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Tag: class war

  • “9 to 5” With An Edge (That Is To Say, “Mexican Style”): Shakira Sticks It to The Man in “El Jefe” Featuring Fuerza Regida

    “9 to 5” With An Edge (That Is To Say, “Mexican Style”): Shakira Sticks It to The Man in “El Jefe” Featuring Fuerza Regida

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    Inaugurating, however briefly, her regional Mexican music era, Shakira brings us yet another single designed to prepare us for her long-awaited twelfth album. And yet, if Shakira has conditioned us to understand one thing about her, it’s to expect the unexpected in whatever musical route she decides to take. Because who knew something like a corrido would be next in her wheelhouse. At the same time, after such varied-in-style hits as “Shakira: Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53,” “TQG,” “Acróstico” and “Copa Vacía” earlier this year, nothing Shakira releases should come as a surprise. The only real shock being if she didn’t manage to release a bop…or a song that didn’t feature someone else on it (in this case, Mexican group Fuerza Regida). And this one not only delivers on that front, but also, let’s call it, the People’s Liberation Front (no relation to the organization named as such in countries such as Sri Lanka and Ethiopia). And, yes, like Beyoncé’s anti-work anthem, “Break My Soul,” Shakira is also coming from a place of having never really worked the kind of soul-breaking job she refers to in “El Jefe,” yet still does her best to sound as though she has (hence, the need for co-writers Edgar Barrera, Kevyn Cruz and Manuel Lorente). 

    But, in contrast to her erstwhile collaborator, Bey, Shakira is far more aggressive in her contempt for thankless, underpaid jobs and the overpaid fat cats who make work so unbearable for the other ninety-nine percent. Because she doesn’t sing a passing verse like, “And I just quit my job I’m gonna find new drive/Damn, they work me so damn hard/Work by nine, then off past five/And they work my nerves/That’s why I cannot sleep at night.” No, instead, the entire song is about work being a fucking scam/joke for anyone who isn’t in a position of power (usually as a result of birth lottery circumstances). And, talking of the nine to five schedule (increasingly outmoded at this juncture), Shakira officially outdoes the anti-The Man anthem that is Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5.” That’s right, it only took forty-three years for something as oppressor-despising (hidden behind a “jaunty” tone and rhythm) to come along. 

    What’s more, “El Jefe” mimics the narrative structure of “9 to 5” in terms of laying out all the rightful complaints from the beginning of the day. From the very moment one opens their eyes to the sound of the alarm that might as well be a death (of the soul) knell. So it is that Shakira opens “El Jefe” with lyrics that translate to: “7:30 the alarm has gone off/I want to be in bed/But it cannot be done/I take the kids at 9/The same coffee, the same kitchen/The same always, the same routine/Another shitty day/Another day at the office.” In 1980, Parton phrased that opening as, “Tumble out of bed/And stumble to the kitchen/Pour myself a cup of ambition/And yawn and stretch and try to come to life…/Out on the streets, the traffic starts jumpin’/For folks like me on the job from 9 to 5.”

    Parton then serves up the iconic chorus, “Workin’ 9 to 5/What a way to make a livin’/Barely gettin’ by/It’s all takin’ and no givin’/They just use your mind/And they never give you credit.” Shakira feels much the same as she sings, “I have a shitty boss who doesn’t pay me well/I arrive walking/And he in a Mercedes-Benz [again, Dolly correlation]/He has me as a recruit/The son of a bitch/You’re dreaming of leaving the neighborhood/You have everything to be a millionaire/Expensive tastes, the mentality/You only need the salary.”

    In the accompanying video, Shakira plays up the regional Mexican tone with a Texana aesthetic that comes complete with cowboy hat, cowboy boots, leather fringe skirt, bombastic belt and some zapateado stylings intermixed with her own renowned “hip work.” Directed by Jora Frantzis, who has already dabbled with Latina mamis in the past (i.e., directing videos for Jennifer Lopez and Cardi B), scenes of Shakira on a horse that taps its hooves to the beat (something that deserves a visual effects award because that can’t be real) are quickly interspersed with scenes of immigrants on a train making their way, presumably, to the U.S. border. Where, as Shakira describes, they’ll be met with working conditions that can best be described as glorified slavery. No wonder she’s quick to urge, “Stick it to the man” in between scenes of warehouse workers (played by Fuerza Regida members) carrying too many boxes on their shoulders (perhaps a dig at Amazon, as famed for its “low” prices as it is for never giving warehouse pickers a bathroom break). 

    Soon, we see Shakira and Fuerza Regida joining the other aspiring Americans on the back of a boxcar as Shakira continues to speak on her rage regarding racial and class inequality (for the former is directly related to the latter, particularly in “anyone can be anything” America). Shakira, too, seems well-versed in the fact that it’s just as Dolly said: “It’s a rich man’s game/No matter what they call it/And you spend your life/Putting money in his wallet.” Ergo, “What irony, what madness/This is torture/You kill yourself from dawn to dusk and you don’t even have a writing.” That last word a botched translation from “escritura,” which can also mean a deed (as in: to property) or a “document”/“papers” (as in: the legal “right” to be somewhere).

    For good measure, Shakira also adds another dig at Gerard Piqué by calling out his father with the insult, “They say there is no evil/That lasts more than a hundred years/But there is still my ex father-in-law who has not set foot in the grave.” So much for a temporary peace between the two exes (yet perhaps it’s only fair considering Shakira took aim earlier this year at her ex mother-in-law through a carefully-curated witch display). But this song has nothing to do with getting revenge on an ex (unless it’s an ex-boss). No, it’s all in service of buttressing the proletariat…or at least comforting them by assuring that someone is very aware of what they’re going through (even if from their own perch on Millionaires’ Row). 

    Which is why, at the one-minute, forty-four-second mark of the video, things take a turn toward the indoors, with Frantzis focusing on the fat cats (literally fat, obviously) themselves as they sit at a banquet table. And what’s on the menu? Why, the proletariat, of course! A.k.a. Jesus Ortiz Paz’s (Fuerza Regida’s lead singer) head on a platter, John the Baptist-style. What the fat cats hadn’t bargained for (just as Franklin Hart hadn’t bargained for Violet, Doralee or Judy), however, was a calmly irate Shakira showing up to walk on their table and approach the so-called “jefe” at the head of it with an expression that says, “I’m the jefe now, bitch.”

    As for the mention of her former-turned-current nanny, Lili Melgar, by declaring, “This song’s for you/They didn’t pay you compensation,” well, that’s another direct hit at Piqué. Who apparently fired Melgar after she tipped Shakira off to a “third presence” visiting their house all the time before she finally clocked the suspiciously diminished contents of the jam jar. 

    The last shot in the video returns to a defiant-looking Shakira (dressed in her all-red cowgirl ensemble—because, sooner or later, the oppressed becomes the oppressor, right?) on her horse as she stares into the camera. As though daring the jefes of the world to try to keep her or her “kind” down. But, no matter who you are or where you’re from (to paraphrase the Backstreet Boys), there is always common ground to be had in the shared experience of how much work blows chunks (at pretty much any pay grade, to boot). 

    For even the white men known as Blink-182 once said, “Work sucks, I know.” And so does Shakira. Or at least she can “get into the headspace” of knowing, if “El Jefe” is any indication. Thus, the only thing that could be more triumphant than this anti-work anthem is an official mashup (à la “Numb/Encore”) of it with “9 to 5.”

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • The Rich Eat: The Menu

    The Rich Eat: The Menu

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    At the crux of every basic class divide is food. It is the most essential unit of life, and yet, it took little time at all after the world became “civilized” for it to become the first source of division between the haves and the have-nots. Over the centuries, especially in America, it created the ironic phenomenon of poor people being, frankly, fat (“unhealthy,” if you prefer) and rich people being thin beacons of wellness. Because rich people can afford to sidestep the overprocessed foods that the broke can actually afford. Shoveling their faces with it every day to sustain themselves. What’s more, they would never dream of paying/wasting top dollar for minuscule portions at a fine dining restaurant, the cost of which is more than they make in a month.

    With this sense of a historically-rooted class war in food, former The Onion writers-turned-screenwriters Will Tracy and Seth Reiss bring us The Menu. And no, it’s not entirely “coincidental” that the fine dining restaurant they use, called Hawthorn, as their backdrop for brutal “satire” (read: unbridled honesty) is located on a remote island. For the idea that planted the seed of the screenplay arrived when Tracy himself took a boat to a restaurant on an island off Norway (it could have been many establishments, but Cornelius comes to mind, though that’s probably too “gauche”). With that herculean effort (by restaurant-going standards), Tracy started to have some paranoid feelings about being on an island with only a handful of other diners, prompting him to wonder if this was the kind of extreme emotion worth writing about with his go-to partner, Reiss. Indeed, it was. Not to mention perfectly-timed for a market that has eating the rich on its mind. But if one was hoping for another cannibal movie (on the heels of Bones and All), don’t get your hopes up. This is not a literal “eat the rich” film, so much as a mock-their-absurd-self-importance-which-extends-into-food film. Timely, to be sure, for if it has been the year of anything in cinema, it has been the year of eating.

    Whether that meant “keeping it down” or not. For there was the now-legendary vomiting scene after the passengers consume improperly-refrigerated shellfish in Triangle of Sadness (The Menu’s less-than-“distant” filmic cousin, complete with a captain that reminds one of our chef in The Menu). Then there was the cannibalistic notion of an “eater” in the aforementioned Bones and All. And, released the same day in U.S. theaters, The Menu. Maybe it’s because, somewhere in the subconscious of the average person, an awareness is dawning about food scarcity. Another food irony (in addition to the poor and destitute often being overweight) is that if this is the year of eating in cinema, it’s also “the year of unprecedented famine,” per the World Food Programme. An organization that also noted of alarming 2022 famine statistics, “The number of those facing acute food insecurity has soared—from 135 million to 345 million—since 2019.” At such a ballooning rate (thanks to climate change, war and a pandemic), the implications of what that could do to further cement class warfare imbue one with Children of Men-esque visions for the future. Visions that no doubt present a certain moral quandary to any chef that caters to an affluent clientele. Just as “celebrity chef” Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes, looking his most Liam Neeson-y yet) does.

    Part of that celebrity comes from the fact that he charges thousands of dollars for the “experience” of taking a boat to the island where his restaurant is perched (Norway-style, so to speak). And blowhards like Tyler Ledford (Nicholas Hoult) are only too happy to pay the price. Unfortunately for this “foodie fanboy,” Slowik discriminates against single diners—meaning you can’t just sit at a table alone. So it is that he brings along a replacement “date” named Margot Mills (Anya Taylor-Joy) when Tyler’s original plus-one backs out. This resulting in a flinching reaction from the restaurant’s stoic maître d’, Elsa (Hong Chau), and even more of a grimace from Julian himself.

    Margot’s presence has tampered with his last menu masterpiece. The one he wants to call “egoless” for the first time since he started his career (which commenced with slinging burgers for the plebes, a detail that Margot will use to her advantage by the end). But to do so would be another form of self-delusion, almost on par with the rich telling themselves they worked hard for the money (try claiming that to the actual working class performing their day-to-day job requirement horrors). Which is why Reiss commented that such a statement was about Julian “wanting to say to himself that tonight is completely egoless, but if we take a step back, how could this monumental night that you want to be your masterpiece, how could it not be ego-filled?”

    The only egos that must ultimately be put aside by the end of the night are that of the patrons, including, in addition to Tyler and Margot, food critic Lillian Bloom (Janet McTeer), her sycophantic editor, Ted (Paul Adelstein), Hawthorn regulars Richard and Anne Liebbrandt (Reed Birney and Judith Light), George Díaz (John Leguizamo), a washed-up Hollywood star, his assistant/girlfriend, Felicity (Aimee Carrero), and tech business trio Soren (Arturo Castro), Bryce (Rob Yang) and Dave (Mark St. Cyr). With each part of the movie divided into courses, the food that gets served (or doesn’t… namely, bread—because rich people don’t deserve to enjoy what the poor have no choice but to live on daily) becomes increasingly part of something like performance art. Complete with Julian’s sous-chef, Jeremy Louden (Adam Aalderks), killing himself in front of the patrons to bring them a dish called “The Mess.” What Julian deems, more specifically, as being emblematic of the mess we all make of our lives as we try so hard and so stupidly to please people we’ll never even know (that goes for plebes in addition to famous people) and who will never actually care about all the work we put in to please.

    By this moment in the film, it’s clear Fiennes is having the time of his life in the role, and it’s difficult to imagine anyone else playing it. Unlike Taylor-Joy, whose character was originally meant to be portrayed by the aesthetically and vocally similar Emma Stone. Talking of similarities, The Menu’s kinship with Triangle of Sadness is notable throughout (complete with the idea of filming the bulk in one location; in the latter’s case, that’s on a yacht). Both are an unshrinking attack on the rich, each premise toying with what can happen when that class’ money no longer has clout. In both cases, that transpires within the context of an island, where all “real-world” power can be stripped away. And oh, how Julian is happy to strip it. After all, chefs are the biggest power-hungry control freaks of anyone.

    As for the original director attached to the film, Alexander Payne, Mark Mylod might have been destined to do it instead by sheer virtue of having previously worked with Tracy on an episode of Succession (one that fittingly centered on a dinner party) called “Tern Haven.” Tracy confirmed that reteaming with Mylod assured further seamlessness on set, noting, “…it’s just great to have someone whose tastes I trust and [whose] working process [I knew].” That sense of trust between writer and director is undeniably part of what makes The Menu come across as such a confident serve.

    And what Julian aims to serve up by the end of the night (apart from tortillas etched with some highly specific and incriminating memories of each patron) is a clean, simple dose of karmic balance. With the rich even getting off more than just a little on being abused by the climax. For it’s almost as though they’ve been surrounded by obsequious “yes” people their entire lives and they just want to experience Truth for once.

    To this end, Margot herself is the antithesis of a sycophant for Julian, undermining him at every turn with her “that don’t impress me much” expressions and commentary about the meal. It is through this “tell” that Julian can surmise she is not “one of them.” She bears the mark of someone who serves, not someone who is served; therefore, she is but a spy among the rich’s kind as opposed to being of their kind. And so, by the end of the night, per Julian’s insistence, she must take her rightful place on the side of the “givers,” not the “takers.” Or the cooks and the eaters, as it were.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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