As summer winds down, I thought I’d throw up a few videos by artists I can always rely on. Two of them–Björk and St. Vincent–have albums coming out next month. Jill Scott is the third artist featured here, and The Light of the Sun has been in personal rotation this summer. I’d include Rihanna’s Avril-sampling “Cheers (Drink to That),” but Rihanna slants her eyes at the 3:11 mark, bringing to mind Miley’s racial insensitivity incident, so I can’t endorse it without a lot more context.
St. Vincent
“Cruel” Mercy Me
Directed by Terri Timely
Jill Scott
“Hear My Call” The Light of the Sun
Co-directed by Jill Scott
Björk
“Crystalline” Biophilia
Directed by Michel Gondry
The other night, I watched Missy Elliott’s Behind the Music. It’s a pretty good episode. I forgot how many talented ladies Elliott worked with, including Tweet, Nelly Furtado, and Alyson Stoner. Joan Morgan champions “One Minute Man” for articulating that women can seek out sex for it’s own sake. Mary J. Blige backs Elliott’s genius regardless of her size. Elliott’s mother Patricia talks about coming forward as a domestic abuse survivor at her daughter’s behest. And Elliott speaks candidly about working through traumas related to incest and childhood molestation, living with Grave’s disease, struggling to break into the music industry as part of the girl group Fayze, and getting edited out of the video to Raven-Symoné’s “That’s What Little Girls Are Made Of” because she was fat, even though she co-wrote the song. Damn. At least Heart videos had Ann Wilson’s face, even though the camera lusted after Nancy’s guitar-slung torso.
I knew we were going to talk about protégée Aaliyah’s death, which brought back so many memories. The plane crash. The news reports. Fatima Robinson crying. The posthumous release of the video for “Rock the Boat.” Jackets with the singer’s face airbrushed on the back. DMX in the “Miss You” video. Her older brother Rashad weeping during her episode of Behind the Music. Missy and Tim’s hearts breaking. All these feelings came up again when I watched the Elliott episode, as I’m sure they do for the rapper-producer every day. They flooded back this morning when I read Leslie Pitterson’s Clutch Magazine piece, which commemorates the 10-year anniversary of her death excerpts Damon Dash’s Billboard interview about his relationship with the singer and the grief he worked through.
Aaliyah, always; image courtesy of billboard.com
In a weird way, the loss of Aaliyah also came back last week when I watched an episode of Buffy that featured Ashanti as a demon. She seemed to be channeling Aaliyah in Queen of the Damned, or maybe that’s who writer Jane Espenson and the wardrobe department were trying to conjure. I knew something wicked was afoot, because there’s no way Ashanti would date a schlub like Xander. This also made me think of what a weird time the early 2000s were when Ashanti broke Billboard records but left no impression on me besides coming off as impolite to a chauffeur in an episode of Punk’d because she expressly forbid him from talking to her. Ah, Punk’d. How it played into (and often betrayed) celebrity image construction. Justin Timberlake is a stoned mama’s boy. Magic Johnson is quite level-headed when dealing with his son’s scorned lover. Katie Holmes gets pushed around. Of course, the show also presented a lot of scenarios where black celebrities had to deal with law enforcement. Call out Ashton’s racial insensitivity, Dave Chappelle!
Anyway, Ashanti wearing belly chains and wielding swords just made me miss Aaliyah. This might have worked better if it was Rihanna. I’m willing to see her an action movie, even if it’s stupid to build a film franchise on a board game. Maybe the “Hard” video was her audition for a Tank Girl reboot. Maybe Michelle Rodriguez will be in it. . . . But I digress.
I love Aaliyah’s music, as do many friends. In high school, girlfriends made up dances for her songs. Ginny created an interpretive dance for the first verse to “Are You That Somebody?” Brooke came up with a routine for “Try Again” that she performed at prom. I was introduced to Aaliyah in junior high when I saw the video for “Back & Forth” on the Box (a channel in need of more academic scholarship and a Grantland oral history). Who was this cool girl with the silky voice and why was she wearing sunglasses? It’s staggering how many amazing singles she had in her too-short career: “One In a Million,” “If Your Girl Only Knew,” “We Need a Resolution,” an amazing cover of the Isley Brothers’ “At Your Best (You Are Love),” and my all-time favorites “More Than a Woman” and “4-Page Letter.”
For me, Aaliyah represented the future. In this and other ways, she reminds me of Selena. Both women were veteran entertainers who were just about to break into the mainstream when their lives were cut tragically short, at 22 and 23 respectively. They continue to influence artists and develop fan bases across generations and borders. They also seemed to have a lot of self-respect. Both women were sexy, but refused to be degraded or turned into objects. They seemed in control of their sexuality. They knew girls were watching them, and they also knew to save some of themselves from the public eye. Like Janet Jackson before them and Beyoncé after, they made self-possession sexy. Hell, Aaliyah was secretly married to R. Kelly as a teenager and that didn’t stick to her (or him, really). She kept quiet about it. It undoubtedly changed her, but she wasn’t a victim and it wasn’t your business what transpired between them. It didn’t define her. It was never going to. The cover to Age Ain’t Nothin’ But A Numbersays it all. Notice which figure is blurry and out of frame and who doesn’t have to take off her shades to look directly at the camera and hold your attention. All that, and she never had to raise her voice. You were one a million, Aaliyah. You still are.
Had a lovely weekend tooling around Fredericksburg, visiting my grandparents’ old house in Ingram, climbing Enchanted Rock, and swimming in Krause Springs. Gettin’ in my Hill Country fare before I move to Wisconsin.
Replenished from my outdoors time with two of my favorite people, I thought I’d post a few new(ish) videos I like. Given the excellent commentary on Beyoncé and Rihanna’s new videos from Racialicious, the Crunk Feminist Collective, and Womanist Musings, I thought I’d just provide the links and say “preach!” However, here are some other new(ish) clips to get you talking.
Christeene (click on artist’s name to view the clip, as I can’t figure out how to embed Funny or Die videos)
“Workin’ on Grandma”
Directed by PJ Raval
The Juliettes
“Hooray You’re Gay”
Grouper
“Alien Observer” A I A
Directed by Hamish Parkinson
Nikko Gray
“Rollercoaster” Love Seen
Directed by Holly Port
Les Nubians
“Afrodance” Nü Revolution
Directed by Andrew Donsumnu
Thanks to Clutch Magazine for the last two. Like ‘em almost as much Bene Viera’s piece on Kreayshawn, which you should read alongside this Crunk Feminists post if you haven’t already.
Katy Perry, Rihanna, Ke$ha, and Nicki Minaj--two of these girls vacation together; image courtesy of idolator.com
I’m okay with Katy Perry and Rihanna being buddies. I’m just gonna let it go like Andrea Plaid allowed Rihanna’s “S&M” video to circulate without clutching her pearls.
While I bristle at the idea that Perry allegedly wanted Ms. Fenty to serve as adult entertainment at her bachelorette party, I liked their connection ever since I saw those photos of the pair vacationing after Rihanna split with Chris Brown. I’m happy when any two female celebrities have a long-standing friendship. It’s why I like that Ellen Page and Alia Shawkat found each other, even if I reserve the right to hate on that TV series they pitched about crafty hipsters who relocate to Los Angeles. Female professionals should stick together. Work, both within and outside of the celebrity fishbowl, is a boys’ club. Solidarity is better than, you know, laughing at Britney while she snorts your cocaine or fighting over Wilmer Valderrama. Remember those dark days? Lohan forever.
I’ve made my feelings known about Perry. I’ve also been a die-hard Rihanna fan since “Pon de Replay” entered into heavy rotation. Hipster cred aside, Rihanna has had a phenomenal five-year run. Britney Spears released her first greatest hits compilation at that point in her career and Greatest Hits: My Prerogative and there’s some definite padding after “Toxic” and “I’m a Slave 4 U”. If Rihanna were to follow suit, there’d hardly be a slouch in the bunch. I only hope some Rated R cuts make it in.
By the way, I don’t mean any disrespect toward Britney’s inaugural best-of, especially since it includes ”Do Somethin’”. I also believe that Britney released her best album to date in 2007. Blackout would be noteworthy for Robyn’s vocal work alone. But I’m with Rob Sheffield–it may be the most influential pop record of recent memory.
However, Perry and Rihanna’s friendship makes me think about my preferences. The majority of white feminists roundly dismissed Perry. Yet many of us praise Rihanna. Some of this might be weird hair envy, but a lot of our admiration stems from knowing she’s a survivor. We may read that into her music. But on the surface, Perry and Rihanna have a bit in common. Both are limited singers who have smartly aligned themselves with skillful producers who can craft a mean dance-pop gem. They also foreground their sexuality in somewhat conventional ways.
For me, the two diverge by how they construct their sexuality. Perry’s femme camp feels disingenuous, like she’ll only dance at the gay bars long enough to project footage from her wedding onto the train of her dress. Her conceptualization of female sexuality is ultimately passive, heteronormative, and shot through with regressive double standards. But Rihanna seems to draw strength from her sexuality, usually making demands and taking action instead of batting her eyelashes and letting the boys call the shots. Maybe they’ll come together on some future project. Here’s hoping they remember to recruit Britney and Nicki Minaj.
Prove me wrong, Lykke Li, but I don't imagine that you hailing the prostitute in a song has anything to do with securing workers' rights; image courtesy of nymag.com
Late last year, a reader sent me an e-mail asking what my thoughts on the Lykke Li’s “Get Some.” Truth told, any news about the Swedish singer’s forthcoming Wounded Rhymes was hovering my mind’s periphery. I knew it was coming out soon and that she contributed a song for Twilight‘s New Moon soundtrack. I liked her first album Young Novels. I thought it was interesting that “I’m Good (I’m Gone)” was sung by the season nine cast of American Idol in one of their embarrassing car commercial music videos. But that was really the extent of it. So when the reader pointed that Li refers to herself as a lover’s prostitute in “Get Some,” I was pretty bummed and surprised I hadn’t heard about it. At best, it gives detractors more ammunition to claims that indie recording artists are the quickest to sell out.
Look, I’m not here to knock prostitutes. I’m starting on the second season of Deadwood, and Trixie is one the show’s most interesting characters. I understand that several feminists have spoken in defense of their work, including a lawyer friend of mine who wrote a really stunning piece of legal writing on the subject when she was in school. I recognize that many people go into prostitution on their own accord and derive pleasure and self-empowerment from their work. As their work often gets collapsed in with human trafficking (which is an altogether different matter and should be eradicated), we should recognize that sex workers are real people who are providing services. Frankly, I think they should get health benefits and union rights like other professions do in the states. But I also feel beyond uncomfortable with a society that places a dollar value on exchanging sexual favors with paid strangers.
As a feminist, I’m ambivalent about prostitution as a profession. However, I’m really not okay with female pop stars self-identifying as prostitutes in their songs, particularly as misguided attempts to gin up controversy, construct blockhead metaphors about the power dynamics of female sexuality, or be edgy. I get that Li is Swedish and thus may have a different outlook on it than this ugly American. However, though it’s perhaps meant to be perceived as transgressive, women playing the whore ultimately seems like such a safe play. It presents the illusion of confronting taboos around sexuality, but casts women in the societal roles ascribed for them. This is why I’m probably not going to get much out of the penis P.O.V. shots that await me when I get around to seeing Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void. Maybe by the time they appear, I’ll have fallen asleep or smashed my television.
It’s a tenuous connection fraught with racial difference, but Li’s single made me wonder why I celebrate Rihanna’s sexual frankness or am more accommodating of Keri Hilson’s gleefully explicit ”The Way You Love Me.” I think we still might live in a culture where black women declaring and demanding sexual gratification on their own terms is unfortunately really unsettling for many people. Though I certainly hope that these women are recognized for more than their libido, I’m glad their pleasure doesn’t seem to come with a price tag.
Janelle Monáe did a lot to define 2010's year in music; image courtesy of newblackman.blogspot.com
Jennifer Kelly is my favorite writer at Dusted, my go-to music e-zine. Recently she conceded that this year in music had a lot of contenders, but no clear leader of the pack. She then went on to list ten albums she really liked regardless of music critics’ echo chamber. It’s a good list, and I recommend you check it out. I also think you should give some time to Wetdog, a British punk band I learned about from her list.
In many ways, 2010 was an embarrassment of riches. So many big-name artists released career-peak records and lots of up-and-comers made me excited to listen to music each week (day? half-day? quarter-day? how rapid is the cycle now?). On paper, it’s a banner year. Yet I can’t pick one album that defines it. But that’s probably a good thing.
If I were to draft a list, three albums would place at #2. Critical darling Janelle Monáe comes the closest to topping my list. She defied commercial expectations with a pop album called The ArchAndroid about a futuristic metropolis that fused Prince with Octavia Butler. Joanna Newsom channeled Randy Newman, Joni Mitchell, and Blood on the Tracks-era Dylan to create the dusky reveries on the enveloping Have One on Me. LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy lifted synths straight out of Depeche Mode’s Black Celebration and the Eurythmics’ “Love Is a Stranger” while borrowing from Berlin-era Bowie for This Is Happening, which was book-ended by two of the man’s best songs.
Joanna Newsom on David Letterman; image courtesy of stereogum.com
The last two artists also managed to follow up and improve upon the albums that made them big tent attractions. Like most great pop music, they transcend their influences and ambitions. Yet each album is weighed down by at least one song. I always skip Happening‘s “You Wanted A Hit?,” which is too long and repetitive, even if it is aware of these things. I won’t fault Monáe and Newsom’s scope, but pruning a few tracks off for an EP or as b-sides might have been helpful. I think “Say You’ll Go” and “Kingfisher” don’t have the impact they could have elsewhere. If Newsom were referencing PJ Harvey’s Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea, “Kingfisher” would be her “Horses in My Dreams,” but it’s buried here.
BTW, no one’s jostling for #3. It’s Flying Lotus’ elegantly trippy Cosmagramma all the way.
As with every year, there are albums that are overrated and underpraised. Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is a perfect #11. It’s got fascinating angst and pathos that recalls another celebrity guilt rock record, Nirvana’s In Utero while squarely situating it as a black man’s experiences with fame. West’s bionic, prog-inflected production is the most potent it’s ever been. “All of the Lights” and “Monster” are among the year’s best songs, though credit goes solely to Nicki Minaj for the latter. But Jesus am I tired of reading ovations that cite the rapper’s Twitter feed. Yes, it provides insights into his process. And yes, it is noteworthy how West made so many tracks available to fans before the album was released (and maybe I’d bump it to #10 if “Chain Heavy” made the final cut). But it’s hardly album of the year or even a career best (in my opinion, he still hasn’t improved upon Late Registration).
Conversely, Spoon’s Transference is an ideal #9. People seem to hold one of America’s best rock bands in lower esteem this year for making an incomplete-sounding album. To my ears, this is an ingenious thing for a band so preoccupied with space and compositional austerity to do with a break-up record. I keep returning to tracks like “Is Love Forever” and “Nobody Gets Me,” yearning for a resolution I know I won’t find. I’d also mention that Marnie Stern‘s latest record (which would probably round out the top five) and Dessa‘s A Badly Broken Code (a peerless #4) were slept on. If they didn’t place higher, it’s only because they didn’t feel the need to announce their greatness and came on as slow burners. The same could be said of Seefeel‘s earthy dub on Faults (possibly #7) and Georgia Anne Muldrow, who had an incredibly prolific year that peaked with Kings Ballad (between #8-10). Psalm One’s Woman @ Work series on Bandcamp has me anticipating her next album. Oh, and since this was a year largely defined by albums about break-ups and shaky make-ups, Erykah Badu’s Second World War (#8) needs your attention.
There’s also lots of new stuff I liked this year that I hope ages with me. I’ve made peace with my misgivings about the limited shelf life of Sleigh Bells’ bubblegum through blown speakers, in part because Treats (#12-15 with some staying power) sounds amazing in the car, which is where all great pop records become immortal in the states. I’d like Best Coast more if leader Bethany Cosentino just went ahead and wrote a concept album about the munchies or her cat instead of devoting so many songs to boys. Sufjan Stevens’ indulgence bored me silly, as did Surfer Blood’s inability to rise past their influences and sound like themselves. Big Boi and Bun B’s ambitious releases deserve their accolades, but they should excite me more than they do. I have yet to fall in love with Robyn the way everyone else has, but Rihanna continues to be my girl.
I’m really into the new Anika record, which is tailor-made for insomniacs. However, I’m certain that a woman with a Teutonic monotone snarling her way through catatonia as producer Geoff Barrow quotes post-punk’s buzzsaw guitar noise holds limited appeal. I always welcome a new Gorillaz album, and Plastic Beach certainly delivered. Among others, I liked new efforts from Baths, El Guincho, Noveller, M.I.A., Grass Widow, Sharon Van Etten, Soft Healer, Beach House, Mountain Man, The Black Keys, Cee-Lo Green, Tobacco, Sky Larkin, Tame Impala, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Nite Jewel, Deerhunter, Vampire Weekend, Warpaint, Antony and the Johnsons, The Budos Band, and Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, even if the last two artists essentially release the same great album each time out. And even though I get a free cocktail if Merge wins the Album of the Year Grammy, Matador had a good year for me with Glasser, Esben and the Witch, and Perfume Genius, whose harrowing confessionals will hopefully find a larger audience (Sufjan fans, listen up).
(Note: don’t get me started on the Arcade Fire. I’m going to be mean and unfair, as I’ve been since I gave up on liking Funeral. Suffice it to say, I’m not fond of them and think I can tell you more about living in a Houston suburb than they can. But it won’t be a productive conversation because I’ll tear up my throat launching cheap shots about dressing for the Dust Bowl and wearing denim jackets to prove that you’re one with the working man. It’s not helpful, so I’ll be kind and say they’re fine at what they do but I want no part of it.)
Part of why I can’t settle on a #1 is because I don’t think it matters. I don’t think I need an album to define the year for me. It’s always seemed that selecting one was a fool’s errand. Steve Albini may very well be an insufferable jerk, but he’s absolutely right when he said “Clip your year-end column and put it away for 10 years. See if you don’t feel like an idiot when you reread it.” Last year, I chose Neko Case’s Middle Cyclone. While it helped situate my feelings for the year, it can’t hold a candle to her modern classicFox Confessor Brings the Flood. But now I’m not even sure what the point is. This exercise doesn’t take into account all of the older music I finally prioritized this year. For me, 2010 is just as much defined by digging through Cocteau Twins and Throwing Muses records (4AD had a good year in all kinds of ways), as well as getting excited about Mary Timony, Jenny Toomey, and Carla Bozulich.
Carla Bozulich and I will be spending some quality time together next year; image courtesy of wfmu.org
Furthermore, I’ve sometimes lost sight of why I write in this medium. Apart from being vulnerable to having my content scraped by sketchy sites and feeling like I should be doing something more politically important with my time, it can be a challenge to keep the routine of blogging from dulling the impact of your work. This may have more to do with a need to explore scarier forms of writing, like the kind that requires the involvement of a guitar or a storyboard. As a departure, I started a film blog series for Bitch last month. It’s been the right kind of challenging, though I’m not always certain I’m effectively communicating what I hope to accomplish. Music allows for abstraction where films require exposition, which sometimes makes me feel like I’m writing several variations on “I walked to the chair and sat down.” But I’m learning and it’s been a lot of fun.
I don’t mean to be self-effacing toward my efforts, as I’m proud of them. It’s been a good year and it’s healthy to be critical when you’re taking stock. Perhaps I’m responding to a lack of stability. This was a year of change. Some changes were seismic, like when several friends had babies. Others were gradual, like my partner launching a successful music e-zine and me delving into the world of freelance writing in earnest while taking a deep breath and learning to play the guitar. While some friends returned to Austin, others moved away this year and more are soon to follow in 2011. There’s even an infinitesimal chance I’ll be in that number, but the likelihood of uprooting and leaving the food carts and backyard parties of my adopted home is so small and too profound to consider, so I push it away.
But as I’ve thought on these feelings during the year, the lyrics from LCD Soundsystem’s “Home” resonate. Though detractors may note Murphy’s manipulating my generation with lines like “love and rock are fickle things” and “you’re afraid of what you need . . . if you weren’t, I don’t know what we’d talk about,” I’ve taken comfort in crooning them in my car. That’s the best of what pop music can accomplish–taking abstractions and making them applicable to life’s mundane realities, at times clarifying their importance. In whatever medium, I can’t wait for another year of writing about it.
James Murphy, you and I had another good year; image courtesy of nymag.com
I returned from lunch and saw that Kristen at Dear Black Woman, posted the music video to Willow Smith’s “Whip My Hair.” Ya’ll, it’s delightful. I’ve been into her look for a while and am happy that she’s making music. We can search for nefarious doings involving her family’s alleged relationship to the Hubbard cult, but I don’t have any problems with the Smiths. They seem like nice famous people who are trying to maintain their careers while raising their children and encouraging them into creative endeavors without buying them fame or foisting it upon them. Here’s what I like about the song and the clip.
1. The song’s catchy.
2. The video takes place in a school. Willow turns ten this month, so it’s where she and many in their peer group spend their time.
3. The school isn’t depicted as a sex dungeon or a sweaty club. Put it differently, I’m glad Willow isn’t hyper-sexualized. This seems like good parenting and image control, something the fathers of Jessica Simpson and Miley Cyrus might want to have worked on. Kudos to director Anthony Mandler, who is best known for his work with Rihanna, for being sensitive to this as well.
4. Her hair makes the environment change colors. How cool is that?
5. Importantly, her surroundings are white before she whips her hair around. As her hair is braided into long cornrows or styled in puffs for the video, I have to read race into this. The video and song are obvious celebrations of hair, but not a white lady’s sleek ponytail or wavy tresses. I could potentially read it as a reclamation of the whip from its treacherous Antebellum context. Regardless, bringing color into the setting is a charged act. It’s no coincidence that people are pairing this song with Sesame Street’s “I Love My Hair” segment. Here’s the original, which Snarky’s Machine clued me into.
And here’s a mash-up.
6. Whipping hair is something I always associate with headbangers. Even if video vixens, Beyoncé, and that regrettable episode of Glee make it acceptable, the subjects of Heavy Metal Parking Lotstill come to mind. But Willow’s actions make me think of her mom Jada, who fronted metal band Wicked Wisdom. Not a lot of women of color are associated with metal, which makes Laina Dawes writing on the subject exceptional before one even takes the quality of her work into account. Thus the video and clip also destabilize how we relate women and girls of color to genre.
7. If items #5 and #6 sound heavy, they don’t play out that way in the video. This looks like such a fun shoot.
8. Can more videos please have babies break-dancing?
Lady Gaga and Beyoncé; image courtesy of buzzworthy.mtv.com
Recently Logan Hill contributed a piece for Vulture on the invigoration of music video production on the Internet following a dry spell for the medium on television. Of course, folks have noted this as YouTube, Vimeo, Vevo, and a host of other clip-sharing sites became ubiquitous alongside MTV’s continued programming choices to inundate their audience with reality shows. The network recently took “Music Television” out of its logo. For a moment, it seemed like DVD collections like Palm Pictures’ Directors Label series would step in and make music videos more available to the public, but clearly the Internet has won, even invigorating the careers of Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry.
While I don’t see this move as little more than a shift indicative of how we consume media, I would also like to point out that many of these headline-grabbing Internet sensation music videos are notable for another reason. The scandal and celebrity associated with these big-budget clips center on female pop stars. In the past year, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Christina Aguilera, Miley Cyrus, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, Shakira, Janelle Monáe, Erykah Badu, and M.I.A. have made garnered attention and controversy with clips inundated with sexual and/or violent imagery that might not fly on post-network television but keep the blogoshere typing, Tweeting, and uploading. Alongside those artists, fringe acts like Peaches, Yo! Majesty, and Gossip — all peopled by queer musicians — have garnered some recognition for their work.
Screen shot from music video for Rihanna's "Rude Boy"; image courtesy of accesshollywood.com
On the surface, the presence female pop stars have in reviving the music video format also recalls MTV’s nascence. Many note that the first clip the network aired was The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star.” But Pat Benatar’s “You Better Run” followed it, along with a whole host of female pop stars who battled rock acts and hair metal bands for programming supremacy. The Go-Go’s, Cyndi Lauper, Tina Turner, Madonna, Janet Jackson, and Eurythmics’ lead singer Annie Lennox all catapulted to stardom during the network’s infancy, as art rock acts like Kate Bush also received some stateside recognition.
The Go-Gos' Rolling Stone cover; image courtesy of rhonabennett.wordpress.com
While the current stable of video stars seem to subvert conventional femininity by playing with camp and excess, I’m actually inclined to read many of these artists as ultimately normative. Many of the video narratives, regardless of costuming or cultural references, tend to rehash contrived narratives about young women getting rowdy in the club and letting her (hetero)sexual inhibitions run wild. I believe Badu’s “Window Seat” and M.I.A.’s “Born Free” challenge these offerings however, by either making female nudity at once mundane and endangered or by dispensing of the female pop star altogether to focus on government-sanctioned ultraviolence. Monáe’s approach might be the most refreshing as she recontextualizes rock and R&B’s cultural origins within a female body covered up in menswear that’s ready to teach you some new dance steps.
In addition, many of these musical artists are working with established male video directors. Gaga revived the career of Jonas Åkerlund, who originally made a name for himself working with Madonna. While it’s easy to read these directors as auteurs, I’m inclined to point out that some of them have established collaborative relationships with these women across several projects. This also recalls how Gondry came into the cultural lexicon. While we may now think of him as the visionary behind White Stripes videos and Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, an Icelandic pop star named Björk selected him to direct his first English-language music video after years working in France. The clip was for “Human Behaviour,” which launched both of their careers in the states.
I’d like to bring up in the current emergence of female pop stars on the Internet is that almost all of them are solo artists taking sole focus on big-budget music videos. While I don’t want to suggest that these women are not musicians, or overlook the fact that Beyoncé tours with an all-female backing band, I find it disheartening that we aren’t seeing as many images of women and girls creating video images as collaborators, whether between female artists and directors, as members of a band, or female artists who collaborate with one another. While Lady Gaga and Beyoncé have been known to work together, as have M.I.A. and Santigold, it would be nice to see more music videos with a group of women or girls as the focus.
Sasha Fierce's backing band; image courtesy of spin.com
Likewise, I also find it frustrating that so many of these big productions have to be so moneyed, most notably Lady Gaga and Beyoncé’s “Telephone.” Perhaps a new group of bands and musical artists in collaboration with one another will also make names for themselves as music videos continue to thrive on the Internet. Who says you need a big budget and an iconic pop star to make a clip for the ages?
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.
