My dear patient reader:
I'm finally back from an unexpectedly long hiatus. See, what with school and finals and all, and then the holidays, and then the serious illness of a loved one, I haven't had time to post to Rock and the Single Girl.
During this hiatus, I had the pleasure of reading what is secretly my favorite kind of album review: a bad review of what I know is a terrible band. It was in a magazine that I secretly read almost every week, Entertainment Weekly. (My excuse is that my stepfather gets it, and that I only read it because it's always there waiting for me at home.) It was a review of a band that I make no secret of despising: Nickelback.
In the recent EW that reviewed the entirety of 2008, critic Leah Greenblatt rated Nickelback's Dark Horse a C+. She calls the lyrics of the album's first track "execrable" (hello SAT word!), and further calls it "kryptonite for feminists". I guess that's not a serious criticism for some people, but I'm pretty sure she meant it in the most negative way possible. Greenblatt goes on to call the entire album a "marvel of low art", which might sound like a compliment, but probably isn't really.
Here's the only part of the review that wasn't enjoyable for me to read: Greenblatt writes that based on the massive success of Nickelback and other laughably lame cock rock bands like Hinder and Metallica, that we are in the "Year of the Dude." "The only sure thing in the music business in 2008? The testosterone caddies of AC/DC, Metallica, Hinder, and Nickelback..." says Greenblatt.
This news came as something of a surprise to me. It's impossible to not be aware of lame guy rock, there are more Nickelbacks and Hinders and Buckcherries and Three Days Graces and Avenged Sevenfolds every single day, they're coming at us from all sides, it seems. It's equally impossible to not be aware of what I consider high quality music that happens to be made by men: according to numerous best-of-2008 lists, 2008 was the year of TV on the Radio, a band that certainly deserves the critical acclaim. But Year of the Dude? That strikes me as a bit of an overstatement.
But then, I'm probably the wrong girl to ask. By this point, I'm pretty well-studied at the art of shutting out the mainstream. Reading Entertainment Weekly is the only connection I have to big mainstream media, and otherwise, I live on a different plane. For me, 2008 will always be the year I volunteered at Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls in Brooklyn. It will always be the year that I had my faith in women's collective ability to create something powerful through music revived -- and by the keening, wailing, joyous racket produced by two hundred or so young girls, aged 8 - 18. (The other volunteers, who worked as their instructors and mentors, a small but fierce group comprised mostly of radical lady musicians, had a different, but positive impact on my faith in humanity.) I was so busy setting a positive, empowered example for my campers, and then so busy supporting the bands the volunteers play with that there was no room in my musical world for these dude bands, though I knew in the back of my mind they were out there.
'Out there', yes -- but I certainly wasn't aware of how popular these dude bands are. This review says that Nickelback and other related bands "collect platinum plaques like they seem to collect hangovers and cocktail waitresses." Nickelback alone has allegedly sold 16 million records! I can hardly even fathom that, in this day and age it's rare for a band to go platinum, forget 16 times platinum. I hate to say it, but I read the review several times, and I was convinced: in 2008, shitty guy bands dominated the industry. How depressing.
I was approaching the edge of despair over this news when it occurred to me: hey, 2008 is over. It's 2009 -- and while the lame bands that were so popular in 2008 are still here, that doesn't mean that they have to continue to be popular. It's a new year, reader, and it might not seem like it, but we have the power to decide what this year will be about. Maybe we can't control the ailing music industry, or the increasingly monolithic radio industry, or the frankly disappointing music television channels. But we can control what we pay attention to, and how we decide to live 2009. I didn't realize it at the time, but that's what I did with Rock Camp, I effectively changed my approach to music and life.
And who knows? Maybe if enough of us change the way we listen to and think about music and live performances, we can impact the industry. It might seem impossible, but think about it: a year ago, most of us thought it was impossible that Barack Obama would win the United States presidential election. Through out his campaign, Obama had millions of people cheering: "Yes we can!" Here's hoping that in 2009, we can keep saying "yes we can" to the challenges that lie ahead -- including the challenge of reviving our languishing music and pop cultures.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Saturday, November 15, 2008
One of these things is not like the other: Little Lungs at 237 Quail
On Friday, October 17, New York metro-area band Little Lungs made the long and tedious journey to Albany. They endured hours of weekend upstate traffic in a tiny vehicle packed to capacity with musical equipment, all to play a show in the comparatively sleepy Capital District.
And so, on Friday, October 17, I put away the books for a night and stepped far beyond my comfort zone. I went several blocks from my house, in maddening Friday night college town traffic, to the heart of the 'student ghetto', all to see Little Lungs, the only decent band that had come to town all season. Fortunately, I did not have to do this alone: my protegee and friend Stephanie came with me, to provide moral support, and also to indulge her own curiosity about the band.
I am happy to report that the band did not disappoint. Little Lungs played a short but tight set that seemed to entertain even the most jaded Albany scenesters who were in attendance.
Little Lungs really stood out that night, and not just because of the high quality of their performance and their songs -- they really are different from most of the bands that were on the bill in a number of ways. First, Little Lungs were the only non-local band playing that night. Second, they were the only band on the roster not playing seven minute posthardcore masterpieces that featured overwrought guitar work. Third, they were the only band that didn't employ screamed vocals or a heavy, masculinist sound made to be moshed to. And finally, and maybe most importantly, Little Lungs were the only band there that night that was not comprised of white guys who felt the need to antagonize the small audience gathered in the basement space that night. That's right, I said it: there are actual girls in Little Lungs.
But Little Lungs deserves more credit than "they were the band that didn't suck". Regardless of who they played with, or where they are from, their style of music, or the male-to-female ratio of their members, Little Lungs sounded really good that night.
Little Lungs write songs about ambivalence. From what I can tell, it seems that they are frequently inspired by that vaguely uncomfortably mid-twenties malaise, a malady that typically entails a disconcerting alternation between fervor and apathy, and an uncertain quest to figure out if there's really any point to any of this. They are the Reality Bites of current postpunk, and they are able, somehow, to recreate this feeling in the live setting. They play unsteadiness and vicissicitude with assurance and stability. Their songs might shift their weight from one foot to the other nervously, like a boxer who's considering throwing the fight while warming up, but Little Lungs never pull any punches. They carry off the contradiction, and the result is surprisingly uplifting; a cold, unfinished basement in a city that feels like the middle of nowhere never sounded so good.
p.s. Want to see for yourself? Catch Little Lungs on tour this winter -- dates are posted at ther myspace
And so, on Friday, October 17, I put away the books for a night and stepped far beyond my comfort zone. I went several blocks from my house, in maddening Friday night college town traffic, to the heart of the 'student ghetto', all to see Little Lungs, the only decent band that had come to town all season. Fortunately, I did not have to do this alone: my protegee and friend Stephanie came with me, to provide moral support, and also to indulge her own curiosity about the band.
I am happy to report that the band did not disappoint. Little Lungs played a short but tight set that seemed to entertain even the most jaded Albany scenesters who were in attendance.
Little Lungs really stood out that night, and not just because of the high quality of their performance and their songs -- they really are different from most of the bands that were on the bill in a number of ways. First, Little Lungs were the only non-local band playing that night. Second, they were the only band on the roster not playing seven minute posthardcore masterpieces that featured overwrought guitar work. Third, they were the only band that didn't employ screamed vocals or a heavy, masculinist sound made to be moshed to. And finally, and maybe most importantly, Little Lungs were the only band there that night that was not comprised of white guys who felt the need to antagonize the small audience gathered in the basement space that night. That's right, I said it: there are actual girls in Little Lungs.
But Little Lungs deserves more credit than "they were the band that didn't suck". Regardless of who they played with, or where they are from, their style of music, or the male-to-female ratio of their members, Little Lungs sounded really good that night.
Little Lungs write songs about ambivalence. From what I can tell, it seems that they are frequently inspired by that vaguely uncomfortably mid-twenties malaise, a malady that typically entails a disconcerting alternation between fervor and apathy, and an uncertain quest to figure out if there's really any point to any of this. They are the Reality Bites of current postpunk, and they are able, somehow, to recreate this feeling in the live setting. They play unsteadiness and vicissicitude with assurance and stability. Their songs might shift their weight from one foot to the other nervously, like a boxer who's considering throwing the fight while warming up, but Little Lungs never pull any punches. They carry off the contradiction, and the result is surprisingly uplifting; a cold, unfinished basement in a city that feels like the middle of nowhere never sounded so good.
p.s. Want to see for yourself? Catch Little Lungs on tour this winter -- dates are posted at ther myspace
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Crawling in Whose Skin? Co-opting Young, Female Bodies and Girly Parts
I recently found myself wandering disappointedly through the Virgin Mega Store in Times Square. I had gone there to procure the new Marnie Stern Record, and was shocked that the allegedly ultra hip, super cosmopolitan record store of the future with its in-house travel agency and in-store movie theater did not have the one cd I wanted. After looking at the over-priced t-shirts, I headed for the exit, consoling myself by vowing to order the album directly from Stern's record label that evening. I reminded myself that I would rather give my money directly to Kill Rock Stars than some corporate chain, anyway.
Before I made it to the front doors, my eye was caught by a cd cover that featured the face of a young woman. The portrait is only from the neck up, but the way her hair fans out behind her makes it look as though she is lying down. She has what my 'bff' Ashleigh and I have affectionately termed "My Chemical Romance Makeup"; her face is pale, while her eyes are lined with a mixture of black and red-tone eye shadows for a bruise-y, "at the morgue" kind of effect. Her eyes are wide and her lips are parted just slightly, with what seems to be an unpleasant shock.
I gravitated towards the cd, I'm not entirely sure why, and I picked it up, and found out that the album is I Am Ghost's Those We Leave Behind. I studied the cover, and made a few hasty assumptions, based on the image and the name of the band:
1. They're goth. Only bands that write about death and darkness and gloom make use of the My Chemical Romance makeup.
2. They're goth because only 'goth' bands would have the word 'ghost' in their title.
3. They're an all-dude band because for some reason, lately, guy bands are using images of women in their advertising, videos, and album art.
The last point stuck in my mind: is this really a trend, guy bands inexplicably using female bodies? As I trekked home from the record store, I tried to think of other examples, but couldn't come up with anything. What does this mean? I asked myself. Am I imagining this? Or has dead-looking girls on album covers become so common that I don't even notice it now?
The first time I noticed this weird feminization of rock images was in Linkin Park's early videos, "Numb" and "Crawling". In both videos, the band 'plays' at some undisclosed location, while images of a young girl in various forms of distress flicker by. I know, when you put it that way, it sounds kind of absurd; you can't help but wonder: why is one of the most popular and successful guy bands in the world using that most maligned and misunderstood of figures -- the teenage girl -- in its music videos?
For those unfamiliar with Linkin Park, this is what happens in the videos: in "Numb", an 'artsy' (read: unpopular and non-blonde) high school girl wanders through Prague and bumbles through her classes; you see her drawing during a lecture (she is reprimanded for this by teacher). You see the other students laugh at her, you see her trip on the stairs. During the second verse, you get to see her at home, arguing with her mother over dinner. "Crawling" starts with our bottle black hair, pierced-nose, 'goth'-looking protagonist crying in the bathroom, and watching her dark makeup-blackened tears roll down her pale face and into the sink. Unlike Artsy Girl, Gothy Girl looks a little more conventionally attractive, and she seems to have a boyfriend. She also seems to have some sort of problem with her father, whose face we never see.
Artsy Girl and Gothy Girl have something else in common though: self-inflicted wounds. Artsy Girl appears to be a self-mutilator (she has 'numb' carved into her left arm), while Gothy Girl has purple-blue bruises on both her arms, though it's not clear whether she or her skeezy father put them there. Either way, it all adds up to the same tired formula: teenage girls have to be screwed up or damaged in some way -- i.e., 'promiscuous', self-mutilators, binge drinkers/druggers, etc -- to be interesting, worthwhile, or marketable.
I've come across a few more offending record covers: there's Alexisonfire's debut album, the cover of which features two uniformed school girls who seem to be gearing up for a knife fight. (The cover, like the band itself, and like their one fan who I know, my 'bff' Ashleigh, is actually very tasteful.) There's Escape the Fate's Dying Is Your Latest Fashion from 2006; on this cover, you see a made-up, female face from the nose down. Her lipstick is smudged on her face, and her cheeks are either bruised or smeared with dark eye makeup. My personal favorites, I think, are Bury Your Dead's covers: You Had Me At Hello has a pair of fishnet-ed legs on it. Cover Your Tracks has a woman's bare midriff. Their self-titled has another girl's face on it, and yes, again, she has heavy, dark make up on and looks like she's either been crying or attacked or something equally horrible.
You could explain all of this with two words: "sex sells". An attractive girl, even one who looks like she's been beaten, will attract onlookers to the product or album. It worked on me; I was drawn to that I Am Ghost album like a big gay magnet. But still, I don't think that that's what's going on here. There's nothing explicitly sexual about Linkin Park's videos or most of the album covers mentioned above. (The Bury Your Dead covers are a different story.)
No, the impression that I get, from Linkin Park, at least, is that the use of troubled teenage girls is supposed to signify how the narrator of the songs, or lead vocalist Chester Bennington, feels -- powerless.
Teenage girls as a rule are not entirely without agency, as anyone who has so much as seen the movie Heathers knows. But between their age, their gender, school, parents, societal pressures to look and behave in very specific ways, and countless other forces, they are at a definite disadvantage. For this reason, teenage girls, like young children, are vulnerable to multiple kinds of abuse, and in reality, they have little control over their lives. And while this is all very poignant, it makes Linkin Park's videos look like a blatant appropriation of the average miserable teenage girl experience. For Chester Bennington, the straight, white frontman for a band with 20 awards and at least one certified diamond album, to imply that he feels as trapped and unhappy as a teenage girl who is being abused, seems preposterous, to the point where it borders on offensive.
I should admit here that I don't know very much about Linkin Park for their members. I can't really judge them because I don't know what their intent really is; I just know that it looks bad from where I'm sitting. And that I'm hoping that one day, teenage girls will form their own bands in huge, impossible-to-ignore numbers, and start to tell their own stories.
Before I made it to the front doors, my eye was caught by a cd cover that featured the face of a young woman. The portrait is only from the neck up, but the way her hair fans out behind her makes it look as though she is lying down. She has what my 'bff' Ashleigh and I have affectionately termed "My Chemical Romance Makeup"; her face is pale, while her eyes are lined with a mixture of black and red-tone eye shadows for a bruise-y, "at the morgue" kind of effect. Her eyes are wide and her lips are parted just slightly, with what seems to be an unpleasant shock.
I gravitated towards the cd, I'm not entirely sure why, and I picked it up, and found out that the album is I Am Ghost's Those We Leave Behind. I studied the cover, and made a few hasty assumptions, based on the image and the name of the band:
1. They're goth. Only bands that write about death and darkness and gloom make use of the My Chemical Romance makeup.
2. They're goth because only 'goth' bands would have the word 'ghost' in their title.
3. They're an all-dude band because for some reason, lately, guy bands are using images of women in their advertising, videos, and album art.
The last point stuck in my mind: is this really a trend, guy bands inexplicably using female bodies? As I trekked home from the record store, I tried to think of other examples, but couldn't come up with anything. What does this mean? I asked myself. Am I imagining this? Or has dead-looking girls on album covers become so common that I don't even notice it now?
The first time I noticed this weird feminization of rock images was in Linkin Park's early videos, "Numb" and "Crawling". In both videos, the band 'plays' at some undisclosed location, while images of a young girl in various forms of distress flicker by. I know, when you put it that way, it sounds kind of absurd; you can't help but wonder: why is one of the most popular and successful guy bands in the world using that most maligned and misunderstood of figures -- the teenage girl -- in its music videos?
For those unfamiliar with Linkin Park, this is what happens in the videos: in "Numb", an 'artsy' (read: unpopular and non-blonde) high school girl wanders through Prague and bumbles through her classes; you see her drawing during a lecture (she is reprimanded for this by teacher). You see the other students laugh at her, you see her trip on the stairs. During the second verse, you get to see her at home, arguing with her mother over dinner. "Crawling" starts with our bottle black hair, pierced-nose, 'goth'-looking protagonist crying in the bathroom, and watching her dark makeup-blackened tears roll down her pale face and into the sink. Unlike Artsy Girl, Gothy Girl looks a little more conventionally attractive, and she seems to have a boyfriend. She also seems to have some sort of problem with her father, whose face we never see.
Artsy Girl and Gothy Girl have something else in common though: self-inflicted wounds. Artsy Girl appears to be a self-mutilator (she has 'numb' carved into her left arm), while Gothy Girl has purple-blue bruises on both her arms, though it's not clear whether she or her skeezy father put them there. Either way, it all adds up to the same tired formula: teenage girls have to be screwed up or damaged in some way -- i.e., 'promiscuous', self-mutilators, binge drinkers/druggers, etc -- to be interesting, worthwhile, or marketable.
I've come across a few more offending record covers: there's Alexisonfire's debut album, the cover of which features two uniformed school girls who seem to be gearing up for a knife fight. (The cover, like the band itself, and like their one fan who I know, my 'bff' Ashleigh, is actually very tasteful.) There's Escape the Fate's Dying Is Your Latest Fashion from 2006; on this cover, you see a made-up, female face from the nose down. Her lipstick is smudged on her face, and her cheeks are either bruised or smeared with dark eye makeup. My personal favorites, I think, are Bury Your Dead's covers: You Had Me At Hello has a pair of fishnet-ed legs on it. Cover Your Tracks has a woman's bare midriff. Their self-titled has another girl's face on it, and yes, again, she has heavy, dark make up on and looks like she's either been crying or attacked or something equally horrible.
You could explain all of this with two words: "sex sells". An attractive girl, even one who looks like she's been beaten, will attract onlookers to the product or album. It worked on me; I was drawn to that I Am Ghost album like a big gay magnet. But still, I don't think that that's what's going on here. There's nothing explicitly sexual about Linkin Park's videos or most of the album covers mentioned above. (The Bury Your Dead covers are a different story.)
No, the impression that I get, from Linkin Park, at least, is that the use of troubled teenage girls is supposed to signify how the narrator of the songs, or lead vocalist Chester Bennington, feels -- powerless.
Teenage girls as a rule are not entirely without agency, as anyone who has so much as seen the movie Heathers knows. But between their age, their gender, school, parents, societal pressures to look and behave in very specific ways, and countless other forces, they are at a definite disadvantage. For this reason, teenage girls, like young children, are vulnerable to multiple kinds of abuse, and in reality, they have little control over their lives. And while this is all very poignant, it makes Linkin Park's videos look like a blatant appropriation of the average miserable teenage girl experience. For Chester Bennington, the straight, white frontman for a band with 20 awards and at least one certified diamond album, to imply that he feels as trapped and unhappy as a teenage girl who is being abused, seems preposterous, to the point where it borders on offensive.
I should admit here that I don't know very much about Linkin Park for their members. I can't really judge them because I don't know what their intent really is; I just know that it looks bad from where I'm sitting. And that I'm hoping that one day, teenage girls will form their own bands in huge, impossible-to-ignore numbers, and start to tell their own stories.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Do I have to? Music, feminism, and obligations
Last winter I discovered Tegan and Sara's latest album, The Con, and fell in love with it from the bleakness of my on-campus apartment. Last spring, I started listening to their previous album, So Jealous. In the summer I bought tickets to their October 5th show at Terminal 5, and continued to work backward through their records. And on Saturday the 4th, approximately 20 hours before I was supposed to go see them, I found myself struggling to explain to my friend Alma: "See, I like Tegan and Sara...but I don't."
I can hear the strangled cries of Tegan and Sara fans across North America now, a chorus of indignant "How can you not like Tegan and Sara?"s. It's a fair question, there's more to like about them than there is to dislike. They write good songs with catchy, but non-annoying hooks, they're great at telling funny stories, their lyrics are quotable, they're wonderfully easy on the eyes. They're out lesbians, and I'm sure that if I were coming out of the closet, that would make them more appealing to me, the same way that knowing that Corin and Carrie had dated made Sleater-Kinney more appealing to me back when I was coming out. They're snappy dressers who put on great shows. Tegan and Sara, one can argue, are the complete package: beauty and talent, humor and poignancy, style and substance. But unfortunately, none of this changes the fact that stylistically, their music is not quite for me.
I feel a certain amount of guilt over this, and it is specifically feminist guilt. The Second Wave of feminism encouraged us to embrace other women -- all women -- without condition, in the spirit of sisterhood. It asked all of us to overlook the mistreatment we suffered at the hands of other women, who usually had more power than us, and support women even when disagreed with them or their views, and asked us to call them our sisters, and this ideal has trickled down through the years and through some current feminist criticism and literature. And I feel like even now, us women of color, us women of limited means, us lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered folk -- have found ourselves wondering, "Do I have to?" Are we really obligated to support all women, even if we don't like them or their ideas? For me specifically, as a musician and as a critic, I ask myself constantly, "Do I have to like this band or artists just because they girls? If I don't like this artist or band, is it because underneath all my feminist dogma, I'm just a huge sexist?"
When I wonder if I'm a chauvinist after all, I remind myself that division between women is not always the product of internalized sexism. Any girl who's ever been socialized with other girls, through school or team sports or a religious organization or whatever, knows that not all animosity between girls is caused by jealousy or competition. Sometimes, with both guys and girls, you just don't get along with a person. Tegan and Sara is a good example of this. If I'd gone to school with Tegan and Sara's music, we wouldn't have been friends or joined the same extra-curricular activities or talked in the hallways. I don't think we would have had big dramatic fights or arguments or anything, but I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have mingled. (On the other hand, if I'd gone to school with Tegan and Sara themselves, I probably would have been all over at least one of them, pined after one or maybe even both of them in an Angela Chase sort of way, but this is a different issues altogether.)
Tegan and Sara are a great exception though. There are a lot of women and girls out there who are making music that I wouldn't have gotten along with in high school, who I would have hated as a teenager. There are a lot of women and girls that are making music that I don't like, not just because it's not 'my style', but because it's bad. It's poorly written, poorly produced, and marketed in such a way that is insulting. I'm mostly talking about pop stars, but there are also country-pop and rock-pop crossovers who are guilty of this. You know who I mean: the Britneys and Christinas, yes, but also the Avrils and Shania-types. I don't feel quite as guilty about my intense loathing of these artists. It's easy to shrug it off with a nasty "feminism is about quality, not quantity."
But this leads to the question: what about this term, "quality"? What if the concept of "quality" is inherently sexist? Isn't there something inherently masculinist and hierarchical about 'objectively' evaluating the mertis and faults of a piece of music? I worry that we've internalized sexism to such an extent that it manifests itself in our hatred of certain things. It's too easy to feel a sexist, leering abhorrence towards girls who slink around in underwear and heels and lip sync to shoddily arranged synth beats and call themselves artists. It's too easy to accuse them of setting feminism and its gains back, to resent them for their hypersexualized looks and behavior and how it affects both us and the men in our lives. Male artists are never, ever accused of being too sexy, and criticisms of the quality of their music are never so venomous as the diatribes that have been written, by both men and women, about people like Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears. "Quality" frequently seems like an excuse to enumerate a girly pop star's many faults, and not just her music.
It's not very sisterly or feminist to have such negative feelings towards any women, no matter how upsetting their words and actions may be. But it's not any better to like an artist just because she identifies as a woman, or to insist that we all like female artists 'just because'. By that logic, we'd all be obligated to like Sarah Palin.
Which is not to compare Tegan and Sara (who made many jokes at Palin's expense on October 5) to the current Republican vice presidential nominee. A comparison between Palin, and say, Britney Spears -- who once announced very publicly her trust in President Bush and his campaigns in the Middle East -- might be more appropriate. But it's the point, not the vernacular: it is unrealistic to expect anyone, including women listeners, to like all women musicians. It's unrealistic to expect us to like every woman we encounter -- men certainly aren't expected to all like each other. Men don't burden each other with the expectation that they will all be perfect representations of whatever masculinity and manhood mean to them, and so long as a guy doesn't have a limp wrist, men don't attack each other for not meeting their specifications. So why should we do that to each other? Why should us girls who participate in music and pop culture, us lady musicians, attack or resent women musicians for not being, say, Beth Ditto, or Kathleen Hanna, or which ever other women we admire?
It will sound like old news, maybe, but the conclusion I've come to is that it's a waste of energy and time to dislike other women so intensely, for whatever reason. It's also a waste of time and energy to feel guilty about not liking someone or something, even when, like Tegan and Sara, it's good. I want to encourage all of us, myself included, to stop thinking in terms of quality, and prioritize our feelings towards music, how it makes us feel, not how we think we should feel. And I want to encourage us to make room for the Britneys, the Lindsays, the Christinas, the Kellys, the Tiffanys, the Avrils, the Jessicas, and whoever else might come along, because so long as they make someone feel good or happy, as pop stars frequently do make younger girls feel, we should be able to give them some space. They might be problematic, and their visibility might inspire doubt or misgivings in some of us feminists and critics, but that's the thing about feminism: it's not about choosing between quantity and quality. It's about having both -- in politics, in art, in music, everywhere.
I can hear the strangled cries of Tegan and Sara fans across North America now, a chorus of indignant "How can you not like Tegan and Sara?"s. It's a fair question, there's more to like about them than there is to dislike. They write good songs with catchy, but non-annoying hooks, they're great at telling funny stories, their lyrics are quotable, they're wonderfully easy on the eyes. They're out lesbians, and I'm sure that if I were coming out of the closet, that would make them more appealing to me, the same way that knowing that Corin and Carrie had dated made Sleater-Kinney more appealing to me back when I was coming out. They're snappy dressers who put on great shows. Tegan and Sara, one can argue, are the complete package: beauty and talent, humor and poignancy, style and substance. But unfortunately, none of this changes the fact that stylistically, their music is not quite for me.
I feel a certain amount of guilt over this, and it is specifically feminist guilt. The Second Wave of feminism encouraged us to embrace other women -- all women -- without condition, in the spirit of sisterhood. It asked all of us to overlook the mistreatment we suffered at the hands of other women, who usually had more power than us, and support women even when disagreed with them or their views, and asked us to call them our sisters, and this ideal has trickled down through the years and through some current feminist criticism and literature. And I feel like even now, us women of color, us women of limited means, us lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered folk -- have found ourselves wondering, "Do I have to?" Are we really obligated to support all women, even if we don't like them or their ideas? For me specifically, as a musician and as a critic, I ask myself constantly, "Do I have to like this band or artists just because they girls? If I don't like this artist or band, is it because underneath all my feminist dogma, I'm just a huge sexist?"
When I wonder if I'm a chauvinist after all, I remind myself that division between women is not always the product of internalized sexism. Any girl who's ever been socialized with other girls, through school or team sports or a religious organization or whatever, knows that not all animosity between girls is caused by jealousy or competition. Sometimes, with both guys and girls, you just don't get along with a person. Tegan and Sara is a good example of this. If I'd gone to school with Tegan and Sara's music, we wouldn't have been friends or joined the same extra-curricular activities or talked in the hallways. I don't think we would have had big dramatic fights or arguments or anything, but I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have mingled. (On the other hand, if I'd gone to school with Tegan and Sara themselves, I probably would have been all over at least one of them, pined after one or maybe even both of them in an Angela Chase sort of way, but this is a different issues altogether.)
Tegan and Sara are a great exception though. There are a lot of women and girls out there who are making music that I wouldn't have gotten along with in high school, who I would have hated as a teenager. There are a lot of women and girls that are making music that I don't like, not just because it's not 'my style', but because it's bad. It's poorly written, poorly produced, and marketed in such a way that is insulting. I'm mostly talking about pop stars, but there are also country-pop and rock-pop crossovers who are guilty of this. You know who I mean: the Britneys and Christinas, yes, but also the Avrils and Shania-types. I don't feel quite as guilty about my intense loathing of these artists. It's easy to shrug it off with a nasty "feminism is about quality, not quantity."
But this leads to the question: what about this term, "quality"? What if the concept of "quality" is inherently sexist? Isn't there something inherently masculinist and hierarchical about 'objectively' evaluating the mertis and faults of a piece of music? I worry that we've internalized sexism to such an extent that it manifests itself in our hatred of certain things. It's too easy to feel a sexist, leering abhorrence towards girls who slink around in underwear and heels and lip sync to shoddily arranged synth beats and call themselves artists. It's too easy to accuse them of setting feminism and its gains back, to resent them for their hypersexualized looks and behavior and how it affects both us and the men in our lives. Male artists are never, ever accused of being too sexy, and criticisms of the quality of their music are never so venomous as the diatribes that have been written, by both men and women, about people like Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears. "Quality" frequently seems like an excuse to enumerate a girly pop star's many faults, and not just her music.
It's not very sisterly or feminist to have such negative feelings towards any women, no matter how upsetting their words and actions may be. But it's not any better to like an artist just because she identifies as a woman, or to insist that we all like female artists 'just because'. By that logic, we'd all be obligated to like Sarah Palin.
Which is not to compare Tegan and Sara (who made many jokes at Palin's expense on October 5) to the current Republican vice presidential nominee. A comparison between Palin, and say, Britney Spears -- who once announced very publicly her trust in President Bush and his campaigns in the Middle East -- might be more appropriate. But it's the point, not the vernacular: it is unrealistic to expect anyone, including women listeners, to like all women musicians. It's unrealistic to expect us to like every woman we encounter -- men certainly aren't expected to all like each other. Men don't burden each other with the expectation that they will all be perfect representations of whatever masculinity and manhood mean to them, and so long as a guy doesn't have a limp wrist, men don't attack each other for not meeting their specifications. So why should we do that to each other? Why should us girls who participate in music and pop culture, us lady musicians, attack or resent women musicians for not being, say, Beth Ditto, or Kathleen Hanna, or which ever other women we admire?
It will sound like old news, maybe, but the conclusion I've come to is that it's a waste of energy and time to dislike other women so intensely, for whatever reason. It's also a waste of time and energy to feel guilty about not liking someone or something, even when, like Tegan and Sara, it's good. I want to encourage all of us, myself included, to stop thinking in terms of quality, and prioritize our feelings towards music, how it makes us feel, not how we think we should feel. And I want to encourage us to make room for the Britneys, the Lindsays, the Christinas, the Kellys, the Tiffanys, the Avrils, the Jessicas, and whoever else might come along, because so long as they make someone feel good or happy, as pop stars frequently do make younger girls feel, we should be able to give them some space. They might be problematic, and their visibility might inspire doubt or misgivings in some of us feminists and critics, but that's the thing about feminism: it's not about choosing between quantity and quality. It's about having both -- in politics, in art, in music, everywhere.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Manifesta.
A column on sex, gender, and discrimination within the Anglo masculine stronghold of rock and its subsets, especially punk and hardcore. Why?
BECAUSE there are non-male, non-straight, non-cisgendered, non-white people who listen to the genre. Girls, gays, trannies, genderqueer folk, "people of color": we listen to rock'n'roll, we listen to punk, we listen to hardcore, even though you only see/hear skinny straight white dudes on mainstream rock radio and "video" channels
BECAUSE there are non-male, non-straight, non-cisgendered, non-white people who are MAKING rock-n-roll that is transgressive, that is brave, that challenges social and musical conventions and asks uncomfortable questions about sex, gender, race, and class-based discrimination, and these artists deserve more attention
BECAUSE non-male, non-straight, non-cisgendered, non-white people who are participating in rock-n-roll need a place to discuss the discrimination we face; these divisions are reflective of oppression and hierarchy in larger society, and we need to talk about these problems if we ever hope to solve them
BECAUSE non-male, non-straight, non-cisgendered, non-white rock musicians need a space where we can publicize and critique their ideas, releases, and performances, and discuss the contributions they are making to popular culture and art
BECAUSE it is time for us to make rock-n-roll live up to its reputation of being a liberating and radicalizing force for its audience/participants....a genre like rock-n-roll, that has the potential to be so subversive and so inclusive, should be big enough for ALL of us
BECAUSE the scene is male identified -- but it doesn't have to be.
The white patriarchal hierarchy in rock'n'roll NEEDS a swift kick to the groin -- and this is as good a place as any to start.
BECAUSE there are non-male, non-straight, non-cisgendered, non-white people who listen to the genre. Girls, gays, trannies, genderqueer folk, "people of color": we listen to rock'n'roll, we listen to punk, we listen to hardcore, even though you only see/hear skinny straight white dudes on mainstream rock radio and "video" channels
BECAUSE there are non-male, non-straight, non-cisgendered, non-white people who are MAKING rock-n-roll that is transgressive, that is brave, that challenges social and musical conventions and asks uncomfortable questions about sex, gender, race, and class-based discrimination, and these artists deserve more attention
BECAUSE non-male, non-straight, non-cisgendered, non-white people who are participating in rock-n-roll need a place to discuss the discrimination we face; these divisions are reflective of oppression and hierarchy in larger society, and we need to talk about these problems if we ever hope to solve them
BECAUSE non-male, non-straight, non-cisgendered, non-white rock musicians need a space where we can publicize and critique their ideas, releases, and performances, and discuss the contributions they are making to popular culture and art
BECAUSE it is time for us to make rock-n-roll live up to its reputation of being a liberating and radicalizing force for its audience/participants....a genre like rock-n-roll, that has the potential to be so subversive and so inclusive, should be big enough for ALL of us
BECAUSE the scene is male identified -- but it doesn't have to be.
The white patriarchal hierarchy in rock'n'roll NEEDS a swift kick to the groin -- and this is as good a place as any to start.
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