Odd Future with Mos Def at center; image courtesy of villagevoice.com
Note: As of July 12, 2011, the comments thread to this post is closed. I’m done talking about Odd Future, and frankly, unless you’ve got a constructive argument or a fresh take on them, you should be too.
Last week, Odd Future made an indelible network debut on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The prolific L.A.-based hip hop collective has been generating a lot of hype. I started hearing about them last fall. Music critics began latching on to their work and started following leader Tyler, the Creator’s Twitter feed, and comparisons to Kool Keith, Eminem, the Sex Pistols, N.E.R.D., Bad Brains, and the Wu-Tang Clan soon followed. Dutifully, I listened to some songs. The group is best recognized for their distinct sound and image, which features an austere production aesthetic and an obsessive focus on, among other things, all the ways people can rape each other.
I think I was supposed to be shocked and offended but frankly I was too bored to make it through more than a handful of songs. However, like many emotional states, boredom is variegated.
Primarily, I’m bored with the hype machine. Critics get duped. Occasionally I’m no different. And we all have a lot of things to reconcile before making any ruling, which informs Zach Baron’s Village Voiceprofile and Mehan Jayasuriya’s Thought Catalog post on the group.
But ya’ll, these Wu-Tang comparisons are lazy. The only things they share are spare beats and being a gaggle of black men (given Tyler’s recent signing to XL, I hope they also share a keen business acumen that allows them to exist as one entity for a label while allowing themselves to be free agents as solo artists). I think some music critics always find groups of black musicians as exceptional, perhaps because they never encounter more than one black person at a time. Living Colour is a black rock group?!? Even though African Americans helped invent rock music by integrating raced musical forms like country and the blues? WRITE IT DOWN. I can draw a sketchy parallel between Tyler and Method Man’s charismatic presence and conversational flow, but some other members have yet to prove themselves as singular personalities the way Wu-Tang did. Maybe Hodgy Beats is Ghostface Killah. Maybe drawing a comparison between Tyler’s cult of personality and fellow West Coast punk Darby Crash’s would wake me up. I can go a little further with the Keith comparison, though don’t think the group has yet to harness their free associative revelries with the comedic impact and verbal prowess that Keith does. Maybe drawing parallels is a stupid, baseless exercise that belittles all parties.
The second kind of boredom was informed by hipster incredulity, which is why I remain skeptical about MF Doom’s skills as an emcee. Odd Future’s iconoclastic punk spirit is exactly the kind of thing cool kids who don’t actually listen to much hip hop would champion. Odd Future may seem like a rank fart blast of fresh air if you aren’t familiar with, say, the talent on Doomtree or Rhymesayers’ rosters. Granted, their recent performance on Fallon’s show represented something of a passing of the torch. Roots’ drummer Questlove encouraged the booking, which scans as a kind professional gesture. And I agree with Tyler’s recent assertion that people who want Odd Future to stay underground aren’t real fans because they don’t want them to succeed. This tension is kind of fascinating, because it seems to me that Odd Future’s core audience is peopled with hipsters, who as a group skew white and of middle- to upper-middle class origins. In short, they can afford to drop out and stay obscure. Odd Future want mainstream success. I don’t want to make some racialist, classist assumption and say they need it, but they want the mass appeal that stretches past being a blogosphere curio. They want power. They might want endorsement deals too. Too bad they’ll lose a Super Bowl invite to Arcade Fire.
However, as a feminist I’m leery of hipster appraisal. This doesn’t necessarily stem from not wanting to be identified as part of the group. If you think I’m a hipster, fine whatever. Some of the nicest folks I know and some of the worst people I’ve encountered could be labeled hipsters. IDing them as such seems both irrelevant and relativist.
But let’s be honest: hipsters tend to carry a lot of liberal white guilt with them, especially true among the most (pseudo-)intellectual. A group like Odd Future can prompt unwarranted discussion about how their bleak world view dovetails nicely with the United States’ economic recession, which seems like a way for these people to congratulate themselves for constructing an illusion of racial sensitivity. I think this is problematic for two reasons. For one, this is a facile attempt at explaining their cultural relevance that requires greater political nuance. Steve Hyden recently argued that nü metal predicted the cynicism and maverick posturing of the Bush administration. It sounds great, but seems too easy to me. For another, isn’t it insulting to assume the economic recession and Odd Future have anything to do with one another? Doesn’t the assumption that urban-based youth of color are always associated with socioeconomic collapse seem . . . racist?
My surreptitious attitude toward hipsters extends well past my generation. It’s old news that hippies and beatniks sublimated chauvinism and misogyny because straight white guys set the terms. This hasn’t changed radically despite an influential feminist blogogensia. In fact, sometimes I think we haggle over progressive or subversive readings of this stuff when we should probably set all of it on fire. Anyway, I knew some hipsters would rationalize or justify Odd Future’s hate speech, because in this regard we are no different from the suburban smug marrieds we assume we have cultural capital over. I recently overheard one guy describe Tyler’s proclivity for rapping about holding women hostage in basements as a “motif” at a Marnie Stern show. Hooray, your liberal arts education allows you to justify rape in the same way generations of men have before you. I gave him the biggest scowl I could summon, but I wasn’t surprised. How can you be disappointed when you’re already disappointed?
I also share this boredom with my mother. When I was seven, I read Ramona the Brave. The first grade is stressful for Ms. Quimby, as is her mother’s new job and her family’s inattention toward her. At one point, she flies off the handle and starts swearing at her family, who allow her vitriol. Her blue word of choice: “guts.” What I gleaned from this book, as a wiser second grader to parents who then strove to keep a fledgling print shop afloat, is that I would like to start swearing too. Since I absorbed vocabulary from after-dinner conversations and stints in day care, I knew the right words.
My mom bargained with me, perhaps because she shares my belief that swearing children are comedy gold (for a contemporary example, watch Bobb’e J. Thompson steal Role Models from Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott). I was allowed to curse a blue streak, but only at home and never at anyone. I could only apply swear words as descriptors. But after a week of me employing “fuckin’” as an adjective, mom flipped the script! She told me that smart people know how to use curse words sparingly and draw from a larger vocabulary. “Fuckin’” remains one of my favorite words, especially when I’m angry and therefore southern. But she’s right. And that’s how I feel about Odd Future’s rhymes. It’s clear they play with complex language, but a lot of times those S.A.T. words, humorous observational asides, and left-field cultural references are obscured by swear words. And rape jokes. And homophobic epithets. I really don’t want to compare this group to the Family Guy writing staff but both should try harder.
This brings me to the major source of my boredom, which emanates from being too grown for this nonsense. I don’t think Odd Future are subversive. I think they need to grow up. I would like them to broaden their scope, hone their skills, and diversify their lyrical content. I don’t necessarily think they should get into message rapping or “elevate their people” or any of the other things white liberals ascribe to young black people who make them uncomfortable. I also think that some folks’ objection to the group’s rape narratives stem from the racist myth of the black sexual predator, which the group may be responding to. However, I think I’m meeting people more than half-way on that one. Because I never, under any circumstance, find rape funny. I also cannot abide by any of their casual homophobia and jokes about ass rape.
To me, there’s little difference between the intent of many of their rhymes and what the kid who sat next to me in the first grade was trying to accomplish by flipping his eyelids. Or what a high school acquaintance was after when he said that girls who get raped should just lay back and enjoy it. Or why young men (Tyler among them) develop obsessions with A Clockwork Orange (I recommend they read Gary Mairs’ critique of its legacy before donning bowler hats). Or what a group of homophobes are up to when they wail on a couple of gay men leaving a bar. It’s supposed to seem bad and cool, but it’s just childish and frequently awful. And please don’t tell me that as a feminist I have no sense of humor. I do. I’m also really funny when I go off on a rant or spill queso on my shirt. I’m just not laughing because you aren’t funny. You can do better. Odd Future can do better, but I’m not willing to give them the mantle of the new big thing until they do.
However, I have some learning to do myself. Recently Molly Lambert Tweeted about how Syd tha Kyd’s involvement challenges racist notions of the group’s preoccupation with rape (apparently her mom also mentored her in a high school music program–yay, cool moms!). Frankly, I’m somewhat unclear how a female producer accomplishes this outright but I do think Lambert is right to identify Syd’s role. Music producers tend to be men, both within and outside of hip hop. I’m curious about how Syd conceptualizes her role, but I’d imagine asking her what it’s like to be a female producer within a predominantly male group is insulting to her for both personal and professional reasons.
Syd’s participation is particularly exceptional to me because her beats are what I respond to most favorably. Her production aesthetic is minimal to the point of inducing claustrophobia but prone to disorienting passages. The beats bring the ultraviolence to a horror movie where the black kids aren’t always the victims (though I can’t celebrate their ugly tendency to victimize). This is what really gives Odd Future its sense of sonic terrorism, as Syd foregrounds their rhymes by having the voices dominate the mix while giving the listener grooves too slippery and slight to hold onto. It also makes the group distinctive, as they don’t use samples. For this reason Syd is as important as the group’s breakout star, and why I also hope she gets her own contract.
The Kids Are All Right's principal ensemble; image courtesy of filmschoolrejects.com
Last night was must-see TV, at least at my house. Having followed former NBC executive Jeff Zucker’s stupefying programming decisions, further driven home after reading Bill Carter’s The War For Late Night, it’s a wonder the network even has its Thursday night comedy line-up. I sat through Perfect Couples‘ cold open and shaved my legs during The Office, but Community and the triumphant mid-season return of Parks and Recreation did not disappoint. But since I refuse to watch Outsourced or Leno but planned to stay up for the Dismemberment Plan performance on Fallon (seriously, music booker Jonathan Cohen is turning it out), I needed something to occupy my time. I stumbled on the chords to “Jane Says” and attempted to untangle a necklace. I also watched Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right, after Dana Stevens and virtually everyone else told me to see it. Also, Cholodenko’s comments during the Hollywood Reporter directors’ roundtable won me over and Annette Bening’s recent Golden Globe win reminded me of her cerebral sex appeal. Plus I’ll literally see any movie Mark Ruffalo is in.
I was more than a little skeptical of this movie during its theatrical run. The possibility of a dalliance between a lesbian and her heterosexual male sperm donor made me grimace a bit. My principal concern was something Amanda Klein touched on with in part of a tweet that stated “lesbians really love getting pounded by straight dudes.” To my surprise, the affair between Julianne Moore and Ruffalo’s characters didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would. The affair certainly isn’t the focus of the movie, which breezes through it to devote considerable time to the aftermath. Moore’s Jules discusses human sexuality’s fluid nature in an earlier scene. Yes, this is rather obvious foreshadowing. But frankly, I’ve known a few lesbians who’ve been involved with men in various capacities. It didn’t make them any less queer.
This commitment to representing lesbians as complex beings because of and apart from their sexuality was reflected in the performances. Bening and Moore very much registered as a couple to me. They’re possibly the sort of couple where one partner was queer long before she found the other, who may have discovered her lesbian identity through this relationship. The movie handled the affair as an indiscretion and lapse of judgment between two aimless people who briefly take solace in approaching middle age as one party’s daughter is heading off to college and the other is just getting to know the kids he helped create. Furthermore, I thought the exploration of lesbian partners who shared the experience of child-bearing fascinating, especially when they have to confront parenting differences in relation to which child they gave birth to. Seriously, I want to read more about this.
However, The Kids was merely all right. There’s a lot to recommend. The ensemble is fantastic (recognition should also go to Mia Wasikowska, who I loved in the first season of In Treatment and is great as older daughterJoni). Music supervisor Liza Richardson does an exceptional job locating the songs these characters would identify with (Joni would totally throw the Knife on while loafing in her room). The production design is phenomenal. The homes immediately resonate as the dwelling places where upper-middle-class bougie southern Californians. Thus Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg’s script, which my partner had an allergic reaction to, also registers. I don’t necessarily like these people, but I buy them. Every clipped line or wine ovation Bening delivers as breadwinner doctor Nic strikes the right balance between surreptitious and well-mannered. Likewise, every time Julianne Moore says “man,” it seems like a joint is being passed just out of frame. And when the couple interrogate their son Laser (Josh Hutcherson, playing a role with a name only ex-hippie types would come up with) about their suspicion that he’s gay or goad their children into sharing their feelings, the premium they place on unfiltered self-expression scans as the tactics of people who use phrases like “higher self” and spend thousands of dollars and hours in therapy. While I’m not enamored with the efforts, I certainly appreciate their sensitive realization.
My biggest problem with the movie was exposition. I know that the movie was made for a pittance and under a truncated shooting schedule, but I would have appreciated ten more minutes of set-up. Why are Jules and Nic in a rut? Why does Ruffalo’s Paul care about being a father after forgetting that he donated his specimen when he was 19 and broke? Why is Laser’s friend peeing on cats? Who exactly is Paul’s girlfriend Tanya (played by Yaya DaCosta, who should have won the third cycle of America’s Next Top Model but is doing okay by herself as a working actress, particularly in John Sayles’ Honeydripper)? This is drawn together too hastily for me, especially given the care put into the rest of the movie.
However, the scene that’s the center of the movie for me is Nic impromptu performance of a verse from Joni Mitchell’s “All I Want” at a dinner at Paul’s house. When perusing his record collection she discovers, after weeks of suspicion about him and his proximity to her partner, that they’re both fans. This part didn’t surprise me, nor did the reveal that Wasikowska’s character is named after her (seriously, poll a sample of late boomer or early Gen Xer women — 4 out of 5 probably love Mitchell, especially if your pool resides in California). I could be snarky and say that it would be better if they dug a little deeper than track one of the canonical Blue. What, no love for The Hissing of Summer Lawns? But Blue captured the zeitgeist and lives on across generations for a reason. It’s a devastating record about love curdled by deception and human error.
Joni, Joanna -- thus the circle game continues; image courtesy of spinner.com
It totally works here, bolstered by Bening’s disarming performance. The camera lingers on Nic’s ostensibly private reverie. It’s a purposely awkward but deeply informative scene. Nic might be embarrassing her kids but she’s ultimately singing to herself. Jules and Paul watch, perhaps only slightly aware of how deeply affected she is by what’s going on. Following her performance, she will walk into Paul’s bathroom and have the truth she already knows confirmed for her. But this scene gives you insight into her interiority and why she’ll remain committed to her family after the fallout. It’s a subtle, powerful moment that demonstrates what the movie is and what it could be.
Cover to New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh) (Universal Motown 2010); image courtesy of wikimedia.org
Erykah Badu’s latest offering is one of the year’s most anticipated releases for me. A long-time fan, Mama’s Gunchanged my perception of the world. Carrying on the artist’s tradition of bridging personal reflection with political awareness, 2008′s New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) evinced the work of a maturing artist and mother with an insurrectionist’s heart. Released during the twilight of the Bush Administration and somewhat of a musical departure with its use of digital composition and recording software, Badu linked the political climate to the addiction and disease that destroyed many people of color during the “greed is good” Reagan years. Sometimes, as with TV on the Radio’s 2008 release, Dear Science, Badu suggested possibilities for change. But most of these moments came from within and not out of hoping a political leader would make any profound difference for the citizenry.
While 4th World War should be judged on its own merits, another reason it was so interesting was that it was the first installment of a two-part series. And if this album was so forward-thinking and challenging, what lies ahead in part two?
The answer will be the focus of this entry. Released at the end of March, New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh) was preceded by a controversial music video for lead single “Window Seat.” My first introduction to the song was about a week prior to the video’s release. She performed the song with The Roots on Jimmy Fallon, and I was pumped.
Some reviewers have been disheartened by this album, which basically focuses on a disintegrating romatic relationship. Jody Rosen claims it’s too consciously strange at times and is lacking in many actual songs, which is a claim I think you could make about 4th World War upon first listen. Jessica Hopper believes the album’s inward focus lacks the energy and cultural relevance that propelled the series’ first offering.
While I’m an admirer of both critics, I think Oliver Wang‘s assessment most closely mirrors my thoughts. While 4th World War may have been more outwardly political and Return of the Ankh more personally reflective and at times self-pitying, I find Badu to be consistent, and her newest release only bolsters my opinion. Going back to Baduizm and including Worldwide Underground, Badu’s oft-overlooked follow-up to Mama’s Gun, all of her albums contain moments of self-reflection and political consciousness (sometimes in the same song, as on “Other Side of the Game,” “…& On,” and “Danger”) celebrations of love, and outpourings of grief (Mama’s Gun‘s ”Orange Moon,” “In Love With You,” and “Green Eyes”). Her albums are also punctuated with skits and asides that suggest that Badu is at once strange, silly, and smart (“Afro” and “Amerykahn Promise,” for starters).
All of these moments can be found here. There’s reflections on the personal and professional juggling that Badu tires of in “Window Seat.” “Turn Me Away (Get MuNNY)” focuses on capitalism in ways that to me recall Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings protest “Money” and P!nk’s ”Stupid Girls,” which mockingly indicts status-obsessed starlets. But these concerns have always been in Badu’s mind.
Album opener “20 Feet Tall” features Badu reminding herself that she is strong enough to get over her heartache. Studio riff “You Loving Me” is an example of Badu’s self-deprecating humor that may have been cut from another artist’s album out of a need to showcase more polished, ”important” work. And closer ”Out My Mind, Just In Time” recalls the wordplay and drama of “Green Eyes” though is messier, more emotionally conflicted, and ends in discordance that recalls Joanna Newsom’s “Does Not Suffice,” from another great 2010 break-up record, Have One on Me. I also think the last track is a promise of things to come: Badu may be wounded for now, but she’s got unfinished business to tend to.
And while 4th World War wasn’t as lavish a production, all of her albums show a clear indebtedness to funk, soul, and jazz in their arrangements. They also feature hip hop’s common practice of sampling (revisit “Love of My Life (An Ode to Hip Hop)” or take a look at her production team for clearer evidence of Badu’s fandom). As Wang points out in his review, samples provide multiple layers of meaning that gesture toward the time in which Badu came of age as well as her influences and personal history.
I’d also like to reclaim the break-up album a bit, as women have made art out of them, processing personal feelings with little filter and suggesting how power dynamics are gendered in heterosexual couples. Joni Mitchell did it with Blue. Björk did it with Homogenic.As with Mama’s Gun,I think Badu is continuing in that tradition.
Cover of Joni Mitchell's Blue (Reprise, 1971); image courtesy of wikipedia.org
Finally, while its contents may lack obvious political content, I think Badu and Kyledidthis created visually stunning and connotatively loaded album art. On the cover, Badu is drawn as a robot — perhaps the robot girl she sings as in “Turn Me Away (Get MuNNY)”. Black female artists have referenced the cyborg and the android in their work, notably Missy Elliott, Lil Kim, and Janelle Monáe. Cultural critic Steven Shaviro neatly unpacks the potential connotations of Elliott and Kim identifying as cyborgs in his essay “Supa Dupa Fly: Black Women as Cyborgs in Hiphop Videos.” In a culture that privileges whiteness and still clings to racist ideologies, whether consciously or not, black women especially have been dehumanized because of presumptions about their sexuality and pressures to abide by Anglo/Eurocentric beauty standards.
Robot Badu confronts her potential audience on the cover, her gaze direct. Human Badu emerges from her skull, naked, sitting in grass, holding a tuning fork, and under a tree with branches that spell her name. Surrounding the robot is the flora that continues to grow amidst human-made weapons, airplanes, government buildings, and foreclosed houses that accompanied images of dead babies, fast food, television, and drugs on 4th World War‘s cover. While nature is long associated with female identity, Badu acknowledges her continual presence in both worlds. This album’s growing on me, and evidence that one of pop music’s most original artists is herself still evolving.
So I finally got around to seeing the much-discussed music video for Erykah Badu’s single “Window Seat,” from her new album New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh), which came out yesterday. In it, she is featured walking around a Dallas street, stripping before a gaggle of pedestrians before being shot. The video concludes with the word “GROUPTHINK” oozing in blue letters from her head and a spoken outro. I’ve since seen it several times and can now trail behind the tweets. If you haven’t seen it already, you can check it out here.
First off, I’ll come out and say that I like this music video. I’ve liked the song since I heard Badu perform it with longtime collaborators The Roots on Jimmy Fallon a few weeks back. I’m also really glad people are talking about it. As a long-time fan of her work, it’s about time people acknowledge that she has consistently been at the center of some of the most interesting, challenging, and readable music videos since the start of her career. “Honey” (which she co-directed) is my favorite video of the past few years — it’s overtly political, visually compelling, dense with references, takes a revisionist’s attitude toward music history, and is funny as hell. But she’s had me as a supporter since the first time I saw “On & On” back in 1997.
It’s a little disheartening that people are only now starting to talk about one of her music videos, as I think some of why Badu has been overlooked has to do with our culture’s racialized conceptions of how female musicians are supposed to comport themselves as video subjects across musical genres. White ladies like Björk or Madonna can “elevate” the medium to ”art,” but black women — usually packaged as R&B, hip hop, or pop stars — need to be commercially viable. If they’re down with glamour, spectacle, and easy objectification, so much the better.
Badu’s never played that game, and has perhaps been under the radar as a result. I’m not worried about how this renewed attention will impact her career. She’s quite capable of fielding Twitter follower requests. And I’m not certain that it’ll substantially boost opening week sales of her new album. Some folks may buy (or more likely download) out of curiosity, most likely stumbling upon a cerebral listening experience. If they recognize that New Amerykah is a sequel, maybe they’ll investigate and give a listen to its incendiary predecessor. She’s a veteran artist, and her career isn’t about to be compromised by becoming a tweeting trend. But at least the video is taking some of the attention away from Lady Gaga.
Erykah Badu, weirder than Lady Gaga; image courtesy of nydailynews.com
Now onto the Coodie Rock-directed clip itself, which has courted controversy for its display of nudity and allusions to the JFK assassination. I will reflect upon some key aspects.
1. The JFK assassination: It’s clear that Badu is conveying a sense of place. President John Kennedy was killed in Dallas in November 1963. Badu was born Erica Wright in the same city in 1971. In the interval, Vice President Lyndon Johnson took office, bringing about considerable gains for racial equality through the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He was also (though not without a heavy conscience) responsible for the escalation of the Vietnam War, which killed or forever altered many young men, many of whom were African American.
While I don’t want to overstate matters, Badu was clearly influenced by the gains and the ongoing struggles of American race relations. This consciousness moved her to change the spelling of her first name and take on the surname “Badu,” which has origins in both Ghanaian and in Arabic languages. It may have influenced her enrollment in Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and Grambling State University. It’s also evident in her lyrics, which often grapples with the dimensions of racial tension and oppression, as well as celebrate the philosophic tenets of the Nation of Islam. Thus I read Dallas as both a site of American political tragedy, the birthplace of Erica Wright, and space out of which Erykah Badu came into being.
2. Badu’s clothing and body: As Natalie Hopkinson reminds in her assessment of “Window Seat,” the black female body is a site of troublesome discourses around race and sexuality. Indeed, this seems to be at the fore of that which Badu is trying to confront her audience. But I think it’s worth discussing what kind of a body being presented, along with the manner with which she sheds her clothes, and the clothes themselves. I believe that doing so points out a myriad of ways that the artist is subverting the process of video-making and her role as a pop star.
While disrobing and nudity are concerns here, let us first pause to consider what clothes Badu is wearing. She is dressed in casual attire — what appears to be a sweatsuit and a head scarf (for more on the subject of head scarves and their utilitarian and aesthetic functions for black women, I highly recommend reading this post from Kristen at Dear Black Woman,).
Furthermore, the way in which Badu takes off her clothing is clearly the cavalier actions of a self-possessed woman. She isn’t engaged with the camera, much less the people around her. She isn’t even engaged with the song, which reflects on her need for freedom and support from her partner and her struggles to acquire it amid conflicts from her relationship, and the struggles to balance her professional life with motherhood.
Badu, not particularly concerned with the camera; image courtesy of cbsnews.com
As for Badu body, I’d like to refer to the tattoo stretched across her shoulders. “Evolving” is clearly what she is doing and her body is a reflection of that. It’s been nearly 13 years since the release of her debut Baduizm. In that time, she’s matured and her physicality has changed as well. At the start of her career, she was slight, gamine. But age and motherhood shaped her figure, which she first alluded to on Mama’s Gun with a song called ”Cleva” and later elaborated on with “Me” from Amerykah Part One. In both songs, she explicitly mentions sagging breasts, pot bellies, and the thickening of her legs and backside. As if that isn’t enough candor, she actually tweeted about the birth of her third child in real time last year.
In short, we are not watching a conventional video vixen here. Beyoncé’s washboard abs and Sasha Fierce glare cannot be found. This video’s subject is a woman we don’t often get to see in the medium – a mother and working professional who is imperfect, proud of her imperfections, and unconcerned with returning or engaging with the cinephilic gaze, even as she’s willing to use social media as a marketing tool.
Badu's not studying this; image courtesy of nydailynews.com
And if the minute or so that Badu languishes in her underwear prompts certain viewers to fetishize her form, the carpet quickly gets pulled out from under them. The much-hyped nudity lasts about five seconds and abruptly ends with gunfire.
One thing I’d like to add about this music video is its inspiration. The clip for “Window Seat” begins with a dedication to Matt & Kim, a Brooklyn-based dance-punk duo who incorporated nudity and guerrilla-style film-making for their “Lessons Learned” video. This music video takes place in Times Square — perhaps an indictment on the commercialization of tourism that may motivate artists to move to lesser-known areas (that they then turn them into tourist destinations is another matter).
Unlike “Window Seat,” Matt & Kim revel in their shared nudity for a considerable period of time. One could argue that their hipster whiteness allows them this moment, as their bodies are seen as less threatening than Badu’s. However, in an interview with Pitchfork, the duo revealed that the police brutality depicted was very real. It seems a lot of fuss over some nudity, but then again naked bodies are never that simple. Thankfully, there are a few brave pop stars who recognize that. I’m so glad Badu is one of them.
William Miller, Stillwater, and the Band-Aids, on the road; image courtesy of redriverautographs.wordpress.com
All right, folks. I’m home with the sniffles, so let’s roll up our sleeves for this one. I recently re-watched my VHS copy and am ready to get into it. At length. Double-album style. Watching the movie on video means I didn’t listen to any DVD commentaries to formulate my thoughts. And while I have seen the Untitled version, my opinions will mostly be generated from the theatrical release version. Keep this in mind reading on, but feel free to mix it up in the comments section.
Now, this is a movie that pushes and pulls me like few other. As I’ve grown older, depending on how I felt when I watched it, I waft somewhere between charitable introspection and vitriolic rejection, one time even going so far as drunkenly telling a friend who likes this movie to shut up (sorry, Leigh!).
I wasn’t always this way. When it first came out during my senior year of high school, I looooooooved it. I saw it with my best friend Jamie and a boy I would later regret dating. Jamie was the editor of the school newspaper. I made my extracurricular committment to choir, but wished I had room in my class schedule to write for The Clarion. I wanted to be William Miller, the fifteen-year-old journalist protagonist who fills in for director Cameron Crowe and his own (idealized?) experiences as a writer. Figuring I could catch up in college, I set my sights on UT’s journalism school. By graduation, I assumed I’d be working as a rock critic in New York City, perhaps following bands like Stillwater, the fictitious classic rock band based on The Allman Brothers Band that breaks (then promises to make) Miller’s career.
My hope of being a rock journalist was officially dashed the second time I was not hired as a writer for The Daily Texan‘s entertainment section. After this rejection, 19-year-old me reasoned that these fat cats were shills for the man with terrible taste in music. I might have even phrased it that way at the time. From here, I officially cast my lot with college radio.
It’s important to bring up music journalism, not only to burn on it out of bitter feelings of rejection. When this movie originally came out, it was a dangerous time for print publications like Rolling Stone and Spin, much like the early 70s was a dangerous time for rock music. 1973, the year this movie takes place, was a harbinger of the bloated, corporate, cool-hunting enterprise the mainstream music industry would become. By 2000, it had completely transformed into a deregulated, conglomerate behemoth, peddling a handful of marketable, palatable, and safe talent that could sell ancillary products and jack up the retail prices on those ancillary products, which the compact disc had become. Music listeners, irritated by ever-higher CD prices, began downloading illegally in earnest. Sometimes they were met with arrests and lawsuits. Sometimes those lawsuits were filed by the popular musicians they idolized. As a result of these actions, and some truly stupid strategies the music industry has used to push units, people are more incredulous of the music industry than ever.
It’s important to bring in the Internet and the ubiquity of digital technology too, as online communication affected print journalism. Throughout the 2000s, publications scrambled to keep up circulation and readership. Some were bought and sold to other conglomerates. Some turned from monthlies to quarterlies. Some drastically changed their content and marketing campaigns (the saddest one for me was Spin, a high school favorite that was Rolling Stone‘s cool, younger sibling; by the time I entered graduate school, it packaged itself as the hipster version of Us and lagged behind e-zines like Pitchfork and Tiny Mix Tapes in its coverage of new music).Some shilled out to reality TV (looking at you, Rolling Stone). Some simply folded.
Along with publications, staffs shrunk due to budget cuts. Some folks survived the fall-out. Rob Sheffield came into the field from the academy and penned a touching memoir. Eric Weisbard became part of the academy, currently an American Studies professor at the University of Alabama. Some folks, like Sarah Lewitinn and Chuck Klosterman, became cults of personality. But others didn’t fare as well. Sia Michel lost her position as Spin‘seditor-and-chief, though was hired on to be The New York Times‘ pop music editor. At some places, an entertainment staff was whittled down to one person, if there was a department at all.
Sarah Lewitinn, aka Ultragrrrl; image courtesy of daylife.com
With the implosion of print-based music journalism came the advent of e-zines like Pitchfork and, of course, blogs. These folks, for good or for bad, may shape what criticism will look like in this century. I, for one, do see some good to blog culture (barring, you know, my recent public involvement with it). The principle assets I have found with it are its immediacy and DIY ethic. I couldn’t get a staff position at the Texan. I wasn’t financially able to take an internship. In short, traditional modes of ascension in the field weren’t available to me or many others. But blogging allows (some) writers to continue researching, hone their craft, and figure out just why they’re so interested in their subject of analysis.
Of course, there are hazards to blogging. Our collective attention span for new sounds has diminished. Furthermore, a considerable amount of misinformation gets reported. However, while I’m tempted to attribute this to a lack of fluency with journalistic principles of investigating, reporting, and fact-checking, I don’t know if it’s that simple. I’d hasten to point out that blogging and traditional journalism are both vulnerable to errors, unfair coverage, unequal time, and other ethical issues in the wake of the 24-hour news cycle.
In short, I watch this movie and think three things: 1) I don’t know if William Miller would be a journalist today, as the publications he would want to work at might not be able to hire him, 2) I do think he’d be a blogger, as the fan-critic and musician-journalist binaries in media culture have been considerably blurred since the early 70s, and 3) while this movie seems quaint in its depiction of a just-booming American music industry, it still seems completely relevant, maybe even more so than when the movie was originally released.
So, you would think based on all of this fodder, I’d love this movie. But it’s not so simple and the movie itself is only partly at fault. A major issue I have with the movie isn’t so much to do with its gender politics as it is with the gender politics of its fanboys. I have heard too many fanboys talk about this movie with fervor, as if God touched Cameron Crowe’s camera. They’ll regale folks with abstruse bits of commentary from the Untitled version and quiz people on what songs like Stillwater’s “Love Thing” and “Fever Dog” are really about (I think love and kicking addiction, respectively). They are often humorless, especially if you point out any similarities they might have to Vic Munoz, the movie’s Led Zeppelin devotee. Oh, and they always love Led Zeppelin. Always.
But Alyx. Smelly zealot fanboys shouldn’t keep you from liking a movie, you say. The movie has a lot of good things going for it, you add. There’s even a lot of interesting female characters walking around, being smart and human and brave, you note. You might even say they’re more interesting than altruistic protagonist William Miller, you whisper emphatically. Fair points all. So, let’s do what Mary Kearney did when I watched this movie in her gender and rock undergrad class and run through the women and girls we meet in Miller’s coming-of-age story. Note that many of them are autonomous beings, free agents on the road:
1. The Band-Aids, especially one Penny Lane (played by Kate Hudson in what many argue is her only credible screen performance). They are not groupies and consider themselves fans who are autonomous, exercise sexual agency, and are not disposable, though some musicians have trouble seeing them the way they see themselves.
1A. While Penny Lane is clearly the Band-Aid leader, I’ve always loved Sapphire (played by Fairuza Balk). Label it blonde antipathy or brunette solidarity, but it’s hard not to love this rough, mischievous, funny, and wise lady. Can you imagine the stories she could tell? She intimates with William’s mother about his travels on the road and how she should be proud of her son from a hotel phone. She’s responsible for orchestrating the orgy that takes William’s (who she calls “Opie“) virginity. She’s also the one who delivers the hard truth about Penny and William to guitarist Russell Hammond. And she’s the one who insists that younger groupies take birth control, appreciate the music, and quit eating all the steak at crafts’ services.
2. Alice Wisdom, a deejay whose playlist Lester Bangs rudely rejects. Now I don’t like The Doors either, Lester, but that doesn’t mean you should shout over her opinions and discredit her taste in music. Unless you’re actually discrediting the radio station’s taste in music, in which case the deejay’s role becomes even more compromised. And this woman is already compromised by having the regulatory whiskey-throated voice that all female deejays seem required to have or emulate.
3. High school girls running for gym class. Stillwater bassist Larry Fellows perks up at the view from the tour bus; Penny Lane gives them the finger, glad that she’s playing hooky. That she’s not them.
4. Fans. Some of whom are Band-Aids or groupies, most of whom are regular girls and women with jobs and parents.
5. Band wives and girlfriends. They were there before the band got signed, are not often there for the shenanigans on the road, and probably won’t be there after the break-ups and divorces.
6. A particularly shrill feminist stereotype of a Rolling Stone journalist billed as Alison the Fact Checker. Sadly, she probably has to be in order to be heard in staff meetings. Plus, wouldn’t you be pissy if you were trying to forge a career, were all-too-cognizant of sexism and misogyny, but also loved writing about popular music? This is a question I’ve always wanted to ask Ann Powers, Dream Hampton, and Lorraine Ali.
"How do you do it, Dream Hampton?"; image courtesy of thestartingfive.net
7. A singer-songwriter jamming with another singer-songwriter who appear to be modeled after Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons. William sees them playing in a hotel room during his first visit at the Riot House.
8. William’s big sister, Anita. She has a turbulent relationship with her mother and leaves home to become a flight attendant, leaving her kid brother a haul of amazing records, including Joni Mitchell’s Blue. She even gives him some good advice about how to listen to The Who’s Tommy that seems to have a lasting impression.
9. And, of course, William’s awesome, anti-establishment, overprotective mother Elaine, who is a college professor in San Diego. She is also the family matriarch, and probably was even before her husband died. Besides Lester, Ms. Miller is one of the few rebels. They both hold the distinction of being the only people who recognizes that rock culture, and its attendant cheap thrills and promises, is just another corporate enterprise.
Now, now. The dudes are interesting too, you might say. And masculinity is a discursive minefield here. So let’s walk through it. Let’s make like the movie and use William Miller to do this.
1. Miller himself is a soft-eyed, feminine boy played by then-unknown Patrick Fugit. He is hopelessly in love with Penny, a girl who may be his age but is out of his depth and hopelessly in love with someone else.
William Miller and his quest for truth; image courtesy of blog.lib.umn.edu
2. Billy Crudup’s Russell Hammond is the talented, aloof, and cowardly lead guitarist for Stillwater. He’s technically better than his bandmates, and is quick to hover it over them. He takes William under his wing because he’s a fan, only to dismiss him when Bob Dylan makes an appearance at Max’s Kansas City. He also nearly ruins William’s journalistic integrity when his own credibility is on the line. He’s also in love with Penny, but more in love with becoming a rock star. He’s not so in love with his wife, Leslie. He loves himself more than anyone, and hates himself for it.
3. Stillwater lead singer Jeff Bebe (Jason Lee) feels differently toward Leslie. He also has considerable animosity toward Hammond, whose emergent fame and skill is threatening to eclipse him and the rest of the band.
4. Bassist Larry Fellows and drummer Ed Vallencourt round out the band. Fellows (played by singer-songwriter Mark Kozelek, who I named my cat after) seems only interested in barbeque and high school girls. Vallencourt (played by John Fedevich) is silent through most of the movie, until he announces that he’s gay during a traumatic airplane ride.
5. Dick Roswell (Noah Taylor) and Dennis Hope (Jimmy Fallon) manage the band. Fellows has been with them for most of their career. Hope convinces the band to cash in and sell out, most symbolically by trading their bus for a jet. They will regret this decision.
6. Jann Wenner and Ben Fong-Torres, Rolling Stone‘s respective editor-and-chief and senior editor, who serve as William’s bosses. Note the Wenner is gay, though at this time in his career, he was married to a woman named Jane. They would go on to have three children before divorcing in 1995. I haven’t read anything on Wenner, but am fascinated to learn how he negotiated all of this. Note also that Fong-Torres is Chinese American and one of the few people of color in both the movie and perhaps the emerging mainstream rock music industry. Note also the “Torres” surname, which his father adopted, dropping “Fong,” in order to pose as a Mexican in order to be granted U.S. citizenship while Chester Arthur’s Chinese Exclusion Act was still on the books. The family later kept both surnames.
Stillwater, on the cover of Rolling Stone; image courtesy of jeffdurling.com
But William doesn’t really have much in common with Stillwater. He wants to be them, but is in actual fact a music geek. Two like-minded male characters empathize, and share a relationship that is at once classically masculine in its indexical organization of rock’s ephemera and, at the same time, feminine in their romantic, homoerotic obsessive fandom.
1. Lester Bangs, William’s mentor, played by the formidable Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is one of the main reasons I’ll be seeing Pirate Radio. Reportedly, his scenes were filmed while he had the flu. Bangs hates what rock journalism has become.
Lester Bangs imparting life lessons to William Miller; image courtesy of playground.chronicleblogs.com
2. Vic Munoz, played by longtime Apatow mainstay Jay Baruchel. He’s the Zeppelin fan who follows the band everywhere, clutches a marker frontman Robert Plant once held, and wears his “Have you seen the bridge?” t-shirt at all times.
I should point out, however, that the girls index too. Penny Lane may not want William to take notes during Stillwater concerts, but that doesn’t mean that she, her peers, or William’s sister Anita, can’t rattle off band line-ups, industry players, and song lyrics.
And lest we forget that William actually forges strong relationships with his sister, his mother, and the Band-Aids. While Sapphire, Polexia, and the gang seduce William, they also believe in him, intimate secrets with him, and provide him support, though they sometimes treat him as a minion and less as an equal.
I should also point out, since I opined that Miller doesn’t have much in common with Stillwater, that he does have an interesting relationship with Hammond nonetheless. Miller, a kid brother with an older sister, doesn’t seem to have any male friends or role models before he takes Bangs’s assignment to cover Black Sabbath for Creem, a band for whom Stillwater is opening and launches Miller’s almost-too-good-to-be-true feature assignment for Rolling Stone.
I wouldn’t necessarily categorize Hammond as a friend or role model. Perhaps he’s better suited for an older brother position. At first, Miller looks up to Hammond, calling his guitar-playing “incendiary” and trying (largely in vain) to emulate his slingin’, ’stached bravado. But, despite a Band-Aid orgy (controlled by the women who believe that “Opie must die”), Miller clearly doesn’t have that kind of swagger. He also doesn’t seem to want it, seeing Hammond’s cowardice beneath it. He also recognizes the irony of such inauthentic displays of machismo and ego in a form supposedly as authentic, romantic, and pure as rock is supposed to be, and is quickly unbecoming. Perhaps he also notices the rigid gender roles and chauvinism that inform the supposed gains of free love and the sexual revolution. This hypocrisy, along with the band’s quick rejection of real fans for industry success and the promise of rock mythology, make Miller able to put Hammond and his band mates in their place during the climactic plane scene. His honesty and integrity also earns him their trust, especially Hammond’s, who finally grants him a real interview at the end of the movie.
As an aside, if Hammond is Miller’s imperfect older brother, he steps right into the role by sassing Ms. Miller when he first talks to her on the phone, immediately snapping into a “yes ma’am, no ma’am” routine when she admonishes his behavior and values.
Miller’s character also wins the respect of Penny Lane, even when she’s ignoring the icky realities of seeing yourself as a fan but being treated as a groupie, as disposable as a real Band-Aid.
Note that it doesn’t win Lane’s affections, at least not physically. She may be too hard for or scared of Miller’s feelings (which are announced, unfortunately, in a scene where Miller kisses Lane, who just overdosed on Quaaludes). She may not be ready for rejecting her own rock star mythology in order to be truly intimate with someone (though she suggests she might when she tells Miller that she came into this world as one Lady Goodman). Maybe doing so would make her the typical teen she (and William’s mother) see little value in becoming. Maybe not consummating this relationship suggests they have no interest in typical interactions with one another.
Yet Miller’s and Lane’s relationship, which seems built on male fantasy, is an issue I have with this movie. I don’t get what the fuss is about, frankly. I understand that Lane is pretty, savvy, and well-traveled, but don’t understand why Miller has such a crush on her, primarily because I don’t understand how loving a band’s music leads you toward doing their ironing backstage while the boy you love in the band can’t be bothered to love you back. More importantly, I don’t know who she really is. Maybe the self-mythology is part of what prevents me (and certainly Miller) from getting close. Maybe the challenge of trying to find out who the real Penny Lane is warrants enough of a fascinating exercise for Miller. And maybe it isn’t any of our business who Lane really is. But I sort of wonder if she’s perfectly matched with Hammond, a man who wants desperately to be the myth he’s created for himself. Maybe this suggests that both of them have something in common with Don Draper. Here’s one scene where I think Lane, alone after a concert, drops the masquerade (note that the scene follows Stillwater’s treacherous meeting with super-manager Hope).
Admittedly, perhaps my problem resides in Kate Hudson’s performance. Perhaps I want her not to channel her mother, herself a manic pixie dream girl of this era, so much. Perhaps I’m projecting Goldie Hawn’s presence and ignoring how Hudson is making this role her own. I do think Hudson does a good job balancing Lane’s contrasts and contradictions, perhaps a better job than Kirsten Dunst (who almost got this role, but was cast in Crowe’s Elizabethtown instead) would.
And I do think I’m being unfair in my dismissal of Kate Hudson and Penny Lane. Because I think my real problem, as it usually is with Crowe’s movies, is the director’s unfortunate habit of crutching on the magic of pop music. Admittedly, this might be a hard habit for a music geek director to break, but it has kept me from enjoying his other movies (including, yes, Say Anything). And it’s probably contradictory for a music fan not to like pop music playing such a pronounced role in Crowe’s work. To me, however, Crowe’s use of pop music suggests the necessity of delicate application. Because I hate how he uses Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” in one of the movie’s big reconciliatory moments, as its obvious that he is making the case for how pop music’s universality heals all psychic wounds. When Lane tells Miller that he is home, all I can think is “fucking duh.”
While I feel like the movie’s score adds to the treacle (especially during the scene when Miller runs with Lane’s departing plane), I do admire Cameron Crowe’s ongoing collaborations with wife and Heart guitarist Nancy Wilson. We’d do well to remember Wilson’s rock legend status, score work, and Crowe’s relationship with Wilson when making sexist assumptions about Sofia Coppola’s relationship with Phoenix’s Thomas Mars, who is working on her next movie, Somewhere. We might also like to keep it in mind when thinking about Karen O’s involvement in ex-boyfriend Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are.
Going back to Crowe’s unfortunate flirtations with the obvious for my closing remarks, he does make a few other points in this movie in highlighter yellow that I love anyway. So much so that I’ve shaped my life around them. In the interest of full disclosure, I will share them now, suggesting that sometimes flirtations with the obvious are essential and humane.
1) The introductory scene between Bangs and Miller, when Bangs talks about staying up all night, writing about music. Whether or not he was high on cough syrup and speed or the tomes he devoted to The Faces or John Coltrane were dribble didn’t matter. The objective, as William knows well, is ”just to fuckin’ write.” It’s an objective I know well too. It’s a key reason why I put this blog together in the first place, and I’m certainly not alone.
2) Lane has a great line as well, one that has stayed with me as I age. I’m a firm believer in the advice she gives Miller when she drives them to the Riot House: ”if you ever get lonely, you just go to the record store and visit your friends.” The comfort I have found in record stores cannot be overstated, and I only hope that, as I get older, at least a few of them don’t get completely mowed down to make way for more lucrative businesses. I might have to stay in a city that shares kinship with Austin to assure this, but I think it’s worth it. I’d rather live in a city that appreciates the cultural and communal value of record stores over a city that only sees value in their market returns.
After all this, I believe Almost Famous to be an interesting and challenging movie at times marred by its idealism, sentimentality, and emphasis on one very lucky boy’s experience following around a band and writing down what happened. Thus, it’s a movie I keep coming back to, even if I don’t feel the need to replace the tape.
Literally just got back from a sneak preview of Fox Searchlight’s new potential sleeper Whip It! Gotta say, I really enjoyed it. Good job, director-lady Drew Barrymore. Good job, cast of rad ladies. If you follow this blog and like what you read, I think you should see it. Let’s watch that trailer one more time.
I’ll admit that certain things are problematic, like the “hey, we’re at Waterloo! Hey, we’re watching The Jerk at the Drafthouse,” feel of certain scenes. And there’s certain a potential argument to be formed out of how white roller derby appears to be, based on the movie (Eve is the only woman of color I saw represented, playing Rosa Sparks, a member of the Hurl Scouts). Also, Hurl Scout teen rookie and protagonist Bliss Cavender has a coming-of-age romance with an indie rocker named Oliver that, while it ends up being far-from-idealized, is unnecessary to me. Finally, I think the movie gets a little too plot-heavy at the end — I really don’t mind a movie that focuses more on character development instead of pushing action forward. Though most of the movie was shot in Michigan, it takes place in and around Austin. We keep it relaxed here, and I feel like the movie really flies when it keeps story structure loose.
That said, I found it to be a delightful, feel-good movie with a great feminist message: be your own hero. So let’s run through why I think you should see it when it comes out later this month.
1. Ellen Page brings it as Bliss. I still don’t know if it’ll catapult her to mega-stardom, but these sorts of roles fit her like a worn-in pair of jeans.
"Oh, I got this part down"; image courtesy of aceshowbiz.com
2. Alia Shawkat plays Bliss’s bestie Pash. She a) is totally awesome and funny, b) should be in more things, c) rocks a hot vuluptuous body, and d) should be my friend.
BFFs Pash and Bliss; image courtesy of aceshowbiz.com
3. Ellen and Alia are totally convincing as friends, both on- and off-screen.
4. To that end, all of the female homosocial relationships are interesting — especially the intergenerational ones Bliss forms with mentor Maggie Mayhem (Kristen Wiig), nemesis Iron Maven (Juliette Lewis), and her beauty pageant enthusiast mother, Brooke (Marcia Gay Harden). Most of the characters, almost all of whom are female, are thoughtful and well-developed.
Juliette Lewis's Iron Maven and Bliss Cavender's Babe Ruthless don't meet cute, but in the end make friends; image courtesy of trailertracker.wordpress.com
5. Some good dude allies, particularly coach Razor (Andrew Wilson) and proud papa Earl Cavender (Daniel Stern).
6. Interesting class touches as well. Bliss is decidely lower-middle class. Her mother works as a mail courier. Bliss’s team-mates seem to suggest similar class backgrounds. Wiig’s Mayhem is a single mom. Kick-ass stunt woman extraordinaire Zoë Bell, who plays former Olympic figure skating contender Bloody Holly appears in scrubs, suggesting that she is either a nurse or a med student. And Drew Barrymore’s Smashley Simpson plays Austin’s most popular Whole Foods bagger.
7. Neat little feminist music geek touches abound. Note that Bliss gets Oliver to start talking to her by escaping a house party scene to play an album in an empty room upstairs. Giggle at the scene when Bliss and Pash dance together at their part-time job at a local greasy spoon, reconfiguring the words to Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” to be about the sad failure that is their hometown of (fictitious) Bodeen. Show your Texas pride by clapping along to Bliss and Oliver’s a cappela version of “Deep In the Heart of Texas” (we did at our screening). And beam at the realization that Bliss’s beloved Stryper t-shirt comes from her mother’s closet.
8. Girl-on-girl dancing and, I believe, implied girl-on-girl romance between Rosa Sparks and Ari Graynor’s Eva Destruction. When they shoo derby emcee “Hot Tub” Johnny (Jimmy Fallon) away from the jacuzzi at a house party after a meet, I think it’s just as much because they’re into each other as they aren’t into him.
9. Girls fall down and get bruised and get right back up. Sometimes someone helps them. Sometimes they help themselves. But they never stay down, even if they don’t have their next move plotted out yet. Always a good lesson, one that I hope will inspire many ladies to join a derby league or start playing some other sport. Fuck, now I wanna strap on some skates myself.
