I recently watched the first installment of High School Musical for my media franchising class. I was somewhat familiar with the series. I evaluated a colleague’s term paper on it for a class I took on dance and film. I figured South Park nailed their musical parody, which I now believe they did. I also watched two supremely awesome little girls grow up next door to me for three years. A friend once used Ashley Tisdale’s name as her blogger handle. And I have some chores for a shirtless Zac “Lt. Dangle” Efron to do around my house.
Despite compelling arguments in favor of HSM‘s merits as a franchise or media text, as well as a firm belief that Daft Punk could do a sweet remix of “Bet On It“, I wouldn’t consider myself a fan. Overall, the cloying wholesomeness gets on my nerves. For me, the stakes are so low. Will Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens, who I recently saw in the so-problematic-it-must-be-blogged-about Sucker Punch) end up with Troy (Efron)? Of course they will–at least on screen. I think I would be a fan of a variety show hosted by Evans and his sister Sharpay (Tisdale). Glee very much tries to provide the archetypes it mines from High School Musical with depth and grit (Kurt Hummel is basically an out Ryan Evans).
I also don’t know what to do with colorblindness, conflict-free inclusivity, and the politics of positive representation, particularly with the girls of color on the show. On the one hand, I think it’s cool that Gabriella is a smart girl who excels in math and science and attends Stanford after graduation. On the other hand, I’m very troubled by how little the series seems invested in her academic pursuits or her ethnic identity. She and her friend Taylor (Monique Coleman) are both beautiful, brainy girls of color, but their presence often veers toward tokenism to me. I don’t want them to be defined by their racial or ethnic identity any more than they’d want to be thought of as nerds. But such attention toward respectability doesn’t give their characters much conflict. However, the white characters are also less-than-compelling for these reasons as well. Although I wish Glee wouldn’t relegate Mercedes to the role of the sassy black girl, at least there are instances within the show where she resists or defies such categorization.
Kelsi Nielsen (Oleysa Rulin)
Taylor is joined by another female character I wish was better incorporated into HSM‘s story world. Kelsi Nielsen (Olesya Rulin) is the shy, nerdy white girl at East High who provides piano accompaniment for the school’s musical productions. She also serves as the productions’ chief composer. Something tells me that if Nielsen wrote a musical that centralized Gabriella and Sharpay and brought in Taylor, it would be far more compelling. Maybe she could get all Max Fischer with it and cast them in a musical remake of Robert Altman’s 3 Women. She could follow it up with Věra Chytilová’s Daisies starring Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez. Or she could come up with something original. I’m sure if she were really given the spotlight, she could share it with the other girls and create something better than a rehash of Romeo and Juliet without any actual romantic conflict.
The first half of 2010 has been eventful for music, hasn’t it? Epic break-up albums from Spoon, Joanna Newsom, Erykah Badu, and Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. Controversial music videos from Lady Gaga, Badu, and M.I.A. Janelle Monáe cornering the “Hey Ya” market with “Tightrope.” The initial run of David Simon’s Treme, which is a feast for music geeks.Courtney Love re-emerging like some fucked-up phoenix rising from the ashes of coke and pixie dust. Corin Tucker making a solo album. The Lilith Fair relaunching this summer, though unfortunately at one point in support of anti-choice brainwashing complexes crisis pregnancy centers. Christina Aguilera collaborating with some interesting folks on her new album. And so many amazing album covers. Goddamn.
By my count, we have four new covers to talk about: the Dap-Kings’ I Learned the Hard Way, Hole’s Nobody’s Daughter, Monáe’s soon-to-be-released The ArchAndroid, and Aguilera’s Bionic. As I want to write proper reviews for the first three titles, I figured today’s post could be on D*Face‘s cover art for Bionic, which doesn’t come out until June. I’ll admit that I’m pretty nervous that I don’t see Santigold, M.I.A., and Le Tigre listed as producers on the album’s Wiki entry. While I do note Ladytron, I’ll also point out that it’s the dudes in the band who worked with her. The lead single “Not Myself Tonight,” has been released and I like it even if it’s slipping on the charts. The Hype Williams-directed video is set to premiere on Vevo tomorrow, though you can look at snippets and stills from the singer’s Web site. The cover was revealed last month and to whet our appetites, I thought we could briefly look at it.
Cover to Bionic (RCA, 2010); image courtesy of wikimedia.org
Haters can say that the lead single is derivative, but that’s one hell of a cover. Admittedly, the critique is pretty close to the surface: the cover shows the obscured constructedness of pop stars, the technological interventions on their voices and bodies, and the potential disembodiment of normative and subservient female glamor. I’d also bring up Richard Dyer’s call in White to make whiteness strange. It also seems to recall Daft Punk’s politically dire and underrated Human After All and the corporate shills and politicians in They Live.
Still from "They Live"; image courtesy of movingimagesource.us
As I mentioned in my review of Badu’s new album linked above, the cyborg — and the cyborg as doll — is a racially fraught cultural figure that black women have channeled in their work, particularly Missy Elliott and Lil Kim. I’d add Monáe and Nicki Minaj (channeling Kim) to that list.
Nicki Minaj, in doll form; image courtesy of rightonmag.com
I’d also point out that Björk and Chris Cunningham challenged the racial and sexual connotations of the cyborg in the music video for “All Is Full Of Love.”
Twin cyborg Björks making out; image courtesy of bjork.com
I’m not convinced that Aguilera has done anything new here, but continue to be interested with whom and what she chooses to align.
Alexandra Patsavas licensing indie rock for TV and movies like a boss; image courtesy of letterstotwilight.wordpress.com
I’ve been thinking about Alexandra Patsavas for a long time. She started blipping on my radar during the first season of The O.C., which she helped make a phenomenon early in the show’s run. She’s worked similar magic for Grey’s Anatomy and collaborates with creator Josh Schwartz, who also gave us The O.C., Chuck, Gossip Girl, andRockville CA. Her credits are all over network and cable television. She’s also worked in film, most notably with the Twilight franchise.
Patsavas in between Josh Schwartz and Kaiser Chiefs' lead singer Ricky Wilson; image courtesy of pedrowatcher.freedomblogging.com
What does she do, you ask? She’s a music supervisor, and one of the few women to rise to such prominence in the industry. The role of music supervisor has expanded considerably in the past fifteen years or so to include legal finagling with record labels. I’d also argue that their role, depending on the project and the collaborative spirit of a director or show runner, warrants entitlement to authorial claims. As such, Patsavas is also the person largely responsible for the commercialization of indie rock during the 2000s, almost single-handedly catapulting bands like Death Cab for Cutie into mainstream success. She even has a hand in distribution, as the indie-friendly Twilight soundtracks that she developed were released on her record label, Chop Shop.
New Moon soundtrack (Chop Shop/Atlantic, 2009); image courtesy of openbooksociety.com
Thus, she’s been a figure I’ve followed obsessively during this decade, sometimes causing me to sniff that I’d never sell independent music out like she has and other times provoking me to growl “bitch took my job,” depending on my cash flow at the time. Either way, I’m fascinated with her and think we should think about her work more closely.
It seems I’m not alone in thinking Ms. Patsavas is interesting. In a previous post on designer Anna Sui and her Gossip Girl-inspired collection for Target, reader Alaina made an astute comment about the shared importance of music and fashion on the show. To her, if anyone on the trendsetting teen soap has the cultural clout akin to, say, Sex and the City costume designer Pat Field, it isn’t designer Eric Daman but music supervisor Patsavas.
Now, I don’t want to put words in her mouth so hopefully she’ll feel compelled to elaborate her point further. But I interpreted her comment to mean that Patsavas’s work on Schwartz’s television shows, which all feature characters who are tremendously literate in popular and independent music, creates a sense of authenticity both for the show and for the characters whose lives are changed and identities formed by the right song from Spoon, Sonic Youth, LCD Soundsystem, Death Cab for Cutie, Air, Daft Punk, or any other cool-kid music act. In fact, Seth Cohen and Dan and Jenny Humphrey might not even exist without her, as they certainly wouldn’t know what band names to drop. Thus, Patsavas creates a brand awareness akin to the sort of work Field did through Carrie Bradshaw in making Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo, and Christian Louboutin such household names.
"Sarah, I own you like Alex Patsavas owns the Humphreys!", Pat Field with Sarah Jessica Parker; image courtesy of observer.com
For me, though, perhaps her most fascinating work is on Mad Men, which is often period-appropriate but sometimes dabbles with pointed anachronism, thus potentially opening up inquiry about the show’s relationship to historical authenticity. The most jarring (and discussed) musical moment so far has been season two’s “Maidenform,” which opens to Betty Draper, Joan Holloway, and Peggy Olsen getting dressed to the galloping strains of The Decemberists’s “The Infanta,” a track off Picaresque that was released in 2005 and not 1962. I’m assuming she’s responsible for selecting the show’s theme as well, though imagine score composer David Carbonara or creator/show runner/auteur Matthew Weiner could be responsible. Regardless, this is easily the show’s most heard but least commented upon bit of anachronism.
As I mentioned in my comment to Gary Edgerton’s essay for In Media Res about the show’s opening credits, the theme song is not the work of Bernard Herrmann or a Carbonara approximation. It’s an instrumental version of a song called “A Beautiful Mine.” The people responsible for it are an instrumental hip hop artist named RDJ2, a rapper from Freestyle Fellowship named Aceyalone, and a period-appropriate violinist named Enoch Light, whose “Autumn Leaves” provides the basis for the tune. The song originally appeared on Acey’s Magnificent City.
Pointedly, his vocals are absent from the show’s theme. I suppose a black man’s rap might be too anachronistic for some. But I also think there’s something unsettling about such an argument. It may either provide a comment on the deliberate absence of people of color in a show set in pre-integration America or validate many of the show’s detractors who cry “racism!” I think it does both.
Thus, song selection matters. But of course, so do song selectors.
I don’t know what it’s like where you live, but it’s been cooling off and getting overcast in Austin as we head into the fall. I for one, could not be happier. We’ve had months of three-digit temperatures, the heat forming itself into my nifty foot tan and bleaching the plush Garfield on my car window. I celebrated by frequenting Cheapo Discs after work, adding some key titles from Daft Punk, Ariel Pink, Kate Bush, and Black Dice to my collection, along with snagging Air’s 10,000 Hz Legend, one of the funniest albums by a French pop group that boasts one of the prettiest songs Beck ever recorded (“Vagabond”) and my favorite song by the Gallic duo (“Radio #1″).
The punks of Jubilee; image courtesy of stephanievegh.ca
The electrically depressive weather and investment in discarding and collecting our culture’s trash recalls the late Derek Jarman’s Jubilee, a movie I watched last night with Kristen and Curran (we missed Susan, who also usually watches movies with us). I credit Curran, a future queer punk PhD, for introducing me to the movie in the first place and can’t wait to read about it in his dissertation. Released in 1977, it was Jarman’s second movie, and my first viewing of his feature work. I had a passing familiarity of Jarman, as he also made music videos for acts like Suede, The Smiths, and The Pet Shop Boys. For example:
In addition, apparently he and Tilda Swinton were good friends and often worked together, so I think I’ll start with Edward II. You can read Swinton’s touching, lengthy tribute to Jarman.
So, I kinda can’t get over Jubilee. It was kind of amazing, but I don’t think I have a real handle on its plot. I can tell you these things. Queen Elizabeth I is transported to 1977 England, around the time of Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee and the country’s considerable economic downturn. From there, the movie preoccupies itself with mixed-gender group of punks linked in varying degrees to one another. They’re played by real British punks of the era (Jordan, Adam Ant, Toyah Wilcox), real queer British punks of the era (Linda Spurrier, Ian Charleson), and one quintessential American queer punk icon (the inimitable Wayne/Jayne County). They live in squalor. They steal cars. They play board games. They quote from historical tomes. They attempt to have pop careers, if only to destroy The Top of the Pops. They love each other, sometimes; that is, when they aren’t killing or getting killed by police.
As a document of its era, the movie is pretty significant. Brian Eno composed the score. Siouxsie and The Banshees appear on the telly. Adam and the Ants audition for a record company. While a bunch of kids attend a disco orgy, The Slits smash up a car. And Jayne County sings to herself in one amazing green room.
And yet it had a theatrical release in the UK, which I can’t imagine how that happened but can fully believe people’s non-plussed response to it. I mean, how do you process the scene where Amyl Nitrate (Jordan) performs her pop “hit” “Rule Britannia” for record mogul/madman Borgia Ginz, played by the phenomenal Orlando?
That said, I found the movie constructively, at times rapturously, difficult. How else to feel but to gape at all of the strong female punks, many of whom abide by defiantly non-normative beauty standards who take pride in their pock marks, acne, fleshy thighs, and cellulite dimples? Or Adam Ant’s feminine beauty? Or the sculpted, smoothed, Greco-Roman-bodied men who one imagines Jarman cast with a loving eye? Or the romantic impulses of the mixed-gender queer trio — two of whom identify each other as brothers? Or the upsetting deaths of the movie’s queer characters (including a particularly brutal, seemingly pointless murder of County — talk about killing your idols!)? Or the blinding whiteness, which, by absence, brings to mind England’s issues with nationalist, segregational racial politics? Or the fast-and-loose timeline? Or the preoccupation with classic art and literature amid and outside London’s urban decay? Or queering up the interactions in such a way so as to trigger punk’s oft-obscured homophobia (apparently Sex proprietrix/designer Vivienne Westwood issued a homophobic missive in response to the movie).
But if punk taught us anything, messy can be beautiful, good, and constructive. This is a movie that revels in this idea. Do make time for it. Just presume that you’ll need to see it twice.
Thanks to my friend Evan, who alerted me on Monday that some serious Aughties musical canonization was going down this week, I’ve been following Pitchfork’s unveiling of the Top 500 tracks of the decade. As it may be of interest, I thought I’d share my feelings.
In subsequent posts, I may comment on their impending coverage of the decade’s best music videos and albums, as well as their formulations on the reclamation of pop, the exploration of noise, and the mainstreaming of indie rock. I won’t devote posts to it, though, because there’s a fine line between providing useful commentary and hearing yourself type. And my hunch is that discussing the singles list will suffice, as it presents, by microcosm, a general set of criticisms I’ve long held about the “tastemaker” e-zine.
Covering Pitchfork’s appraisal of the decade in this way makes more sense to me anyway, as the 2000s marked the resurgence of the single. Our increasingly digitized media culture cultivated the need for that one song, found at the click of a mouse or the touch of an mp3 player button or phone pad. That song also tended to get posted on blogs, e-zines, and MySpace pages (however briefly) as a means to define the self or selves (this was a decade when Gnarls Barkley, Brightblack Morning Light, and Crystal Castles could potentially coexist on the same shuffle or mash-up).
So, this list is the first time I’ve seen music of my youth canonized in such a way that it now seems historical. When Pitchfork first did the list half-way through the decade, I was 22 and just out of college; an adult, but only sorta. More specifically, the songs were still new. But having graduated from college twice over and a year into my second post-college job in 2009, I can look at songs from 2000, when I was in high school, and feel my age like many folks who transitioned into adulthood in decades prior.
And now, some nostalgia. A lot of the songs on this list bring up specific memories, images, people, and feelings. I remember my friend Brooke trying to teach me a dance routine to Aaliyah’s “Try Again” for our junior prom. PJ Harvey’s “Good Fortune” reminded me of a high school boyfriend which, in hindsight, speaks to an epic love song’s power to project. I remember a classmate singing the chorus to OutKast’s “Ms. Jackson” to herself in French class. I remember hearing Jay-Z and UGK’s “Big Pimpin’” at a Claire’s somewhere in New York City on a field trip. Radiohead’s “The National Anthem” confused the hell out of me, but I kept playing it at full volume anyway. Missy Elliott’s “Get Ur Freak On” was a confusing song that made perfect sense. And if Daft Punk’s “One More Time” was released when the class of 2001 voted for our song, it would’ve been my pick (I submitted U2′s “Beautiful Day” and Counting Crows’ “Hanging Around”; our song ended up being Aerosmith’s cover of The Beatles’ “Come Together” from the Armageddon soundtrack, for some reason).
Then there’s the rough transition between high school and college. Songs off Radiohead’s Amnesiac and Daft Punk’s Discovery suggest my lonely, uncertain summer before college. I started college, withdrew mid-way through my first semester, and resumed in the spring. This was a “the” time — The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Shins, The Avalanches, and the last album by The Dismemberment Plan. It was also when I started to follow Pitchfork, mostly to avoid writing term papers.
After a summer back home, I applied for a college radio show. It was here that I really started learning about music, and just how much music there was. KVRX maintains a “none of the hits all of the time” policy; if a musical act got a single or video on rotation in a commercial market, they could not be played. While I was there, we pulled The Arcade Fire and Franz Ferdinand from rotation. Some deejays would think that by pulling a musical act they liked out of rotation, we were initiating a taste-based attack on coolness (i.e., undiscovered = good, discovered = bad). While this prejudice existed (and I would certainly perpetuate it at times), pulling an artist embraced by the mainstream out of college radio rotation felt more political to me. “Spoon is on 101X? Great! They’re awesome. Now let’s shine a light on the thousands of other bands who’ll never get that kind of attention.”
Pitchfork made an effort to shine a light too, biases notwithstanding. During my tenure at KVRX, my relationship with Pitchfork became contentious. While I followed Pitchfork, I was also dismissive or derisive of the staff’s opinions (a classic push-pull for many music geeks: we are at once too cool for Pitchfork, yet check to see if we line up with their rulings). As I came into my own as a feminist, I also became more critical of what they covered, how they covered it, and what they dismissed, out of which came, among other things, this blog.
Yet, there are so many songs on this countdown that remind me of that time. I remember my first radio show, when I played Interpol’s “NYC” because I had some vague idea of who they were. I remember exactly where I was when I first heard TV on the Radio’s “Staring At the Sun” and Dizzie Rascal’s “I Luv U.” I remember seeing Spoon perform “The Way We Get By” on Conan and hoping they’d get big. I remember hearing the bass line to Broken Social Scene’s “Stars and Sons” for the first time. I remember fighting The Rapture’s “House of Jealous Lovers” for weeks before surrendering. I remember being unable to avoid The Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights.” I remember playing Broadcast’s “Pendulum” while getting ready for parties. I remember rocking out to The Gossip’s “Standing in the Way of Control” in the deejay booth. I remember LCD Soundsystem’s “Losing My Edge” being one of the go-to songs deejays would throw on for a smoke break when we weren’t quoting from it (I alluded to it in this post’s title). I remember hearing M.I.A.’s “Galang” at a party and having it blow my mind. I remember impromptu dance parties after Alliance for a Feminist Option meetings when a bunch of sweaty grrrls I still call friends would shimmy to Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love” and OutKast’s “Hey Ya!” I remember skanking harder and smiling wider than I ever have with the person I built my life with to Ted Leo and the Pharmacists’ “Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?”
In addition, there was Boards of Canada, Wolf Eyes, Feist, Black Dice, Andrew Bird, Ladytron, Devendra Banhart, Destroyer, Hot Chip, The New Pornographers, Deerhoof, M. Ward, Liars, Junior Boys, The Walkmen, Manitoba (later Caribou), El-P, The Go Team, (Smog), Sufjan Stevens, RJD2, The Books, Talib Kweli, Phoenix . . . . The list goes on. If I ever had trouble keeping up with new artists after graduating in 2005, it was only because I had so many established artists to follow.
Of course, my college radio utopia didn’t last. It couldn’t. My monolithic friend group fragmented. People moved, lost touch, became casual, or just stopped being friends. Perhaps this is really when the decade became more to me than a sequence, instead an evolution of time. Late-in-the-decade offerings like LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends” and Animal Collective’s “Fireworks” convey this for me.
After college, I acquired Deerhunter, CSS, Hercules and Love Affair, Santigold, Bat for Lashes, Grizzly Bear, Battles, No Age, Be Your Own Pet, Girl Talk, Magik Markers, Vampire Weekend, Vivian Girls, Women, King Khan and the Shrines, and St. Vincent.
Assuredly there will be more new artists for me (and you) to adopt. Just this week, because of the countdown, I picked up on The Knife.
There are artists whose countdown placement evinces moments when we were willing to bet the farm on an act that now seem dated (Death From Above 1979, The Streets, and Klaxons). There are also acts I didn’t “get” but sorta came around on later (hello, Joanna Newsom). There are acts I didn’t know that well in college but came to treasure later (bless you, Neko Case). There are acts I enjoy but could never fully champion (I like you fine, Belle and Sebastian). There are acts I appreciate, but kinda overwhelm me and can’t listen to all the time (Jesus, Xiu Xiu). And then there are acts for whom I just never got the fuss (Fleet Foxes and The Decemberists).
With that said, this countdown plays predictably. Accepting minor issues like what song was selected to represent an artist and where songs fell in ranking, Pitchfork got a lot right. They also got caught up with some songs that I think they’re overselling, and some things they marginalized or completely overlooked. I’ll preoccupy the rest of this post with those flaws.
For me Pitchfork’s big Achilles heel has always been hip hop, primarily because they really only cover mainstream hip hop (Lil Wayne, T.I., 50 Cent, Clipse, Eminem, Cam’ron, OutKast, Kanye West, and Jay-Z — the last three are all over this countdown). And while this isn’t a problem in its own right, it limits how hip hop is defined and what it represents, which, in a lot of commercial hip hop, that still means money, Cristal, whips, blunts, and bitches (though not in all cases). It certainly suggests that the only way for rappers to be successful and culturally relevant is to be part of a corporate mechanism. This seems like something a publication that prides itself on giving visibility to independent artists should re-evaluate. Because, in my mind, if there’s no Busdriver or Jean Grae, I question the validity of the list.
As a result, it largely eclipses underground hip hop which has seen tremendous advancements over the course of the decade, particularly in the states. Talent from labels like Stones Throw, Quannum Projects, Rhymesayers, Definitive Jux, and anticon., along with talent at labels like Plug Research, Mush, Warp, and Ubiquity have created some of the most vital and interesting work in the genre, expanding its sound and its content while working outside a corporate mechanism in the process (anticon. runs as a collective). But you’d never know that if you only read Pitchfork, who acknowledged a few efforts, primarily from white male label owners (El-P) and instrumental artists (RJD2, DJ Shadow). No female MCs were acknowledged. This may also speak to the dearth of female MCs in underground hip hop, but doesn’t excuse it (I love you, Jean Grae; I love you, Psalm One). My challenge to hip hop fans in the next decade is to try to create online resources as influential as Pitchfork to get the message out. You’ve got guaranteed spots on my blogroll.
Also, as you may have noticed if you combed through the entire list, only the top 200 songs are accompanied by blurbs from the writing staff. While I understand that writing 300 more blurbs presents its own challenges, I also think it suggests that tracks 500-301 weren’t good enough for a write-up. And this makes me especially sad when many of the women I loved in this decade – Vivian Girls, St. Vincent, Goldfrapp, Sleater-Kinney, Bat for Lashes, Björk, and The Gossip — are thrown at the end and not given any qualifying statements. This especially seems necessary for a song like The Gossip’s “Standing In the Way of Control,” which became an LGBTQI anthem this decade. That would be especially useful to read alongside #18, Hercules and Love Affair’s “Blind.” This is a great dance song that I’ve always interpreted as an anthem for coming out and living life queer. But you wouldn’t know that from Tim Finney’s write-up.
And while I’m heartened by the women who did make it to the top 200, especially women like M.I.A., Beyoncé, Missy Elliott, Annie, and Karen O of The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, who made the top 20, I can’t help but notice that many of these women are pop artists who work extensively with predominantly male producers. I don’t want to suggest that cutting a track with Timbaland or Diplo or Pharell from The Neptunes means that women are robbed of artistic autonomy, as I wouldn’t say that for Justin Timberlake. However, I do take issue with what female artists and what songs get praise. Or even what versions of songs. While the Diplo remix of the version of M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” that features UGK is great, I wonder why her version isn’t enough.
That said, the 2000s were both a hell of an education and a hell of a time. Pitchfork knows it. I know it. Hopefully, you know it too. It was a great time to be alive. I hope the next decade is even better.
Still from "Addicted to Love" video; image courtesy of onlythe80s.com
Lately I’ve been revisiting Robert Palmer, The Power Station, and mid-80s to early 90s Duran Duran. For some reason. It may have something to do with Duran Duran’s Liberty being the first CD I ever got. Again, for some reason. I’ve been offsetting this with Daft Punk in the car, so I can pretend I’m in Tron.
(Aside: The first tape I ever got? New Kids on the Block’s Hangin’ Tough.)
So, there’s probably two reasons for my Miami Vice-rock renaissance.
1. Glossy production aside, Power Station drummer Tony Thompson rocks it.
2. When my parents split up in the mid-80s, my dad moved to West Palm Beach and lived the single life for a while. One artifact that I wish he’d kept from this period was a glass he got from a night club called Banana Max. The glass was cylindrical, opaque, beige, and made out of (three-dimensional) naked women. Aside from a rock that he découpaged with a photo of Raquel Welch and my grandfather’s April 1970 Playmate of the Month jigsaw puzzle mounted on cardboard (both in my possession), this is the weirdest item owned by a male family member that has, in opposition, shaped my feminist beliefs.
The glass is also a document of its era. If you don’t have one, a copy of Riptide is the next best thing. And this is where Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” music video comes in.
As a feminist, I have trouble with this music video for one big, obvious, highlighter-yellow reason. It’s so blatantly sexist. The models who comprise Palmer’s backing band are normatively beautiful, musically inept, interchangable, ornamental, passive, and blankly spectacular. They’re kinda like a Busby Berkeley chorus line, only on sedatives and with visible nipples.
And yet. I can’t let this one go so easily. It’s an indelible image that is simple and yet iconic in design (it’s so effective that ”Simply Irresistible” and “I Didn’t Mean to Turn You On” only mildly revise the concept). Thus, it’s also easily replicable. When you put “Addicted to Love” alongside another lexicon 1980s video like, say, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” it’s much easier to match (many people, including Jackson, tried and failed to reach or exceed that video’s epic proportions).
It’s also an easy concept to subvert, which is my primary interest. I’d like to highlight a few instances where women take on “Addicted to Love” and, in the process of recasting and reconfiguration, potentially disrupt the original music video’s sexist aims.
The one most of us probably all know is Shania Twain’s “Man, I Feel Like A Woman,” which shows the singer flipping the script. Twain is Palmer, and she’s accompanied by a group of beefy, bronzed, eyelinered boys in mesh shirts and leather pants. While I think the clip’s clear limitation is that the switched-gender roles only go so far when it glamorizes and sexualizes Twain via skimpy attire in a manner similar to the girls in the original video, I do enjoy its winking, campy sensibilities (i.e., visible male nipples, having one of the boys lick his lips just like one of the girls in “Addicted to Love”). Also, I kinda read her backing band as gay.
Blink and you miss it, but Britney Spears also plays Palmer in a Pepsi ad from the early 2000s (start it at :57).
Kinda interesting. She’s got a shaggy wig and a suit on, which could potentially queer her. However, the cut of the jacket and dance moves highlight her breasts, reifying her femininity. Also, she has no contact whatsoever with the (female) background dancers. To me, this further emphasizes that “Addicted to Love” was an iconic video of the 1980s and fails to do much to subvert the original video or the singer. That she’s only in a suit and tie for ten seconds before going back to tight ensembles that show off her decidedly feminine torso furthers this claim. Britney and Pepsi are just trying on Palmer — they aren’t doing anything new or different with him; just using him to sell Pepsi.
There’s also Beyoncé’s “Green Light,” which I mentioned in an earlier post. She positions herself as both Robert and a member of the chorus through her costuming, queers her interactions with the chorus through choreography, and showcases an all-female band who are clearly playing their instruments.
And let’s not forget Kim Gordon, who covered the song as part of Ciconne Youth (a Sonic Youth-related project that, alongside Palmer, also championed and mocked Madonna — how very art school of them). This version makes me wonder what would happen if one of the girls in Palmer’s “band” let down her hair, smeared her make-up, snatched a microphone, and used Palmer’s song to mock him.
Also, my friend Curran posted the video in the comments section, but it’s too good not to mention in the post. Michelle Shocked sent up the music video in 1990 with “On the Greener Side,” taking the queerness, campiness, cleverness to the next level. Thanks for bringing it to my attention, Curran!
In sum, when ladies put on the Palmer drag, we might a broader sense of how women can turn being spectacle into a position of power, as well as a position containing multiple possibilities for the performer.
