If you want to get me interested in your band, calling yourselves “Screaming Females” is a pretty good start. If you can back it with talent, I’m yours.
I caught the New Jersey trio in question last night when they opened for Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, who save rock music every time they play. But I was anticipating Screaming Females, who I hadn’t seen before. They’ve been together for a few years and garnered attention from publications like The Tripwire. And there’s only one word to describe their tight, boisterous set at Emo’s: badass. Though clearly influenced by punk, there’s definitely a bit of classic rock to their sound, particularly in the dexterous guitar solos leader Marissa Paternoster shrugs off her G&L Stratocaster. To my ears, however, the influences seem intercepted by 90s alternative bands like Smashing Pumpkins and Weezer, who worshiped at the feet of Black Sabbath and Cheap Trick. This makes sense, as the members are in their early 20s.
And man oh man, was I ever blown away by Paternoster. Dressed like the prim sister of AC/DC’s Angus Young in an ankle-length black skirt and matching collared sweater, Paternoster took to the stage with cool detachment. A curtain of mod bangs shielded her eyes and she occasionally mumbled “banter” between songs. This could be the result of shyness, but it certainly didn’t read that way to the audience. If anything, it heightened the contrast between the sounds she brings to their songs. Thwarting the expectations of her diminutive stature, Paternoster wields a mighty ax, giving short newbie players like myself no excuse not to get those scales down. Furthermore, her voice is a deep, rich bellow. That she can seamlessly transition her singing voice into the unholy screams the band’s moniker suggest is no small feat, particularly when she oscillates between the two in a turn of phrase. And given the dark nature of many of the band’s songs, which often conjure brutal and unsettling images. “I’m not your cutie,” she seems to say to her audience. Juxtaposing her girlish look and the possessed quality of her performance style with her sexual orientation seems to indicate a desire to at once thwart expectations and leave them unexplained. “I’m totally melting your face, hosers. Enough said.”
But I don’t want to draw attention away from drummer Jarrett Dougherty and bassist King Mike, as they are just as valuable to the band’s volcanic sound. Also, I think there need to be more mixed gender bands forming, as well as bands whose members identify with multiple sexual orientations. And if they rock this hard, even better.
Earlier tonight, I caught a screening of Radical Harmonies, Dee Mosbacher’s 2002 documentary on lesbian folk artists and women’s festivals. Inspiring stuff about a topic I know very little about. But I need time to unpack what I saw. Plus, I taped my neighbor’s drum practice in exchange for guitar lessons, which start next Tuesday. What is more, I’m still reeling over some very exciting professional news. Starting in April, I will do an eight-week stint as a guest blogger for Bitch. I’ll be doing a series on the intersections of television and music culture, in keeping with some of the entries I’ve posted here. So I made a nice dinner and had a little happy happy joy joy time.
It’d be easier to celebrate if Germans would leave female artsts alone and stop using copyright infringement as a front, as some have been doing recently. For one, a Munich court banned Beyoncé’s hella-problematic “Video Phone” clip because of a supposed intellectual property violation against underwear manufacturer Triumph, who own the rights to the Iskren Lozanov-designed, Pablo Picasso-inspired skivvies she’s wearing. Also, a bunch of German folks who own the rights to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s hack . . . er . . . rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar are refusing to let Peaches stage the musical as a one-woman show.
Peaches Christ Superstar; image courtesy of ew.com
I’m not particularly concerned with the fate of “Video Phone” (or Rihanna’s new clip, “Rude Boy,” which recycles much of the same racist, sexualized imagery by way of dancehall and M.I.A.’s “Boyz“). I think that claiming panties as a legal battle ground is silly, but it also speaks to the fashion industry’s need to be economically viable during a recession while serving consumers who are increasingly drawn to ready-to-wear retail collections and renting couture. But I think Peaches not being allowed to perform Jesus Christ Superstar is ridiculous for two reasons.
1. Really, it’s not like she can do any damage to what is already awful source material. Her involvement only improves it in my mind. At least she’d bring a different, campier lack of subtlety to what is . . . well, obvious. If you haven’t seen the musical, you should do something fun with those two hours that would have been wasted on it. All you need to know is that Jesus was the original rock star.
Well, Peaches is a rock star too. And a smart, hairy, queer, Jewish, gender-bending, politically subversive, sexually autonomous feminist rock star at that. A rock star who, unlike Webber’s Jesus, doesn’t need guitars to melt faces and underwear. The boys wanna be the persona Merrill Nisker embodies, but some of them are totally scared of her.
2. Legalese aside, I think the real issue here is the threat to patriarchal order that motivates fearful types to dictate the terms of “fair use.” I’m sure there would be no problem with, say, Michael Crawford doing a one-man show of Jesus Christ Superstar (though he’d probably do a Vegas revue). But a queer Jewish feminist drawing on source material she loved growing up so she can play Jesus and Mary Magdelene. No no no. “Blasphemy.” And that’s absurd.
I hope Peaches gets to do the show somewhere. She’s welcome to convince me of the musical’s worth by performing the stage show in my garage.
Clamdandy, played by Lori Petty, Shelly Cole, Gina Gershon, and Drea De Matteo; image courtesy of filmlinc.com
The general consensus is that Prey for Rock & Roll is terrible. In fact, the trailer looked terrible.
But it’s about a LA-based band named Clamdandy (shudder) comprised of queer women supposedly past their prime. One of my favorite scenes in Whip It!is when Juliette Lewis’s character Iron Maven admits to Ellen Page’s Babe Ruthless that she didn’t find something she was really good at until after turning 30. I root for the underdog. You know this. Bonus points for a movie that features Lori Petty and Drea De Matteo, the latter of whom broke my heart as Adriana La Cerva on The Sopranos and looks like she was born to play in a rock band.
That said, wow what a pile of garbage Alex Steyermark’s directorial debut is. He’s since retreated back to his roots as a music supervisor and I think that’s for the best. I had no idea that a movie which opens on close-up fragments of Gina Gershon’s bare midriff, leather adorned chest, and open pout had nowhere to go but down.
But the movie has bigger obstacles than poor technical execution. It’s hard to overcome a script as hackneyed as the one first-time screenwriters Cheri Lovedog and Robin Whitehouse penned. Let’s count the regressions and clichés. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, don’t worry about the spoilers. You’ll see them coming.
1. Gershon’s Jacki is a bisexual tattoo artist who discovered the power of rock through Tina Turner and Exene Cervenka. She starts the movie with Jessica (played by Shakara Ledard), an African American woman who she casts aside in the name of rock. By the end of the movie, she’s with a white bruiser convict with a neck tattoo who goes by the name of Animal (played by Marc Blucas, who most Buffy fans will remember as Riley Finn). But don’t worry. He murdered his pedophile stepfather to save his sister, Sally.
2. Drummer Sally (played by Shelly Cole, who I’m currently watching play Madeline on another WB/CW teen soap called Gilmore Girls) is not only a survivor of sexual abuse. She also gets raped by Nick (played by Ivan Martin), a junkie with a sick rape fetish who dates bassist Tracy (De Matteo).
3. Tracy’s a junkie too. That damn trust fund is an albatross. But don’t worry — she gets clean after Jacki reveals to Sally that she has a similar family history and the band write a song called “Every Six Minutes” about sexual assault. I should be more excited about a song that confronts and indicts rape, but Lovedog isn’t a good songwriter either. For a good example of an anti-rape song, might I point you toward X’s “Johnny Hit and Run Paulene”?
Or, since punk boys often misunderstood its message, let’s listen to The Raveonettes’ “Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed).”
4. Sally is a lesbian and is dating guitarist Tracy (Petty). In addition to being punished by having to listen to the half-hearted efforts of lazy guitar students as an instructor, Tracy gets killed by an oncoming car when some no-goodniks of color steal her guitar.
But fear not. The band soldiers on. And yet, I have no real reason to care.
Paradise Titty (from left to right): Bassist Deb Norris, guitarist Beth Puorro, guitarist Emily Marks, vocalist Kitty Shearer, drummer Lori Glidden; image courtesy of myspace.com/paradise titty
I went to go see Paradise Titty at Stubbs’ last night. I went because a) the all-female Guns N’ Roses cover band is comprised of some Girls Rock Camp Austin personnel — including co-ordinator Emily Marks womanning Slash’s duties, b) I’ve missed their first few shows, and c) I’m fascinated by women performing in cock rock cover bands (see also Lez Zeppelin and AC/DShe). There seems to be a spirit of reclamation behind it, there’s a lot of inherent gender drag and play, and the bands tend to cultivate considerable followings with feminists and/or queer folks (particularly lesbians), which tends to be a reflection on the band members. Also it’s nice to have it affirmed that some of the ladies you know have killer chops.
(Note: After reading this post, Kristen at Act Your Age asked the “yeah, but what about the show” question. Ah, right. I shall answer here. The band sounded great and were really in sync, though I singled out drummer Lori Glidden’s command of her kit. I was surprised that lead singer Kitty Shearer, who possesses a rich tonal quality, sounded very little like Axl Rose. Likewise, save for Marks’s dexterous and faithfully Slash-like guitar playing, Paradise Titty sounded less like a cover band and more like a rock band covering Guns N’ Roses — even when covering GNR’s version of Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” While I know the outfit’s M.O. is to cover another band’s material, the show made me wonder what their original material might sound like.)
I’m not particularly familiar with Guns N’ Roses’ music. I have a cursory awareness of the singles, some of the music videos, and Chinese Democracy. I know that one of their songs contains racial epithets and homophobic language and that they were fond of heroin and alcohol. Much of my low opinion of Rose is informed by his Charles Manson obsession and violent behavior toward former partners like Stephanie Seymour and Erin Everly (the daughter of musician Don Everly and muse behind ”Sweet Child O’ Mine”). Oh, and that Slash is an awesome guitarist. Beyond that, I have spent much of my life abiding by the gendered belief that Guns N’ Roses were a band my stepbrothers liked (specifically a band Darren liked; Daniel has long been more of a Red Hot Chili Peppers fan).
So I was really interested in how a group of women would approach the band’s repertoire. I became especially curious after attending a Wax Fax trivia night and finding out that a) the original cover for GNR’s debut Appetite for Destruction was artist Robert Williams’s disturbing piece of same name and b) that said album contains the closing number “Rocket Queen,” which incorporates the recorded sounds of some girl getting fucked by Rose in the studio.
Robert Williams's "Appetite for Destruction," later to be the rejected cover for Guns N' Roses' debut album; image courtesy of arrestedmotion.com
Now, I’m not entirely clear of the situation or Adriana Smith, the pseudo-credited instrumentalist in question. Apparently she dated drummer Steve Adler and had sex with Rose to make him jealous. I’ve also heard that Smith was brought in to dance for a harmonica player that the band worked with. Regardless, this is all very icky to me. If fucking Rose is the prize or a means to an end, it’s icky. If this woman was getting passed around, it’s icky. If she was proud of being passed around and becoming studio spectacle, it’s icky. And if she didn’t know her impromptu “performance” would turn her voiced pleasure into a disembodied instrument, that’s all kinds of icky.
Having not seen Paradise Titty before, I was very pleased with how the ladies handle the song. They basically play it straight-ahead without the fuck sounds, though I’m sure we’d all oblige if the band wanted to take the song to a Vagina Monologues place during performance.
But what really makes their version work for me is that powerhouse Shearer seems to turn herself into the rocket queen, (note: she could also be singing to her rocket queen like Rose did; in doing so, she takes the song to a new, queerly sexy place). It also seems to honor the subject of the song, as Axl wrote it for a female acquaintance who wanted to start a band called Rocket Queen. Remember that a key reason why Heart are so beloved by generations of women and girls is because Ann Wilson was all about taking the subject position. I’ll take a deep-throated belter claiming her space in rock over just about anything else any day. So much the better when she’s got a great band backing her. I can’t wait to see and hear this one develop.
One of my favorite hypotheticals to play is “what’s my dissertation going to be about?” I’ve heard some good ones from friends in the academy, some of whom are putting them together as I type. I often formulate my ideas here, but haven’t nailed it down yet.
It could very easily be about Fox Searchlight and its role in commodifying indie during the 2000s. Read the titles – Napoleon Dynamite, Garden State, Little Miss Sunshine, Juno, Slumdog Millionaire, (500) Days of Summer, Whip It! Hell, even Darjeeling Limited was a Fox Searchlight picture. And while Wes Anderson’s 2007 India road movie showcases The Kinks and not Vampire Weekend, his quirky aesthetic is all over Garden State, Napoleon Dynamite, and Juno.
"I made this happen," says Wes Anderson; image courtesy of theauteurs.com
But I’m a little resistent to the idea of writing about Fox Searchlight, despite the fact that I think it’s essential to formulating theories about the decade when indie broke. For one, I’m not a huge fan of many of these movies (I’m with Annie — Garden State seemed way less profound the second time I watched it). For another, to my surprise, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist was distributed through Columbia.
I saw Nick and Norah during its theatrical release in fall 2008. I hated it. I thought Lorene Scafaria‘s script was too slick (perhaps unfairly comparing it fellow Fempire screenwriter Diablo Cody’s work). I didn’t know why headphone-crossed Jersey kids Nick O’Leary and Norah Silverberg (played by Michael Cera and Kat Dennings) had the same first names as the gin-soaked sleuths of The Thin Man series, nor did I understand why their playlist was infinite (maybe I’d have to peruse Rachel Cohn and David Leviathan’s book on which the movie was based).
Some of the hatred was unfounded. Since iPod ear buds appear to form a heart on the movie poster, I assumed Apples were gonna fall on me like I was Isaac Newton. Refreshingly, the movie’s music geeks are pretty low-fi. These kids like antiquated things like posters, fliers, radios, and mix CDs. Me too.
Poster for "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist"; image courtesy of musingforamusement.blogspot.com
Annie and I talked about the movie last May. She seemed to think that it was mostly just okay, but liked that there were gay teen characters whose sexuality wasn’t commented upon. But then she also asked me my opinion on a scene that I had completely misread. So, several months later, I finally got around to rewatching it.
Truth told, upon second viewing my response wasn’t quite as venomous. It contained some promising moments, and I do like Mark Mothersbaugh’s score. That said, I don’t think I can in good conscience like this movie.
1. Norah Silverberg has a friend named Caroline who clearly has a drinking problem (kudos to Ari Graynor for playing drunk convincingly, as it’s hard to do well — I also thought she was hot in Whip It!). Caroline stumbles around New York City alone, black-out drunk, and swimming in her own vomit. She’s also positioned as a burden on her BFF who often abandons her to go be with a boy she likes, thus cancelling out any sisterhood this movie could have. All of this, to my horror, is played for laughs. The entire time, I was just hoping she wouldn’t get raped, abused by the police, or die of alcohol poisoning.
1A. Caroline runs into men at port authority who won’t help her get home. One of these men is a ticket taker played by Frankie Faison, who was awesome as Commissioner Burrell on The Wire and several other things you’ve seen him in without knowing his name. The other is a mute fast food employee who lets her eat his turkey sandwich, played with the precisely executed defeat Kevin Corrigan brings to the majority of his sad sack characters. Someone be an ally and help get this girl home.
Nick and Norah holding up Caroline, until they can pawn her off on someone else; image courtesy of areyouscreening.com
2. I find the whole love triangle between Nick, Norah, and Nick’s ex-girlfriend and Norah’s classmate Tris unfortunate. Tris (played by Alexis Dziena, who folks may also remember as Lolita in Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers) is a popular girl who would probably only spend time with a dweeb like Nick because he’s harmless and his adoration boosts her self-esteem (perhaps not unlike cheerleader Cindy Sanders dating geek Sam Weir at the end of Freaks and Geeks). Thus, Tris follows Nick throughout the whole movie, first in the hopes of making him jealous at his gig by waving around her new boy only then to be jealous when he starts hanging with Norah.
Oh, and Tris and Norah hate each other. Norah thinks Tris is a skeeze and Tris thinks Norah is a frosty box. Girl power!
2A. Tris gets Nick to drive her home toward the end of the night and does a sexy dance for him on some dock. He strands her in New York in the middle of the night. Yikes! Not the way to be, bro.
3. While it’s interesting that Nick O’Leary is in a queercore band called The Jerk-Offs, his gay bandmates function as little more than the gay best friends (see also: Sex and the City or the mice in Cinderella). They’re cute, fashionable, insatiably horny, and all too willing to be saddled with Caroline so that Nick and Norah can fall in love. One of them is Asian American, which perhaps should be exciting, but he gets little more dimension than the “MySpace is the new booty call” guy from He’s Just Not That Into You. His name is Thom, by the way (played by Aaron Yoo).
The Jerk-Offs; image courtesy of soundofdusk.blogspot.com
Also for some reason, these guys carry a box of push-up bras in their van so they can help make over the supposedly frumpy Norah so she can help Nick get over Tris. These bras fit her, somehow.
Admittedly, they do come up with a good alternate band name. I’d go see Dickache.
3A. There’s some icky homophobia that goes on in Andy Samberg’s cameo. While I’m sure it was deemed good for his brand to be associated with this project, I’m not sure Nick’s crazy homeless sexual predator is quite the angle I’d go along with.
4. I’m not sure how good The Jerk-Offs are, but I doubt they’re big enough to open for Bishop Allen. Just sayin’.
5. It’s much harder to navigate the entirety of New York in a night by public transit. Somehow these kids are doing it on foot or in a van. And they’re always finding a place to park. Infuriating.
6. The entire Where’s Fluffy? storyline is a disaster.
For one, the band should never be named, because any band name Scafaria came up with was not going to serve the mythological importance the band serves for the characters. As it stands, Where’s Fluffy? is on par with Hey That’s My Bike! for worst movie band names (I think the best might be Sonic Death Monkey and Kinky Wizards from High Fidelity, but welcome other examples).
Ethan Hawke's Hey That's My Bike! from "Reality Bites"; image courtesy behindthehype.com
For another, the movie doesn’t pre-date social networking and wireless communication technology, yet you’d think it does. Before the kids got to any gig, someone might have checked Twitter, Facebook, or received multiple text messages from other friends about the status of each show. Instead, these kids rely on the radio, and are thus completely clueless about the status of their favorite band’s show. How’s that for lo-fi?
Oh, the storyline does get one other thing right. Gossip can lead to awesome fake-outs. The funniest example in my experience was when Dinosaur Jr. were rumored to reunite to headline the Merge showcase during SXSW 2006. I think there was a rumor that The Arcade Fire were going to play the same showcase as well. People stayed in line for hours to catch . . . Spoon. Admittedly, Spoon are a great band. But they were local at the time, and pretty easy to catch. Haha.
I think I was waiting to see Animal Collective at the time, which my partner scorned me for because a) the show was kinda boring (err, I mean . . . ”meditative”) and b) Neko Case and Sharon Jones were playing at the same time. Win some, lose some.
Finally, having the kids chase Fluffy around town doesn’t make sense, especially when a far less convoluted resolution exists: the concert sells out. It happens all the time. I bet it really happens all the time in New York, as it has more people and fewer venues to accomodate them, hence why so many alternative venues have formed. No brainer. Also, a sold-out show is a great way to get the leads together. I’ve had some lovely dates as a result of not getting in to a show.
7. If you’ve gotten this far in the list, are you noticing how busy this movie is? It’s only 90 minutes long too. As a result, all plot twists feel hasty and poorly developed. A lot could be cut out of this movie. I’d remove Caroline’s drinking or the love triangle (actually, it’s a love rectangle — I forgot that Norah is sort of dating some rock wannabee named Tal, played by Jay Baruchel). If I kept the love rectangle, I’d have the leads be with nicer people who just aren’t right for them. I feel like this is more interesting, and truer to real life.
So what did you like about this movie, Alyx?
There’s one thing I loved about it, and her name is Kat Dennings, who plays Norah.
Kat Dennings as Norah Silverberg; image courtesy of zap2it.com
I’ve actually liked Dennings for a while, due in part to the fact that her dry, off-kilter cadence reminds me of my friend Hannah from Karaoke Underground. The first time I saw Dennings was as Jenny Brier, an overly sophisticated tween who employed Samantha Jones to put together her bat mitzah in season four of Sex and the City.
"Today, I am a woman!" Kat Dennings as Jenny Brier; image courtesy of nypost.com
I felt she was underused as Catherine Keener’s daughter in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. I thought she was cute in the Nylon cover she did with Olivia Thirlby. I will eventually get around to watching The House Bunny for both her and Anna Farris. I like her. Please have her be in more things.
I found Dennings’s performance as Ms. Silverberg to be winning, making all of the insecurity that comes with being the nerdy smart girl high school guys don’t tend to notice until after they’re in college. Norah even gets a few additional layers. Her first kiss was with a girl. She’s the daughter of Ira Silverberg, a fictional producer who runs Electric Lady and not being sure if she wants to inherit the family business or enroll at Brown or perhaps choose a third option that doesn’t evince her privileged standing as an upper-middle class girl who attends a private Catholic school.
As an aside, Norah is but one more free spirit fictional character who considers going to Brown, keeping company with girls like Serena Van Der Woodsen. Perhaps they wanted to follow in the footsteps of Todd Haynes and Duncan Sheik and major in semiology. They also boast a pretty rad student radio station.
I was drawn to this at 17, but knew I couldn’t afford to go or did well enough on the SAT to qualify. I jumped through that hoop just once before the application deadline to UT. I was a Texas scholar, so I knew they’d accept me. Once I got in, my AP test scores qualified me for sophomore standing, allowing me to double major in journalism and history.
But Norah is also interesting because she is proudly Jewish. I wish this had been brought in to her experience at a Catholic school, but nonetheless, I find it interesting that Norah identifies so strongly with both the cultural and religious aspects of her heritage.
Finally, Norah makes me like her relationship with Nick, or at least feel confident about how she’ll get to shape it as an equal. When the movie takes the time to breathe and let the scenes between Nick and Norah unfold, we get the sense that these are two very well-suited people who are out on the town for one night only to discover that they could be embarking on something special, perhaps even transformative, but it isn’t executed in a heavy-handed, obvious way.
Falling in love in a beat-up car with drunk people making out in the back seat; image courtesy of telegraph.co.uk
Which finally brings me to the scene that Annie convinced me I needed to rewatch. It’s their love scene. When I originally saw this scene, which takes place in the recording booth at Electric Lady, I thought it was dumb. Hooray, Nick’s magical penis surges Norah toward a once out-of-reach orgasm. It was especially irritating because the scene originally seems as if it’s going to play out with Norah recording Nick playing guitar, but instead we get to see her climax through the level readings of the recording equipment.
While I still really wish we got to see Norah’s technical prowess and Nick’s vulnerability as a feminized, performing subject, Annie is right. Nick is coaxing her . . . digitally, which allows her pleasure to take focus and has little to do with his gendered anatomy. Interesting. If the movie had made some more surprising turns and given itself room to do it, I might have enjoyed it as much as its female lead.
Gabourey Sidibe as Precious; image courtesy of moviedearest.blogspot.com
Before going into my thoughts on a movie that I already feel I’ll need to qualify and back into when composing my analysis, let me stress a few things.
1. I haven’t read Sapphire’s Push, which is the movie’s source material. Thus I can’t say how faithful an adaptation Precious is. I intend to read it, and welcome anyone who has a copy they’d be willing to lend to expedite the process. As you can imagine, it’s hard to find a copy at any of the local libraries right now.
Cover to "Push"; image courtesy of speaksista.com
2. I am a middle-class white lady, so I know I have some biases and blind spots. They may affect my analysis of the story about an abused, illiterate, fat, dark-skinned, HIV-positive black girl named Claireece Precious Jones living in 1987 Harlem during the height of the AIDS and crack epidemics who is placed into an alternative school called Each One Teach One after being impregnated by her father with their second child.
3. Regardless of the criticisms I’ll detail later in the post, I think you should see this movie. Yes, you. Especially those of you who are scared that its content will be too overwhelming, exploitative, or another cinematic example of poverty porn. If you care about the tenuous presence of African Americans in media culture, you should see this movie. If you care about the plight of marginalized groups, you should see this movie. If you are willing to back up these concerns with volunteerism, monetary contributions, or your industry, you should see this movie. And if you think that these kinds of personal and systemic hardships don’t actually happen to young people, you should definitely see this movie. While I agree with Teresa Wiltz and thus don’t abide by Oprah’s line that “everyone is Precious,” I’ve had too many friends and family members recount traumatic personal and professional experiences weathered by themselves, loved ones, peers, neighbors, and students to think otherwise.
I always like to enumerate the positives first.
1. Gabourey Sidibe is an awesome find as the lead. And I know it belabors a perhaps insulting point that actors are not their characters, especially in a role author Sapphire intimated to Katie Couric would have been near impossible for any survivor to play, but I find it comforting that Sidibe is happy, proudly fat, and confident. It’s evident in her talk show appearances on Conan O’Brien that she’s got the approachable star power of an A-list celebrity.
Here’s hoping that Sidibe’s performance will lead to further opportunities. I’d be so sad if she won an Oscar for this role, only to be sidelined by tokenistic casting practices. I already saw Academy Award winner Jennifer Hudson light up the screen in Dreamgirls, only to play Carrie Bradshaw’s personal assistant (and imaginary friend?) in the Sex in the City movie.
Hudson's Louise never mingles with Carrie's established friend group; image courtesy of nypost.com
2. Mo’Nique deserves the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance as Precious’s mother Mary, who neglects, emotionally bullies, and physically abuses her daughter.
In addition to also allowing her partner (who we never fully see on-screen) to sexually abuse and twice impregnate their daughter, she also forces her daughter to engage in sexual activity with her, largely out of punishment for a gross, patriarchal misinterpretation of what consensual partnership is and should be. It’s a challenging, potentially damaging role that many actresses shied away from out of an inability to plumb terrifying emotional depths or out of an uneasy feeling that taking on this part could be misconstrued as promoting the idea that black women are sub-human.
To me, Mo’Nique does a superlative job negotiating how this woman is considerably flawed, morally compromised, and victimized by a system that encourages women of oppressed racial and economic groups to stay marginalized by over-relying on men, competing with other women and girls to keep undeserving men, keeping them bracketed off from educational and professional advancement, and convincing them that they don’t deserve better and neither do their children. While many people may gesture toward Mary’s knockdown fights with her daughter or her transparently fake show of domestic stability for visiting social workers as evidence of Mo’Nique’s powerful performance, I’d offer up scenes where Mary sits comatose for hours in front of the television or gives her profound confession about her daughter’s home life to social worker Ms. Weiss (played by Mariah Carey) at the end of the movie. These moments are informed by a series of photographs kept in a scrapbook that show Mary as a happy young woman in high school, with her partner, and her baby girl, and later distant and resentful of her, suggesting how mother and daughter came to their destructive relationship. In these moments, whether conveyed with glazed eyes, frozen in damning snapshot, or through a bewildered face made paler by make-up, we see a woman depressed and trapped. It becomes suggested that she is perhaps haunted by the same cycle of domestic abuse her daughter has lived through and at times as much victim as victimizer.
Screen shot from Mary's final scene; image courtesy of accesshollywood.com
3. As this was a concern for many skittish filmgoers of my acquaintance, I’ll say that from my perspective, I didn’t find this movie to be exploitative. Though I had issues with how director Lee Daniels would abruptly shift aesthetics and cinematic style, I appreciated that this movie wasn’t, say, all Dogme all the time. For one, surrealist flights of fancy is part of Precious’s coping strategy. For another, I think a movie that dwelt so much of the horror of the protagonist’s situation and environment would have veered the movie into exploitation, and may have also suggested that an authentic poor, black experience (whatever that is) necessitates aesthetic ugliness over compositional beauty. I found the unsettling moments to be handled sparingly, oftentimes providing a necessary jolt while also suggesting that Precious isn’t only her pain. The most effective moment for me was when Precious is given a reading tutorial by her teacher and, in a her embarrassment and frustration, returns to a particularly explicit memory of her father attacking her. Another noteworthy moment occurs when Precious is getting ready for school and sees a slim, blonde white girl staring back at her in the mirror — a chilling example of how girls of color may internalize normative standards of feminine beauty.
4. Man, did I ache for Ruby, Precious’s young, inquisitive neighbor who is clearly another abused child and is seeking comfort and friendship with a girl who is too damaged to see a kindred spirit. Some people laughed at Ruby in the screening I attended, especially in one scene when Precious is running away from Mary with her newborn in hand and knocks the girl over. Fuck you, I say. My only hope is that somewhere, later, off the page and reel, Precious and Ruby reconnect.
5. I’m assuming this is lifted from the book, but I was struck by how Precious is a proud and protective mother to children who, due to incest, are also technically her siblings. Watching her hold her mentally disabled daughter or breast-feed her infant son, I found myself confronted by how my own feelings about reproductive rights are informed by racial and class privilege and how the notion of “choice” is subjective. While I might personally be horrified at the thought of giving birth to children formed from prolonged familial abuse and would thus potentially remove our relationship, Precious views these children as her own. Mercifully, the movie does not judge her for feeling this way, and forced at least one (middle-class, white, female) spectator to think more critically about her politics.
6. As this is a music blog, I found the incorporation of music culture to be applied to interesting effect here. For one, there’s Daniels’s decision to cast successful recording artists like Mariah Carey and Lenny Kravitz, drawing out believable and unassuming performances that belie their celebrity and attendant glamor.
Mariah Carey un-glams it up for Ms. Weiss; image courtesy of createdintheattic.files.wordpress.com
For another, there’s the soundtrack’s song selection, which emphasizes contributions from jazz, soul, and R&B artists, many of whom are women of color, perhaps a reflection on the majority of the movie’s cast (thanks for the link, Kristen!). Some of the songs listed here are not period-appropriate and thus not heard in the movie, perhaps serving as inspiration and putting the movie and its source material in dialogue with generations of female artists. However, Mary J. Blige’s stirring “I Can See In Color” serves as the movie’s theme and is even featured in the scene when Precious finally flees her mother’s apartment. I hope she wins an Oscar too.
Then there was stuff that made me itchy in a bad way.
1. The opening credits are written in Precious’s semi-literate hand, then clarified through parenthetical notation. I don’t know if it was the result of studio meddling, but I found this borderline insulting. For one, it seems to imply that potential audience members can’t do basic decoding. For another, it undermines the protagonist’s particular system of written language, suggesting that it is improper, inscrutable, and in need of intervention from more literate, unseen sources.
2. As suggested earlier, this movie is visually beautiful, but stylistically uneven. At times, this is a blessing. Other times, Daniels’ heightened visuals were annoying, making me think more about how the director executed a shot than what the protagonist was going through in the moment. While I’d have to read the book to determine whether this is true to the source material, I found the most distracting moment to be when Mary visits Precious in a half-way house after leaving home and reveals that her daughter’s father has AIDS. This news and its personal implications hit Precious instantly, but the movie detours into another fantasy sequence where the lead imagines herself at a glitzy premiere. While this may be true to how Precious processes this in the book, the scene in the movie seems to suggest more about the director’s power over the camera than the protagonist’s complex emotional responses to trauma. I would have preferred to stay with Precious in that moment, but maybe some feelings are off-limits to the viewer. It just registered to me as an icky moment of authorial control.
3. As others have noted, the variance of African American skin tones and how certain shades align with class positioning is a source of contention here. As Precious is a dark-skinned black girl, it would stand to reason that her family would match her skin tone. This potentially sets up a binary wherein all dark-skinned characters are poor and uneducated. While this is challenged by the presence of Precious’s classmates, who vary in terms of racial and ethnic categories, the binary is evident with the social workers, who are educated, middle-class, light-skinned (often-multiracial) African Americans.
While Precious speculates about Mrs. Weiss’s background, the movie portrays her writing teacher, Blue Rain (played by Paula Patton), as a light-skinned, gay but somewhat desexualized, savior. If this isn’t clear within the narrative, the movie’s compositional elements make it explicit. How better to frame a middle-class, college-educated, light-skinned black woman teaching systemically disadvantaged girls than to cast a saintly glow around her through back-lighting? In this way, as well as how Precious navigates intersectional identity politics, A.O. Scott makes a case for how the movie is similar to The Blind Side, the Michael Oher biopic starring Sandra Bullock as his affluent and plucky adoptive mother, Leigh Anne Tuohy.
Patton's Blue Rain is Precious's light-skinned savior; image courtesy of nickelforathought.files.wordpress.com
3A. I felt like Precious’s Each One Teach One classmates could have been better developed. Perhaps this is a limitation of the format, as feature films don’t have the time to flesh out characters the way that television can. The Wire devoted an entire season to four pre-teen boys navigating the Baltimore public school system, following them until the end of the series’ run. If only more time and resources were given in movies and television to create complex, multidimensional characters who are girls of color.
Precious with classmates Rhonda (Chyna Layne), Consuelo (Angelic Zambrana), and Rita (Stephanie Andujar); image courtesy of thankgodimfamous.com
3B. I’m curious as to how viewers might interpret the dearth of male characters. I know that Ralph Wiley voiced his concern about with the lack of sympathetic men in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple in “Purple With a Purpose,” an essay from Why Black People Tend To Shout: Cold Facts and Wry Views From a Black Man’s World. I wonder if similar criticisms can be made here. We only see Precious’s dad during traumatic flashbacks, and even then he’s almost entirely obscured by shadows (something I’m sure Richard Dyer would take issue with). Other than that, we have a nurse named John McFadden, played by Lenny Kravitz, who came across to me as kind of a jerk who thinks he can fix any problem with a serving of organic fruit or a greeting card filled with money.
Kravitz's McFadden is well-meaning, if not a bit aloof; image courtesy of tapeworthy.blogspot.com
4. There’s also some characters who are left unexplained. One is a classmate of Precious’s in the Each One Teach One who breaks down for Precious the difference between the word “insect” and “incest,” supposedly for comic effect. That she’s one of a few white characters and coded as queer should be given more context.
Of greater concern to me is Precious’s grandmother, who takes care of her firstborn, Mongo, who has Down Syndrome. At no point is it made clear how she feels or what she knows about her granddaughter’s home life or even what side of the family she’s on. I really wanted to know more about her and the relationships she’s cultivated within this extended family.
5. Finally, the movie suggests that Precious’s final scene is triumphant, again suggesting further similarity with The Blind Side. But it’s also a bit of a lie. The odds are still very much against her, as they would be for most semi-literate, economically disadvantaged, HIV-positive, teenage single mothers. Not impossible odds, and certainly better odds if her love of math was further nurtured, but long-shot odds that don’t often reflect statistically-supported realities.
Taking all of this into account, I’m heartened that movies like Precious are being made and hope that more media texts grapple with such subject matter and fund more projects with African American directors, actors, producers, and other personnel across racial and ethnic categories. The movie apparently broke $30 million domestically at the box office, which is no small thing for a $10 million indie covering such sensitive subject matter with or without Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry’s producer credits. While movie-going can hardly rectify systemic oppression, it can get us thinking about it and maybe (hopefully) work together toward fixing it.
Yoko Ono's 2003 performance of "Cut Piece"; image courtesy of commondreams.org
If you’re a follower of this blog and haven’t gotten a hold of the new issue of Bitch, I heartily recommend it. I also recommend that you get a subscription, something I intend to renew after the holiday season. As luck would have it, the current issue came in the mail just as I was heading to Fort Worth for Thanksgiving, and its theme is all about artists. In it, you will find articles about mediated representations of female artists in television and film, the troubled history of contemporary feminist art, and an indictment of the patriarchal implications of Donald Judd’s artistic take-over of Marfa.
Anne Elizabeth Moore penned quite the invective against Donald Judd's presence in Marfa
While I’d like some more coverage of iconoclastic artists like Kara Walker and an extension of the term “artist” to include women like contemporary dancer Louise Lecavalier, I recognize that the good people at Bitch only have so much negative space to fill and loved the issue all the same. It was just the thing to read while running on the elliptical machine in the guest room when in need of some solitary quality time. I am an only child, after all.
I saw Kara Walker's My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love exhibit at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth two summers ago and it blew my mind; image courtesy of blackhistorymonths.files.wordpress.com
One person I’m really glad Bitch focused on is Yoko Ono. By having 20 female artists contribute their words and feelings about this great woman, Ellen Papazian helps shatter the myth of rock’s dragon lady widow and considers her influence as an artist, musician, Japanese immigrant, feminist, mother, wife, and woman. Importantly, these women also challenge the notion that Ono’s cultural position as feminist conceptual artist was trite and instead suggest ways in which it was revolutionary and brave. Let’s think about this when we look at works like “Cut Piece,” wherein Ono invites audience members to cut off pieces of her clothes and hair — sometimes to dangerous effect at the hands of misogynistic participants — or “Y E S,” which is comprised of a ladder, a magnifying glass, and three affirmative letters scrawled on a board overhead.
Another lady I’d like to shine a light on, especially since she wasn’t featured in Bitch‘s Art/See issue is composer and fellow Houstonian Pauline Oliveros.
Pauline Oliveros with her accordian; image courtesy of paulineoliveros.us
I’m in the process of putting together a couple of entries for an encyclopedia for American women in popular culture. I’ve sent off two, but am stalling on an overview of female composers because, frankly, beyond Ms. Oliveros, Libby Larsen, and film scorers like Wendy Carlos and Shirley Walker, I actually don’t know too many myself and was hoping to use this assignment as an opportunity to broaden my own understanding. A Pandora guide I inherited from my friend Emily will hopefully expand my own knowledge base, but feel free to throw out American female composers I should discuss. In the mean time, I thought I’d share a piece by Oliveros, an accordian player and pianist who emphasizes the importance of breathing in music-making, cultivates the idea of deep listening in contemporary classical music, and incorporates it into her music for feminist reasons.
Let’s toast these female artists and others who’ve carved spaces for themselves and, as a result, tried to bridge the chasm between subject and spectator, hoping to forge that most feminist of ideals: communal space. Here here! I sip my Lone Star in their honor.
