Le Tigre and Christina Aguilera made beautiful music together; image courtesy of amysrobot.com
So, by now we probably all know that Christina Aguilera’s got a new album coming out this spring. It’s called Bionic, which is as rad a title as any. I consider myself a Christina fan, and have enjoyed watching her develop as a singer. And I thought Back to Basics, while overlong, was a lot of fun. Do we all need to watch the “Candyman” music video she co-directed with Matthew Rolston to jog our memories? Okay.
But while I’ve got Bionic on my radar, the folks she’s collaborated with is what really fills me with anticipation. She’s worked with rad ladies like M.I.A., Santigold, and post-riot grrrl icons Le Tigre. If she could bring in artists like Björk, one of her favorite singers, or Gossip, my head might explode. I’m anticipating some tough, glossy electroclash and I hope I get it. While I’m not sure what the album sounds like and do hold some reservations, I’m excited that Le Tigre have been back at work after their hiatus. Also I do think this collaboration is important.
Sure, indie music’s cross-pollinations with commercial fare in the recent past are well-documented. If this applies to big-name producers like Lukasz Gottwald, it certainly applies to lesser-known talent who might be able to lend a certain caché. Remember when LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy tried to produce a Britney Spears single? Hell, remember the rumor that Kathleen Hanna was going to serve as one of the many producers of Paris Hilton’s inauspicious debut? Yeah, we’ve been doing this for a while.
But how often do independent and mainstream female artists work together? How many superstar pop singers espouse even remotely feminist values that could jibe with Le Tigre’s politics (besides P!nk and maybe Lady Gaga)? How many pop stars even claim “Deceptacon” to be one of their jams? And while Mariah Carey liked Hole’s Live Through This, I like that Aguilera actually went in to the studio with these artists. I’ll reserve judgement on the music until I hear a final product, but I respect the professional motivations of all parties. I also look forward to hearing the results, especially if they’re built for the dance floor.
Taylor Momsen, apparently over it; image courtesy of gofugyourself.com
So, did ya’ll know that Taylor Momsen fronts a rock band? I guess that’s why she’s always sneering each time I see her on Go Fug Yourself. All this, and Leighton Meester working toward a pop career too!
Now, I don’t want to seem snide or condescending, especially about a veteran child actress transitioning into adulthood. I don’t want to speculate that her interest in music has developed just as the once-hot teen soap she’s on is starting to cool. Who am I to suggest that the Gossip Girl star’s musical forays aren’t sincere?
Apparently Momsen’s been singing for years and fronts a band called The Pretty Wreckless. While essentially a solo project with some (male) hired-gun musicians, she is the act’s vocalist, costume designer, and primary songwriter. The group has been putting on shows and has recorded a single, “Zombie,” which has a raw sound that suggests Momsen’s listened to a lot of Courtney Love.
Momsen channels Love when fronting her band; image courtesy of buzznet.com
Momsen’s done a lot more to suggest she wants to explore music beyond adding another hyphenate, like one-time would-be pop singers Hilary Duff, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Nicole Richie, who at one point was in a band with model Josie Maran called Darling and was supposed to be working on an alternative-influenced solo project that may or may not see the light. Momsen even plays a bit of guitar as well. I’d hazard she’d do more of it if she’d bulk up. Have you seen her twiggy arms? Homegirl needs to eat all kinds of sandwiches.
But I am a still little incredulous, as I am about Momsen’s entire hipster image, which became public just as Jenny Humphreys was becoming the UES’s edgy It Girl on Gossip Girl. There’s something just way too pre-fab about all of it that makes me wonder if there’s any real difference between Momsen wears skinny jeans and when, say, the Jonas Brothers do it (or, as Jonah Weiner points out in an article Kristen sent my way, when Miley Cyrus hires producers who swipe from lesser-known songs for indie cred). After the controversial but transformative presence Rachel Zoe had in reinventing Nicole Richie’s public image, I work under the assumption that all celebrities have stylists and that Momsen’s no exception, even if she herself is interested in fashion. I can’t help but wonder if similar industrial mechanisms are at work for her and her musical aspirations.
Maybe I’m just being snobby about medium and public image. While I have my doubts about Momsen’s musical pursuits, I never questioned when fellow former child actress Jena Malone released a seven-inch with Social Registry back in 2007 and continued on as the lead singer of The Shoe. Assuredly this has much to do with an appreciation of Malone’s experimental sound.
Jena Malone, in concert; image courtesy of jena-malone.info
But I’d be lying if I said my enjoyment of Malone’s music wasn’t informed by my pre-established fandom of her turns in indie-friendly fare like Cheaters, Saved, and Donnie Darko. It probably didn’t hurt matters that she has lesbian parents, legally emancipated herself as a minor for financial reasons, and appeared in public with a bald head. In short, her outsider persona matched her acting and musical choices. It seemed, to employ that ickiest of value judgements, “authentic.”
That said, I support Momsen’s right to rock out. But I’ll have to hear and see more before I call myself a fan.
Lady Gaga sitting (without pants) in the lap of luxury
So, I’ll just come right out and say it. I don’t get Lady Gaga. Actually, no. I think I get her. At first I thought I was just being resentful that she got to perform in the Pet Shop Boys medley at the BRIT Awards and I didn’t, but now I just think there’s nothing to get. To take Gertrude Stein out of context, there is no there there.
My immediate problem with her is that she seems to have garnered a lot of attention around her fashion choices. Admittedly, she’s got an interesting look on the surface. Glittery, glam, vaguely militaristic, often without pants. She certainly throws together a spectacle. But my big question is where is the commentary? What is the critique exactly?
Based on the video for “Beautiful Dirty Rich” (or, indeed, the title of her debut album, The Fame) one might assume the commentary is on the desperation and boring vapidity of fame and wealth.
But, the thing is, she’s totally buying into it, perhaps in the same way that her idol Andy Warhol bought into it. There’s not really a commentary. She wants to be famous. She wants to be rich (a goal not difficult to obtain unto itself, as she was born into an upper-middle-class family). Basically, it seems like she wants to be Paris Hilton. And not to comment on her. Just simply to be her.
Heygirlhey.
To add to which, the glamor of Lady Gaga further seems to enforce the idea of fabulousness as being politically progressive. That if women own their fabulousness and earn it for themselves, it’s their choice to spend their money on jewel-encrusted, shoulder-padded bathing suits and designer sunglasses, and creating room for that kind of excessive materialism is empowering to women, somehow.
But you don’t see Lady Gaga appropriating thrift-store togs or found objects, as my friend Kristen astutely pointed out. Her key accessory of late seems to be the tea cup. This, combined with her taking up of the title “Lady”, suggests that there’s no reason for women to question high fashion’s or society’s dependence on capitalism (which also has a nasty habit of keeping patriarchal practices in power and, as a result, oppressing marginalized groups) but, in fact, to embrace it.
A Lady who lunches with high society; photo taken from gofugyourself.com
And let’s look closer at this image for a moment. Another thing that I think is interesting about her look is her predilection for appropriating East Asian (specifically Japanese, it would seem) fashion cues. This kind of pilfering further emphasizes her whiteness and her compliance with it — while she may have been born brunette Stefani Germanotta, she reinvented herself as Lady Gaga, a white, bleach-blonde pop star with an ear for pseudo-Aryan techno dirges and a desire to make herself as racially normative as possible. And how better to be white than appropriate from other cultures? This is evident in the picture above, where Gaga’s lips are made up in a pursed style popularized by the geisha, and in the look below, where she has manipulated her (wigged?) hair into a Hello Kitty bow.
Lady Gaga by way of Sanrio; photo taken from kittyhell.com
Of course, many may defend her constructedness as being progressive because of how performative and excessively feminine it is, suggesting that it’s all drag and thus may be totally queer and subversive. Which is a fair claim to make. What was her American Idol performance of “Poker Face” if not one big, campy drag revue?
But a look to the lyrics. Apparently the song is about how Lady Gaga was having sex with a guy and pretending he was a woman. Shock me shock me. But you know what, Lady? Rather than suffer through some lame guy’s inability to satisfy you, why don’t you get out of bed and find another partner. Also, I’d be more impressed if you actually had a substantial male member, but you probably don’t. So the illusion is broken there.
And, of course, it cannot be ignored that the popularity of drag was another bit of appropriation white pop stars exacted from black, queer subculture. Maybe putting it on the Idol stage is interesting, but I’m sure much of its context and subtext was lost.
If all of this sounds super-familiar, it’s because it’s also not new. Having just read Pamela Robertson’s Guilty Pleasures: Feminist Camp From Mae West to Madonna, this basically reads to me as Madonna Redux. And let’s not forget that Madonna herself borrowed from Marilyn Monroe and Mae West, and was big on appropriating images and customs from black and gay culture, which bell hooks suggests in her essay “Madonna: Plantation Mistress or Soul Sister” further highlighted her white blondeness, as well as her compliance with patriarchy.
And while I’m all for feminist camp and female drag queens, I’d like to see some models of it (perhaps, gasp, some models of color) who actually make a comment on patriarchy, capitalism, race, sexuality, and normative feminine beauty ideals. If this critique isn’t there, then what keeps folks like Lady Gaga, who may seem progressive, subversive, or even transgressive, from actually endorsing a very staid set of class, gender, racial, and sexual norms and charging it all to their credit cards?
