine and that we’re awesome.
2. Never underestimate the power of pooling together resources. Right before our first workshop, nothing was set up. But thanks to some awesome ladies pitching in and thinking on their feet, we got everything put together and put on two great workshops.
3. Some girls wonder if the female musicians we highlighted are alive. A few girls kept asking if each person was dead. Thus, it was a pleasure to tell them that folks like Wanda Jackson are very much alive.
Wanda Jackson at SXSW 2010 -- I was in attendance for this show; image courtesy of wandajackson.com
4. Some girls are obsessed with wigs. I’m okay with this.
We didn't get to talk about The B-52s, but they looove wigs -- Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson wear them all the time and the band actually wrote a song called "Wig"; image courtesy of wikimedia.org
5. Allow room for girls to come back to a question you posed earlier when they have an answer. For example, our icebreaker for the older girls we taught was about the first album they remember really liking. One girl didn’t have an answer until we started talking about En Vogue. Her eyes lit up and remembered that she loved “Free Your Mind.” This is a very exciting moment.
This album blew at least one camper's mind; image courtesy of wikimedia.org
6. Some girls know who the 5678s are, which is awesome.
7. Allow room to include the counselors sitting in. In addition to the personal insights they can offer, they may also be able to explain why Dolly Parton plays her guitar in open tuning.
8. There’s always at least one girl who knows almost every artist you’re talking about. She may get a little embarrassed that she’s monopolizing conversation. Let her know you appreciate her enthusiasm and encourage her to keep talking.
9. With little effort, girls can make astute connections between artists like Lady Gaga, Elton John, Janet Jackson, and David Bowie.
10. They also seem to respond if you tell them that some musicians change instruments, as Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon did when she switched from bass to guitar.
Kim Gordon shredding with the boys; image courtesy of forums.epiphone.com
11. We should combine genres a bit more in terms of racial diversity. The first half of the workshop had greater emphasis on genres associated with women of color (blues, pop, jazz) than the second half (punk, riot grrrl). We could offset this by pairing seemingly dissimilar genres, like hip hop and country music.
12. It’s okay if the girls don’t like an artist or group or aren’t sure about what to do with them. They may find Mika Miko abrasive or aren’t sure what Lady Sovereign is saying. But by opening the door, they may walk through it.
Just got back from teaching music history workshops with Kristen at Act Your Age for Girls Rock Camp Austin, which “rocked.” I will post about what I learned from the experience tomorrow, but I kinda need to recover and eat some dinner. I happened to have a review of Helium’s 1997 album The Magic City in the pocket. I was obsessed with the album a couple of months ago after I snagged a used copy signed by leader Mary Timony during a rediscovery period prompted by the 120 Minutes Archive. So let’s talk about why Helium was an awesome band and why this album exemplifies that. Because, if indeed this decade will revive music from the 90s, I hope those who rediscover indie rock stalwarts like Pavement pay equal consideration to fellow Matador act Helium.
Helium's The Magic City (Matador, 1997); image courtesy of amazon.com
As a proper follow-up to their debut, The Dirt of Luck, and a sonic and conceptual expansion of their murky sound, 1997’s The Magic City tends to be overlooked despite being well-regarded in its time. However, the band’s prog-influenced sophomore (and final) effort is often cited as a fan favorite, perhaps prompting artists like Ben Gibbard to name-check singer/guitarist Timony in Death Cab for Cutie’s “Your Bruise.” The band’s legacy lives in contemporary acts like Austin’s YellowFever. Furthermore, Timony is still active. It may make more sense to revisit The Dirt of Luck, particularly for the inclusion of breakthrough single “Pat’s Trick” and its accompanying music video. But The Magic City is a clear artistic achievement that deserves further consideration.
Prog evokes ideations of the concept album. Yet it’s hard to ascertain what this sophomore effort is about. Some may think the album is about Timony’s then-boyfriend Ash Bowie. Others may consider her lyrics as evidence of Timony’s affinity toward hippie spiritualism, nature’s ephemera, space, Christian and Pagan iconography, and stoner poetry.
Having revisited Joanna Newsom’s auspicious sophomore full-length Ys, which is also heavily shrouded in symbolic language, it’s still a jolt when she makes mention of an “awfully real gun” amidst the romantic turmoil of “Only Skin.” Similarly, it’s shocking how often the real world intrudes in Timony’s lyrics. Opening track “Vibrations” opines about astrology while reminding the listener that she’s always available for a chat on the phone. Single “Leon’s Space Song” finds her telling an adversary that her Los Angeles friends like her better. “Aging Astronauts” includes weary mention of perennial air travel. “Ancient Crymes” reveals how Timony finds power in being rude and that she’s down for a party. That Timony is able to incorporate the spiritual realm into the mundane is no small feat. She conveys this in large part through the evasive yet surprisingly expressive qualities of her deadpan alto.
The Magic City also reveals itself to be a relic of the album’s cultural wane. Though some carry the mantle of the full-length, less care has been given to sequencing and cohesion. This cannot be said of this album. There’s a concerted effort to project grandeur, primarily through Timony’s virtuosic guitar playing on songs like the 8-minute opus “Revolution of Hearts Parts 1 and 2.” It repeats musical themes and returns to certain lyrical images while subtly suggesting variance with a diverse assemblage of instruments and compositional stylings, indicating the era’s interest in hybridity.
Mary Timony, I love you and want your guitar; image courtesy of brooklynvegan.com
Instrumentals like “Medieval People” also suggests the band had more in common with agit-pop acts like Brainiac (another band in need of a revival) than Yes. However, I’d like to think one of Helium’s key contributions to indie rock in their brief career was that these acts could co-exist on one beguiling album.
Cover to Awkward and Definition; image courtesy of amazon.com
Last night, I cuddled on the couch and read Ariel Schrag’s Awkward and Definition. I needed something to do while my computer burned the mix CDs for Kristen‘s and my Girls Rock Camp music history workshop, which we teach tomorrow. As session #1 is in full swing, it seemed fitting to read two graphic novels from a queer girl cartoonist and avowed rock music fan.
For those unfamiliar, these two books document Schrag’s first two years at Berkeley High School in the mid-90s. She composed them during the summers between each school year. Potential, which follows her junior year and Likewise, which captures her senior year, were published later. If you weren’t aware of Schrag’s work, perhaps you can recall her name being mentioned in Le Tigre’s “Hot Topic” or recognize her as a writer on The L-Word. But Awkward and Definition put her on the map.
I find these two books interesting for a number of reasons. For one, the visual style changes dramatically. Awkward is sloppily put together, with characters resembling melted Precious Moments figurines. Definition has cleaner lines, surer plotting, and better defined character composition. Not that Awkward‘s messiness is in any way a disadvantage. While it may cause eye strain at times, the sheer exhilaration of a girl putting this together was enough for me. That cartoonist and chemistry enthusiast Schrag already had her own voice and vision at such a young age is inspiring to me.
"Whoo! Ariel Schrag!"; image courtesy of timeoutnewyork.com
There’s also the matter of Schrag’s fandom, which is a key aspect of her queer girlhood. It’s evident in who she idolizes. Evincing the era, Schrag is a big alternative rock fan who loves going to shows and acquires a Fender Stratocaster from her mom on her 16th birthday. Her idols cover her walls as well, as her bedroom becomes a shrine to L7, No Doubt’s Gwen Stefani, and Juliette Lewis. It’s also interesting how she uses language to possess her idols. An early male love interest is called “my L7″ because of his coveted band t-shirts. Application of glittery make-up is referred to as “putting on my Gwen.” And Juliette Lewis is simply “my Juliette.” I find it particularly interesting that Scrag watches anything with Lewis in it, but has a particular affinity for Mallory Knox in Natural Born Killers.
Schrag is also girl-crazy — identifying as bisexual, but will later come out as a lesbian — and surrounded by girl companions who fall in and out of her social circle. This is refreshing, in part because I grew up in an area where bisexual, lesbian, and transgender girls assuredly existed, but primarily remained in the closet. So perhaps I sound like a West Coast outsider, but it’s staggering to me that Schrag had so many queer and queer-friendly girlfriends she could crush on, but also call upon as friends. Having just read an article about two gay teen male friends in New York who were voted king and queen of their prom by their peers further instills me with hope.
I was also pleased by the depiction of drug use and Schrag’s engagement with the street. I didn’t do drugs in high school and received fairly strict parameters from my parents, who wouldn’t let me go to punk shows in Houston until I graduated from high school. This was primarily because gigs usually weren’t close by and because my mom worried about what dangers could befall a young girl. And while I’m more than a little surprised by how permissive Schrag’s parents were (or perhaps how little they knew about their daughter’s social activities), I’m also pleased that Schrag’s drug experimentation isn’t sensationalized. Pair this against, say, Larry Clark’s Kids, a movie I hate in part because it promises to be transgressive in its representation of urban teenagers but actually espouses a cautionary, conservative ideology (note: I dislike Requiem for a Dream for similar reasons). This isn’t to say that I approve of how often she hits the pipe. I just like that we can see a girl character partake of drugs without dying, getting raped, or contracting a disease. It’s refreshing.
Similarly, I like that Schrag and her friends are sometimes put in scary situations, but are resourceful enough to work through them. This is best exemplified when Schrag and her friend Julia attend a Bush concert (No Doubt cancelled! NO!) for Julia’s birthday. They get dropped off at the wrong venue and have to figure out how to get to the show and get home. This requires the two girls — who are also high — to walk vacant streets, take the bus, ask for help from the useless police, attempt to hail a cab, and finally get a ride home from Julia’s dad. Again, this situation is far from ideal. Yet I like to see girls be tough, resourceful, and successfully get out of bad situations.
Of course, I can’t review the two graphic novels without mentioning the exnomination of racial and class privilege. I’m not sure of Schrag’s socioeconomic background, but she does come from a politically progressive area that appears to be predominantly white. Thus it was probably easier for her to grow up queer than it is for rural, working class young people. That said, I’m still pleased that she possessed the confidence to declare her teen years important enough to capture in self-made panels teeming with wit, anxiety, and glee. I only hope Potential lives up to its title.
A few weeks back, I watched Jonathan Khan’s 1998 feature Girl for the first time with my friend Erik, who loved Blake Nelson’s young adult novel of same name as a teenager. He had the great idea of doing a grunge movie night, screening this one with Singles and Bodies, Rest & Motion, though I’d also like to through in Gas Food Lodging, as I haven’t yet seen it. Apparently, Girl suffered considerably as it transitioned into another medium.
Cover to "Girl" (Simon and Schuster, 1994); image courtesy of nogoodforme.filmstills.org
For one, it was released about four years too late, not accounting for a fickle market that, by 1998, tired of grunge and was starting to cultivate a backlash against The Spice Girls. It also drew obvious narrative parallels and stylistic similarities with ABC’s My So-Called Life, which made it feel all the more dated. For another, David E. Tolchinsky’s screenplay appoarently lost much of the novel’s singular tone that rallied many fans around the book. I worry that this may happen with Stephen Chbosky’s screen adaptation of his 1999 novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower, though my concerns also stem from finding the source material derivative and unworthy of much of the praise it recieved.
Finally, the end product itself was terrible, lacking especially in terms of writing, directing, and acting. Starring many B- and C-level actors like Portia de Rossi, Selma Blair, Tara Reid, Sean Patrick Flannery, Channon Roe, and Christopher Masterson, the film rests on Dominique Swain’s incapable shoulders. Remember when Swain beat out thousands of young actors for the title role in Adrian Lyne’s Lolita? How did that happen, exactly?
I almost thought about not writing an entry on Girl, as there was hardly anything positive to write about it. Privileged white girl Andrea Marr (Swain) inexplicably has everyone fall in love with her, including Brown University, square frenemy Darcy (Blair), rebel girl bassist Cybil (Reed), music journalist (Roe), and rock god Todd Sparrow (Flannery), even though she’s shallow, narcissistic, and not especially bright. The movie follows her last semester of high school, as she plants her freak flag to follow Sparrow and his band, The Color Green. She becomes his groupie for a while, but ultimately decides she’s putting his needs before her own and breaks up with him before starting college. Since I just read Pamela Des Barres’s I’m With the Band: Confessions of a Groupie for a Bitch entry on Zooey Deschanel’s efforts to adapt the memoir for an HBO series, groupies are on my mind.
Also, I’ve decided to write a post on the movie because Kristen at Act Your Age and I were recently asked to give a guest lecture for an undergraduate class at UT Austin this summer. Since the course is on race representations in media culture, we’ll be focusing on whiteness and girlhood and movies and television shows that feature young cisgender female characters who are interested in music. Thus, Girl needs to be considered, if not for its individual merits, but to provide further context for the evolution of hipster girls and manic pixies dream girls during a period where post-riot grrrl was becoming post-feminist in teen movies.
Summer Phoenix, center, with Jennifer Garner and Liv Tyler; image courtesy of instyle.com
An interesting contribution the movie provides is sidekick character Rebecca Fernhurst, played by Summer Phoenix. Intellectual, deadpan, more obsessed with records than boys or fashion, and already over the next big thing, Fernhurst in some ways recalls Daria Morgendorffer and anticipates Juno McGuff and Norah Silverberg. A running joke in the movie is that Fernhurst is the girl always out of frame in a picture while Marr is in the center. For this music geek, she’s the only character in focus.
Mariah Carey Vs. Mariah Carey; image courtesy of mtv.com
At lunch the other day, Kristen at Act Your Age and I got on the subject of music videos, as we are wont to do. We were talking about instances where artists play multiple characters in clips, which brought to mind this entry on Beyoncé and Bat for Lashes. We could only come up with female artists, though my partner also brought up OutKast’s “Hey Ya” and The Foo Fighters’ “Learn To Fly.” I’d point out that the former seems to only be possible because Andre 3000 had already established himself as an eccentric, feminizable fashion icon though I wonder if any women — besides ex Erykah Badu, who directly referenced “Hey Ya” in “Honey” — has played an entire band. I also have to say that the latter showcases regressive stereotypes of girls, homosexual man, and fat women. Yikes!
In Jennifer Lopez’s “Get Right” she plays pretty much every character: the club deejay, a bartender, a dancer, a clubgoer trying to dance away her heartache, her friend, a celebrity, the celebrity’s nerdy (and potentially queerable) fan, and the video star projected on the club’s screens. She also appears to be playing outside her race at times, inhabiting white characters as well as Latinas. Oh, and fun fact: the girl playing the deejay’s kid sister as actually Lopez’s stepdaughter Ariana. Click on J.Lo’s name to watch.
Jennifer Lopez
“Get Right” Rebirth
Directed by Francis Lawrence
Mariah Carey’s “Heartbreaker” recycles the played-out good girl-blonde/bad girl-brunette binary, but I like that she also gets to recreate the “Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee” scene in Grease and that there’s an animated version of herself that both characters watch at the movies.
Mariah Carey featuring Jay-Z
“Heartbreaker” Rainbow
Directed by Brett Ratner
Britney Spears — who has put on multiple aliases in “Toxic” and “Womanizer” — also brings out the blonde/brunette binary for “Gimme More.” However, I find it interesting that blonde Spears is at a strip club with girlfriends and is watching brunette Spears perform as club talent.
Britney Spears
“Gimme More” Blackout
Directed by Jake Sarfaty
Florence Marr, played by Greta Gerwig, another woman who should not be dating Roger Greenberg; image courtesy of collider.com (click on the image for Gerwig's interview)
This weekend was unexpectedly packed. Two friends came in from out of town, another turned 29, two more went on a 100-mile bike tour to Shiner, and Karaoke Underground continued to give folks something to do in Austin on the first Saturday of each month. On Friday, Kristen at Act Your Age and I accompanied Caitlin from Dark Room to a screening of Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg.
I had many reservations going in. Despite being a fan of Kicking and Screaming, The Squid and the Whale, and Margot at the Wedding, I wasn’t sure how game I’d be for a movie about Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller), a once-promising musician who now does little beyond carpentry and a stint at a mental hospital. He turns 41 while house-sitting in Los Angeles for his more successful brother, who is on vacation with his family in Vietnam. He also meets his brother’s 25-year-old assistant, Florence Marr (Greta Gerwig), a driftless young woman with whom he shares a regrettable dalliance.
The Science of Sleep came to mind as I read about the movie around this manipulative narcissist who is too blind to realize that his supposed honesty toward others prevents him from any acknowledgement of his considerable flaws and attaining actual intimacy with anyone. In short, Roger Greenberg’s fixation on his own neuroses keep him from actually getting to know who he or anyone else is. He’s a terrible human being. To make matters worse for this feminist music geek, he uses mixes and obscure pop songs like Albert Hammond’s “It Never Rains in Southern California” as tools of seduction. He also probably wears his Steve Winwood “Back In the High Life” t-shirt with a sense of unironic irony, which further pisses me off. I wasn’t sure if I could watch a movie about him (Jessica Grose’s assessment didn’t help matters). What’s more, I don’t know if I could forgive a movie that made him likeable or redeemable.
Which is to say that I’m not sure I can forgive this movie. I did like James Murphy’s score, which sounds more like the now-fashionable hypnagogic pop of LA acts like Ariel Pink and Nite Jewel (whose members made a cameo in the climactic party scene) than anything LCD Sounsystem has done and is assuredly a way to orient the distinctly East Coast Baumbach within a West Coast context. On the one hand, the movie takes great pains to make Greenberg appear to be a monster (it is a Baumbach movie, after all). Friends (usually erstwhile) constantly voice how despicable and impossible he is.
Yet the movie centers around Greenberg’s actions and ridiculous, hateful monologues. It also suggests that comely young women, including his neice, find his misanthropy somehow attractive even as he continues to dismiss them. Furthering concern, I was disheartened that some dudes in the audience were charmed by Greenberg, especially the stocky hipster seated the row in front of us who habitually twirled his moustache.
What do you see in this guy?; image courtesy of eastbayexpress.com
In addition, the movie does suggest in its final shot that he’s capable of change — in this case, the ability to love. Kristen made an interesting comparison to Punch-Drunk Love, a movie about an angry and depressed man unexpectedly finding love with a shy woman who pursues him, which she felt Greenberg was something of an inversion. For me, I had a hard time understanding why anyone would feel this way about the protagonist, though mumblecore Gerwig does an exceptional job rendering Marr as a sad young woman with no direction, few financial prospects, and little self-confidence.
As Natasha Vargas-Cooper and Julie Klausner discussed in their conversation about the movie, Marr seems like a woman many of us know. She’s sweet and funny, but places no value in herself. She constantly apologizes for everything, starting every sentence with “I’m sorry.” Like the protagonist in Liz Phair’s “Fuck and Run,” she sleeps with guys simply because they ask her to and she’s too weak to decline. She discredits every personal project and refuses to voice an opinion on anything. She always says “okay” and “you’re right,” even when people (re: Greenberg) are clearly being mean or taking advantage. She’s the kind of girl you have to drive to get an abortion after she lets the wrong guy knock her up. Actually, the movie reveals (spoiler alert) that she’s the kind of girl who gets talked into having a different wrong guy and his college buddy escort her to the clinic. Like her friend Gina (Merritt Wever), Marr frustrates me but also gets my sympathy. Like so many women, she needs feminism.
Marr comes close to asserting herself a few times in the movie, suggesting that she could find the strength to be more than just a doormat. She also suggests, however timidly, that she has talent worth sharing with others. One such instance is her musical performance at a local bar. While she shrugs off the event to Greenberg after their first failed sexual encounter, she sings on stage to her friends, accompanied by another male friend on guitar (who Greenberg assumes she’s fucking). Her music recalls the plaintiveness of Judee Sill, and suggests briefly that perhaps — through music — she might find her voice. Just don’t accept the opportunity to get your boss’s creep brother back in the music business.
Sing it, Florence; image courtesy of jake-weird.blogspot.com
Cover to Lorrie Moore's "A Gate at the Stairs" (Knopf, 2009); image courtesy of examiner.com
While on my maiden voyage (har!) to Eugene for Console-ing Passions, I had the latest Lorrie Moore in my carry-on, courtesy of Kristen at Act Your Age. I actually knew nothing about Moore going in, particularly that she teaches in the English department at Madison (a university well-represented at aforementioned conference). Thus I had no expectations going into a novel about a female college student who nannies for a damaged married white couple who adopt outside their race. That it was set post-9/11 interested me, as I was roughly two weeks into freshman year and on my way to the bus stop following my 8 a.m. journalism survey course with Bob Jensen when news circulated that the towers fell.
But I was mainly interested in the fact that protagonist Tassie Keltjin was a bassist who loved Sleater-Kinney. Thus it was Carrie Brownstein, who mentioned that her former power trio were name-checked in Moore’s prose, who peaked my curiosity in A Gate at the Stairs. I was especially interested in the protagonist’s fandom as, 1) I picked up a used copy of The Woods for Record Store Day and can’t get it out of my car CD player and 2) Sleater-Kinney were known for being a power trio with no bass player.
I won’t reveal too much, as many people (including the person who loaned me the book) haven’t read it yet. I will say that it’s a well-written book that I liked. Some of the passages were arresting, particularly those involving Keltjin’s rural Midwestern upbringing, her aimless younger brother, and the two tragic incidents that forever scarred her employers and her own family. I liked reading about Keltjin’s roommate Murph, an acerbic girl who uses black soap and black dental floss. I felt the sting of white guilt, self-righteous racism, and privileged ignorance when reading the conversations Keltjin’s employers Sarah Brink and Edward Thornwood had with their bougie support group for adoptive parents to children of color.
I also related to Keltjin’s somewhat decorative humanities-based education, though I’d like to think that the undergraduate courses I took in copy editing, media management, women’s history, and rock culture prepared me for the professional life I’m plotting out. They certainly were more useful to me than Keltjin’s wine-tasting class, though I’d probably teach the course she takes on war movie soundtracks. And as I strolled the terminal alone, I got a sense for Keltjin’s isolation. I’ll say no more on the synopsis, other than offer my recommendation and spend the remainder of the post focusing on a peripheral but integral aspect of the protagonist’s characterization: Keltjin’s musicianship.
As a guitar player, I was especially struck by Keltjin’s commitment to the bass, which she essentially taught herself to play. I found it interesting that Keltjin believed the guitar to be too easy to play and the forced physicality required of bassists. I’ll hedge that there’s nothing easy about getting your fingers dexterous enough for guitar, but recognize that one stringed instrument necessitates fluidity from its instrumentalist while another requires tension against it.
Paz Lenchantin, bassist dynamo; image courtesy of flickr.com
I also like that Keltjin and Murph briefly engage in songwriting together. This follows Keltjin’s break-up with a classmate that occurs around the same time as the end of Murph’s relationship with a guy the readers never meet. Murph also teaches herself to play Keltjin’s bass. Thus, they rely on both music and each other to get over their heartache.
Finally, I appreciate that the end of the novel, which involves the aftermath of a family tragedy, includes mention of Keltjin potentially following through on a want ad she finds from a band looking for a bassist. As she gets settled into her college life, I’d like to think the phone call she makes turns into a surprising new opportunity.
Promo for Times Square; image courtesy of theauteurs.com
A few years back, I became interested in Allan Moyle’s 1980 feature debut. Times Square stars Robin Johnson and Trini Alvarado as two teenage girls who escape from a mental institution, live on the streets, form a punk band called The Sleez Sisters, drop televisions off buildings, occasionally rule local station WJAD, and creates some underground infamy that anticipates the groundswell Corrine Burns and The Stains would cause two years later. While Moyle was fired by producer Robert Stigwood fired so he could remove explicit lesbian content and include more musical sequences in the film, the director later went on to make music geek teen pics like Pump Up the Volume and Empire Records. But his first movie was praised by Kathleen Hanna. While Hanna and I disagree on the quality of Floria Sigismondi’s The Runaways, I’m always willing to give the riot grrrl pioneer the benefit of the doubt. Plus, that soundtrack is a beast.
I saw Times Square two summers ago with a bunch of friends, including Caitlin at Dark Room and Kristen at Act Your Age. I remember a few things surprised me upon initial viewing.
1) Despite cuts, this movie is still explicitly queer. It centers on a female friendship that is romantic and liberating for both parties. And drifter Nicky Marotta, wonderfully rendered by Johnson, is assuredly a young lesbian who is starting to formulate how her sexuality shapes her identity. She often does this alone and with Patti Smith’s “Pissing in the River” rumbling in her broken heart, but sometimes with enough room to let in Pamela Pearl (Alvarado), the daughter of a politician she meets in a mental institution and creates a life with on the mean streets.
2) Girls like Johnson don’t star in movies much anymore, which is a shame. Little Darlings came out the same year. Kristy McNichol’s Angel Bright may have been looking to get laid by a boy in the movie, but she reads to me as a baby butch.
3) New York City doesn’t look like this anymore, and I’d love to read a history of how the city and mediated representations of it changed from the 1960s to the 2000s. In the 1980s, the city continued to endure escalating crime and drug rates from the decade before, as the area had not yet been gentrified and “cleaned up” to attract tourists. This is something Taxi Driver made central to Travis Bickle’s mental decline and that I hope Mad Men incorporates into the series.
By the time Sex and the City became part of the lexicon, it had. Now teenage characters in Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist and New York Minute gallivant around the Big Apple. When at the time of Times Square‘s location shoot and subsequent release, the city was far from being the tween amusement park it would later seem to be. As a matter of fact, Pearl’s father is running on a platform to clean up New York City. Thus, you really get a feel for the danger, vastness, and anonymity of the big city that informs the girls’ existence.
But you also get a sense of solidarity amongst them and other street denizens. While the movie could perpetuate racist stereotypes of predatory people of color serving as crack addicts, pimps, and whores, most of the folks the girls encounter are nice. When Pearl applies for a dancing job at a dive cabaret and refuses to perform topless, the owner (who appears to be Hispanic) praises her on being classy and holding on to some mystery.
However, I don’t want to overemphasize the treatment of race in the movie. For the most part, people of color are depicted as supportive, but they are usually without names and relegated to the background. In the rare instances that they aren’t, they can sometimes be viewed as siding with the establishment. Hence how I read Anna Maria Horsford’s Rosie Washington, who is Marotta’s case worker. While Washington understands that Marotta, whose parents are M.I.A., has been failed by the system, she’s still in cahoots with Pearl’s father and writes a letter to his daughter urging her to part ways with her “unstable” new friend.
The girls also have a troubling relationship with people of color. At the beginning of the movie, Marotta rehearses guitar. She sets her amp on the hood of a night club owner’s car. When a Latina matron complains of the noise Marotta’s making, she responds by smashing in the owner’s headlights. She’s also rude to Washington. And perhaps most disconcerting, Marotta and Pearl associate Washington with voodoo and proclaim themselves to align with various homophobic and racial epithets in their song “Your Daughter Is One.” Good that they’re pushing back against the systemic oppression they’ve endured. Bad how they’re using language to express it.
I also find Tim Curry’s role as DJ Johnny LaGuardia, who documents the girls’ story and later becomes something of an ally to them. Both girls are fans of his radio program on WJAD. Pearl actually wrote to him about her unhappy home life prior to being institutionalized, signing the letter as “Zombie Girl.” Pointedly, he insinuates himself as their ally. At first, I thought I was projecting those feelings onto LaGuardia because Curry has one of the most sinister voices I’ve ever heard. But when LaGuardia shows up at the girls’ flat with a bottle of vodka for Pearl and an interest in how “wild” Marotta is, his cover’s blown.
Upon review, I’m basically of the same opinion of it as I was before. This movie is poignant, though I do wish the original footage that documented the girls’ romance was kept intact. I also wish Marotta wasn’t depicted as crazy and escorted off at the end, while Pearl watches the mob disperse with her father. But I also have no doubt Marotta will escape once more, perhaps with Pearl by her side. She may prompt dozens of other girls to follow in her path and pen their own rock anthems.
