ReportWire

Tag: Culled Culture

  • The Resilience of Joni Mitchell and Celine Dion as Underlined by the 2024 Grammys

    The Resilience of Joni Mitchell and Celine Dion as Underlined by the 2024 Grammys

    [ad_1]

    There was scarcely a dry eye in the house when Joni Mitchell took the stage at the Crypto.com Arena toward the middle of the Grammy Awards to sing “Both Sides Now.” Although written by Mitchell, Judy Collins recorded the song first and released it on her 1967 album, Wildflowers. Suffering a common dilemma among songwriters (save for Diane Warren) who allow their compositions to be sung by other people, Mitchell didn’t like Collins’ interpretation of the track and ended up recording it herself for 1969’s Clouds. Her sophomore album was quick to chart on the Billboard 200 (at its highest position, it went up to number thirty-one), with “Both Sides Now” becoming her signature song as much as “Like A Virgin” would become Madonna’s on her own sophomore album. It was for this reason that Mitchell chose to sing it to mark her first-ever performance at the Grammys in her fifty-six year career. That’s right, despite winning eleven Grammys (now twelve after Sunday), Mitchell had never previously taken the stage at the ceremony to remind people of why. 

    At age eighty, it seemed just as good a time as any to highlight to the audience watching the Grammys (whether in-person or at home) of how she is the progenitor of the confessional female singer-songwriter shtick (to use a somewhat jaded term). In other words, without Joni, there would be no Taylor, no Lana. And without them, there would be no Olivia, no Billie—and so the cycle continues. She was joined onstage for a rousing reminder of what she “hath wrought” by Brandi Carlile (as her number one fan, that was only natural), SistaStrings, Blake Mills, Lucius, Allison Russell and Jacob Collier, all of whom flanked her as she sat in a regal armchair at the center of the chandelier-bedecked stage while holding a cane. As the chair slowly turned around, one couldn’t help but flash to a similar moment at the Billboard Music Awards in 2016, when Madonna turned in a similar fashion in her own fancy chair with a cane to sing a tribute to Prince in the form of “Nothing Compares 2 U” (at the Grammy Awards this year, Annie Lennox would sing that as a means to pay homage to Sinead O’Connor,  even though Prince was not a fan of her cover—which sounds slightly familiar in terms of Mitchell not being a fan of Collins’ interpretation of her work…except Collins’ version was considered the first instead of vice versa).

    But Mitchell gets far more respect than Madonna, so no one would ever try to mock her for having a cane (something Madonna uses for style rather than function, at her own risk of more public mockery). Apparently, once you get legitimately old, people don’t try to give you as much shit for it (Joe Biden and other U.S. government officials being the exception to the rule). And with Mitchell being eighty, she’s more than earned her stripes, ergo her right not to be judged for how she looks. But then, unlike post-Madonna pop stars, Mitchell’s work was always about substance over style, whereas pop music doesn’t exist without the flourishes of spectacle. This extends not only to how women dress and look, but also what they incorporate into their performances. 

    Incidentally, the woman to bridge this gap between “thoughtful music” and spectacle before Madonna even broke onto the scene was Celine Dion, whose debut album, La voix du bon Dieu, came out in 1981. Her gradual veering toward becoming more pop than “choir girl” happened in 1983, with her first hit single, “D’amour et d’amitié.” By the time Dion transitioned to English-language music and, much later, her spectacle-laden Vegas residency, Madonna had already put up a decided partition between the categories of pop singer and “serious” singer (even though Like A Prayer allowed critics to see her as both). For years, Dion was most people’s answer to the latter, until Madonna finally started to be reconsidered for her vocal and songwriting talents with 1998’s Ray of Light. 1998 was also the year, as it happened, when VH1 Divas Live aired, a special honoring Aretha Franklin by flanking her with Gloria Estefan, Shania Twain, Mariah Carey and, that’s right, Celine Dion. The latter was shaded in Mariah’s 2020 autobiography (though not by name or as many times as Madonna) for not “understan[ing] the culture of the court, and tr[ying] to come for the Queen” during the closing performance. As if. Dion was simply putting back out the energy that Franklin was giving when no one else would, not even Mariah. So hopefully the two didn’t run into each other backstage at Crypto.com Arena, because the last thing Dion needs after being diagnosed with a highly rare neurological disorder called stiff-person syndrome and being totally ignored and disregarded by Taylor Swift onstage is Mariah’s kind of self-superior energy. Which was only fed into all the more when Miley Cyrus accepted the first award for the night and graciously bowed down to her (figuratively, not literally) in a way that Swift probably should have with Dion. 

    But clearly, she was too caught up in the moment. Not just of making Grammy history by winning Album of the Year four times—the only musician ever to do so—but also of paying more respect to Lana Del Rey than Celine. Who proved her resilience yet again not just by showing up in her current health condition to dole out this honor, but by taking Swift’s comportment with a grain of salt. Though surely Swift couldn’t have acted that way if Mitchell had presented her with the award, for she is thought to be among Swift’s biggest influences, blueprint-wise, in her later album years. The “confessional, no holds barred” songwriting tack and all that.

    Then again, there was a time when Mitchell wasn’t really of the mind that Swift was anything like her, saying back in 2014, when it was still rumored that Swift might play Mitchell in a biopic, “I squelched that. I said to the producer, ‘All you’ve got is a girl with high cheekbones.’” Not exactly high praise for Swift for anything beyond her looks (which remain the Aryan wet dream). Though Swift has perhaps taken the shade-throwing in songs even farther than Mitchell, who told Elton John during their 2022 interview together, “People thought that [my songwriting] was too intimate. It was almost like Dylan going electric—I think it upset the male singer-songwriters. They go, ‘Oh no, do we have to bare our souls like this stuff, you know. I think it made people nervous, you know. More nervous than…it took to this generation, they seem to be able to face those emotions more easily than my generation.”

    That it did and that they do. Though Dion, another emotional Canadian (must be something in the water there), has her fair share of soul-baring songs. The only “catch” is, she didn’t write most of them. And yet, like Whitney Houston, her emotional delivery could fool anyone into believing that she had lived these experiences. Which, perhaps she did in some way or another. For, like Beyoncé often being approached with material that “might work” for her specific personality, so, too, do icons in Dion’s echelon receive song submissions that are tailored to them. Written with them foremost in mind. Which is perhaps why Swift looked down her nose at Dion while onstage, instead focusing on a fellow singer-songwriter like Del Rey’s accomplishments. 

    Whatever the reason for Swift’s social faux pas, Dion’s presence in conjunction with Mitchell’s on this night of a thousand stars spoke to the unique ability that these women have to bounce back from even the greatest of falls. Both physical and emotional. And there’s no doubt that their love of and connection to music is part of what has kept them both enduring in a manner that is, alas, simply “expected” of women, whether they’re legendary sonic powerhouses or not. Thus, women’s resilience is often taken for granted. Sort of the way Madonna’s continued presence is on this Earth after her own near-death experience during the summer of 2023. And yet, one would never know it to see her on The Celebration Tour now. Mitchell, too, is planning to take the stage at the Hollywood Bowl in October for the Joni Jam. And, who knows, Dion might well find a way to tour again. If she can take the stage at the Grammys, then maybe at least one live performance isn’t far behind…

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • Griselda Shades What A Shithole America Is

    Griselda Shades What A Shithole America Is

    [ad_1]

    As yet another narrative that proves capitalism drives people to do insane (and cold-blooded) things, Griselda is as much an exaltation of the beloved American system as it is a cautionary tale about it. That to get “caught up” in the game of paper chasing is to sign one’s death warrant. Especially when that paper chase involves illegal activity. For, as most of us know by now, only white men in government or high-level corporate management can get away with illegal activity in the long run. A woman like Griselda Blanco, not so much. And, although the miniseries based on her life has many discrepancies between fact and fiction (as is usually the way it goes), what it does get right is the sense of disappointment many immigrants (“legal” or otherwise) ultimately feel upon arriving to the so-called Promised Land. The harsh disconnect between expectation and reality. 

    For the Griselda Blanco of Doug Miro’s imagination (in conjunction with co-creators Eric Newman, Carlo Bernard and Ingrid Escajeda), she isn’t all that dismayed by it considering the situation she was fleeing in Medellín. One that required killing her husband, Alberto Bravo (Alberto Ammann), in order to leave. As for that plot point about Griselda killing him for forcing her to sleep with his brother, well, it’s just another means for the series to make viewers feel more empathy for someone so ruthless. Instead, what she killed him for was skimming millions off the top of their drug enterprise together. Because if Griselda cared about one thing, it was bitch better having her money. So, in that sense, perhaps she was a true American. Driven and motivated by the power that money entailed. As a woman who felt powerless for so much of her life, that made sense. As they say, money is power. 

    With every episode directed by Andrés Baiz, his and Sofía Vergara’s participation in the miniseries makes for a very Colombian affair indeed. Though nothing makes it more clichely Colombian than the cocaine itself. Described as so much purer and “tastier” when it comes from the “gateway to South America.” Indeed, per Griselda, that’s really how Blanco gets her foot in the door, attracting the attention of one of Amilcar’s (​​José Zúñiga) dealers at a club called The Mutiny by offering him a “free sample” to get him hooked. As is the case with most men who encountered Griselda, Amilcar made the mistake of underestimating her and the even worse blunder of trying to steal the kilo from her without paying the price she had originally asked for. Making her get it back by any bloody means necessary. Again, this is all how it transpires in the series, which finds it easier, for storytelling purposes, to place Griselda at the bottom rung of the drug ladder upon her arrival in Miami when, in truth, she was already established and well-known as a dealer when she emigrated to the city. 

    But that wouldn’t make for as scrappy of a character as portrayed by Vergara. A character who feels as at sixes and sevens in this environment as any other freshly-arrived immigrant. Without that aura about Griselda in the show, her ability to relate to someone like Chucho (Freddy Yate) wouldn’t be as resonant. At the diner where she first meets her soon-to-be bodyguard/henchman, he is berated and belittled by his boss, who tells him to wipe the counter again because it isn’t clean. When the boss walks away, Chucho mutters in Spanish, “Get your eyes checked, asshole.” Griselda takes this as her “in” to relate to him, asking, “You Colombian?” He replies, “Yes, but I came to America to wash dishes.” The sardonic remark speaks to the notion that doing anything “honestly” in this country is a surefire ticket to poverty and obscurity. Griselda knows that, and she also knows how to draw in people like her—“underdogs,” if you will—to endear them to her cause. A cause that, in the end, turns out to be serving her ego. For that’s the thing about power: it makes you hungry for more. Which, of course, plays into narcissism. And what’s more American than that, really? The bill of goods everyone gets sold about “taking what’s theirs.” The lie that everyone can be powerful, or at least has the opportunity to be…if they play their cards right. Usually, though, the only people with the right cards are those that the second episode is named after: “Rich White People.” 

    It is in this episode that the first major shade is thrown at the U.S. about what a shithole it is. And worse still, one that’s pretending to be a Promised Land. A Third World country in sheep’s clothing, as it were. And that much is highlighted when Griselda calls some sex worker comrades of hers to Miami to smuggle in some cocaína in the patented Griselda way: stuffed in bras. Being that this was still the glory days of no-frills airline travel, it was so much easier to carry off such a trick. And with the help of her trusted friend, Isabel (Vergara’s real-life cousin, Paulina Dávila), leading the pack of other “working girls,” Griselda has a willing army of smugglers at her feet. But that also means she has to house them in the same rundown motel she’s been staying at. The one with the empty pool and questionable sheets. It’s the waterless, dilapidated pool that makes one of the women comment, “What an ugly-looking pool.” “No water, how great,” another responds. She then adds, “I thought the States were more fancy.” But no, turns out, not really. Unless, of course, you belong to the aforementioned rich white people group. The very market Griselda plans to tap into as no other dealer has ever tried to before, figuring they thought South Americans of any variety were too “dirty” to deal with. And yet, just as Griselda knew how to tap into people’s emotions so as to “relate” to them and then lure them onto her side as a loyal subject, she also knew how to tap into her vision for unique business purposes that “the men” in the industry simply didn’t have the intuition or imagination to execute. 

    By giving rich white folks the “little thrill” of cocaine as funneled to them by their tennis coaches and yoga instructors, they could feel far removed enough from the ickiness of the “overly ethnic” drug dealers normally employed by the cartel. And, talking of the cartel, it is the Ochoas that Griselda brings to their knees in order to gain full control of Miami, forcing a key overlord in the Medellín cartel, Fabio Ochoa (Christian Gnecco-Quintero), to take a meeting with her after drying the city out of all cocaine by using the Marielitos as her footmen to steal the Ochoas’ drugs from their drop points. When Fabio finally meets with her, he admits, “We’ve all been impressed by what you’ve done here. No easy task to tame these American shithole cities. So many egos, so many guns…” And yet, there Griselda was, a woman managing to carve her place in the upper echelons of the business. (Plus, Blanco is an appropriate last name for someone trafficking cocaine, as she put the “white” in white powder.) 

    Her “enterprising” spirit and “whatever it takes” attitude are, needless to say, the stuff that American capitalist dreams are made of. As Vergara said of Griselda, “She had nothing, no education or tools to survive.” Only her wits, will and balls of steel. That usually leads to the sort of rags to riches potential American capitalism gets off on. That is, when the person in question is not “immigrant trash” like Griselda. But then, nothing is trashier than America itself…as Griselda points out in these shade-drenched moments of dialogue.

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • Pet Shop Boys’ Latest Single Dives Into the Pandemic of Our Age: “Loneliness”

    Pet Shop Boys’ Latest Single Dives Into the Pandemic of Our Age: “Loneliness”

    [ad_1]

    It’s been four years since the Pet Shop Boys released 2020’s presciently-titled Hotspot (which later felt like a nod to the “hot zones” caused by being in the throes of a pandemic). Ever since 2016, this four-year gap between records has tended to be Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe’s pattern, perhaps slowing down to more thoroughly take in the world around them as they’re simultaneously inspired and disgusted by it. But that has always been the brilliance of the duo: being able to turn the horrors into a catchy, sardonic ditty. “Loneliness,” of course, proves to be no exception to the rule. 

    As the lead single from the oh-so-on-brand-as-a-Pet-Shop-Boys-album-title Nonetheless, it’s clear this electropop duo is making a statement about life’s worsening state in a post-social media, post-pandemic world. Perhaps PSB was inspired by loneliness at the start of 2020, when lockdowns, particularly throughout Europe and the UK (its own “continent,” it wants you to know), put a glaring spotlight on people’s personal lives. Because, at that time, a mirroring pandemic was forming. The one that showed the masses just how empty and meaningless their existence was without the distraction of work, where ersatz social situations could present themselves under the guise of “camaraderie.” Maybe the same type of camaraderie that could be felt in a gulag. 

    Thus, with this massive public health issue (one that is ongoing and will likely remain so), Pet Shop Boys surely must have found their musical muse. And they’re ready to address it, as with all things, head-on. Hence, the accompanying video, directed by Alasdair McLellan. A sumptuous visual featuring a narrative and tone that often reminds one more than slightly of Bronski Beat’s “Smalltown Boy,” itself a specific kind of anthem for loneliness (more to the point, lonely gays who had no one to turn to at a time when being gay was hardly à la mode). And yes, this is PSB’s most overtly gay video. For never before have they been so on-blast with two men kissing, touching, blowing each other, etc. Perhaps it’s because once a person reaches a certain age, “subtlety” is hardly something to be bothered with.

    And, speaking of “a certain age,” some might assume Tennant and Lowe’s seeming absence from the video is tantamount to what Elton John did when he started to feel “too old” to be filmed for music videos by having people like Justin Timberlake and Robert Downey Jr. stand in for him instead. But, just when you’re ready to assume they’ve decided to make this video all about one-off gay hookups (okay, so there’s some straight ones in there too), Tennant and Lowe materialize around the four-minute mark, after a Tilt-a-Whirl scene. These images at the “funfair” continue, with the video finally concluding at a party where all the people previously showcased throughout appear, including the “running boy,” still looking rather lonely among the throng. Which, of course, is the worst loneliness of all—feeling alone in a crowd. 

    It’s not that stark of a thematic contrast to the opening scenes of the video, which focus in on desolate, oppressive structures in Sheffield, with a title card that also mentions we’re supposed to be in the year 1992. A year that, compared to now, hardly seems as lonely. One of those oppressive structures is Sheffield Forgemasters, containing within its walls a number of men doing rugged, lad-oriented things that remind one a lot of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, de facto Madonna’s “Express Yourself” video. However, just as PSB has us duped into thinking this is a “homos only” video, they’re wont to show us a boy and a girl getting hot and heavy, if you will, as they try to stave off their own loneliness (in addition to their hormones). The main boy we keep seeing throughout the narrative, however, is able to swing both ways in order to accommodate his hunger to feel wanted, desired. Thus, capable of telling himself he’s not lonely—because how can someone who’s never alone possibly feel that way?

    Alternating between scenes of color and black and white, a continuous thread throughout is the image of the boy running along a pathway in his wifebeater…usually as Tennant is singing, “Where you gonna run to now from loneliness?/Who you gonna turn to out of loneliness?” The implication being that “going both ways” doesn’t always mean one is doing it out of “sexual fluidity,” so much as a desperation to feel connected to someone, anyone—no matter how ephemerally. Which is why, inevitably, a glory hole is bound to appear sooner or later in this video. One that gets desexualized when somebody slips a note through it that reads, “Are you lonely?” Elvis, too, once essentially asked the same question with, “Are you lonesome tonight?” Indeed, the subject of loneliness has often been explored by some of music’s major icons. For example, in 1993, the year after “Loneliness” is meant to be taking place in, Madonna released her “Bad Girl” video, yet another homage to how sex can dilute feelings of loneliness (in addition to being an homage to Looking For Mr. Goodbar).

    As “Louise Oriole” a.k.a. Madonna keeps going to bed with strangers, the thrill of doing so becomes increasingly dulled and the loneliness starts to become impossible to stave off, particularly after one encounter where a stranger leaves her an unsettling note. Not one that asks, “Are you lonely?,” but rather, states, “Thank you whoever you are.” Talk about making a girl feel cheap. And soon, she’ll have to pay the price of her life for this method of attempting to keep the loneliness at bay. 

    Which ties into PSB riffing on the old chestnut, “Wherever you go, there you are” when Tennant ominously reminds, “Wherever you go, you take yourself with you/There’s nowhere you can hide…” Tennant then adds, “From the loneliness that’s haunting your life/The sense of wounded pride/Everybody needs time to think/Nobody can live without love.” Well, that’s not entirely true. It’s just that those who do live without love tend to turn into people like Trump and Putin. And yes, Pet Shop Boys acknowledge the isolating nature of power on the single for “Loneliness,” which also features “Party in the Blitz” and “Through You (Extended Mix).” The cover itself provides a familiar pose and image, one that can be characterized as Twin Peaks meets Actually (the cover art itself, not the album). 

    The surrealism that’s synonymous with Twin Peaks also applies to the feeling of loneliness. And perhaps no country knows loneliness as well as Britain right now. Except that it’s a self-imposed kind after so many decades spent pushing the EU away, which speaks to the lyrics, “When you gonna not say ‘no’ and make the answer ‘yes’?/Who is here to help you out?/Oh, tell me/Can’t you guess?” The answer, we’d like to believe is: “ourselves.” That self-help mumbo-jumbo about how you are the only person who can change your situation. Pull yourself up out of the hole of loneliness, the pit of despair, etc. For Britain, however, that seems to be an impossible task.

    As bona fide Brits themselves, the Pet Shop Boys make a highly specific reference to A Hard Day’s Night, when Tennant sings, “Like Ringo walking by the canal/Downcast and alone/You’re taking time to play that part/A man who skims a stone.” But while some are only “playing the part” of loneliness for dramatic cachet, others are one botched name pronunciation away from suicide.

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • “Bodies lie in the bright grass and some are murdered and some are picnicking”: The Zone of Interest

    “Bodies lie in the bright grass and some are murdered and some are picnicking”: The Zone of Interest

    [ad_1]

    When Martin Amis’ fourteenth novel, The Zone of Interest, came out in 2014, many people still believed we lived in a very different world than the one of Nazi Germany. For Americans, after all, it was still before the 2016 election, the 2021 insurgency, the reemergence of Trump yet again in the 2024 election. People outside of the U.S., however, have always been less naive. Especially Europeans. For the lingering pall of World War II remains cast over everything throughout the continent: monuments, statues, plaques, walls. Constant reminders that to forget history is to slip back into the same dangerous patterns in the present. 

    With Jonathan Glazer’s brutal adaptation of Amis’ novel, a different aspect is highlighted than in the source material. An aspect that more directly asks the question: how does evil not only so effortlessly rationalize itself, but continue to live with itself each day? In the book, Amis does a better job of concealing his main character’s true identity by, if nothing else, naming him Paul Doll instead of Rudolf…as in Rudolf Höss, the longest-serving commandant at Auschwitz. Glazer doesn’t much bother with that, likely figuring one of history’s biggest monsters doesn’t deserve such a cloak. Being Jewish himself (unlike Amis), Glazer’s take on the material is undoubtedly more personal. And certainly comes across that way. His merciless contrast between how someone so despicable lives right next to the very thing that serves as the crux of their despicability is what keeps viewers on the edge of their seat throughout the film despite never actually seeing any onscreen torture of camp prisoners. 

    Instead, Glazer relies on the horror of the sounds coming from the camps. Screams, burnings, gunshots. All contrasted against “idyllic” scenes like the flowers growing in Rudolf’s (played by Christian Friedel) backyard. Or, more accurately, his wife’s backyard. Hedwig (Sandra Hüller, clearly on her game this year with film choices, for Anatomy of a Fall is also Oscar-nominated), indeed, “runs the roost,” as it were. Perhaps being more Nazi-like in her rigidity than her husband. In point of fact, Rudolf is sure to tell her she’s the “Queen of Auschwitz.” This being something she relays proudly to her visiting mother, Linna (Imogen Kogge). Initially, Linna seems pleased with her daughter’s way of life. “Living off the land” and all that, but, after enough days spent seeing and hearing the goings-on at the camp (complete with watching the flames burst into the sky as the crematorium roars on next to them), she departs without any warning. The note she does leave behind with an explanation is never shown to the audience, only the image of Hedwig reading it and then promptly burning it in her own “mini crematorium” of a cast iron fireplace. Because it’s clear that Hedwig can’t “receive” any information that might infect her delusions about what this place really is. What it actually represents. And that is, of course, how the unspeakable suffering of others is always at the core of those on top’s pleasure. Glazer elucidates this in so many ways throughout The Zone of Interest, but among the most memorable is when Hedwig is given the latest batch of personal effects from those transferred to the camp. Among these items is a lavish fur coat and a pink-hued lipstick. 

    Greedy Hedwig is quick to retire to her room and try these things on, even the used lipstick. Because, apparently, Jews aren’t that “dirty” to Nazis when they want to use something they’ve stolen from them. Plucked and pilfered from their very body. It is such a disgusting sight that it makes graverobbers look almost positively benign by comparison. Glazer eases his audience into this more overt form of reprehensibility, opening the film with a black screen filled with ominous noises and Mica Levi’s jarring music. That blackness leads into the contrasting image of Rudolf on an idyllic picnic with his family, taking a swim in the river as he surveys and appreciates the natural beauty around him. Natural beauty that is a stark contrast to the visions he views at “work” on a day-to-day basis. Where “just following orders” meant the mass extermination of millions of human beings. This done in just less than five years. All that life snuffed out thanks to methodical German “efficiency,” carried out by men with the same effortless compartmentalizing ability as Höss. And yes, walls like the one between Höss’ “home” and the concentration camp do make it so much easier to compartmentalize. Something that not only Germany knows about, but also Israel. With its West Bank Barrier designed to keep Palestinians (therefore, Palestinian “militants”) out as they’re summarily abused in their occupied territory.

    The seed for building this barrier was heavily planted by former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who said in 1994, “We have to decide on separation as a philosophy. There has to be a clear border. Without demarcating the lines, whoever wants to swallow 1.8 million Arabs will just bring greater support for Hamas.” The clinical, “pragmatic” tone with which Rabin stated this is a mirror of Nazi “logic” during WWII. And, as so many have pointed out, it seems more than a touch ironic that the very race—Jews—subjected to such cruelty has decided to unleash similar acts of violence and oppression on another race. This being yet another reason why The Zone of Interest’s release comes at such a timely moment. Glazer couldn’t have anticipated just how timely. Not only in relation to Israel with Palestine, but also that “other” increasingly forgotten war between Russia and Ukraine. 

    This is why, when accepting the LA Film Critics Award for Best Director, Glazer remarked, “Obviously the events in the film predate the abominations of these current conflicts by years. But the questions it poses are the same: to ask ourselves to have a genuine human response, to ask ourselves why one life can be considered more valuable than another. Human pain is pain and loss is loss and at their most basic or fundamental, the needs and desires of any of us are the same. Violence and oppression of any kind produces more violence and oppression, not less.” But it seems history will never teach governments and regimes anything, that it will forever be doomed to repeat itself. Especially since, as The Zone of Interest suggests, it isn’t necessarily “pure evil” that causes violence and subjugation and genocide, but rather, a willingness to simply go along with pure evil’s will. “Just following orders.” 

    It was the Milgram Shock Experiment, conducted by Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram in 1961, that accented an unsettling point about that Nazi-spouted excuse: any ordinary person is capable of what is reductively branded as “evil.” When coerced by those in positions of authority, Milgram found that the large majority were willing to go against their own personal beliefs in order to “follow orders.” To obey. Milgram eventually summarized these unnerving findings as follows: “​​The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation. Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.”

    Despite ringing true in relation to how the events leading up to the Holocaust could go unchecked, Milgram’s experiment was viewed unfavorably as an analogy for what Nazi officials like Höss and Adolf Eichmann were capable of doing. And even what Höss’ wife was more than capable of turning a blind eye to for the sake of her “comforts” and “needs.” Something most are also willing to do every day while others suffer on an unfathomable scale. As Jenny Holzer once said in her Survival series, “Bodies lie in the bright grass and some are murdered and some are picnicking.” This is at the heart of what The Zone of Interest quietly, yet ruthlessly illuminates. The tragic part being that we all still need to be illuminated about our own complicity in the goings-on of the present.

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • Justin Timberlake’s “Selfish” Reinforces “Romantic” Ideas of Toxic Masculinity When It Comes to Jealousy

    Justin Timberlake’s “Selfish” Reinforces “Romantic” Ideas of Toxic Masculinity When It Comes to Jealousy

    [ad_1]

    Sometimes when a man does such a number on you, you still can’t help but want to be in his good graces even after all the horrible shit he pulled. This explains why Britney Spears took leave of her senses on January 29th when she stated, “I wanna apologize for some of the things I wrote about in my book. If I offended any of the people I genuinely care about I am deeply sorry. I also wanted to say I am in love with Justin Timberlake’s new song ‘Selfish.’ It is soo good and how come every time I see Justin and Jimmy together I laugh so hard??? Ps ‘Sanctified’ is wow too.” This caption accompanied a video clip from Timberlake’s January 25th appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, with “Sanctified” also referencing his January 27th appearance on Saturday Night Live (because, yes, he’s really been whoring himself out to promote his upcoming album and tour). This caption has merely added to the news cycle surrounding Timberlake’s “Selfish” as it relates largely to Britney. For her fans not only saw fit to make a 2011 bonus track of the same name beat out Justin’s “Selfish” on the charts, but now, Britney is further inserting herself into the Justin dialogue with this apology. 

    It’s almost as if she’s masterminding one of the greatest trolls of the twenty-first century by continuously “horning in on” his current spotlight time. And since Timberlake does so love the spotlight, it’s worth focusing on the content of “Selfish,” the song that Britney thinks is “soo good.” Those with a knowledge of their musical history might have already detected the thematic overtones of John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy,” but Timberlake confirmed it during an interview with Zane Lowe when he said that while coming up with inspiration for the track, he sang Donny Hathaway’s cover of Lennon’s “Jealous Guy.” He noted, “We were talking about the song itself and just breaking down the idea that, like, you just don’t hear that from men often that they would express that, an emotion that makes them vulnerable.” That certainly didn’t seem to be the case in 2002, when Timberlake dropped “Cry Me A River” and foisted his “vulnerability” onto everyone. Nonetheless, he added, “You know, and growing up the way I grew up, like, you’re kind of taught not to do that.” What you are taught, apparently, is to tarnish women’s reputations with the effortless doling out of the “whore” brand. Or, as Britney put it (before apologizing), “In the news media, I was described as a harlot who’d broken the heart of America’s golden boy,” also adding, “I don’t think Justin realized the power he had in shaming me. I don’t think he understands to this day.”

    But, based on the reactions to and the promotional blitzkrieg surrounding “Selfish,” it appears as though Timberlake’s “golden boy” status is in no danger. And probably never really was. For, as we should all be very familiar with by now, women’s voices have a tendency to get lost in the shuffle after enough time has passed. Less than six months (The Woman in Me was released in October, 2023) is, evidently, enough time to pass for people to “forget” all about Timberlake’s history of being a putain. Even Spears herself. Who has perhaps fallen prey to her own millennial ways by swooning over a song that reiterates all the worst tropes that 00s-era rom-coms reinforce. First and foremost being that: “Jealousy is just a sign that he cares.” 

    And yes, all throughout the song Timberlake excuses away any toxic behavior with the caveat presented in the chorus: “So if I get jealous, I can’t help it/I want every bit of you, I guess I’m selfish/It’s bad for my mental, but I can’t fight it/ When you’re out lookin’ like you do, but you can’t hide it, no.” Thus, not only does Timberlake self-exonerate any fucked-up displays of anger or puerile resentment he might engage in (while also admitting it’s mentally unhealthy behavior), he also chalks it up to being mostly about how hot this girl is. Doesn’t seem to have much to do with her personality. This is further accentuated when he reverts to “(God Must Have Spent) A Little More Time on You” parlance via the lines, “Put you in a frame, ooh, baby, who could blame you?/Glad your mama madе you/Makin’ me insane, you cannot be еxplained, ooh/You must be an angel.” Surely he can’t be talking about Jessica Biel. In fact, one imagines Spears continues to be the subconscious “blueprint” for his lyrical “muse.” And who can blame him after the success of “Cry Me A River”? A track Timberlake had no problem shading Britney with yet again for his mid-December performance at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas, where he prefaced the song with the dig, “No disrespect.”

    But it wasn’t just that song that Spears inspired, for who can forget the cringeworthy talking head moment he gave when describing his “process” for writing “Gone,” one of the last *NSYNC singles (that was also supposed to feature, erm, Michael Jackson). He explains with a totally straight face, “I got the idea for ‘Gone’ when, um, obviously I wrote that back when me and Britney were a couple, and, um, she went to the hair salon and said she was gonna be back in a couple hours, got there, decided to get a manicure, pedicure and wasn’t back for, like, five. And that’s what stemmed the idea for that song.” Imagine being that needy. No wonder Spears wanted to stay out of the house a little bit longer. 

    That sort of clinging, possessive personality exhibited by Timberlake is also ostensibly alive and well today, if we’re to go by the “Selfish” lyrics, “And I don’t want any other guys/Takin’ my place, girl/I got too much pride/I know I may be wrong/But I don’t wanna be right.” That much has been made obvious time and time again in his comportment toward Spears. 

    Talking as though he’s inside the mind of Mark (Andrew Lincoln) in Love Actually, Timberlake additionally has the gall to sing, “But they don’t know what you want/And baby, I would never tell/If they knew what I know/They would never let you go/So guess what?/I ain’t ever lettin’ you go.” Like Mark showing up to Juliet’s (Keira Knightley) door with a slew of mawkish “cue cards,” as it were, it’s one of those things that’s supposed to seem “really sweet” but is actually quite horrifying and could easily be soundtracked over a scene in Enough (another 00s movie about “possessing” someone). Instead, Timberlake, again saying something absurd with a straight face, told Lowe in the same abovementioned Apple interview, “It just felt like a really honest song, the lyrics just started to come out honestly.” What a circuitous and faux-profound assessment. One that Spears has appeared to fall for hook, line and sinker.

    To boot, the language Spears uses to describe that—“I am in love with Justin Timberlake’s new song ‘Selfish’”—almost feels overtly coded. Like she really just wants to say, “I am in love with Justin Timberlake.” And maybe she still is. Maybe some lovefools never really get over that “one” person. Regardless of how shittily they treated you. After all, Spears did once say (in MTV’s Diary), “I would love to be with him forever. I would.” Some of us, on the other hand, are no longer charmed by his retro lyrics posing as the “kind” words of a “loving” and “devoted” significant other. Not when, in truth, they fortify all the usual toxic male stereotypes under the guise of conveying “sensitivity.”

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • Nicki Minaj Is All Over Megan Thee Stallion’s Latest Song…Without Being an Actual Feature, Or: Megan Thee Stallion Continues Her Cobra Motif With “Hiss”

    Nicki Minaj Is All Over Megan Thee Stallion’s Latest Song…Without Being an Actual Feature, Or: Megan Thee Stallion Continues Her Cobra Motif With “Hiss”

    [ad_1]

    After joining in for a feature on “new queen bee” (not) Reneé Rapp’s “Not My Fault,” some listeners might have been misled into thinking Megan Thee Stallion had gone soft. But her new pattern of single releases seems to be “hard, soft, hard,” if we’re going by “Cobra,” “Not My Fault” and, now, “Hiss.” The latter obviously being thematically  in line with “Cobra” based on the title alone. And yet, the “snake” Megan Thee Stallion has in mind as inspiration for this song is one, Nicki Minaj. While some might have been foolish enough to believe that there was harmony between the two rappers after they collaborated on 2019’s hit of the summer, “Hot Girl Summer,” there is often a pattern with Nicki when it comes to alienating the female rappers who have come up after her. Especially the ones she’s willing to collaborate with at the outset of their careers. Once upon a time, that was Cardi B, who quickly turned from “friend” to foe after 2017’s “MotorSport.” A song that Cardi was added to later in the creation process, and that Minaj felt she should have been more grateful for. 

    By 2018, the two famously got into a scuffle at an event for New York Fashion Week, prompting Cardi to release a series of videos in the aftermath defending herself and more fully speaking on their beef with comments like, “You lie so much you can’t even keep up with lies.” It seems Megan Thee Stallion, who collaborated with Cardi one year after “Hot Girl Summer” on “WAP” (and then again on 2023’s “Bongos”), would tend to agree. Along with the many venomous (snake pun intended) outcries about how Minaj is both enabling and defending a sexual predator. Which brings us to the most scandalizing (for Nicki and beef-lovers alike) line of all from “Hiss”: “These hoes don’t be mad at Megan, these hoes mad at Megan’s Law.” A direct aim and hit at Nicki for her husband, Kenneth Petty, not registering as a sex offender upon moving to California in order to be with her. This deliberate failure on his part was considered a federal offense. Thus, he was sentenced with three years of probation and one year of house arrest. Plus a $55,000 fine that Minaj undoubtedly paid.

    Thee Stallion’s shade-throwing might seem like a non sequitur to some, but hints of contention have been publicly brewing at least since Minaj’s 2023 single, “Red Ruby Da Sleeze,” on which she raps, “I don’t fuck with horses since Christopher Reeve.” Stallion, horses…you get it. To cinch the allusion, Minaj also added, “Dorito bitches mad that they not chose.” Megan, as it happens, has an endorsement deal with Doritos (and all the other Flamin’ Hot products in the Frito Lay stable). So, not exactly subtle. Thus, Megan meets that “subtlety” and raises it on “Hiss.” Which is why she comes for Minaj’s “okayness” with sex offenders (including her brother, Jelani Maraj). She makes no mention, however, of Minaj’s beef with her stemming from, per Minaj’s account, the time Megan told her to drink alcohol while pregnant and get an abortion so she could really have a good time. It seems Minaj sat on that for a while and decided it was wildly inappropriate, even if said in jest (and probably because Thee Stallion didn’t want her to have a sex offender’s baby…so, if you think about it, it was coming from an inherently good place). Hence, “Red Ruby Da Sleeze.” But Minaj didn’t seem to bargain for Megan Thee Stallion actually lying in wait (like a cobra) to pounce when the time was right. And oh, how it was right for poking the bear that is Minaj’s furor on social media once she gets started. But all of that attention she gave Megan only worked to the latter’s advantage, with the video for “Hiss” becoming the number one trending video on YouTube the day after its release. Having warned us that she’s the “Black Regina George,” Thee Stallion dropped the equivalent of every page (photocopied ad infinitum) in the Burn Book into the public space with this song and video. 

    Directed by Douglas Bernardt (who also did “Cobra”), the video opens on a snake’s egg hatching (just as the video for “Cobra” ended on the image of one hatching). And who else should be inside of it but Megan herself? As we see her float inside the amniotic fluid, Megan paints the picture, “I feel like Mariah Carey/Got these niggas so obsessed/My pussy so famous, might get managed by Kris Jenner next/He can’t move on, can’t let it go/He hooked nose full of that Tina Snow/And since niggas need Megan help to make money/Bitch, come be my ho.” Invoking Mariah’s name from the outset was already an immediate dig at Nicki, who famously had beef with Mariah during the filming of American Idol starting in 2012. Though, just two years before, the sparring duo came together for a remix of a Mariah song called “Up Out My Face.” Released even before Minaj’s debut album, Pink Friday, it established the fact that “Barbie” was rising to the top as fast as some of her current competitors are now. This includes Ice Spice, who is theoretically “Team Nicki” after collaborating on “Princess Diana” and “Barbie World” with her. Though she might find herself eventually in a war with Nicki too, if we’re to go by the pattern of Cardi and Megan, both of whom Nicki collab’d with at the beginning of their mainstream musical journeys as well. But back to Mariah, who is strategically mentioned by Megan as an allusion to another feud and to make a callback to Carey’s 2009 single, “Obsessed,” which took shots at Eminem (both in the song and its accompanying music video). A rapper who would appear alongside Nicki on Pink Friday with “Roman’s Revenge.” How…circular. At least when it comes to making correlations based on “Hiss.”

    And Thee Stallion also wants the correlation to be made that she’s still talking about Nicki (by referencing “Hot Girl Summer”) during one of the final verses when she raps, “Ever since I claimed the summer, all you bitches want a season/Ask a ho why she don’t like me, bet she can’t give you a reason.” But if Minaj didn’t have one before, she certainly has one now…and will no doubt be using this as cannon fodder in the future. Not just for attacking her, but also her “known associates.” Namely, Drake. Who gets majorly trolled by Megan in the verse, “All these lil’ rap niggas so fraud [perhaps a nod to the Nicki/Drake song “No Frauds”]/Xanax be they hardest bars/These niggas hate on BBLs and be walkin’ ’round with the same scars…/Cosplay gangsters, fake-ass accents/Posted in another nigga hood like a bad bitch (where are you from?).” So, essentially, she came for most of the Young Money alumni (except Lil’ Wayne). As per usual, Thee Stallion also talks about how the more people speak negatively about her, the richer she’ll get. This was addressed on Traumazine’s “Her” with, “The more hoes hating, more money I’ma make/And the more niggas talk, more niggas want a taste.” On “Hiss,” it becomes, “Bottom line is I’m still rich” and “Every time I get mentioned, one of y’all bitch-ass niggas get twenty-four hours of attention.”

    This includes Minaj, who is currently getting more than just twenty-four hours of it as she keeps going off on social media while Thee Stallion has let the work do all the talking. Though one imagines Minaj won’t wait too long to deliver a better rebuttal than the one she gave with, “Bad bitch, she like six foot/I call her Big Foot/ The bitch fell off, I said get up on your good foot.” And maybe part of Minaj’s response will also be to the Cardi-delivered line on “Bongos” that goes, “My BD is a Migo/Bitch, your BD is a zero.” Which, yes, could even be interpreted as a dig at Minaj’s baby daddy (turned husband) selection.

    As for Thee Stallion, she concludes “Hiss” by strutting down a stark white catwalk with a pit of snakes slithering on either side. By now, though, she’s prepared to bite back with her own distinct venom. Though there are some very specific moments during the video when she channels the Minaj aesthetic while doing it. Particularly just before opening an Alice in Wonderland-type door into a hall of mirrors where she can say to one version of herself, “Y’all goofy-ass niggas look so dumb after y’all celebrate fake news/Usin’ my name for likes and views/I don’t give a fuck what y’all make trend/Bitch, I still win.” It seems that’s the case for this round of the biftek between the two rap powerhouses (because if anyone knows Minaj, this isn’t going to stop now). So maybe Thee Stallion might be the first to prove that imitation isn’t the sincerest form of flattery…not when the person doing it also happens to be dragging your name through the mud in the process.

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • Justin Timberlake Didn’t Think Through His Latest Single’s Title, Or: Britney Spears’ Fanbase Shows Which Singer’s “Selfish” Is Boss

    Justin Timberlake Didn’t Think Through His Latest Single’s Title, Or: Britney Spears’ Fanbase Shows Which Singer’s “Selfish” Is Boss

    [ad_1]

    At one of the many uncomfortable points in Justin Timberlake’s first solo single (without the crutch of adding any features or being the feature) in almost six years, he sings, “You’re the owner of my heart/And all my scars/Baby, you’ve got such a hold on me.” In many respects, that line easily applies to Britney Spears. Like Taylor Swift and Kanye West (or Ye, if you must), the two seem condemned to be forever linked in the pop culture sphere. Of late, that’s been mostly Spears’ doing, as she’s finally seen fit to tell her side of the story that’s primarily “belonged” to Justin since their breakup in 2002. This came in the form of her bestselling memoir, The Woman in Me, in which she not only tongue-in-cheekly mocks Timberlake for his late 90s/early 00s predilection for attempting a blaccent, but also exposes him for cajoling her into getting an abortion. Worse still, an at-home abortion so that no media outlet could ever find out that she was pregnant with his child. For that would have really fucked with his “wholesome” boy band image (though, if he had been in the Backstreet Boys, it might have only helped his image). So would being outed for his tendency to cheat on Spears throughout their relationship, a reality she also chose to keep to herself (even when certain gossip rags didn’t) until The Woman in Me. 

    Unfortunately for Timberlake, he seemed to be orchestrating a “comeback” right as Spears reminded everyone, in the most official capacity yet, of what a douche he is. This has been proven not only in his dealings with Spears (who he kept bringing up and besmirching repeatedly years after the breakup, including on a horrific SNL sketch from 2009 called “Immigrant Tale”), but with, just as infamously, Janet Jackson, who took all the flak for the 2004 “Nipplegate” snafu at the Super Bowl Halftime Show. Funnily enough, many have speculated that Timberlake “planned” the incident as a means to upstage Spears after her lesbianic kiss with Madonna at the 2003 VMAs just months earlier. If that was, in some form or another, truly the case, then both parties definitely got more than they bargained for. It also appeared as though Timberlake wanted to emulate and one-up Spears when she did a duet with Michael Jackson (specifically, “The Way You Make Me Feel”) for a 2001 special called Michael Jackson: 30th Anniversary Celebration. Timberlake and Janet Jackson cavorted around the stage following each other in a similar fashion, and it might have stayed as respectable and well-received as what Spears and Michael Jackson did were it not for that “unexpected” finale.

    The irony of Timberlake singing, “No disrespect, I don’t mean no harm” and “Gonna have you naked by the end of this song” right before Jackson’s nipple was exposed was almost too on the nose (or nipple) as well. Timberlake’s statement in the aftermath also didn’t align entirely with the one Janet made, which was: “The decision to have a costume reveal at the end of my halftime show performance was made after final rehearsals. MTV was completely unaware of it. It was not my intention that it go as far as it did. I apologize to anyone offended—including the audience, MTV, CBS and the NFL.” Timberlake, instead, used the term “wardrobe malfunction” rather than admitting that a planned costume reveal had gone awry. It was just one of his many selfish behaviors in the 00s. Which women like Spears and Jackson bore the brunt of because that decade was a period that favored dragging female celebrities through the mud for even the slightest hint of sex positivity. That made Jackson an even easier target because this was exactly the type of sexuality that society used against a woman to make her feel shame. In any other place (save for the Middle East), the exposure of a breast on TV would be nothing to write home about. In the puritanical U.S. and, worse still, on the NFL’s watch, it was. And Timberlake used that to his advantage in order to sidestep any real culpability. Even though it was he who seemed to rip the garment off a little too overzealously. 

    However, as usual, Timberlake displayed a pattern for setting women’s reputations on fire and then walking away looking like the better person somehow. Spears’ fans are no longer content to let that pattern stand and they showed as much the day that Timberlake’s poorly-named single, “Selfish,” was released on January 25th. And no, it’s not just poorly-named because it speaks to the heart of Timberlake’s actions up until the point where he was held publicly accountable for them in 2021 (after both Framing Britney Spears and Malfunction: The Dressing Down of Janet Jackson were released, delivering a one-two punch in terms of showing how complicit Timberlake was in each woman’s tarring and feathering in the media), “forced” by the deluge of internet trolling to issue a public apology (and a flaccid one at that). It’s also poorly-named because Timberlake (and his team of handlers) didn’t seem to take note that Spears, too, has a song titled that. And, although it’s but a bonus track from 2011’s Femme Fatale, that hasn’t stopped fans from getting it to trend and place at number one on the iTunes charts above Timberlake’s own “Selfish.” Ah, how embarrassing. To know that the sins you committed against someone who never spoke the truth about you until now are going to haunt you in some very unexpected ways going forward. Including this latest little “prank,” if you will, from the Britney Army (the fanbase with the most hilarious and karmic sense of humor, it would seem). A legion that has presently put a spotlight on just how different a song called “Selfish” can be when coming from two contrasting personality types (and not just because Brit is a Sagittarius to Justin’s Aquarius).  

    Indeed, with this previously slept-on bonus track back in the spotlight, it proves itself to be worth the revisit (as do most of the other Femme Fatale bonus tracks, namely “He About To Lose Me” and “Scary”). Comparing the themes of each song, it’s clear that Spears is coming from a genuine (and genuinely unapologetic) place, admitting it’s time for her to have a selfish night of fun (a.k.a. be selfish in the boudoir), whereas Timberlake tries to cloak his selfishness in something like “love” and “altruism” with a chorus that goes, “If I get jealous/I can’t help it/I want every bit of you/I guess I’m selfish.” It’s in the vein of John Lennon saying, “I didn’t mean to hurt you/I’m sorry that I made you cry/Oh no, I didn’t want to hurt you/I’m just a jealous guy.” Not really useful after you’ve been emotionally and/or physically abused, but whatever. 

    Maybe that’s why Timberlake does his best to offset some of the chorus with a “softness” that makes him sound like he’s been listening to too much Taylor Swift. Because, as any Swiftie knows, Taylor is obsessed with “mark” imagery. So when JT declares, “Owner of my heart/Tattooed your mark” it sounds awfully familiar. And almost like he’s trying too hard to tap into his “feminine side” after so many decades spent relishing his misogyny. 

    Maybe Spears ought to have “S&M’d” him when she had the chance, perhaps only fully coming into her sexually dominant own after Timberlake had already done her wrong. And, speaking of “S&M,” that song majorly channels the overall vibe of Femme Fatale, released in March of 2011—just one month before Rihanna would drop the “S&M” remix with Britney on it (in fact, the song was originally written for Britney). Similar to the domineering vibes of “S&M,” Spears flexes on “Selfish,” “​​Okay, you think you got me where you want me/I’ma show you tonight (la, la, la)/That I’m a girl and you’re a boy/And tonight, you gon’ be my, be my man.” It sounds like just the sort of thing Timberlake, little boy that he was, needed to hear back when the two were together. Along with, “Tonight, I’m feelin’ sexual/Come on and play inside my love below/Strip down and give me my own private show [Britney loves talking about private shows]/I’m gonna be a little selfish, be a little selfish.” Instead, it’s fairly probable that Timberlake got to be the most sexually selfish between the two of them throughout their relationship. If for no other reason than the fact that he cheated multiple times. That’s pretty damn selfish (sexually and in general). 

    While Jessica Biel might like to believe this song was inspired by her, it’s apparent that Britney will remain his underlying (no sex position pun intended) forever muse (and, now, nemesis). Because if anyone’s the “Exaholic” (the name of an unreleased track from Spears’ Glory album), it’s Justin. Alas, his obsession with Britney post-breakup (this time unwittingly revealed by naming his song the same title as something she already did) has proven to backfire spectacularly (thanks to the fighting spirit of the Britney Army). Almost as spectacularly as naming his dog Brennan not long after Britney said that was her preferred baby name. With the revelation that Timberlake strong-armed her into aborting the child that might have been named that, well, shit, it’s just another bad look—no, another selfish look—to add to the pile.

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • Lana Del Shill: On the Skims Campaign Everyone’s Gone Heart-Eyed For

    Lana Del Shill: On the Skims Campaign Everyone’s Gone Heart-Eyed For

    [ad_1]

    For a while there, it seemed as though there was nothing Lana Del Rey could do right. It started at the beginning of her career, and then briefly tapered off during her Lust for Life through Norman Fucking Rockwell era. It was during the critical darling phase of Norman Fucking Rockwell, however, that things started to take a turn back toward 2011-2012 territory. And ultimately, all at Del Rey’s own hand. Or rather, social media outbursts. It began with her vitriolic reaction to Ann Powers giving her a positive review on NPR for NFR. The problem? Powers had the audacity to declare that Del Rey had a persona early on in her career: the Daddy-loving coquette queen being chief among them. Del Rey then clapped back, “To write about me is nothing like it is to be with me. Never had a persona. Never needed one. Never will. So don’t call yourself a fan like you did in the article and don’t count your editor one either—I may never have made bold political or cultural statements before—because my gift is the warmth I live my life with and the self-reflection I share generously.” Pretentious and ego-driven much?

    Almost as if to further insist—therefore, defy Powers’ assessment—that her Daddy-loving coquette queen persona has always been real, Del Rey opted to fall right back into it for her first ad campaign since the 2019 one she did for Gucci, also co-starring Jared Leto. The campaign was in promotion of the Gucci Guilty fragrance, though, as usual, the goings-on of the pictorial “narrative” seemed to have little to do with scent. Unless one counts being at the laundromat…there’s plenty of odors there. 

    At the very least, the campaign for Skims is able to be less abstract about what it’s promoting. Not just Kim Kardashian herself, but the Valentine’s Day “drops” she wants to sell out for the month of “love” (i.e., buying something for someone proving how much you love them because capitalism). On January 18th, the big announcement was made that Del Rey would be Skims’ “Valentine” a.k.a. their February shill. A key piece to moving this kind of product in an increasingly less romantic world. Indeed, it’s already been reported by Women’s Wear Daily that Del Rey “amassed $13.7 million in media impact value [for the brand] within four days, with Del Rey’s own Instagram post earning Skims more than $4 million.” This allure of Del Rey (particularly, for whatever reason, among the Gen Z crowd trying to lay claim to her the way they have with Mean Girls) has entirely superseded her brief bout with “cancellation” in 2020, after posting her infamous “question for the culture” and receiving backlash for her specific callout of women of color in it. Comparing her “struggle” to their so-called lack thereof.

    As if that weren’t bad enough, Del Rey then made matters worse for herself by soon after posting a video of people looting during the George Floyd protests in L.A., prompting Kehlani (one of the singers name-checked in her “question for the culture”) to tweet directly at Del Rey, “Please remove your Instagram post it’s dangerous as fuck and a very poor choice of moments to post. By all means protest, but DO NOT endanger people with your very massive platform. Oh and turn your fuckin comments on man.” Tinashe also weighed in on Del Rey’s recklessness for the sake of a social media post clearly meant to prove she was “down” two weeks after being accused of those racist undertones in her public missive. In slightly less gentle words, Tinashe tweeted, “Why the fuck are you posting people looting stores on your page literally WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM.”

    As though not wanting to let the haunting comments of 2020 persist in 2021, Del Rey overcorrected by posting a picture of her then-new album cover for Chemtrails Over the Country Club at the beginning of 2021, foolishly commenting, “In 11 years working, I have always been extremely inclusive without even trying to. My best friends are rappers my boyfriends have been rappers. My dearest friends have been from all over the place, so before you make comments again about a WOC/POC issue, I’m not the one storming the capital, I’m literally changing the world by putting my life and thoughts and love out there on the table 24 seven.” Funnily enough, most of that extremely narcissistic statement sounds as though it could have come straight out of Kim Kardashian’s mouth. A woman, evidently, that LDR has “loved” for quite some time. Even before singing at one of her wedding festivities back in 2014 (a “gift,” incidentally, given to Kardashian by Kanye West…before Del Rey decided to write a damning lyric about him that goes, “Kanye West is blonde and gone”). Del Rey was, indeed, only too eager to tell Vogue, “I love Kim, and I love her family. Me and my sister are huge fans of them, and have been watching them forever.” That right there should be a major red flag to anyone who has insisted that Del Rey is some beneficent, selfless soul. For anyone who can see the Kardashians as something other than the very embodiment of the decay of America that Del Rey is meant to be “ironically” speaking on in her songs is not to be trusted. 

    And yet, now that Del Rey has reemerged from the other side of 2019-2021 unscathed and more revered than ever (how rapidly the public can forget back-to-back controversies), it appears as though she’s comfortable ruffling feathers again. Specifically, the feathers of those who would take issue with advocating for a brand (and the person associated with it) like Skims. That aside, Del Rey’s decision to align with the “body positive” juggernaut doesn’t feel like a coincidence. Almost as though she’s leaning entirely into her chili cookout and Waffle House era. Plus, despite any perceptions to the contrary (and also urging, “If you want some basic bitch/Go to the Beverly Center and find her”), Del Rey has always been, at her core, a basic bitch (cue the droning lyrics, “Put his favorite perfume on/Go play your video game” or “Blue jeans, white shirt”). She copped to it herself in a 2019 interview with Billboard as well.

    Thus, it was no surprise that when Vogue asked her, “What do you love about the pieces that Kim and Skims are making?” Del Rey replied, “Well, first of all, I just love how well it’s doing for her [insert gag noises here]. And second of all, I do wear basics on most days; I like wearing the little rompers, or onesies with a big t-shirt. I’m always curious to see what they’re going to do; it’s an ever-evolving brand. It started as kind of a niche brand [like Del Rey herself], and I feel like it’s grown into a thing where now my sister and my best friend Margaret [Jack Antonoff’s wife, one presumes?] are wearing it. All of a sudden you’re like, ‘Oh, you’re wearing Skims too,’ and you show up in the same outfit as you’re getting a coffee. It’s really kind of sweet.” If by “sweet” (also the name of one of her songs on Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd) what she means is: absolutely atrocious. For there is nothing more terrible, generic fashion-wise, than a world of women outfitted in Skims. 

    Except maybe a world of women outfitted in H&M. Which brings us back to 2012. Better known as the year Del Rey felt most comfortable being a shill. After all, everyone is obliged to be when they’re first starting out (even Madonna was no stranger to an early onslaught of ads, including ones for Mitsubishi and, of course, Pepsi). It helps not only get a still-unknown face “out there” for more audiences to see and “connect with” (if a “connection” can really be forged by wanting to look like someone who represents a false ideal), but it also helps secure one’s bag right from the get-go in case the fame game doesn’t endure. So secure it Del Rey did. Not just stopping at her H&M campaign (for which she sang a cover of “Blue Velvet” in a Lynchian-inspired commercial), but also continuing to lend her name for Jaguar’s F-Type that same year. “Burning Desire” was the song tailor-made for the accompanying commercial (which doesn’t look that dissimilar to the one for H&M, in terms of LDR standing on a red-curtained stage alone with a microphone looking “old-timey”).

    And so, here it bears noting that, when it comes to what she’ll shill, Del Rey has little discernment in how the products she touts affect the environment she claims to so love and care about (particularly on Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass’ “Paradise Is Very Fragile”). What with fast fashion and fossil fuel emissions being at the heart (no Valentine’s Day pun intended) of environmental fallout. Any such love was also tossed aside when she opted to wear that Shein dress that everyone immediately flocked to buy (because, whether it was Shein or not, it was still fast fashion-y enough to find a knockoff on Shein that quickly sold out afterward—call it the Del Rey advertisement effect). 

    Her latest advertising foray for Skims only adds to the damning proof of that. For it’s not exactly under the radar anymore that Skims’—an “American” company—production and manufacturing occur mainly in China and Turkey, where labor laws don’t exactly live up to the Skims promise that workers will be “ensured fair wages, safe environments and healthy working conditions.” What’s more, the company is just as (Gucci) guilty of greenwashing as the aforementioned H&M, insisting that its packaging is free of non-recyclable materials, as well as plastic. A closer look at the fine print indicates that’s bullshit. And sounds almost as fantastical as a world where the U.S. nominates a (non-conservative) woman for president. Though, at the rate that Kardashian’s clout has increased even more since ditching Ye (even though, at the outset of their relationship, he was responsible for increasing rather than detracting from that clout), she might have a far more successful run for the presidency than her ex-husband ever did. And it would probably be endorsed by Del Rey while wearing the Velvet Lace Teddy in Periwinkle Multi.

    Doing her part to help obfuscate the problematic nature of Skims and its fast fashion manufacturing processes, Del Rey’s “innocent” coquette air is played up by photography from Nadia Lee Cohen (half Israeli at a time when no one in the media wants to talk frankly about Israeli-Palestinian “relations”). No stranger to photographing Del Rey after the March 2023 issue of Interview…not to mention doing the photoshoot for Kim’s Interview cover for September 2022. Lending her by now signature tinge of 60s aesthetic style to the Skims x Lana shoot, the audience is ultimately enraptured by the photos themselves, rather than the products they’re meant to represent. And yes, it’s a lovely set of photos, in and of themselves. Begging the question: why does it also have to be about selling something? Why does Del Rey, a self-declared “simple” singer-songwriter feel obliged to peddle these wares at this late stage in her fame game anyway, when money has never been less relevant to or needed for her artistic pursuits?

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • Postcards from Sydney (Australia and Sweeney)

    Postcards from Sydney (Australia and Sweeney)

    [ad_1]

    It’s no secret that the rom-com is an ever-dying genre. One that’s harder and harder to “spoon-feed” audiences that have gotten both younger and more jaded. The last generation to truly “revere” (or at least appreciate) the art of the rom-com (and it is far more of an art than people give it credit for) is probably millennials. Sydney Sweeney, however, is not quite a millennial, having missed the cutoff by just a year. But perhaps as a “geriatric Gen Zer,” she identifies more with the millennial heart, hence her commitment to the role of Beatrice a.k.a. “Bea” (a name that no one who is twenty-six years old would ever have, but 1) it’s a nod to Much Ado About Nothing and 2) that’s the least of one’s suspension-of-disbelief worries). A character given life by co-screenwriters Ilana Wolpert and Will Gluck (who hasn’t written a rom-com since 2011’s Friends With Benefits (itself a foil to No Strings Attached, released earlier the same year; and weirdly, Justin Timberlake probably should have starred in that film instead since NSYNC titled their 2000 album the same thing). And since Anyone But You is earnest about “bringing back the rom-com,” Bea is someone who wastes no time walking right into a meet-cute. 

    While more conventional rom-coms might wait a few scenes instead of just “raw dogging” their audience like that with a meet-cute, Anyone But You takes the plunge for a “good” reason: Bea and the object of her affection, Ben (Glen Powell), are about to hate each other far more than they ever like each other for the brief twelve or so hours they spend on a date. This after Ben does her a solid by pretending she’s his wife so she can jump the line at the coffee shop to be able to buy something, therefore use the bathroom. Then, of course, further hijinks ensue because the sink ends up spraying her entire crotch with water so she has to air dry her jeans by taking them off. Miraculously (and because of rom-com “law”), the jeans are able to fully dry so that she can exit the bathroom without seeming like “the girl who pissed her pants” to Ben. 

    Like many beloved and, at times, “awesomely bad” rom-coms (most of them falling into the subcategory of “teen movie”) of the last few decades (including Just One of the Guys, 10 Things I Hate About You, She’s the Man and Warm Bodies), Anyone But You borrows the core of its plotline from William Shakespeare. Specifically, Much Ado About Nothing. And yet, like 10 Things I Hate About You, the film opts to “pepper in” multiple “little” Easter eggs pertaining to the British bard. For example, after Bea walks out of Ben’s apartment in the morning, there’s a wall she passes that features the manicured graffiti: “Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love.” (Maybe that’s believable enough in an “erudite” town like Boston.) This being extracted from a monologue by Romeo in The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet during which he continues on with a barrage of oxymorons: “Why, then,/O brawling love!/O loving hate!/O any thing, of nothing first create!/O heavy lightness! serious vanity!/Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!/Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!/Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!/This love feel I, that feel no love in this./Dost thou not laugh?” Gluck and Wolpert’s allusion to this monologue from Romeo is an intentional nod to the adage, “There’s a fine line between love and hate” (or “thin line,” depending on who you ask). 

    Obviously, this applies very much to the dynamic between Bea and Ben, who vacillate between the two so-called extremes at any given moment throughout the movie. As far as being anything like a “direct” adaptation of Shakespeare’s play, the crux of what Anyone But You borrows is the idea that various people, particularly one couple, are trying to convince Bea and Ben that each one is in love with the other. 

    This is done by Bea’s sister, Halle (Hadley Robertson), and Ben’s good friend, Claudia (Alexandra Shipp), the ones getting married and choosing to have a destination wedding in Sydney when they do. As for the seemingly “random” location choice on Gluck’s part, he explained to The Hollywood Reporter that it was a mere matter of funneling his love for the city into something. So it was that he stated, “I wanted Anyone But You set specifically in Sydney because I had really fallen in love with the city, starting back in 2018. After making Peter Rabbit in Sydney, I liked it so much that for Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway, I moved my whole family down there.” He also added, “Almost every time you shoot a movie in Sydney, you have to pretend it’s somewhere else and frame out the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. For Anyone But You, I thought, ‘Why do that?’ We actually wrote this movie one hundred  percent for Sydney—very specific to the destination.” The person, maybe not so much. For Sydney Sweeney’s character could easily be played by just about any current Hollywood ingenue (of which there are surprisingly few compared to the days of 00s-era Hollywood). Except maybe Maude Apatow (a.k.a. Sweeney’s “TV sister”). In any case, Anyone But You does build on a rather lacking selection of mainstream movies set in Sydney (most of them “full-on Australian” fare like Strictly Ballroom or Muriel’s Wedding). Alluring viewers to take a trip there as much as it allures them to play “Unwritten” by Natasha Bedingfield (Gluck clearly has a thing for Bedingfield’s music if we’re also going by Easy A). 

    As for Halle and Claudia, like Bea and Ben, their names are also a callback to Much Ado About Nothing’s Claudio and Hero. The couple theoretically “at the center of it all.” Instead, though, everyone gets into the spirit of trying to manipulate Bea and Ben into falling in love. Or at least falling in like for a couple of days (though the movie, at times, feels as though it takes place over a week). Largely out of convenience and wanting to get through said wedding weekend without hearing any more of their bickering. Which is, per rom-com rules, merely just “Hepburn-Tracy”-esque “repartee” that ultimately acts as a kind of foreplay. Indeed, not giving in immediately to the temptation to fuck the “hate” away is half the fun/appeal for Bea and Ben. 

    In terms of dialogue related to that repartee, as well as the plotline itself, Anyone But You might not have the most stalwart of scripts (despite being “adapted” from the unbesmirched Shakespeare). Nor is it anywhere in the same league as rom-com classic standards like His Girl Friday or Some Like It Hot (and later, movies like Pretty Woman, Clueless [which favors a Jane Austen riff rather than a Shakespeare one], The Wedding Singer and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. But what it lacks in substance and “pedigree,” it makes up for in postcard-from-Sydney (Australia and Sweeney) appeal and, well, the sheer fact that it’s a rom-com at all. Because, a​​part from No Hard Feelings, there hasn’t been much in the way of recent rom-com fare for Anyone But You to compete with. In fact, people just seem grateful to bear witness to the existence of a new rom-com at all, what with their increasing unicorn status. It doesn’t have to be anything as “highfalutin” as Shakespeare either. Which Anyone But You certainly isn’t—though it does what it can to “pay tribute.” Mainly through “carefully-curated” lines inserted arbitrarily into the mouths of select characters (e.g., “Some cupids kill with arrows and some with traps”) or on signage where you least expect it (e.g., “Assume thy part in some disguise”). 

    One supposes that’s the height of “sophistication” these days when it comes to a Shakespeare “remake” (though “Shakespeare hodgepodge” seems like the more appropriate phrase—an amalgam of “little references” and “collage-like interpretations” of Shakespeare’s work). Throw in a cute koala and a song that can help a clip go viral on TikTok and, voilà, suddenly you have a hit rom-com on your hands. The song, mind you, is the aforementioned “Unwritten.” Not, say, Olivia Rodrigo’s “bad idea right?,” which soundtracks the trailer (perpetuating a “Rodrigo trend” in trailers if also having “get him back!” played during the Mean Girls 2024 trailer is an indication…but hey, Wolpert did previously work on High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, so perhaps her Olivia love goes way back). 

    Indeed, it’s been said that some people are only going to the movie to make it to the credits scene where “Unwritten” plays in all its…glory? (that can’t be the right word). Then they can film themselves with the outtakes (complete with a koala whose stoic facial expression is translated to: “Please leave me alone”). And here one thought that seeing Dermot Mulroney and Rachel Griffiths (both of whom appeared in rom-com staple My Best Friend’s Wedding) act as Bea’s parents would be enough. But alas, no one seems to remember such “little details” about rom-coms of yore. Which is how rom-coms like Anyone But You might continue to prevail if the studio system agrees to keep making and distributing them in movie theaters instead of just via online platforms. In which case, there’s going to be a need for more “destination movies” to compete with the success of this one. Which has firmly marked its territory, for better or worse, on Sydney (Australia and Sweeney).

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • Margaret Qualley Serves Taylor Swift in “Delicate” for Bleachers’ “Tiny Moves” (Which Is Meta Because Taylor Swift Serves Margaret Qualley for “Delicate”)

    Margaret Qualley Serves Taylor Swift in “Delicate” for Bleachers’ “Tiny Moves” (Which Is Meta Because Taylor Swift Serves Margaret Qualley for “Delicate”)

    [ad_1]

    Continuing to act as Jack Antonoff’s muse in multiple ways, Margaret Qualley makes a far more pronounced appearance in the latest Bleachers video than she did in their last one (some wannabe Lynchian fare for “Alma Mater” featuring Lana Del Rey). Indeed, she’s the star of the show. One that is rather limited in production value (on the surface), but nonetheless channels the vibe of Taylor Swift in her far more “blockbuster-y” 2018 video for “Delicate,” directed by Joseph Kahn. This, of course, is a rather meta statement considering Swift borrowed all her swagger for “Delicate” from Spike Jonze’s 2016 ad for Kenzo World starring none other than Qualley. 

    In said ad, not only is Qualley wearing a similar style of frock to Swift’s in “Delicate” (the latter wearing a blue instead of a green tone), but, most important of all, she’s dancing “like no one is watching.” That is to say, like a monkey let loose from the zoo. This is precisely how Swift feels in “Delicate” upon realizing that she’s invisible. A dream come true for someone so incessantly scrutinized. With this newfound freedom from being studied, let alone perceived at all, Swift delves into some very Qualley-esque choreo that eventually leads her out into the pouring rain (pouring rain being Swift’s bread and butter when it comes to accenting dramatic effect).

    Funnily enough, this is one of the few songs in recent years that Swift didn’t tap Jack Antonoff to produce. Instead, Shellback and Max Martin (the latter being all over the Reputation album) did. But even if Antonoff had produced the track, he wouldn’t have said anything to Swift about how “familiar” her video looked. Because, at that time, he still wasn’t dating Qualley. Instead, he was in his breakup year with Lena Dunham (who Qualley probably doesn’t want to think about having shared a penis with). Right after their breakup in early 2018, Antonoff went right for a visual opposite of Dunham in Carlotta Kohl. 

    Similarly to Antonoff’s rebounding propensities, right after her breakup with Shia LaBeouf in 2021, she began dating Antonoff. A man who, instead of being an outright fuckboy (Qualley had already made that mistake with Pete Davidson in 2019, too), just looks like one. Though her romance with LaBeouf only lasted a year, it was still enough time for them to star in a music video for “Love Me Like You Hate Me” by Rainsford (a.k.a. Margaret’s sister, Rainey Qualley). Although this gave her another slight opportunity to showcase her dancing and movement abilities (having been trained heavily in dance and ballet during her teen years before quitting to study acting), it is with Bleachers’ “Tiny Moves” video that she gets to truly display her chops in a manner not seen since the Kenzo World ad that Swift so blatantly borrowed from.

    Qualley’s involvement in the conception of the video appears to be so extensive that she even has a co-directing credit with Bleachers go-to Alex Lockett. And, perhaps to honor Antonoff’s hipster roots, the video’s backdrop is the New York skyline (filmed from a vantage point that one presumes is in Williamsburg). 

    Considering the chorus of the song goes, “The tiniest moves you make/Watchin’ the whole world shake/Watchin’ my whole world change/Tiniest twist of faith/Watchin’ the whole world shake/Watchin’ my whole world change,” having Qualley not only present in it as the focal point, but also showing off her dance moves feels like a no-brainer. For, when speaking of this song in particular, Antonoff noted, “​​I met my now-wife, and it feels like a lot of the mythology and armor that I wore [fell off]. And when you have a big shift like that, which was really meeting my person, it’s brilliant and amazing, but it’s also destabilizing ’cause you have to deal with all of the past, where you lived by this code that was bullshit.” 

    As Qualley dances (once again in a long, flowing frock—this time a white one instead of a green one à la Kenzo World) like she’s being demonically possessed (that’s kind of her thing) against the night sky, the camera eventually turns away from the view of the city to reveal Antonoff himself leaning against the hood of his car while marveling at Qualley from afar. Evidently, she dances long enough for dawn to eventually come (as manifested by the lightening sky color), finally stopping to stare back at Antonoff and approach him. As though she’s made enough “tiny moves” and can finally cease performing them so as to see what kind of ripple effects they’ve invoked.

    Getting closer to “her man” so that she can embrace him (complete with cheesy, circling camerawork to accent the intensity of their connection), Qualley can probably safely say that her tiny moves have had a big impact. Which was already apparent when Swift saw fit to cop them for “Delicate.”

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • The “California Dreamin’” and “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” Connection

    The “California Dreamin’” and “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” Connection

    [ad_1]

    Perhaps more than any other state, California gets a lot of shit talked about it (well…maybe Florida actually wins on that one). This was even before the constant reports about a mass exodus because of how expensive and overtaxed it is as a place to live rather than visit. The long-standing “issue” many seem to take with it (hence, the river of ridicule) stems mostly from the idea that Los Angeles represents everything about it, therefore it must be a “nation” of superficial, self-obsessed twats. Even though the bulk of that demographic actually resides in New York City. But anyway, just because the state invokes the ire of a lot of jealous bitches (cue Don DeLillo writing, “California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom”), there are those who have no trouble understanding the majesty and appeal of the Golden State. 

    This, of course, might prompt the Janis Ian in Mean Girls-inspired response, “That’s the thing with you plastics. You think everybody is in love with you when actually, everybody hates you!” But that wasn’t the case with songwriter Douglass Cross and composer George Cory or The Mamas and the Papas’ John and Michelle Phillips. The former two being the brainchildren behind “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” and the latter being the ones behind “California Dreamin’” (ranked by Rolling Stone as one of the five hundred greatest songs of all time). In both instances surrounding the creation of the songs, the writers felt the call of California after moving to New York. In John and Michelle’s case, they were trapped in a dreary New York setting during the winter (thus, “California dreamin’/On such a winter’s day”), and yearning to return to the golden sunshine of California. 

    Cross and Cory, on the other hand, can acknowledge that San Francisco is not without its own form of coldness and grayness (“The morning fog may chill the air, I don’t care”), but that it is of the singular “California variety” (a.k.a. not nearly as bleak and biting). They, too, address a certain unavoidable loneliness that permeates New York, resulting in the lyrics, “I’ve been terribly alone and forgotten in Manhattan/I’m going home to my city by the Bay/I left my heart in San Francisco/High on a hill, it calls to me/To be where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars.” Cross and Cory also can’t help but mention the sunshine (“When I come home to you, San Francisco/Your golden sun will shine for me”) as a major factor for wanting to return to California, de facto a major reason why New York blows chunks. Ergo, in both songs, California’s weather is touted as its superpower, not its downfall (as is the trend of the moment when discussing the ravaging effects of climate change on the state…while, for some reason, no one seems to be talking half as much about the flood that is coming for NYC). 

    Created just three years apart, with “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” being released in 1962 and “California Dreamin’” in 1965, the affection for the state was starting to become a palpable trend. Perhaps most notably begun by the cast of I Love Lucy in 1955, in an episode titled “California, Here We Come!” Repurposed from Al Jolson’s 1924 rendition (“California, Here I Come”)—during which, unfortunately, he’s wearing blackface—the quartet is featured driving over the George Washington Bridge as they sing bombastically in their brand-new Pontiac Star Chief convertible. The image of Lucy, Ricky, Fred and Ethel gleefully abandoning the oppressive, cold confines of NYC in this boat of a vehicle signals their ready and willing conversion to California culture (a phrase Woody Allen, back when his name could be said, would likely call an oxymoron). And established the idea that, when given a choice between “intellectual” and anti-luxurious New York versus warm, spacious California, a person would opt for the latter every time. 

    Even the man “born and bred” in New York who would become synonymous with San Francisco, Tony Bennett, chose California when presented with a song like “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” Although Tennessee Ernie Ford (another I Love Lucy connection for you) was the original choice to sing it, Bennett ended up getting his eyes on it and performing it in the Fairmount Hotel’s Venetian Room in Nob Hill (where he would continue to do so in subsequent decades, making the single his signature every time he performed there). At that first December 1961 performance, Mayor George Christopher (the last example of SF ever having a Republican mayor) was in attendance, as well as Joseph Alioto, who would serve as San Francisco’s mayor in the years soon after. Thus, from the start, the song was historic, becoming an instantaneous piece of San Francisco’s identity. Just as “California Dreamin’” would for the entire state as a whole. With John and Michelle Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas having no clue that their ire for New York winters would result in such a phenomenon.

    Although Michelle was the California-born one between the two of them, John would prove his undying devotion to the state yet again in 1967, when he wrote “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)” for Scott McKenzie. Because to know California (rather than know its stereotype) is to love it. Whereas to know New York (especially during the winter) is to fathom that there is wisdom in the advice, “Go west.” As a matter of fact, it was a New York newspaper editor (Horace Greeley, allegedly) who immortalized that line.

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • Olivia Rodrigo Tries to Fill the Hole Where Hole Used to Be

    Olivia Rodrigo Tries to Fill the Hole Where Hole Used to Be

    [ad_1]

    As supposed Olivia Rodrigo nemesis Taylor Swift once said, “I come back stronger than a 90s trend.” That’s precisely what’s happened of late in the live performances Rodrigo has been doing in promotion of her Guts album. It started roughly two months ago, when Rodrigo appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to sing “ballad of a home schooled girl” (a timely choice considering the then upcoming release of Mean Girls 2024). Although not exactly outfitted in “Courtney Love circa 1994” attire during this instance, the entire vibe of the performance smacked of Rodrigo’s desire to bring back the raucous stylings of 90s-era frontwomen (e.g., Kathleen Hanna, Justine Frischmann, Shirley Manson), with an especial emphasis on the riot grrrl sound and look (granted, Love was no fan of that mid-90s movement).

    Out of all those “alt-rock” (a cringe-y term that Daria Morgendorffer undoubtedly hated) bands, Courtney Love’s personal style as the frontwoman of Hole was the most visible, aided along by the fact that she was dating (and then married) the “king” of grunge, Kurt Cobain (a name Gen Zers often have no knowledge of despite freely and vexingly sporting Nirvana t-shirts on the regular). While Rodrigo might have adopted solely the “tone” of Love’s performances (albeit more of a Love Lite vibe than an all-out visceral experience) on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, she saved an homage to all-out Hole aesthetics until she appeared on the December 9, 2023 episode of Saturday Night Live.

    Choosing to introduce a new song to the less-versed in her Guts album, Rodrigo followed her stripped-down performance of “vampire” with a more production value-y “all-american bitch.” Outfitted in a pink babydoll dress (this style of frock being Love’s well-known signature around the time of Live Through This), complete with a white, doily-esque collar, Rodrigo sits at a table decorated with cakes and other assorted sweets as she initially sings in her most precious voice while placing sugar cubes into a coffee cup (this, one imagines, will be repurposed again for her Guts Tour, along with babydoll dresses galore). Once the chorus hits, though, she shatters a champagne flute in her hand and proceeds to semi-writhe on the table in a botched attempt at “doing the Madonna at the 1984 VMAs.”

    Rodrigo then briefly goes back to being a “good little girl” before again ramping up the repressed anger she holds back in these moments, finally going all in on decimating the desserts on the table, not just hurtling them aside, but also throwing some of it at the camera and violently stabbing one of the cakes with a knife like she’s stabbing at the patriarchy itself. This blending of Madonna and Courtney Love (notoriously contentious toward one another for a while there) performance sensibilities is perhaps a testament to the pastiche overload of our current time. Something that Rodrigo, like anyone of her generation, can’t help but be a (for lack of a better word) victim of. 

    After loosely returning to her faux sugary sweetness shtick for another verse, Rodrigo once more goes apeshit during the chorus, the entirety of which is: “Forgive and I forget/I know my age and I act like it/Got what you can’t resist/I’m a perfect all-American bitch/With perfect all-American lips/And perfect all-American hips/I know my place, I know my place, and this is it.” The dripping-with-sarcasm aura also smacks of Love’s brand. Most notably on 1994’s “Miss World,” wherein she drones, “I’m Miss World/Somebody kill me/Kill me pills/No one cares, my friends.” In another part of that song, Love belts the chorus, “I’ve made my bed, I’ll lie in it/I’ve made my bed, I’ll die in it/I’ve made my bed, I’ll die in it/I’ve made my bed, I’ll cry in it.” “Coincidentally” enough, this expression is something that crops up in a Rodrigo song on Guts called “making the bed.” The track explores similar self-deprecating themes surrounding fame as Rodrigo laments, “And I’m playin’ the victim so well in my head/But it’s me who’s been makin’ the bed/Me who’s been makin’ the bed/Pull the sheets over my head, yeah/Makin’ the bed.” 

    This is also a song she sang live recently for NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert, rounding out the set of four songs (which additionally included “love is embarrassing,” “vampire” and “lacy”) with this one while wearing what is quickly becoming her own signature babydoll dress. After all, she’s openly stated her favorite fashion era is the 90s, with a budget for “vintage” clothing to support her zeal. Thus (and probably needless to say), Courtney Love would surely be present on the proverbial Pinterest board of that decade’s fashion trends. Accordingly, Rodrigo’s influences on Guts have clearly shifted far more toward the 90s rage of alt-rock than the “happy anger” of 00s pop-punk, which was more palpable on Sour (though that wasn’t without its major “girl rage” 90s influence either: Alanis Morissette—and Alanis gets more play on this album cycle, too…at least visually speaking). This likely due to her declaration that Rage Against the Machine was a key influence on her while recording the album, particularly “all-american bitch.” But as far as promotional performances have gone since Guts was released in September of ‘23, the most overt influence has been purely Love (whether Rodrigo wants to admit to being fully aware of it or not). 

    Some can appreciate this commitment to homage, while others might not necessarily find it quite so “cute” or “endearing.” Although Rodrigo has pointed out that nothing in music is ever new, there is an increasing sense of “watered down-ness” the more the decades go by and people keep “gleaning” from the past. However, as Rodrigo insisted, “Every single artist is inspired by artists who have come before them. It’s sort of a fun, beautiful sharing process. Nothing in music is ever new. There’s four chords in every song. That’s the fun part—trying to make that your own.” 

    Rodrigo does her best to make Hole her own too. Though it’s a prime example of the Narrator (Edward Norton, who, fittingly, once dated Courtney Love) in Fight Club remarking, “Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy.” So if you’re going to copy yourself off of someone, Love isn’t the worst choice—musically or visually. But it still doesn’t quite fill the hole where Hole used to be. 

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • “Passive” Living Has A Price (And It’s Called White Guilt): The Curse

    “Passive” Living Has A Price (And It’s Called White Guilt): The Curse

    [ad_1]

    Consistently talked about as the weirdest, most unclassifiable thing that has ever aired on television (obviously, those who say that have never seen Twin Peaks), The Curse’s series finale left viewers feeling more unsettled than ever. And, to be sure, it was probably one of the strangest, most unpredictable conclusions of a TV show in the medium’s history. But that’s what one should have expected from the likes of Benny Safdie (whose brother, Josh, acted as one of the co-producers). And yes, one supposes, “oddball” Nathan Fielder. An “actor” whose inherently annoying personality translates easily to the role of Asher Siegel, the playing-second-fiddle husband of Whitney Siegel (Emma Stone). Formerly Whitney Rhodes, her maiden name before she likely married Asher to free herself of it, thereby freeing herself of ties to her parents, Elizabeth (Constance Shulman) and Paul (Corbin Bernsen), who are notorious throughout Santa Fe for being slumlords. 

    As Whitney has been trying to cultivate a “different” kind of real estate brand (while still using her parents’ blood money to do so), Asher has been her devoted minion in helping her achieve that goal. Even if she doesn’t seem to fully realize he’s guilty of having skeletons in his own faux-noble closet. In fact, it doesn’t take a psychologist to comprehend that Whitney has sought out her parents in Asher’s form. Especially, as we learn during the first episode, “Land of Enchantment,” in terms of Asher’s micropenis. A trait that her father also shares with him—and has no problem discussing with Asher when the couple comes over to visit. While pissing on his tomato plants to “nurture” the soil, he tells Asher, “Break the illusion in your mind. ‘Hey, I’m the guy with the small dick.’ I tell all my friends. They know.” Paul then adds, “Be the clown. It’s the most liberating thing in the world.” This little piece of advice foreshadows how Asher will soon be referred to as the “jester” to Whitney’s “queen.” Green queen, that is. A term Whitney comes up with as the name for the show in lieu of the mouthful that is Fliplanthropy. 

    The show’s producer, Dougie Schecter (Safdie), is all for the name change, assuring her that HGTV will love it. One of the final cuts of an episode he plays for Whitney, however, is not something they’re likely to “love.” Mainly because of how utterly banal and lacking in “tension” it is. Whitney, prepared to do whatever is necessary to ensure her show is a hit, decides to take Dougie’s advice and give voiceovers to certain “subtle” moments she shares with Asher that play up the reasons behind her vexed expressions. After all, as Dougie points out in episode six, “The Fire Burns On,” “Look, what we have here is a frictionless show. There’s no conflict, there’s no drama. And that’s not something people want to watch. And I get that you’re trying to kind of put this town out there, put it on the map and you can’t talk about any of the racial tensions, or the crime, stuff like that. So what’s left? You and Asher.” But there won’t be anything left of them if Dougie has his way about amplifying the drama and getting Whitney to commit to it. Which of course she does—because there’s nothing she wouldn’t do to ensure the “reality” show is a success. That word, “reality,” being, needless to say, a total fabrication that’s manipulated for the very specific purpose of “audience entertainment.” Because, as Dougie said, no one really wants to see unbridled reality. It’s, quite simply, too dull. And all a viewer ultimately wants out of any show, no matter the genre, is to be taken out of their own lives for a while. 

    This has become more and more the case as the TV-guzzling masses seek to distract themselves from the horrors splashed all over the news like pure entertainment itself. But for those who would rather see chaos that has more of a “narrative”—while also seeking to believe they can learn something about “helping the planet”—a series like Green Queen could certainly deliver on that dual level. Or so Dougie and Whitney want it to. Asher, on the other hand, is just a stooge who would like to believe he has any idea what’s going on. In the end, though, it’s apparent that he was always just a worker bee carrying out orders for his hive queen. Not green queen. And, talking of that color, it does apply to the general green-with-envy aura that both Asher and Whitney have (though more the former than the latter). They’re so concerned with their perception, after all, that it’s easy for them to become jealous of anyone who is perceived as more genuine (and actually is) than they are. The way local Native American artist Cara Durand (Nizhonniya Luxi Austin) is—not just for her art, but her entire “aura.” This is precisely why Whitney and Asher glom onto her like leeches as they parade her artwork in their passive home. As though owning one of her pieces makes them as “brilliant” by proxy.

    Throughout The Curse, Whitney and Asher do their best to convince the rest of the town (and, hopefully, the rest of America) that they are as beneficent as someone like Cara. Though, naturally, a show like The Curse presents the more recurrent dilemma regarding white people of late: can any white person really be “good” no matter how hard they try if their inherent privilege is at the root of most of the world’s suffering since the beginning of civilization? What’s more, is there really any “goodness” at all in a person when their motives are always grounded in self-aggrandizement. As Joey Tribbiani (Matt LeBlanc) on Friends (the whitest show you know) put it, “Look, there’s no unselfish good deeds, sorry.” Because the vast majority of them serve, in some way, to make the “do-gooder” feel better about themselves. To boost that person’s own ego. 

    With the white ego being rattled more and more every day (resulting in the current neo-Nazi political response), there’s been an according uptick in over-the-top displays of “concern” and “allyship.” For the last thing most white people (save for the MAGA ilk) want to be accused of is villainy. And what’s the easiest way for a blanco to boost their “goodness” cachet? The eco-friendly trend. Which is, in fact, a trend rather than a genuine way of life that anyone wants to endure long-term. But so long as Whitney and Asher can cursorily (no “curse” allusion intended) parade how great they are for making “real change” in the community and, therefore, the world, they don’t have to feel too guilty when they do totally hypocritical things like put an air conditioner in the passive house (that’s supposed to naturally moderate its temperature “like a thermos”) they live in. 

    As the couple goes about the process of filming their episodes centered on selling Whitney’s “passive” (and cartoonishly mirrored) homes in the little-known (though not anymore) ​​Española, a dark and ominous pall seems to be cast over everything. Or so Asher tells himself after being “cursed” by a little girl in a parking lot named Nala (Hikmah Warsame). At Dougie’s urging, Asher approaches her to buy one of the cans of soda she’s selling so Dougie can film him doing “good person” shit. Alas, Asher makes the mistake of handing her a hundred-dollar bill solely for the shot, then telling her he needs it back. Something to the effect of this exact scenario is what inspired the idea for The Curse in the first place, with Fielder recounting to IndieWire how “on a routine trip to pick up a new cell phone, [he] was stopped by a woman asking for spare change. He didn’t have any, told her as much and she responded by looking him straight in the eye and saying, ‘I curse you.’” Almost an exact replica of what goes on between Asher and Nala (minus the can of soda). And, just as it is in The Curse, in real life, “Fielder went on his way, but couldn’t stop thinking about the stranger’s sharp words. So he went to an ATM, got twenty dollars and handed it to her. Just like that, she lifted the curse. When Safdie heard the story, he asked Fielder, ‘What would’ve happened if you went back there and she wasn’t there? Then your whole life would be ruined because the curse would just be on you. It would be something that you had to think about forever, and you’d never know for sure whether or not something happened to you because of that or not.’” With both men so openly giving such credence to the woman’s words, well, talk about giving more people a reason to say “I curse you” as a means to extract money. 

    Yet Fielder insisted, “I don’t believe in that stuff, but I can’t get those things out of my head. Sometimes if someone says something to you, even conversationally, where you feel like you messed up something, it can linger in your mind and grow and consume you. Then we just started riffing on that idea, like, ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting if that vibe was hanging over an entire show?’” And there is a large element of The Curse that promotes the idea that if you put thoughts or intentions out into the world, they can have an eerie tendency to, ugh, manifest. That overly-used-by-white-people word. Particularly white people in L.A. But were it not for L.A. and its Lynchian vibe, it can be argued that Fielder and Safdie might never have created The Curse. For it began with Fielder riffing on “trying to encapsulate odd experiences I had since I moved here. L.A. sometimes feels like… there’s something off” (Mulholland Drive anyone?). 

    New Mexico stands in for that “off” feeling easily enough. Though one can imagine the passive living houses Whitney is trying to shill doing quite well on the real estate market in L.A. Where Whitney might also have been tied to her slumlord parents in one way or another. Though she is initially convinced, “There is nothing on Google that ties me to them,” she later demands of her father, “Why does the city keep calling me and telling me my phone number is associated with units in the Bookends?” Worse still, if she Googles “Whitney Rhodes,” there’s a picture of her standing next to her parents at a “ribbon cutting” for the Bookends Apartments. A detail that proves just how much harder is to live in denial about one’s self and one’s “goodness” in the modern age, where the internet never lets anyone forget all of the shady things they might have done in the past. In other words, to quote Dougie berating Asher, “Doesn’t this get exhausting? Cosplaying as a good man?”

    The answer, for white people, is: never. What’s more, the sardonic irony of a phrase like “passive living” applies precisely to how most white people live/engage with the world. Nevertheless, we are all (regardless of color) living pretty goddamn passively as we watch the present destruction unfold around us. Because, in truth, none of us knows how to stop it. Or, more to the point, none of us knows how to truly and profoundly disengage with the behavior that capitalism has furnished and indoctrinated humanity with for centuries. To that point, The Curse is as scathing about faux beneficence as it is about the oxymoron that is “sustainable capitalism.” 

    As for whether or not Asher’s eventual fate at the end of the final episode was really a result of Nala’s “curse” or a phenomenon grounded in the “science” of the passive house causing a reverse polarity of gravity in Asher (episode two was, funnily enough, titled “Pressure’s Looking Good So Far”), that depends on the viewer’s interpretation. Though it’s pretty clear that Asher no longer gave weight (again, no pun intended) to the “curse” theory. A “theory,” quite honestly, that is peak white privilege in and of itself. Think about it: how white is it to assume a curse has really been put on you just because a few things don’t go your way (e.g., not getting any chicken in your chicken penne order)? Perhaps this is why Asher can at last admit to Whitney in the penultimate episode, “Young Hearts,” “I’m a terrible person, don’t you see? There’s not some curse. I am the problem.” Ah, that Swiftian admission. The one that white people, more and more, love to declare because, so long as you acknowledge what you are, you don’t actually have to do anything to change it. 

    Asher, however, vows to Whitney that he’s a changed man at the end of “Young Hearts,” assuring, “If you didn’t wanna be with me, and I actually truly felt that, I’d be gone. You wouldn’t have to say it. I would feel it and I would disappear.” To many, that seems like the obvious foreshadowing to what becomes of him in the finale. But there was foreshadowing long before that at the end of episode five, “It’s A Good Day,” when Asher and Whitney are shown going to bed together only for the scene to later reveal that Asher is no longer sleeping next to her. Could it be that he had already floated up toward the ceiling that night—and many other nights before? Calling her his “angel” as she falls asleep, maybe the truth is that Asher amounts to her angel. By coming across as more devilish than she does (thanks to the privilege of white womanhood). This allows her to more fully believe and invest in her delusions about herself as the real do-gooder of the operation despite knowing, fundamentally, that she’s probably even more narcissistic than Asher. A narcissism that has evolved and grown stronger as a “chromosome” in los blancos over many centuries of enjoyed hegemony.

    Thus, Safdie and Fielder challenge us to ask: is “the curse,” at its core, simply karma catching up to white people after centuries of employing various forms of subjugation and colonialism? After all, it’s not anything new to say that gentrification is the new colonialism. What is new, however, is the idea that the Earth might actually finally be having a visceral reaction to white people’s bullshit and therefore forcibly ejecting them from its atmosphere. Which, in all honesty, means Whitney might be next if there ever happens to be a season two.

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • Lil Nas X Joins the Tradition of Musicians Styling Themselves as “J Christ”

    Lil Nas X Joins the Tradition of Musicians Styling Themselves as “J Christ”

    [ad_1]

    Causing outrage by positioning oneself—literally—as Jesus is nothing new in the music industry. Whether it’s Nas (from whom Lil Nas X obviously takes a portion of his name) or Madonna, nailing oneself to the cross has long been a popular form of controversy-stirring (in addition to “simple” cross burning). But, as it’s been a while since someone has done it, perhaps Lil Nas X thought the time had come for someone to jump back up there. After all, feeling like a martyr is the name of the game in these modern times, for it seems to be one of the best ways to get attention (since taking off one’s clothes doesn’t have the same rarity as it used to). 

    It’s easy to feel like a martyr anyway as a celebrity in the social media age, wherein internet trolls appear in waves to deride anyone they perceive as somehow affronting. And Lil Nas X is no stranger to invoking the “wrath” of such trolls. But he, in turn, knows how to invoke his own wrath by being even more “controversial” in response. Indeed, he seems to take a page from Ye’s (back when he was Kanye West) 2004 “Jesus Walks” video with the religious overtones and imagery that abound in this self-directed project. Perhaps this is why Ye is featured as one of the “problematic” figures walking on the stairway to heaven. And, also taking a page from something Ye would do (and has done in the video for “Famous”), Lil Nas X includes the presence of Taylor Swift walking up the stairway as well. Though she surely wouldn’t like the implications of having to share any “heaven space” with said man/eternal nemesis. One friend she might not mind having around, however, is Ed Sheeran, another famous face (or rather, imitation of a famous face) who appears on the scene. Mariah Carey (who’s also name-checked in the song via the lines, “Last year was a quiet year/Now I’m on Mariah, yeah/I’m finna take it higher, yeah, okay”), Oprah and Barack Obama are in the line for “ascent” too as the very Kendrick Lamar-esque (specifically, “Humble”) beat drops. 

    As the camera then makes its way upward to show us a “slice of life in the sky,” we see the “angel” (or is he God?) that is Lil Nas X, who waves playfully to none other than Michael Jackson doing his moonwalk amongst the clouds. This, in fact, may be the most controversial moment of all in the video. But it also seems telling that a shot of Michael Jackson immediately prompts the camera to dip quickly down into hell to see what’s going on there (as Lil Nas X already showed us his fondness for doing in “Montero [Call Me By Your Name]”). And, in Lil Nas X’s imagination, what’s going on is a “gladiator-style” basketball game between Jesus and the devil…after a quick flash to Lil Nas as some kind of devilish Macbeth-ian witch standing vigil over a cauldron filled with dismembered arms and legs. 

    During said basketball game, “Satan” is, of course, wearing Lil Nas X’s notorious “Satan” Nikes with “Luke 10:18” emblazoned on them (that verse containing the lines: “He replied, ‘I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven’”). After “J Christ” makes a slam dunk, Lil Nas X then cuts to himself dressed as the head cheerleader sassily cheering on the game as his fellow squad members lift him above their head. 

    It’s in the next scene that Lil Nas X delivers on the promise of a song title like “J Christ,” appearing nailed to the cross that we initially see him on from a perspective that makes him appear turned upside down as he raps, “Which way that we goin’? Hmm, this way” before the cross is “flipped around” to show his crucifixion “right side up.” Lil Nas X then goes from crucifixion to sheep shearing—perhaps a symbolic nod to how he plans to lead his flock while ensuring they all look their best. As Lil Nas X does while “serving cunt” in the next scene where he treats the white steps he stands on like a heavenly Met Gala photo opportunity. Turns out, Ts Madison is watching him strike these poses on her TV, as the headline, “Breaking News: We Are So Back” captions it. And yes, based on the subsequent headline detailing the “Global Flood Warning,” it’s clear that this moment in history would be the perfect time for J Christ to swoop in (which makes him sound more like a superhero than a messiah). Lil Nas X, indeed, does offer a fair point about how these are very apocalyptic times, and Jesus really ought to be materializing per the Bible’s “save the date” promises regarding the apocalypse.

    The Noah’s Ark allusion is, obviously, not lost on the viewer either as torrents of water proceed to flood the city. Lil Nas X then does a very 00s-inspired round of choreography amid the lightning and rain with a billboard behind him that reads, “Lord Help Me For I Am At War.” Or, as Ye phrased it on “Jesus Walks,” “We at war/We at war with terrorism, racism/But most of all we at war with ourselves.”

    Lil Nas X goes through that war with the self in a very “Lieutenant Dan in Forrest Gump” sort of way as he battles with the storm on a ship caught thrashing among the waves. When the tempest subsides and Lil Nas X’s ship starts to sail into the sun of a new dawn, the words, “Day Zero A New Beginning” flash over the screen. The final title card then quotes the Corinthians with, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” Ah, leave it to Lil Nas X to repurpose scripture for the announcement of an upcoming album drop. 

    In short, the real reason for Lil Nas writing a song called “J Christ” was so he could serve all the looks while declaring, “Back-back-back up out the gravesite/Bitch, I’m back like J Christ/I’m finna get the gays hyped/I’m finna take it yay high [not Ye low].” And he has…even while also sinking into the depths of hell to do it.

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • “Yes, And?” Video Pays Unexpected Tribute to Paula Abdul’s “Cold Hearted”

    “Yes, And?” Video Pays Unexpected Tribute to Paula Abdul’s “Cold Hearted”

    [ad_1]

    “I miss the old Ari. You know, the singer.” So says one of the many invitees (all critics) to Ariana Grande’s performance art piece in Montauk (the location of which is given via the latitude and longitude coordinates on the business card shown at the beginning of the video). This milieu being significant because Grande’s seventh album is titled Eternal Sunshine—an obvious nod to Michel Gondry’s beloved 2004 film of the (almost) same name. Considering Grande’s dating history, the premise of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is rather on point. As is her choreo (courtesy of Will Loftis) throughout the heavily-inspired-by-Paula Abdul video. Indeed, one might as well call “yes, and?” a “modern update” to Abul’s 1989 video for “Cold Hearted,” the fifth single from her debut album, Forever Your Girl. 

    Directed by none other than David Fincher, “Cold Hearted” continued the trend (established by Madonna, as usual) of pop stars dancing in front of elaborate industrial set pieces (see: the “Express Yourself” video, also directed by David Fincher, and the “Rhythm Nation” video). “yes, and?” builds on that by centering the premise around a “living art exhibition,” of sorts. So it is that, just as is the case in “Cold Hearted,” “yes, and?” offers a caption at the beginning. But instead of reading, “Tuesday 9:45 a.m. The Rehearsal Hall. The Record Company Executives Arrive,” it reads, “11:55 AM. The Critics Arrive.” All of them with something snarky to say (in the spirit of the intro to Missy Elliott’s “Gossip Folks”). Including two critics who have the exchange, “Did she really do that?” “Well I read it on the internet so it must be true.” This replacing the once more relevant go-to line of sarcasm: “I saw it on TV so it must be true.” 

    They then enter the warehouse-y space where a series of “stone sculptures” stand in highly deliberate poses as the critics take their seats. The “Ari sculpture” is at the center of them all, posed with her hands over her eyes to indicate the classic “see no evil” philosophy. Or, in this case, “see no haters.” As the critics start to get impatient with what they’re supposed to be getting out of this little “exhibit,” the sculptures break apart and fall to the ground as the actual people they’re modeled after appear on the scene. Directed by Christian Breslauer (marking his first collaboration with Grande), the camera then focuses in on Grande’s feet before panning up the length of her legs to then reveal an aesthetic that is entirely reminiscent of Keira Knightley’s in Love Actually. Because what is Ari if not adept in the art of pastiche (though perhaps not as much as her one-time collaborator, Lana Del Rey)? As any post-post-post-post-post-post-modern pop star tends to be. 

    Continuing to emulate Abdul and co.’s fierce, defiant choreography, Grande offers occasional moments of “Renaissance painting poses” to keep reiterating the notion of being living art. Or, as Del Rey said, “I had a vision of making my life a work of art.” As such, that technically means she can be critiqued herself as much as the art she actually puts out. Hence, the presence of the critics subbing out Paula Abdul’s record executives. 

    Critics who can’t help “gagging” when Grande urges, “And if you find yourself in a dark situation/Just turn on your light and be like/Yes, and?” The musical breakdown just before she urges people to “turn their light on” sounds a lot like the one in Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy.” But considering Grande is giving a massive homage to dance and house music of the 90s in general (including, of course, Madonna’s “Vogue”), it’s not out of the question that the “nod” is deliberate. At the moment she talks about people turning their (inner) lights on, a heating lamp lights up above the critics’ head, as though to envelop them in the same warm glow she’s chosen to bask in no matter what gets said about her. Some critics don’t exactly “like” it, with one starting to sweat profusely as he wipes his forehead with a napkin in a manner that could also indicate Grande’s body (“too thin” or not) is getting him hot and bothered (the same way Paula Abdul gets the record executives in her video).

    As all the art critics proceed to start removing articles of clothing under the heat of the lamp, Grande approaches with, let’s call it an “aura tuning fork,” as she calmly recites the bridge of the song: “My tongue is sacred, I speak upon what I like/Protected, sexy, discerning with my time/Your energy is yours and mine is mine/What’s mine is mine/My face is sitting, I don’t need no disguise/Don’t comment on my body, do not reply.”

    Of course, that demand likely won’t stop the usual barrage of body commentary that rakes in the millions for the beauty and fashion industries. In the final line of the bridge, Grande then wields her coup de ​​grâce, “Why do you care so much whose dick I ride/Why?” Probably because the dick is Ethan Slater’s and it’s kind of weird/non sequitur (Wicked co-star or not). Even more than choosing “Cold Hearted” as a piece of pop culture to emulate. 

    But anyway, the “yes, and?” then concludes with another shot re-creation from the “Cold Hearted” video, with the curtain dropping off the window while Ariana and co. return to their same positions as statues made of stone to then await the next batch of critics they’ll perform for. The first batch, meanwhile, has turned from the stone statues they were before walking into the warehouse and into warm hearted lovers of Ariana as one of them shouts with delight to the others going in, “You’ll just love it! You’ll love it.”

    The same “conversion” from hater to lover goes for the record executives in “Cold Hearted,” who enter the building with the cynical exchange, “So have you even seen this dance?” “Uh, I haven’t but, uh, it’s a Bob Fosse kind of thing. It’s gonna be really really hot.” “Yeah but tastefully. It’s tastefully hot. And hey, if there’s any problem, we can always make changes.” The director of the video nervously reminds, “Uh, we’re shootin’ tonight.” But of course, there’s no need to change a thing because, by the end (just as it is the case in “yes, and?”), the execs are left with their jaws dropped. Though, of course, all they can say is it was “nice.” So it is that Abdul’s video concludes with the caption, “The dancers laugh.” Probably at the fact that it’s so hard for critics to admit when something is good (though, in their defense, that’s quite possibly because things rarely are). Especially when the artist in question’s personal life has a tendency to cloud the focus on the work itself. 

    In this sense, pulling from Paul Abdul’s video arsenal does make some sense when tying this message back into the concept of the “Cold Hearted” premise.

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • Madonna and Improv Influence Ariana Grande’s “Yes, And?” 

    Madonna and Improv Influence Ariana Grande’s “Yes, And?” 

    [ad_1]

    For a minute there, Ariana Grande had a reputation for releasing new music as frequently as Rihanna once did (the singer-turned-makeup mogul could formerly be relied on for an album a year). That reached an apex in the time period between summer of 2018 and winter of 2019, when Grande famously released the one-two punch of Sweetener and thank u, next in the span of six months. Part of that rapidity stemmed from being creatively inspired by the storm of personal events that transpired in the months after Sweetener’s release, including the death of her ex, Mac Miller, and her breakup with then fiancé Pete Davidson (who Grande put on the map, dating-wise). Grande’s prolificness didn’t let up in 2020 either, when she gave the world a prime example of “pandemic pop” in the form of the Positions album. 

    Soon after the release of that record, Grande announced her engagement (again) to “celebrity (a.k.a. luxury) realtor” Dalton Gomez. This was also after the news that she had been cast as Glinda in the film version of Wicked (because turning musicals based on movies into musical movies is all the rage now). A project that also consumed her enough for her to announce that she would not release new music until production was over. Now, going on four years since Positions was released, Grande is ready to reintroduce herself. And, of course, throw some shade at one of the latest scandals to have affected her “brand” in the headlines: that she’s a homewrecker willing to wreck a home for someone who looks like Ethan Slater, her co-star in Wicked (who, appropriately, plays a munchkin with a crush on her). As for Slater’s high school sweetheart, Lilly Jay, the two divorced soon after the announcement of Grande’s relationship, with Jay commenting, “[Ariana’s] the story really. Not a girl’s girl. My family is just collateral damage.” And yet, even to Jay, Grande would likely quip, “Yes, and?” That two-word phrase being most known for its association with improv philosophy until now. 

    What’s more, the “and what?” (just a synonym for “yes, and?”) vibe of it is also associated with another pop star. The mother of all pop stars, as it were: Madonna (someone Ari is no stranger to collaborating with). Because, indeed, it isn’t just the sound of the song that emulates Madonna’s house-inspired “Vogue” stylings (something Beyoncé also wanted to resuscitate recently with “Break My Soul” [cue another “Queens Remix” instead featuring Ariana and Madonna] and Renaissance as a whole). It’s also the “I don’t give a fuck what you think” aura that Madonna has exuded, specifically, since 1985, after nude photos of her from her pre-fame days were sold to Playboy and Penthouse. Rather than cowering in shame or “apologizing,” as was usually the case in those days, Madonna was the first woman to stand up for herself in such a scenario and say simply, “So what?” Deciding that what she did for money before she was famous was her own business, and she oughtn’t be judged for it, even if the photos were splashed across these glossy men’s magazines for all to see. This unprecedented reaction on the part of a slut-shamed famous woman prompted the iconic New York Post headlines: “Madonna on Nudie Pix: So What!” and “Madonna: ‘I’m Not Ashamed,’ followed by the subtitle, “Rock star shrugs off nudie pix furor.” (Both front pages that would be “arti-ified” by Keith Haring and Andy Warhol.) With those simple two words, Madonna paved the way for Grande’s own: “yes, and?” 

    Of course, the danger of that is how people will now start using it to justify objectively egregious acts, like, say, murder (just imagine how bad “yes, and?” would be received if Israel suddenly started adopting it as its mantra while bombing Palestine, or if Russia did the same in its actions toward Ukraine). And yes (not to be confused with yes, and), we do live in a society where certain kinds of murder are glorified, even applauded (see: Gypsy-Rose Blanchard). Certain kinds of grotesque behavior in general, mostly related to the debasing things people will do for money. One might even say, in her allyship, Grande is ultimately hollerin’ for a dollar when she says, “Boy, come on, put your lipstick on (no one can tell you nothin’).” Because obviously it benefits her makeup brand’s sales to encourage all genders to wear it. Being an “ally” in the process is just an added bonus. 

    In addition to alluding to her “homewrecking” ways (though nothing will ever compare to the homewrecker’s anthem that is Marina and the Diamonds’ “Homewrecker”), Grande also references her body being commented upon back in April of 2023. When she chose to respond to the wave of comments about how “thin” and “unhealthy” she looked with a video. One in which she stated, “I think we should be gentler and less comfortable commenting on people’s bodies, no matter what [Billie Eilish had a similar, blunter statement to make on “Not My Responsibility”]… You never know what someone is going through. So even if you are coming from a loving place and a caring place, that person is probably working on it.” This comes back again in “yes, and?” when she sings, “Don’t comment on my body, do not reply.” Not to mention the Britney-centric declaration, “Your business is yours and mine is mine” (it all has the decidedly tongue-in-cheek tone of Spears’ “Piece of Me” video).

    Grande’s positivity doesn’t extend just to the body, but also to finding light in dark situations (a running motif in her work since Sweetener, when she repeated, “The light is coming to give back everything the darkness stole” on “The Light Is Coming”). Thus, she urges, “Yes, and?/Say that shit with your chest.” In other words, stick out your chest with pride (another subtle gay allyship allusion), hold your head high, etc. Grande then adds, perhaps anticipating the fallout for daring to live one’s “most authentic life,” “Be your own fuckin’ best friend.” It’s a sentiment that echoes the sologamist verse on “thank u, next” (indeed, Ari appears to want “yes, and?” to make even more direct reference to that track when she sings, “Keep moving like, ‘What’s next?’). The one that goes, “I ain’t worried ’bout nothin’/Plus, I met someone else/We’re havin’ better discussions/I know they say I move on too fast/But this one gon’ last/‘Cause her name is Ari/And I’m so good with that.” As she also seems to be on “yes, and?”—even if currently “riding the dick” that is Ethan Slater’s. A tabloid tidbit she addresses with, “Why do you care so much whose dick I ride?/Why?” Probably because celebrity worship/envy and the according “need” to know everything about their personal lives has been an ongoing part of our culture at least since the dawn of film.

    In truth, celebrities would probably be a bit disappointed if no one cared whose dick they were riding, but that’s another story/psychological analysis. Besides, no one wants to “overthink” too much with a song like this playing, its infectious house rhythms (ready-made for striking poses on the ballroom dance floor courtesy of production from Grande, Max Martin and ILYA) likely to infiltrate LGBTQIA+ spaces the world over in no time. 

    To be sure, the release of new Ari music always feels best at the beginning of a year, as thank u, next did. Punctuating it with so much initial hope before people start to notice a few months in that shit is not only still the same, it’s probably getting worse. To which government officials might riposte, “Yes, and?”

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • Gen Z Is to Cady Heron as Millennials Are to Regina George, Or: Does Mean Girls 2024 Make Gen Z the New Queen Bee? Hardly.

    Gen Z Is to Cady Heron as Millennials Are to Regina George, Or: Does Mean Girls 2024 Make Gen Z the New Queen Bee? Hardly.

    [ad_1]

    For those who applaud it, any contempt expressed for the latest iteration of Mean Girls is likely to be met with the ageist rebuke of how it’s probably because you’re a millennial (granted, some millennials might be enough of a traitor to their own birth cohort to lap up this schlock). As in: “Sorry you don’t like it, bitch, but it’s Gen Z’s turn now. You’re just jealous.” The thing is, there’s not anything to be jealous of here, for nothing about this film does much to truly challenge or reinvent the status quo of the original. Which, theoretically, should be the entire point of redoing a film. Especially a film that has been so significant to pop culture. And not just millennial pop culture, but pop culture as a whole. Mean Girls, indeed, has contributed an entire vocabulary and manner of speaking to the collective lexicon. Of course, reinventing the wheel might be the expectation if this was a truly new version. Instead, it is merely a translation of the Broadway musical that kicked off in the fall of 2017, right as another cultural phenomenon was taking shape: the #MeToo movement. 

    This alignment with the repackaging of Mean Girls as something that a new generation could latch onto and relate with seemed timely for the heralding of a new era that not only abhorred flagrant sexual abuse against women, but also anything unpleasant whatsoever. It quickly became clear that a lot of things could be branded as “unpleasant.” Even some of the most formerly minute “linguistic nuances.” This would soon end up extending to any form of “slut-shaming” or “body-shaming.” Granted, Fey was already onto slut-shaming being “over” when she tells the junior class in the original movie,  “You all have got to stop calling each other sluts and whores. It just makes it okay for guys to call you sluts and whores.” (They still seem to think it’s okay, by the way.)

    Having had such “foresight,” Fey was also game to update and tweak a lot of other “problematic” things. From something as innocuous as having Karen say that Gretchen gets diarrhea on a Ferris wheel instead of at a Barnes & Noble (clearly, not relevant enough anymore to a generation that gets any reading advice from “BookTok”) to removing dialogue like, “I don’t hate you because you’re fat. You’re fat because I hate you” to doing away entirely with that plotline about Coach Carr (now played by Jon “Don Draper” Hamm) having sexual relationships with underage girls.

    What Fey has always been super comfortable with (as most people have been), however, is ageist humor (she has plenty of anti-Madonna lines to that effect throughout 30 Rock). For example, rather than Gretchen (Bebe Wood) telling her friends that “fetch” is British slang like she does in 2004, she muses that she thinks she saw it in an “old movie,” “maybe Juno.” Because yes, everything and everyone is currently “old” in Gen Z land, though 2007 (the year of Juno’s release) was seventeen years ago, not seventy. This little dig at “old movies” is tantamount to that moment in 2005’s Monster-in-Law when Viola Fields (Jane Fonda) has to interview a pop star (very clearly modeled after Britney Spears) named Tanya Murphy (Stephanie Turner) for her talk show, Public Intimacy. Finding it difficult to relate to Tanya, Viola briefly brightens when the Britney clone says, “I love watching really old movies. They’re my favorite.” Viola nudges, “Really? Which ones?” Tanya then pulls a “Mean Girls 2024 Gretchen” by replying, “Well, um, Grease and Grease II. Um, Benji, I love Benji. Free Willy, um, Legally Blonde…uh The Little Mermaid.” By the time Tanya says Legally Blonde (four years “old” at the time of Monster-in-Law’s release), that’s about as much as Viola can take before she’s set off (though Tanya blatantly showcasing her lack of knowledge about Roe v. Wade is what, at last, prompts Viola’s physical violence). Angourie Rice, who plays a millennial in Senior Year, ought to have said something in defense of Juno, but here she’s playing the inherently ageist Gen Zer she is. Albeit a “geriatric” one who isn’t quite passing for high school student age. Not the way Rachel McAdams did at twenty-five while filming Mean Girls. 

    To that point, Lindsay Lohan was seventeen years old during the production and theater release of Mean Girls, while Angourie Rice was twenty-two (now twenty-three upon the movie’s theater release). Those five years make all the difference in lending a bit more, shall we say, authenticity to being a teenager. Mainly because, duh, Lohan was an actual teenager. And yes, 2004 was inarguably the height of her career success. Which is why she clings on to Mean Girls at every opportunity (complete with the Mean Girls x Wal-Mart commercial). Thus, it was no surprise to see her “cameo” by the end of the film, where she takes on the oh so significant role of Mathlete State Championship moderator, given a few notable lines (e.g., “Honey, I don’t know your life”—something that would have landed better coming from Samantha Jones) but largely serving as a reminder of how much better the original Mean Girls was and that the viewer is currently watching a dual-layered helping of, “Oh how the mighty have fallen.”

    While the musical angle is meant to at least faintly set the 2024 film edition apart from the original, it’s clear that Tina Fey, from her schizophrenic viewpoint as a Gen Xer, has trouble toeing the line between post-2017 “sensitivity” and maintaining the stinging tone of what was allowed by 2004 standards. Although Gen Z is known for being “bitchy” and speaking in a manner that echoes the internet-speak amalgam of gay men meets AAVE, any attempt at “biting cuntery” is in no way present at the same level it was in 2004’s Mean Girls. And a large part of that isn’t just because “you can’t say shit anymore,” but also because the meanness of the original Regina George is completely washed out and muted. This compounded by the fact that Reneé Rapp is emblematic of a more “body positive” Regina. In other words, she’s more zaftig than the expected Barbie shape of millennial Regina. Perhaps this is why any acerbic comments on Regina’s part about other people’s looks are noticeably lacking. For example, in the original, Regina tells Cady over the phone, in reference to Gretchen (Lacey Chabert), “Cady, she’s not pretty. I mean, that sounds bad, but whatever.” Regina might say the same of the downgraded looks of the Mean Girls cast as a whole… Let’s just say, gone are the days of the polish and glamor once present in teen movies. And yet, there is still nothing “real” about what’s presented here in Mean Girls 2024. Because, again, it struggles too much with the balancing act of trying to be au courant with the fact that it was created during a time when people (read: millennials) could withstand such patent “meanness.”

    In the climate of now, where bullying is all but a criminal offense resulting in severe punishment, Mean Girls no longer fits in the high school narrative of the present. This is something that the aforementioned Senior Year gets right when Stephanie (Rebel Wilson) returns to high school as thirty-seven-year-old and finds that Gen Z seems to care little about the rules of social hierarchy she knew so well as a teenage millennial. And the rules Regina George’s mom likely knew as well. Alas, Mrs. George becomes a pale imitation of Amy Poehler’s rendering, with Busy Philipps trying her best to make the role “frothy,” even when she warns Regina and co. to enjoy their youth because it will never get any better than it is right now for them (something Gen Z clearly believes based on an obsession with people being “old” that has never been seen to this extent before). The absence of her formerly blatant boob job also seems to be an arbitrary “fix” to the previous standards of beauty that were applauded and upheld in the Mean Girls of 2004 (hell, even the “fat girl” who sees Regina has gained some extra padding on her backside is the first to mock her by shouting in front of everyone, “Watch where you’re going, fat ass!”). 

    To boot, the curse of having to “update” things automatically entails the presence of previously unavailable technology. This, of course, takes away from the bombastic effect of Regina scattering photocopies of the Burn Book pages throughout the entire school, instead placing the book in the entry hallway to be “discovered.” And yes, the fact that the Gen Z Plastics would be using a tactile object such as this is given a one-line explanation by Regina when she asks if they made the book during the week their phones were taken away. Again proving how this “translation” doesn’t hold the same weight (no fat-shaming pun intended) or impact as before. 

    More vexingly still, without the indelible voiceovers from Cady, the movie becomes a hollow shell of itself, and not just because it’s now a musical lacking the punch of, at the very least, some particularly memorable lyrics (and no, “Not My Fault” playing in the credits isn’t much of a prime example of that either). And so, those who remember the gold standard of the original movie will have to settle for conjuring up the voiceovers themselves while watching (e.g., “I know it may look like I’d become a bitch, but that was only because I was acting like a bitch” and “I could hear people getting bored with me. But I couldn’t stop. It just kept coming up like word vomit”). But perhaps Fey felt that the “storytelling device” of  Janis ʻImi’ike (Auliʻi Cravalho)—formerly Janis Ian—and Damian Hubbard (Jaquel Spivey)—formerly just Damian—telling it through what is presumed to be a TikTok video (this, like Senior Year, mirroring a trope established by Easy A) would be enough to both “modernize” the movie (along with Cady being raised by a single mom instead of two married parents) and compensate for its current lack of signature voiceovers.

    Some might point out that there’s simply no room for voiceovers in a musical without making the whole thing too clunky. Which brings one to the question of why a musical version instead of a more legitimate reboot had to be made. Well, obviously, the answer is: money. Knowing that the same financial success of the musical would be secured by an effortless transition to film. One that ageistly promises in the trailer: “Not your mother’s Mean Girls.” Apart from the fact that it doesn’t deliver at all on any form of “raunch” that might be entailed by that tagline, as Zing Tsjeng of The Guardian pointed out, “Your mother’s? Tina Fey’s teen comedy was released nineteen years ago. Unless my mother was a child bride, I’m not sure the marketing department thought this one through.” 

    But of course they did. And what they thought was, “Let’s throw millennials under the bus like Regina and focus our money-making endeavors on a fresher audience.” That fresh audience being totally unschooled in the ways in which Mean Girls is a product of its time. And so, is it really supposed to be “woke” to change the indelible “fugly slut” line to “fugly cow”? As though fat-shaming is more acceptable than slut-shaming (which also occurs when Karen [Avantika] is derided by both Regina and Gretchen for having sex with eleven different “partners”—the implication perhaps being that maybe some of them weren’t boys). And obviously, Regina saying, “I know what homeschool is, I’m not retarded” had to go. The phrase “social suicide” is also apparently out (even though Olivia Rodrigo is happy to reference it in “diary of a homeschooled girl”). In general, all “strong” language has been eradicated. Something that becomes particularly notable in the “standoff” scene between Janis and Cady after the former catches her having a party despite saying she would be out of town. In this manifestation of the fight, gone are the harshly-delivered lines, “You’re a mean girl, Cady. You’re a bitch!”

    Despite its thud-landing delivery, the messaging of Mean Girls remains the same. Or, to quote the original Cady (evidently an honorary Gen Zer with this zen anti-bullying stance), “Making fun of Caroline Krafft wouldn’t stop her from beating me in this contest. Calling somebody else fat won’t make you any skinnier, calling someone stupid doesn’t make you any smarter. And ruining Regina George’s life definitely didn’t make me any happier. All you can do in life is try to solve the problem in front of you.” Alas, Fey doesn’t solve the problem of bridging millennial pop culture into what little there is of Gen Z’s. At the end of Mean Girls 2024, the gist of Cady’s third-act message becomes (as said by Janis): “Even if you don’t like someone, chances are they still want to just coexist. So get off their dick.”

    The thing is, Mean Girls 2024 can’t coexist (at least not on the same level) with Mean Girls. It’s almost like Cady Heron trying to be the new Regina George. That is to say, it just doesn’t work, and ends up backfiring spectacularly (though not from a financial standpoint, which is all that ultimately matters to most). Unfortunately, when Cady tells Damian at the end of 2004’s Mean Girls, “Hey, check it out. Junior Plastics” and then gives the voiceover, “And if any freshmen tried to disturb that peace…well, let’s just say we knew how to take care of it [cue the fantasy of the school bus running them over],” she added, “Just kidding.” And she was. Otherwise the so-called junior Plastics of Mean Girls 2024 wouldn’t be here, disturbing the millennial peace.

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • Taylor Swift Takes A Joke Too Seriously Again

    Taylor Swift Takes A Joke Too Seriously Again

    [ad_1]

    Although no one can really say that Jo Koy’s monologue during the intro to the 2024 Golden Globes was exactly “bangin’”—filled as it was with thud-landing jokes and Koy himself laughing at how bad they were and frequently apologizing—one of the moments that was actually least offending to humor sensibilities was the half-attempt at making fun of Taylor Swift for her constant presence at Travis Kelce’s NFL games. Indeed, were fans not so convinced of her “dutiful girlfriend” tendencies, they might think she was being paid off by the NFL to make football have more appeal to an audience it never previously did before. All of whom are waiting for an inevitable breakup album laden with none too subtle football metaphors (please god, don’t let the album be called Tight End…even though that’s exactly what Swift has when it comes to jokes).

    That said, Koy “went along with” (a.k.a. was paid handsomely for) reciting a joke he would likely attribute to the Golden Globes writers, throwing them under the bus whenever something was met with silence. It went like this: “The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL? On the Golden Globes, we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift. I swear. There’s just more to go to.”

    And, of course, the camera then flashed to Swift’s visual response to that, which was so dripping with contempt it was a wonder she herself didn’t melt to the floor as a result of her barely-concealed hot rage. But what was really to be so upset about? This was hardly on the same level as another joke made about Swift on the first season of Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia back in 2021. With Swift reacting to Ginny’s (Antonia Gentry) dig at her mother, Georgia (Brianne Howey), about going through men faster than Taylor Swift by tweeting, “Hey Ginny & Georgia, 2010 called and it wants its lazy, deeply sexist joke back. How about we stop degrading hard working women by defining this horse shit as FuNnY. Also, @netflix after Miss Americana this outfit doesn’t look cute on you 💔 Happy Women’s History Month I guess.” Her passive aggressive conclusion to the statement is in keeping with her usual brand of white martyrdom. One that has played out nicely over the years since Ye “attacked” her onstage at the 2009 VMAs. And while, yes, Ye (then going by his Christian name, Kanye West) was totally in the wrong for doing what he did, one can’t help but speculate about whether or not the reaction to it would have been just a bit tamer had it been a white man who interrupted Swift. 

    In her latest edition of Being Done Wrong By a Joke, most were quick to side with Swift’s facial reaction that spoke a thousand expletive-filled words. Not just because it was a no-brainer to cite the joke as “bad,” some hardy-har-har, yuk-yuk-yuk fare your uncle might tell at a family function and you’d be forced to laugh along with it. But because it was, “at its core,” sexist (which anything is at its core if we want to dig deep enough…though most don’t). Swift, however, was not at a family function with her uncle, but a very public event where, in truth, she might have expected to be a target. The idea that she wasn’t expecting a joke to be made about her is possibly a sign that she feels she’s become untouchable. Alas, the “joke” in question is the price one pays for attending a ceremony with an opening monologue from a comedian (or someone posing as a comedian). Did anyone come to Robert De Niro’s defense about the joke Koy made regarding becoming a father at seventy-nine? Couldn’t that be interpreted as “ageist”? Not when many were too busy worrying about Swift being able to handle the comment directed at her. Because, once again, people are viewing it as a form of “shaming” Swift for her always active dating life. As a result, the joke has been blown way out of proportion. As though Koy said something directly related, somehow, to her so-called promiscuity. 

    Indeed, considering other jokes that have been about Swift on that front, this one was utterly harmless. For example, back at the 2013 Golden Globes, when Tina Fey and Amy Poehler co-hosted, it was the former who said, “You know what Taylor Swift, you stay away from Michael J. Fox this time!” Swift’s response to that “dig” materialized in a Vanity Fair cover story that came out soon after, when she quoted Katie Couric to Nancy Jo Sales by saying, “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.” So yeah, Swift isn’t known for handling jokes about her all that well, especially if they relate to her dating history. Which is somewhat ironic because it’s kind of, like, her thing. Fey wasn’t one to back down on making yet another joke about Swift’s over-the-top reaction, hugging Poheler at the Golden Globes a year later when they co-hosted anew and quipping, “I just wanna say congratulations again to my friend Amy Poehler. I love you and there’s a special place in hell for you.” 

    Thus, Taylor has become somewhat notorious for having a stick up her ass every time anyone says even a hint of an unkind word, from Katy Perry to Damon Albarn. The one person she didn’t seem to react to bringing her love life into a joke was Barack Obama at the 2013 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, during which he remarked, “Republicans fell in love with this thing, and now they can’t stop talking about how much they hate it. It’s like we’re trapped in a Taylor Swift album.” Letting that comment slide perhaps proves that there are only certain men of color Swift is willing to stare daggers at, and Jo Koy happened to be one of them. 

    Although Koy is by no means a “gifted” comedian (complete with a voice that utterly grates), the specific backlash against the comment he made about Swift makes one want to remind the world of something Madonna once said: “You know what I have to say to America? Get a fucking sense of humor, okay? Lighten up!” Even when something isn’t particularly funny, a person doesn’t have to act as though someone just took a huge shit all over their head, or as though Kanye West just jumped on the stage and interrupted them.

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • The 2024 Golden Globes Does What It Can to Keep Itself on the Train Track

    The 2024 Golden Globes Does What It Can to Keep Itself on the Train Track

    [ad_1]

    The Golden Globes is no stranger to being riddled with scandal. Even in the 1950s, when it was still a relatively germinal organization (with the first edition airing in 1944), the awards ceremony was “renowned” for taking what amounted to bribes and payoffs via various “gift-giving” endeavors from studios, production companies and individual stars themselves. By the 60s, the Golden Globes were exposed for determining their winners based on advertiser influence, and that, furthermore, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) put pressure on nominees to attend the ceremony, lest they lose their win to another nominee who actually did attend. The entire thing was such a shitshow—such a complete and blatant display of nepotism and abuse of power—that the ceremony was actually banned from being aired on television between 1969 and 1974. 

    Scarcely back on the air for a full ten years after returning post-1974, the next major scandal was Pia Zadora’s “miraculous” win for “New Star of the Year” (another made-up award in the vein of Cinematic and Box Office Achievement) thanks to her performance in Butterfly, a movie that was both unanimously panned and had not even been released yet at the time the awards ceremony aired. Not so hushed whisperings about how Zadora’s husband, Turkish-Israeli financier Meshulam Riklis, bought her the award led to a further degradation in the Golden Globes’ credibility. Yet this has never stopped the show from enduring. In fact, from being second only to the Academy Awards in terms of prestige and well-knownness to the layperson outside of Hollywood. Yet, as Scarlett Johansson once called out, the show was merely used as a tool by the likes of Harvey Weinstein to curry Oscar favor. Hence, the flagrancy of bribery. 

    Some cynics would even argue that it surely can’t be a coincidence that the only time Madonna was ever recognized for her acting ability was thanks to the Golden Globes, as she won the award (in 1997) for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for Evita. The HFPA had a less speculative case of being paid off for the 2011 Golden Globes, when both Burlesque and The Tourist managed to secure nominations in the Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy category. This despite Burlesque being a critical laughingstock (though, yes, it is lauded by those who appreciate camp) and the fact that The Tourist was a spy/action-adventure movie. Needless to say, HFPA members were cajoled into nominating these films thanks to getting “flewed out” to Las Vegas to see a Cher concert and a little personal lobbying from Angelina Jolie herself re: The Tourist. 

    At the end of 2020, amid then-fervent cries about changing Hollywood’s openly discriminatory practices as a result of the overall anti-racist spark ignited by George Floyd’s murder in May of that year, the Golden Globes were once again put on blast for a lack of Black members and generally arcane membership “policies.” So it was that, yet again, the awards ceremony was barred from being aired on television in 2022, with Tom Cruise going so far as to return the Golden Globes he won as a show of “solidarity” the year before. By 2023, the organization had been (theoretically) totally revamped, sold off to Eldridge Industries (also known for buying Dick Clark Productions) and repackaged as a for-profit entity with a larger and more “diverse” membership working behind the scenes to nominate people and the films they’re part of. Not only that, but as Robert Downey Jr. pointed out during his acceptance speech this year, the organization changed its name, doing away with the HFPA altogether. It also transitioned to a new network, swapping NBC out in favor of CBS, billed as the “less fun” of the Big Three broadcast networks (NBC, ABC and CBS). And, indeed, it didn’t seem like much fun for anyone when the last-minute host, Jo Koy (relatively unknown up until this moment), took the stage to deliver a monologue that induced cricket-chirping silence (though Taylor Swift really didn’t need to be so uppity about the harmless “difference between the NFL and Golden Globes” joke that Koy made). 

    Luckily, things picked up slightly as the evening wore on, and viral moments of levity were provided, including Jennifer Lawrence mouthing, “If I don’t win, I’m leaving” and what felt like two minutes of watching Timothée Chalamet (who, mercifully, did not win for Best Actor in Wonka) and Kylie Jenner “canoodling” and saying shit to the effect of, “No, I love you more.” It was pretty nasty (and not nearly as noteworthy as Ali Wong’s show of PDA with Bill Hader), but obviously the stuff of viral and meme gold. Even that “bit” between Kristen Wiig and Will Ferrell presenting the award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy proved to, for whatever reason, endlessly charm audiences. Which proves that the Golden Globes isn’t quite yet the stodgy, irrelevant entity that people would like to make most long-running institutions out to be.

    That said, the presence of Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish (who also won the award for Best Original Song for “What Was I Made For?”) alone served as enough proof that the ceremony has carried on to subsequent generations. Even if only the most blanca and monoculture-oriented. But that didn’t stop the voters from doing their best to promote “inclusivity” in the lone manner they could: by giving the award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama to Lily Gladstone for her performance as Mollie Burkhart in Killers of the Flower Moon. Even if there were many Native Americans who weren’t quite as moved by the film as some of the white viewers who watched it (a phenomenon that also seemed to occur with 2016’s Moonlight). In truth, Gladstone’s capitulation to the proverbial white male as the teller of an Osage story can be viewed as at Native American version of the Uncle Tom trope. And yet, how else is a girl (or boy) supposed to get representation in mainstream Hollywood without “cozying up” a bit?

    This seemed to be the underlying theme of the night, with audience silence resounding well beyond the Jo Koy monologue in terms of nary a celebrity making any political statement. That’s right: for arguably the first time in history, celebrities at an awards ceremony were not feeling political. Almost as though to do so would be “too much” amid the tinderbox climate (figuratively and literally) of now. Particularly with regard to mentioning anything about Israel and Palestine. Which proves, once again, that Hollywood hypocrisy is alive and well no matter how much its awards ceremonies feign “evolution.” For how can an awards show really evolve if the industry itself hasn’t?

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • Night of the Living Dead Offers a Prime Commentary on How Paying Respect to the Dead Is A Toll on the Living

    Night of the Living Dead Offers a Prime Commentary on How Paying Respect to the Dead Is A Toll on the Living

    [ad_1]

    As the conversation escalates about what to do with “all these dead bodies” in a world with increasingly less space, one can’t help but look back on 1968’s Night of the Living Dead as a metaphor for how paying respect to the dead is a toll on the living. One that can end up costing a person their own life. In fact, it seems that a great many horror movies speak to the trope that all sources of pain stem from visiting a graveyard. For, despite wanting to “honor” the dead by going to a cemetery, it appears as though the dead want the space all to themselves, hence constantly haunting or outright attacking anyone who infiltrates it. 

    In George A. Romero’s seminal film, that “source of all pain” for the living is how the film immediately starts out, with Barbra (Judith O’Dea), the ultimate useless white woman, and her brother, Johnny (Russell Streiner), visiting their father’s grave in rural Pennsylvania—much to Johnny’s dismay. Especially since they drove three hours all the way from Pittsburgh to do it. Romero’s slow build to their drive into the cemetery is punctuated not only by the eerie Spencer Moore theme (“Driveway to the Cemetery”), but by the presence of an American flag whipping in the wind as Barbra and Johnny approach the site, where the burden of visiting a father they never really knew hangs heavy. That American flag waving over a dead body (buried beneath the headstone), at that time, serves an undeniable semiotic importance to spotlighting the bodies that kept coming back from Vietnam. This creating a larger, undercutting social commentary about how bodies become particularly immaterial when they’re racking up—treated so disposably—no matter how much people (read: the government) try to “respect” them by putting them in an “appropriate” environment and then essentially “worshiping” them. Or rather, their memory. 

    To the point of the Vietnam War infecting horror movie commentary during this period, Tobe Hooper’s 1974 film, Texas Chain Saw Massacre, is also rife with Vietnam-oriented political symbolism. And yes, it also opens with a cemetery scene wherein the bodies have been desecrated. Hung up and fashioned into a grisly “corpse sculpture.” The horror that visits Barbra and Johnny while they visit the cemetery is, let’s say, slightly more subtle. With that first zombie appearing “harmless” enough…until he isn’t. It only adds to Johnny’s staunch belief that he’d rather be anywhere else than a spook show of a joint like this. Indeed, the moment they park, Johnny is already complaining to Barbra, telling her, “You think I wanna blow Sunday on a scene like this?” Ah, such 60s parlance to call a cemetery a “scene.” And yet, that’s precisely what it is. A manufactured “comfort” for the dead that’s supposed to benefit the living in that they can continue to “pay their respects” to those they’ve lost when, in reality, it becomes a cross to bear to keep visiting the cemetery regularly (especially if you’re not a kook or a spook who feels naturally at home there). Or as regularly as the distance will allow—as mentioned, Johnny is also sure to bring up how fucking far it is to get there.

    Johnny’s cynicism about being at the cemetery (only obliging the task on behalf of his mother) persists when he mocks the ceremonial arrangement they brought along to place on the grave, reading the words on it that say, “We still remember.” He balks, turning to Barbra to assert, “I don’t. You know, I don’t even remember what the man looked like.” This blunt admission, which of course scandalizes Barbra, raises the question about how, if someone in your life dies when you’re so young and can’t even remember them (unless you’re Madonna losing her mother at five), is it a matter of genuine sentiment or forced duty to visit their gravesite? Barbra is convinced that it is the latter, devoted to the concept that the one thing that truly separates humans from animals is their ability to mourn the dead, to “show reverence” for those who came before them, those without whom they wouldn’t be here today. Johnny, on the other hand, displays total contempt for the entire frivolous practice of mourning. Of how death has become yet another racket through which opportunists can delight in their hungry capitalistic tendencies. 

    So it is that Johnny notes to Barbra, after placing down the cross-shaped memento with flowers on it, “Each year we spend good money on these things. We come out here, and the one from last year is gone.” Barbra, too naive and pure to buy into what he’s saying, replies, “Well, the flowers die, And the caretaker or somebody takes them away.” Johnny ripostes, “Yeah, a little spit and polish, he can clean this up, sell it next year. Wonder how many times we bought the same one?”

    His general scoffing about this entire “visiting the grave” ordeal is something that, in the past, would have been considered disrespectful, but, more and more, it seems as though Johnny was ahead of his time in branding the entire practice of mourning the dead (and the according existence of cemeteries) as totally bogus. Not just because there are so many other less involved, less invasive (literally) to the living ways to honor the dead, but because the entire “death industry” has so patently become about squeezing as much money as possible out of people. Not about providing them with services and “accommodations” designed to furnish them with the most “emotional support” and consolation possible. 

    And yet, as Johnny has no trouble pronouncing, there is nothing consoling about this arduous, often creepy process. Barbra might not have agreed from the outset of their visit, but by the time she sees her brother die at the hands of a flesh-eating zombie (knocking Johnny down so that his head hits a gravestone), she’s undoubtedly converted to the camp that believes no good can come of cemeteries (most notably thanks to climate change increasing the flooding of such locations that will turn Mother Nature into an unwitting “grave robber,” digging bodies up arbitrarily). 

    Considering that, if Johnny and Barbra hadn’t bothered “paying their respects,” they might have both ended up surviving the ephemeral zombie apocalypse that took hold of the nation after, apparently, some radiation fallout (more social commentary on Romero’s part), Johnny was certainly vindicated from the beginning about not wanting to blow his Sunday on a scene like this.

    [ad_2]

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link