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Tag: Culled Culture

  • The Expectation That Being a Fan of Something Creates An Automatic Bond With Another Person Or That There’s a “Right” Way to Be a Fan

    The Expectation That Being a Fan of Something Creates An Automatic Bond With Another Person Or That There’s a “Right” Way to Be a Fan

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    There’s a series of scenes in the opening credits to Daria that present her in an array of different scenarios being stoic amid a sea of overly enthusiastic twits. That’s often how one can feel when they’re not someone who expresses “fandom” in the “correct” way among other “true” fans of a particular “star” (that word being so open to interpretation nowadays). For example, when a Daria type shows up to, say, a concert to enjoy music on their own terms while expected to act like some kind of uncaged monkey by others who view them as “not acting right,” the divide becomes clear. That is, the divide between a fanatic for the sake of honoring blind fanaticism and someone who can be a fan with a bit more objectivity.

    Having “objectivity,” of course, automatically brands the Daria breeds as “haters” for merely critiquing something with an analytical eye. Treating art (if that’s what celebrities actually want their work to be seen as) with the according level of criticism that should come with taking it in. But no, all of the sudden, calling things out in such a way not only gets one marked with the “hater” brand, but also invokes celebrities to goad, “If you don’t like me and still watch everything I do, bitch you’re a fan.” Never taking into account that someone can be a fan, while still not insisting that everything the celebrity does is spun gold. But that doesn’t “compute” for celebrities themselves or their fans. The ones deemed “true” for lapping up all their shit and assuring the creator that it tastes like coq au vin (to borrow a phrase from Succession’s Lukas Matsson) no matter what. In this era, more than ever, that’s what’s expected of a bona fide fan. Something that harkens back to the kind of ancient and Middle Ages “devotion” displayed by acolytes of various churches and their “founding fathers.”

    Fanaticism, needless to say, has existed in religious form for centuries, ultimately evolving into what we have now: celebrity fanaticism. The same tenets of religious zeal still apply, with the worshipper having no tolerance for contrary views to their reverent opinion of the (false) idol in question (there’s a reason religion has been the source of most wars, after all). A “satire” on that point was recently explored in the Janine Nabers and Donald Glover-created series, Swarm. A “sendup” of the Beyhive’s worshipful attitude toward their god, Beyoncé. Who gets rebranded as “Ni’Jah” (Nirine S. Brown). Among the diehard legion of fans that call themselves The Swarm (you get it—because bees/The Beyhive) is Andrea “Dre” Greene (Dominique Fishback). A fan so committed, she’ll kill anyone who says an unkind word about Ni’Jah, even if it’s just in the comments section—where humanity’s true nature can be found. Although intended to be a “parody” of the level of “vehemence” that fans have in the current landscape (especially those of “Queen” Bey), it’s really not that far-fetched to imagine a fan going to this sort of length to defend the “honor” of their beloved idol.

    The tracing back to this current fanatical tendency to “redoubl(e) your effort when you have forgotten your aim” (as philosopher George Santayana once put it) is inextricably linked with the dawn of the internet’s power. Where once someone like Pauline Kael could exist without being sent death threats or getting doxed, there is patently no place for someone with “highly opinionated and sharply focused” reviews within the context of this easily affronted century.

    Starting practically at the beginning of the new millennium, the evolution of fandom into something wherein fans were expected to make celebrities their gods incapable of doing any wrong, creatively or personally, was made apparent on a show like MTV’s FANatic. The premise being to have the purported “biggest fans” (as judged by their video submissions) meet their idol and interview them. Although the show only aired from 1998 to 2000, there were sixty-three episodes—all of which showcased the bizarre, often random fixation on a particular person (or group of people…e.g., the cast of Dawson’s Creek).  

    One of the show’s crowning episodes occurred in season five, with the appearance of Madonna/Rupert Everett. A lopsided duo, to be sure, but, at the time, they were promoting 2000’s The Next Best Thing together in any way they could. And, oddly enough, the Rupert fan, Ellen, came across as far more enthusiastic and knowledgeable about Everett’s career. But that’s the thing: there shouldn’t be any rule that someone has to act or be a certain way with regard to their fandom. Even if the Madonna fan, Miriam, was foolish enough to waste one of her questions for the pop star on asking her what she had for breakfast that morning (nothing, because a bitch can’t practice yoga on a full stomach). Or if she treated the whole thing more like job interview with language such as, “Thank you so much for this opportunity.” But with Miriam and Ellen’s politeness and articulateness (connoted by such first names as theirs), what stands out most about FANatic now is that to put people in such positions in the present would result in far less dignified behavior. For most have become so accustomed to the extreme parasocial relationships that have developed as a result of “social” media that it would be impossible to imagine most fans’ ability to treat a celebrity like a “regular” human being while in their midst.

    At one point during the show, Madonna remarks, “There’s a difference between true fans that respect your privacy and give you space and people that, you know, follow you everywhere.” Of course, both types of fans can fall in the center of that Venn diagram—many of which have aided in Madonna amassing her level of wealth (especially because of the fans that follow her everywhere when she tours, shelling out high amounts for the front row every time). But perhaps, at that moment, Madonna was still thinking of one of her most obsessive stalkers, Robert Dewey Hoskins, a man with a Dre in Swarm kind of appreciation for the pop star who scaled the wall of her Hollywood Hills home more than a few times throughout 1995 and 1996. It was clear he was of the erotomaniac/borderline-pathological sect of celebrity worship (like the Dre character).

    Eventually, Madonna was forced to face him in a courtroom, where she identified him as “the man who came to her estate and threatened to slice her throat ‘from ear to ear’ if she did not become his wife.” And yet, there are some who would see that level of “fervor” as genuine fandom. Which perhaps just goes to show that because there are so many shades and degrees of “commitment” and “ardor” within a fandom, “liking the same person” isn’t always grounds for forging a bond with other fans (indeed, it can actually be a way to alienate oneself from them). Particularly since some fans view themselves as “more deserving” than others and some fans are really just “haters” (ergo, comments from certain fans that say things like, “Honestly, this fanbase is so toxic it’s making me not even want to be a part of it anymore”—but of course they will continue to be). Fittingly, Madonna herself pointed out this type of phenomenon within the framework of being a celebrity, stating of meeting other famous people in Truth or Dare, “I’ve always found it a little weird that celebrities assume a friendship with you just because [voice changes to sarcastic mode] you’re a celebrity too!”

    The varying tones and timbres of fandom over the past several decades even prompted an official scholastic field for it to be established in the early 90s: fan studies. Not merely studies of various fandoms’ behavior and sense of religious ecstasy over their version of “Jesus,” but also “fanworks,” which are usually centered around art, fiction and “remix culture” in general. This form of “fan labor” (unpaid, more often than not) presents a so-called “higher” tier of fandom that proves a particular breed of fan’s “superiority” over others. In this and many other regards, it’s no wonder those of the Daria ilk, who show up to events or online spaces with an utterly blasé, “what the fuck are you so excited about?” attitude, would “prefer not to” engage or participate at all, lest they be tarred and feathered for not “properly” conveying their appreciation.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Lana Del Rey’s “Candy Necklace” Video Deliberately Blurs the Line Between Fantasy and Reality With Its Meta Framework

    Lana Del Rey’s “Candy Necklace” Video Deliberately Blurs the Line Between Fantasy and Reality With Its Meta Framework

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    When an artist reaches a certain point in their career, self-reference can’t be avoided. In Lana Del Rey’s case, that tends to become quite a quagmire in terms of how most of her music and aesthetics were already referencing other people to begin with. This includes not only “paying homage” visually to the “classics” of Americana and 50s-era icons like Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and Elvis Presley, but also more esoteric fare, including instrumentation and intonation from Eleni Vitali’s “Dromoi Pou Agapisa” for “Video Games” (though some have tried to push back on that theory). Then, of course, there’s her signature of randomly throwing in the lyrics of musical heroes like David Bowie (“Ground control to Major Tom” in “Terrence Loves You”), Patsy Cline (“I fall to pieces” in “Cherry”), Bob Dylan (“Like a rolling stone” in “Off to the Races” and “Lay-lady-lay” in “Tomorrow Never Came”), Beach Boys (“Don’t worry baby” in “Lust for Life” and “California dreamin’” on “Fuck It I Love You”) and Leonard Cohen (“That’s how the light gets in” in “Kintsugi”), to name a few. And let’s not forget her tendency toward weaving literary quotes into much of her work, to boot (which is much easier to sneak in and have people assume is one’s own because nobody’s all that well-read anymore, are they?). Many of which take from Nabokov’s evermore problematic tome, Lolita. Hence, the Del Rey songs “Lolita,” “Carmen” and “Off to the Races.” There’s also Walt Whitman in “Body Electric,” T. S. Eliot in “Burnt Norton” and Oscar Wilde in “Gods and Monsters.” With so many people to “inspire” (read: take from), it’s no wonder Del Rey is so prolific.

    But it all makes sense because of how much Del Rey has always represented the millennial gift for pastiche. Themselves having experienced it on overload from the day of conception, thanks to being “cultivated” in a postmodern world. Where society is at now leaves potential for many more “posts” to be placed in front of that “modern” (just how many might depend on who you ask). And maybe that’s why the love of all things meta has taken root so deeply in pop culture ever since Scream came to theaters. Del Rey herself has never much favored playing with the concept too overtly, perhaps deciding it was time to do so after all this talk of her various “personas” throughout album cycles—though mainly the “Daddy”-loving one that sucks on lollipops, sips “cherry cola” and still insists, “He hit me and it felt like a kiss” (another lyric borrowed from someone else: The Crystals). So it’s only right for director Rich Lee (who previously teamed with Del Rey on videos for “Doin’ Time” and “Fuck It I Love You/The Greatest”) to commence “Candy Necklace,” the first single from Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd to receive a video accompaniment, by opening on a klieg light. Everything about such an emblem signifying the grandeur of Del Rey’s music, as well as her ongoing commitment to presenting Old Hollywood glamor as a lifestyle choice people can still choose to make.

    Lee zooms into the shot of the klieg light and then cuts to the man wielding it behind the back of the truck Lana is “driving” on set. One with a screen backdrop that plays footage of trees on a loop to make it seem like she’s actually driving though some woodsy area (“You can find me where no one will be/In the woods somewhere,” as she says on “Sweet”) when, obviously, she’s not. But it’s all part of the “put-on,” innit? That razzle-dazzle that only Hollywood—de facto, Del Rey—still knows how to achieve better than anyone. And where is she driving to but L.A.? Some small-town girl bound for the big city to do “big things.” Much like the woman Del Rey visually emulates in the video, Elizabeth Short. Better known as the Black Dahlia. Like Del Rey, Short shares a name with Elizabeth “Lizzy” Grant and also spent much of her youth on the East Coast (with some stints in Florida, also like “Lizzy”) before ending up in L.A. after various boppings around between her father and some Army and Navy men.

    Rumors of whether or not Short was a prostitute began to crop up in the wake of her murder, tying right in with another favorite topic of Del Rey’s, as explored on “A&W.” Indeed, after so much rejection in her life, it would be easy to imagine Short callously thinking to herself as she prowled the streets of L.A., “It’s not about having someone to love me anymore/This is the experience of being an American whore.” Regardless of whether or not she did prostitute herself at one time or another, there was an innocent aura about her. Which then, of course, brings us to the flowers—dahlias—Short wore in her hair. As Del Rey used to adorn her own hair with a “sweet” flower crown despite talking of subjects like cocaine, older men and being born bad.

    The dichotomy of a woman when viewed through the myopic lens of men—particularly men controlling Hollywood and the narratives that were churned out of it—is embodied by Del Rey as the vixen, the vamp and the lost little lamb throughout the video. Cutting from her in the truck as “Lana” to her as the Black Dahlia sometime in the 40s as she’s guided out of a car by a John Waters lookalike (maybe the real deal wasn’t available), Lee sets the stage for something sinister to build—only to keep taking us out of the moment with constant behind-the-scenes “asides” from Del Rey herself who, as usual, helmed the concept. As she walks into the stately mansion she’s led to by this older gentleman (Johnny Robish), she reminds one of Lana (quelle coincidence) Clarkson being led to the slaughter by Phil Spector. Eerily (and perhaps intentionally) enough, Robish actually did portray Spector in a TV series called Silenced. And yes, one could imagine Del Rey moonlighting as a hostess at the House of Blues and ending up in such a man’s abode had things gone in an alternate direction for her. In fact, one of her chief defenses against those calling her portrayal of the Black Dahlia insensitive (since, by now, everyone is desensitized to Marilyn’s image being habitually plundered) is that, “It’s not insensitive when you started the same way and you could’ve ended up that way, but that hasn’t been how the story played out and no one knows how it will. So, leave if you don’t like the idea.” But obviously, plenty will like it, for Del Rey is not without her devoted legions, even if they aren’t able to move mountains in quite the same way as Swifties or Beyhive members.

    But Taylor and Beyoncé don’t tend to go quite so niche (at least not in ways deemed as polarizing) with their visual brainchilds. In this video’s instance, a key part of the concept is highlighting “what it’s like for those in front of the camera, behind the smokescreen of fame.” Almost like what Britney Spears was doing in the video for “Lucky” as a matter of fact. But, as usual, Brit doesn’t get much credit for her profundity. Del Rey also follows the tradition of movies that serve as a “film within a film” designed to debunk the supposed perfection of it all—totally manufactured by those behind the camera as much as those in front of it. For someone mired in the debate about “persona,” it couldn’t be a more on-the-nose notion. Almost as on the nose as the various “rundowns” of the video that have come out, offering only such reductive “commentary” as, “Lana Del Rey Transforms Into Marilyn Monroe in New Video.” No shit. But, as with most Del Rey videos, there’s much more to it than the surface.

    Considering her collaboration with Lee on the merged videos for “Fuck It I Love You” and “The Greatest” (clocking in at nine minutes and nineteen seconds to make it a length contender with the videos for “Ride,” “Venice Bitch,” “Norman Fucking Rockwell”/“Bartender”/“Happiness Is A Butterfly” and, now, “Candy Necklace”), he actually alludes to it when making mention of her skateboarding down an alleyway in Long Beach for that shoot. An alleyway will factor in during this video as well, but not with such a “fun-loving” tinge. What’s more, it’s worth noting that the lyrics to “Fuck It I Love You” encapsulate the “everygirl”—like Elizabeth Short—who moves to L.A. with “big dreams” (“said you had to leave to start your life over”). Only to fall into the trap of “fast living” (yet again). This apparent in lyrics such as, “Maybe the way that I’m living is killing me/I like to light up the stage with a song/Do shit to keep me turned on/But one day I woke up like, ‘Maybe I’ll do it differently’/So I moved to California but it’s just a state of mind.” And that state of mind can often lead to a dark destiny, hidden behind the oft-repeated phrase: “the myth of California.”

    Del Rey as Black Dahlia starts to slowly uncover it as we see her atop a grandiose staircase, in the home of the creepy older man who takes her there. Another camera cut shows Del Rey overlooking the scene with Jon Batiste, her trusty piano player on the song and also, of course, a Grammy-winning dynamo in his own right. But in this context, the two both appear as outsiders looking in, heightening the meta concept of us as the outsider audience watching them look like outsiders, too. When Del Rey then descends the staircase while “acting the part,” it feels like a callback to Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard doing the same thing after retreating entirely into her delusions.

    Whatever is happening throughout the video, Lee is always sure to keep our eyes on the varying necklaces Del Rey is wearing, with the term “candy necklace” being symbolic of a lure itself. Something women use to “ensnare” by drawing the male gaze to her vulnerable neck and then up to the mouth as she sucks on the candy. It’s also a metaphor for something sweet and disposable—the way most young women are viewed, particularly by men in “the industry” who see such women as mere “perks” of being in it. Ergo, Del Rey’s dissection of yet another disappointing man who she thought she was madly in love with echoes a sentiment expressed in “Shades of Cool”: “I can’t fix him/Can’t make him better.” But by the time she—or rather, the Black Dahlia version of herself—realizes it, it’s too late.

    At the two-minute, forty-eight-second mark of the video, Del Rey is up to her old “National Anthem” tricks again by portraying Marilyn Monroe, but this time with the full-on re-creation of her blonde coif (as opposed to just wearing a replica of the Jean Louis gown that Kim Kardashian felt obliged to destroy for the sake of her vanity). Shot from a movie-within-a-movie perspective again, we hear the “real” Del Rey tell Lee, “I just don’t know, like, how to not be, like, a robot. I just need to shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot.” And shoot she does…in the persona of Marilyn holding a book in her hand (there’s also a book in the background appropriately titled Handbook of General Psychology). While some would write Del Rey’s portrayal of Marilyn off as yet another tired trick in her usual playbook, it bears remarking that her putting on this particular “character” has more significance at this moment in time, with Del Rey currently being thirty-seven—a year older than Marilyn was when she died (or committed suicide, if that’s the theory you’re going with). This meaning she survived past a “scary age” for those who pay attention to the women slain by the Hollywood machine. Which harkens back to Del Rey’s mention of how when she started out as Lizzy Grant taking on the big city and finding herself in precarious situations with men-wolves, her fate might have gone down just as dark a path as Short’s or Monroe’s.

    After talking about being like a robot, Del Rey adds, “I’m not, like, it’s not, like, working anymore for me.” There are two interpretations of this line: 1) the concept isn’t working for her anymore or 2) doing the shoot no longer feels like work to her because she’s so “in it.” In this manner, as well, there is a layer of duality to everything. Transitioning back to Black Dahlia mode, Del Rey offers another behind-the-scenes soundbite in the form of, “‘Cause the whole thing about the video is, like…why it was all supposed to be behind-the-scenes is because all these women who, like, changed their name, changed their hair, like me and stuff [correction: her like them], it’s like they all fell into these different, different, like, snake holes, so the whole point is like how do you learn from that and not fall into your own thing?” Del Rey grapples with that question as she puts on another wig—this one more Veronica Lake-esque. Along with a Red Riding Hood-style cape in white. The Red Riding Hood vibe being undeniably pointed, per the mention of the men-wolves above—the ones that still run most industries. And still make them all a rather scary place to be a woman. Especially a “fragile” one (as Del Rey so often likes to remind people that she is—something Jewel was doing quite some time ago).

    Walking down a darkened alleyway in this glam-ified Red Riding Hood getup, Del Rey finds herself singing—performing—yet again in a club (as she has also done so many times before in videos such as “Blue Velvet,” “Ride” and “Fuck It I Love You”). One where the seedy Phil Spector-reminiscent character waits and watches. A wolf in no sheep’s clothing. As Batiste plays the piano next to her, Del Rey locks eyes with this foreboding male presence…yet another “Daddy” figure in her music video canon (see also: “Ride,” “Shades of Cool” and “The Greatest”). The one to lead her into the proverbial woods, rather than out of them, as she would like to believe.

    Back in the alleyway with this man who will serve as her “date” for the rest of the “evening,” Del Rey rips off the wig she’s wearing to reveal Black Dahlia curls again…or are they Del Rey’s own? As usual, she toys with viewers’ perception on the matter, with wig-snatching as yet another bid to break down the wall of artifice created by Hollywood glamor. Subverting the “real” goings-on “behind the scenes” again by flashing a middle finger at the camera in her dressing room and demanding, “Get out. Seriously.” But is she being serious, or is this a sendup of the difficult diva persona? Once more, the decision is at the discretion of the beholder.

    Close-ups on Del Rey’s necklace become more pronounced after this scene, though it’s been accented the entire time that each “character” she plays wears some kind of ornate necklace. The one lured (whether aware of the lure or ultimately uncaring that it is a lure) into the backseat of “Daddy’s” car keeps caressing the “candy” necklace she’s wearing as Lee cuts to Batiste repeating the phrase like a narrator who can only communicate her fate through this ominous pair of words. All at once, there’s a moment when it seems as though the necklace feels to her like a choking hold that she tries to remove before looking around frantically out the window. Is it too late to escape what she herself walked into? As necklaces both candy and jeweled fall against a black backdrop and into blood, we find out what the answer is…and what we knew it to be all along: she can’t escape the gruesome outcome that awaits. This shown dramatically by a shot of the car door open and her white cape strewn from the seat to the floor, covered in blood. The camera pans to the back of the car, where a trunk is attached. The perfect size for fitting a mutilated body. Partially open, the camera closes in on its blood-spattered exterior, zooming into the blackness of the trunk only to then reflect back the POV from within: a bevy of reporters letting their flashbulbs go off in a frenzy, ready to splash the horrid tale all over newspapers across the country. The girl is just a story now. Another cautionary tale. One that tells women: don’t be “loose,” don’t “ask for it.” And suddenly, among the fray of “paparazzi” (a word not yet coined in the Black Dahlia’s time), there’s Jon Batiste, who presently comes across as the A$AP Rocky of the narrative, for Del Rey does so enjoy to portray herself as the romantic fetish of Black men. And the fetish of bad men.

    Another cut made through the flashbulb and into the reality where Del Rey is just a star who was playing a tragic dead girl concludes the video. Or was this the alternate reality Del Rey wants to offer up for all the girls who didn’t survive the wolves of Hollywood? Whatever the case, she poses with her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (one that doesn’t actually yet exist, but maybe it will soon) with that shit-eating grin of triumph. The black-and-white scene then segues into color, indicating the falseness of it. A few close-ups on some more neck shots of Del Rey wearing her various necklaces are followed by the final frame being Del Rey’s smiling face as seen through the camera monitor. This concluding the meta blending of fiction and reality, with Del Rey happier than ever (to use an Eilish phrase) about confusing the two. For to live in the twentieth century and beyond is to never really know the difference anymore. Just ask Gloria Swanson/Norma Desmond. Or Norma Jeane/Marilyn. Or Elizabeth Short/the Black Dahlia. Or Lizzy/Lana.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Mafia Mamma Adds to the Ever-Growing List of Affronting “Italian” Content

    Mafia Mamma Adds to the Ever-Growing List of Affronting “Italian” Content

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    It’s unclear who thought the premise of Mafia Mamma would be a “fire” idea, but the fact that Toni Collette co-produced it indicates that she was one of the script’s biggest proponents. And why shouldn’t she be, what with it miraculously making her both forty years old and of Italian descent? But these are the more minimal aspects that pertain to “suspending disbelief” throughout the movie. One of the maximal ones, however, is that Monica Bellucci consented to decimating her culture so willingly. Then again, maybe that’s to be expected from someone who was famously photographed by Bettina Rheims in 1995 with a bottle of ketchup positioned over her pasta. Ultimate sacrilege—until now.

    Her participation in Mafia Mamma is particularly affronting because it gives further license to non-Italians who delight in the firm Italian stereotypes that can’t seem to be shaken (least of all with Super Mario Bros. making a comeback thanks to its latest film version). License to view Bellucci’s presence as a “sanction” to keep wielding all the worst clichés about Italians. But surely, one would think, even the most uncultured swine couldn’t take what’s depicted within the frames of Mafia Mamma to heart…right? But to overestimate people is to be inevitably disappointed. Something Kristin (Collette) knows all about after discovering her husband, Paul (Tim Daish), having an affair with her son Domenick’s (Tommy Rodger) guidance counselor, Tracy (Claire Palazzo, possibly cast for her Italian last name). This being among the many shoddy, hastily-developed and ill-conceived plot points…ones that screenwriters Michael J. Feldman and Debbie Jhoon ostensibly cease bothering with altogether after a certain amount of time. Because perhaps they figured something so “hilarious” would “write itself.”

    To be sure, the “mafia comedy” is nothing new, with Married to the Mob and Analyze This (or even Some Like It Hot, for that matter) being the “exemplars” of the hijinks that can result when “comedic tones” are taken vis-à-vis the mob. Maybe Mafia Mamma wanted to attempt something similar, adding to a canon that already needed to die, and this surely ought to put the nail in the coffin of the genre. But, of course, it won’t. For there seems to be no desired end to the madness. No courage on anyone’s part to “take a hit out” on tired Italian stereotypes, least of all the mafia one.

    In most cases, that’s because it’s too profitable, even for the Italians who sell their own kind down the river to keep perpetuating it (*cough cough* Bellucci). Mafia Mamma seemed to want desperately to cash in on that usual profitiability that comes from bored, middle-aged women romanticizing changing their lives by spontaneously moving to Italy and “getting their groove back.” Like Frances Mayes in Under the Tuscan Sun or Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat Pray Love—and yes, both books/movies are shamelessly mentioned. In addition to the horrifyingly revealed “tidbit” that Kristin masturbates to Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy. This being what her requisite “bestie,” Jenny (Sophia Nomvete), reminds her of when she has second thoughts about going to Calabria (though most of the shooting was done in Rome) to honor her grandfather at his funeral and help Bianca (Bellucci) settle his affairs (ones that will, naturally, be mafia-related).

    But Jenny keeps bringing up Eat Pray Love, changing the title, oh so “groundbreakingly,” to Eat Pray Fuck. Even if it’s Under the Tuscan Sun tropes that Mamma Mafia borrows from more overtly. In point of fact, a key catalyst in Under the Tuscan Sun for Frances to move to Italy was her husband’s infidelity. So, needless to say, hackneyed premises and lazy representations abound—especially when Italian culture is involved. Cue the scene where Kristin is invited by Bianca to help her crush grapes in a barrel using the “foot method.” Bianca is sure to explain, “We have machines to crush grapes now, but this is the classic way.” Lucy Ricardo (Lucille Ball) certainly immortalized that much back in 1956 with the I Love Lucy episode, “Lucy’s Italian Movie.” Which is hardly as offensive as dialogue like Bianca’s as she tells Kristin, “You must stomp on the grapes to release their juices, and you must also take over as the Balbano family boss.” That’s pretty much all it takes to get her to agree, along with the promise of the hard dick she’s been told to seek by Jenny. A man who materializes in the form of Lorenzo (Giulio Corso). But before she can “eat pray fuck” him, Bianca insists she meets with the new don of the Romano family, Carlo (Giuseppe Zeno).

    Upon arriving at the restaurant to talk business/territorial restructuring, Kristin’s primary interests quickly become eating (gnocchi) and fucking (Carlo). Because, since it’s apparently been three years since she’s had sex, Kristin starts acting like a crazed nympho with pretty much any man she comes into contact with. Her “whoreish” ways soon serve as a cautionary tale about women daring to seek pleasure when Carlo proceeds to poison her drink of limoncello (because, again, the writers must dig deep to pull out every cliché from the hat, presumably a fedora). An attempt that predictably backfires on Carlo.

    Worse still, as part of Bianca’s bid to easily persuade Kristin into taking over, she says that Fabrizio (Eduardo Scarpetta), Kristin’s eager cousin, is not fit because “he’s a hot-head with a terrible temper…just like Sonny.” “Who’s Sonny?” Kristin asks in confusion. Bianca looks at her incredulously and says, “From The Godfather.” As though an actual Italian would be affronted by someone never having seen it. But no, it’s Italian-Americans who would be, who actually still hold up the trilogy as some kind of badge of honor (to confirm, Mario Puzo was Italian-American). Kristin, wanting to understand that badge, later brings up the movie as she thinks about how far she’s sunk on the morality scale of late while bemoaning, “I’m a good person.” Bianca assures, “Of course you are, you make peace.” Kristin balks, “Yeah but at what cost? I feel like Michael Corleone.” “You saw the movie!” “No, I read the Wikipedia summary.” Ha-ha. Mafia Mamma provides so many “laughs” just like that one.

    But another real laugh is Bianca telling Kristin, “Just because you’re a mafia boss doesn’t mean you have to be a bad person.” Surely, the words Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) always wanted to hear from Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Bracco). But Kristin seems to believe it as she uses her power for “good” by trafficking in pharmaceuticals (a holdover from the job she ended up getting fired from back in America) to help communities get the medicine they otherwise wouldn’t be able to, what with European laws being much stricter about what kind of shit can be sold to people to put in their body.

    So it is that she becomes the supposed “ideal” mob boss with her “male business acumen” and “feminine nurturing.” Alas, to throw a wrench into Kristin’s transformation and the shedding of her “old life,” Paul shows up initially claiming he misses her before her goons torture him into admitting, “After you lost your job, our joint bank account is empty.” Of course, there’s no explanation for why Kristin would be with Paul in the first place, he being a deadbeat musician without even having the courtesy to write jingles to make money like Mark Loring (Jason Bateman) in Juno.

    Finally gaining the courage to toss him out for good with the help of Bianca, Kristin has still learned nothing from her mistakes with Paul by deciding to give up everything she’s built for Lorenzo (who, in the end, will be revealed as an undercover agent for the Antimafia Investigation Department—what a shock). The message that gets lost in the shuffle of over-the-top stereotypes most of the time is that Kristin is a woman who has been repressed her whole life, allowing herself to be walked all over by men…from the ones she works for to her now ex-husband. So when she decides to give up her “donna” position in the family to be with Lorenzo, Bianca cautions her, “Never let a man dictate who you are or what you can do.”

    This is a “positive” theme that could have been conveyed in so many other ways, even if the writers wanted to stick with this mafia stereotype. If Kristin had been given better character development, a better first act start to make her sympathetic as opposed to a two-dimensional suburban mom who just “falls into” mafia life because it’s “something to do,” maybe some (like a sliver) of Mafia Mamma would be more forgivable. None of it is. Least of all the fact that we’re supposed to believe everyone speaks English in order to accommodate Kristin’s lack of Italian-language knowledge (save to butcher it in the usual way Americans do by saying things like “grahts-ee” instead of grazie).

    Then there is the offense to Catherine Hardwicke’s career. Once known for critical darling fare like Thirteen and Lords of Dogtown, Hardwicke adds what feels like a calculated miss to her filmography (in addition to Collette’s). Complete with “riffing” off The Godfather’s famous final shot featuring the door closing on Domenick to indicate Kristin is officially separating her real family from her mafia one. This occurring, obviously, with far less of a “profound effect” on the viewer.

    In the first act of the movie, Kristin naively double-checks with Bianca (as they crush grapes for no other reason than to portray a stereotype), “Are we actually in the mafia?” She replies, “Your grandfather preferred to call it the ‘invisible family’?” Sounds like a loose description of Hereditary. A far better “family” narrative starring Collette than what this could ever hope to be. Save for yet another damning, insulting addition to American-made interpretations of Italian culture.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Lukas Matsson Has His Lexi Featherston Moment

    Lukas Matsson Has His Lexi Featherston Moment

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    There must be something about being inside a rich person’s apartment overlooking the New York skyline that makes a party guest have a rather overt epiphany: New York kinda sucks. More to the point, it’s not actually that special. Naturally, those loyalists who are obsessed with NYC and defending its “honor” no matter how much it devolves into a moated island for the uber-affluent or the uber-deranged (usually those two qualities go hand in hand) will say that the likes of Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) and Lexi Featherston (Kristen Johnston) are merely “haters” because they’re not being treated like the “relevant” beings they see themselves as. Of course, Matsson is endlessly relevant (“fudged” GoJo numbers or not). As far as anyone (apart from the Roys) is concerned, he’s a rich white man doin’ big thangs—and should be treated as such.

    Nonetheless, Lukas is feeling generally bored and resentful from the outset of showing up to Shiv (Sarah Snook) and Tom’s (Matthew Macfadyen) triplex in Lower Manhattan, where they’re hosting an election kickoff “tailgate party” (hence, the name of the episode being just that). It’s Shiv, playing the double agent throughout the ongoing and much talked about “deal” (one in which GoJo will absorb Waystar Royco), who urges Lukas to show up. Because not only will it throw a wrench into Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and Roman’s (Kieran Culkin) plans to talk shit about him and GoJo, but it will also give Lukas a window of opportunity to shine bright like a diamond in front of the “most powerful people in America.” To Lukas’ surprise, it really is that easy to make an impact. More specifically, as he notes to Shiv in the coat room, “You know, I thought these people would be very complicated, but it’s…they’re not. It’s basically just, like, money and gossip” (ergo, Gossip Girl remaining the pinnacle of rich people life). And maybe that’s part of when the disenchantment with New York starts to sink in for Lukas. Sure, he’s been there many times and witnessed “the scene,” but never until this moment did it seem so clear to him how utterly lacking the innerworkings behind the veneer are. Like Dorothy and co. witnessing the Wizard of Oz being operated by nothing more than a little man behind a curtain, Lukas sees something far more disillusioning in these “movers and shakers.”

    Shiv confirms, “Oh yeah, no. That’s all it is.” Money and gossip. Synonyms for wheeling and dealing as a “key player” in New York. And being a key player, of course, automatically means you have to be rich. As the phrase that triggers so many people goes, “You have to pay to play.” No money, no skin in the game. And it is, as most are aware by now, a very rigged one. Matsson has been all too happy to be part of that ruse, particularly since he’s been putting one on himself in order to come across as “big enough” to buy out Waystar. Perhaps he was hoping that New York, for all its prestige and having a “solid reputation” as an epicenter of finance and “glamor,” would have more to it going on behind the scenes than merely more of the same.

    Kendall, committed as much to New York being the “end all, be all” as he is to his father’s company embodying that as well, insists that there is. And that Lukas is the inferior impostor who can’t hack it. In short, he’s no Anna Delvey when it comes to navigating New York as an impostor (as Kendall remarks to Shiv, “I fuckin’ knew he was a bullshitter. I’m tellin’ you…new money. You gotta hold those fresh bills to the light”). And yet, he actually does seem to know how to navigate. For he’s comfortable and confident enough in his own skin to “dare” to speak ill of the “greatest city in the world.” And amongst the “most powerful” people who run it, therefore all of America. Thus, we’re met with Lukas Matsson’s “Lexi Featherston moment” around forty-eight minutes into the episode. When he’s finally had enough of this blasé, bullshit party and wants to stir things up by asking, “So who’s, uh, who’s going out tonight in this shitty fucking town? Anyone? I gotta say, it’s pretty depressing from up here. You can really see how Second World it is.”

    For those who don’t remember Lexi’s own anti-New York monologue from season six of Sex and the City, it bubbled to the surface after being at her wit’s end with the banality of everyone and everything at the so-called party. Thus, Lexi snaps after being told she can’t smoke inside near the window, “Fuckin’ geriatrics… When did everybody stop smoking? When did everybody pair off? This used to be the most exciting city in the world and now it’s nothing but smoking near a fuckin’ open window. New York is over. O-V-E-R. Over. No one’s fun anymore! What ever happened to fun? God, I’m so bored I could die.” And then she does, tripping over her own stiletto heel and falling out the window. Previously, when Carrie encounters her in the bathroom doing coke and tells Lexi she only came in to get away from the party, Lexi replies knowingly, “Oh Euro-intellectuals. I don’t know why I pulled strings to get an invite to this piece of shit party.” Funnily enough, Lexi would probably view Lukas as one of the “Euro-intellectuals” she finds so dull merely because he happens to be from Europe. But at least his “right-hand man,” Oskar Gudjohnsen (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson), is “moon-beamed on edibles” according to Lukas. Which makes things slightly more amusing for him (like having a court jester or something) as he “mingles” among the “glitterati” of the political and business worlds.

    Even so, just as Lexi did, Lukas finds himself utterly unimpressed by the goings-on at this “event.” Which, to him, feels like a sad attempt on these people’s part at pretending they’re living it up in some “fabulous” town with a lifestyle that couldn’t possibly be had anywhere else. Yet if it’s so fabulous, why does it bum him out so much as he stares out the window? Just as Lexi sort of did as she lit her cigarette and then turned her back to the city to give the “revelers” a harrowing recap on the state of affairs in NYC. A merciless “summing up” tailored to those who are still delusional about its “untouchable clout.”

    Kendall being one such person as he replies to Lukas calling it a shitty town with, “I don’t know, [it’s a] pretty happening town, famously.” “Really? Is it though?” “Yeah.” Lukas reminds Kendall of his quaint American perspective by saying, “Compared to Singapore, Seoul…it’s like Legoland.” Kendall insists, “You know we still run shit though?” Lukas ripostes, “Hmm, like as in…only in New York?” Kendall confirms, “Yeah.” Lukas titters, “Right. Okay. Well, uh, nothing happens in New York that doesn’t happen everywhere.” A fairly obvious statement, but one that actually needs to be said to those living in the self-deceiving bubble of “nothing else being like New York.”

    Starting to get offended as every NYC diehard does when a nerve is touched about “their” city, Kendall demeans in return to that comment, “You should get that written on a cup. Right? Shouldn’t he get that written on a cup? Like that would look so cool. You could sell that in a head shop in Rotterdam. Could be a good business for you.” Unfortunately, there’s still not much business in trying to “pull back the curtain” on New York blowing chunks, as it were. And even those who are “aware” of it still claim there’s nowhere else they’d rather be (especially if their choice is limited to staying in the U.S.).

    Including Carrie Bradshaw, as she claims to her “partner,” Aleksandr Petrovsky (Mikhail Baryshnikov), “I have a life here.” This being in response to his desire for them to move to Paris together. He answers, “Yes, but what do you want to come home to? What do you want your life to be?” These questions inferring that her continuing in the same way as she always has for the sake of “being loyal” to New York will only lead her down a path of despair and loneliness (something And Just Like That… ultimately confirms). And it’s for this reason that Lexi’s timing to appear as a cautionary tale plummeting to her death prompts Carrie to take her own plunge—by leaving New York. Even if New York is her “boyfriend,” as she called it in the first episode of season five, “Anchors Away,” wherein she tells us in a voiceover that she “can’t have nobody talking shit about [her] boyfriend” (this after a sailor named Louis [Daniel Sunjata] does exactly that). Unfortunately for Carrie and those committed to New York like a mental institution, this is what both Lexi and Lukas “deign” to do in their honest assessment of a city that “never sleeps.” Which is perhaps part of why it has the propensity to always disappoint.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • David Guetta, Anne-Marie and Coi Leray’s “Baby Don’t Hurt Me” Pays More Homage to A Night at the Roxbury Than Haddaway

    David Guetta, Anne-Marie and Coi Leray’s “Baby Don’t Hurt Me” Pays More Homage to A Night at the Roxbury Than Haddaway

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    As the latest in an increasingly long line (no nightclub pun intended) of songs that have seen fit to extract 90s dance hits for a twenty-first century “update” (though not necessarily improvement), “Baby Don’t Hurt Me” alludes to its origin source in the title. That is to say, Haddaway’s chorus in “What Is Love” that finishes such a weighty question with, “Baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me/No more.” But, clearly, Haddaway was hurting enough financially to allow David Guetta, Anne-Marie and Coi Leray to sample his song. Just as Alice Deejay likely was in order to allow Kim Petras and Nicki Minaj to decimate “Better Off Alone.” Unlike the latter duo, however, the trio of “Baby Don’t Hurt Me” saw fit to pay more direct and correlative homage to a song that soundtracked most of the 90s (apart from the Mentos jingle).

    Originally released in 1993, the single became an archetype of the Eurodance genre that soon managed to warm the hearts of even the most tasteless and/or grunge-happy (an oxymoron, to be sure) Americans. Three years later, Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan would revive the track with their Saturday Night Live sketch, “The Roxbury Guys.” Playing Doug (Kattan) and Steve Butabi (Ferrell), the brothers’ signature was club-hopping from one L.A. hotspot to another as they struck out with women at every venue (via methods that would be decidedly non-#MeToo kosher today). Often joined by the host of the show, including Jim Carrey, Martin Short and Tom Hanks, the sketch proved popular enough to become fodder for the eighth movie based on an SNL sketch, A Night at the Roxbury (released in 1998). Regardless, the premise wasn’t really “meaty” enough to extend past the one-hour, twenty-two-minute mark. Even so, it left an indelible enough impression on the collaborators of “Baby Don’t Hurt Me,” who open their video, directed by Hannah Lux Davis, in much the same way as A Night at the Roxbury: with splashy club scenes shot in a manner that comes across in a way Cher Horowitz would dub “Noxema commercial”-esque. And, on a side note, Clueless’ director, Amy Heckerling, did co-produce the movie (maybe that’s why both Dan Hedaya, Elisa Donovan and even Twink Kaplan are in it).

    As for Doug and Steve, they don’t ever limit their evening to just one club (as Guetta, Anne-Marie and Leray do). This being something we see established when they commence at Billboard Live (before it became The Key Club) at 11:32 p.m., then head to the Mudd Club by 12:16 a.m. Striking out with the women there as well after a botched attempt to impress them with their story of encountering “Breakfast Clubber” Emilio Estevez, they head to the Roxbury, arriving by 1:24 a.m. (but first, they’re pulled over [by Jennifer Coolidge] for speeding while doing their head bobs to “What Is Love,” of course). As Ace of Base’s “Beautiful Life” plays during this scene, A Night at the Roxbury continues to immortalize what club culture in 90s L.A. consisted of. Mainly, waiting in line outside if you weren’t on the guest list. Hence, Doug’s insistence that once he and Steve open their own club, not only will they finally get in, but, “We’re also gonna treat all the outside wannabes just as well as any legendary television star.” Of course, such an egalitarian approach to clubbing wouldn’t take hold until now (when “elitism” in such a milieu has become all but impossible thanks to smartphones)—which is perhaps why Guetta, Anne-Marie and Leray have decided to use this moment to bring Haddaway and its place in A Night at the Roxbury back to the forefront.

    Thus, the presence of Doug and Steve-emulative dance moves amid a boxing ring inexplicably appearing on the center of the dance floor as two women stand in their corners waiting to fight…or have a dance-off. But no, turns out, it’s to fight (after all, it speaks to the title of “Baby Don’t Hurt Me”). Meanwhile, Anne-Marie sings, “I want you for the dirty and clean/When you’re wakin’ in your dreams.” A lyric that harkens back to Doug saying, “You can take away our phones, you can take away our keys, but you cannot take away our dreams.” To which Steve adds, “That’s right, ‘cause we’re, like, sleeping when we have them.”  Their dream, as mentioned, is to open a nightclub. Something as ostensibly “inclusive” as what appears in the “Baby Don’t Hurt Me” video. And probably something as pain/pleasure-oriented, to boot. After all, the original “What Is Love” is drenched in the tone of a masochist who can’t quit a love that’s obviously emotionally damaging. So when Anne-Marie says, “When you bite my tongue and make me scream…/We are burnin’ at a high degree/And you make me feel like it burns/And it hurts/Maybe that’s part of the rush/This is us.”

    The “This is us” of that hurt in A Night at the Roxbury is the growing pains that occur between Doug and Steve, as the latter starts to be more and more seduced by the normie life his overbearing father, Kamehl (Hedaya), wants for him. Complete with marrying Emily Sanderson (Molly Shannon), the daughter of the lighting store owner next door to Kamehl’s fake plant store. Because obviously their marriage would mean a lucrative business merger. But what does that matter to Steve, who really just wants to club all night like Doug?

    With “Baby Don’t Hurt Me,” the glory days that furnished being able to have such dreams are briefly glimpsed as, by the end of the video, everyone in the club is doing the signature Butabi brothers head bob to the beat that punctuated dance floors everywhere (without irony) in the mid-90s. In this sense, it’s hard to say if Haddaway owes a greater debt to A Night at the Roxbury or vice versa. Either way, the trio reviving the song here still sees the movie as being inextricably linked to it. One can’t exist without the other, apparently. That might be bad news for Haddaway, but it certainly helps revitalize the ever-dwindling collective memory of the John Fortenberry-directed film so often considered to be the perfect “hokey” pairing with Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (after all, it’s about two “daffy” dames whose lives are also built around clubbing in L.A.).

    In the final scenes of “Baby Don’t Hurt Me,” the fighters in the boxing ring have seemingly made peace while Guetta, Anne-Marie and Leray continue their head bobbing elsewhere: in the car. A vehicle that we’re made certain to clock as being a Lyft (thanks to strategic brand name placement). And if, somehow, they all happen to be Lyft drivers (or it’s just Leray, which somehow feels racist), it would be in keeping with the Butabi brothers’ way of life: “projecting” style only right before entering the club…while actually living at home with their parents and barely able to function in the daylight hours that solely condone “rational” behavior.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Better Off With No “Alone” Video

    Better Off With No “Alone” Video

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    As though the song itself weren’t disappointing enough, Kim Petras and Nicki Minaj teamed up again to bring listeners a visual for “Alone”—their poor adaptation of Alice Deejay’s signature track, “Better Off Alone.” The video, unsurprisingly, doesn’t do too much to enhance the single, apart from serving as an apparent opportunity for Petras’ love of cosplay. A love that quickly comes to light when a lone man sitting in front of a TV turns it on to reveal a channel with Petras dressed in drum major attire, along with the rest of her backup dancers. Of course, with Petras being likely aware of both Gwen Stefani and Madonna’s previous use of drum major uniforms in their own work (Gwen with the video for “Hollaback Girl” and Madonna with a segment during her MDNA Tour), perhaps those giving her the benefit of the doubt would call this “homage” rather than totally hackneyed visuals.

    Maybe if some of her other costumes were slightly more original, one could excuse the drum major attempt. And since costumes are really the only thing to focus on during this no-frills video that has little in the way of any plot relating to the song, the chance to critique them grows tenfold. Set against a purple backdrop with a half-circle shape resembling a rising (or setting, depending on your outlook) sun in bright pink, the 80s aesthetic might be comforting for a brief period were it not for Petras quickly spotlighting her promotion deal with Bose as the camera zooms in on one of her earbuds prominently displaying the brand’s name. Wonder if she’s trying to tell us something?

    Of course, there’s not much room for anything resembling “subtlety” in a song that touts, “I could ride it, ride it, ride it, ride it all night.” In the video, this is said while Petras and co. hump some “workout balls.” Indeed, much of the video can be seen as part wannabe exercise instructional, part wannabe advertisement for Spirit Halloween store. As for catering to the former category, Petras and her fellow dancers lie on yoga mats and engage in the standard hip thrust maneuver (again, “subtle” is not the keyword here). And so, at this juncture in the video, there’s little to note in the way of Petras being concerned about getting the object of her affection “alone.”

    But maybe, like Miley (via her sologamist anthem, “Flowers“), Petras is actually more concerned with self-improvement (in Hollywood, that always pertains to the body, not the soul)—which, in turn, allegedly leads to someone else loving you as much as you love yourself. The thing that no one talks about, however, is that other people are just as busy loving themselves these days, and have little time to spread that love to another being. So Petras might be waiting longer than anticipated to get the person in question “by her side.” In the interim, she can keep licking her clarinet with “demure” suggestiveness as the object of her seduction watches with voyeuristic interest. To that point, the only potentially interesting element about this video that could have been highlighted further is the peppered-in scenes of voyeurism. Then again, perhaps Petras knew better than to bother after seeing Madonna’s “Open Your Heart” video, the pièce de résistance (along with “Justify My Love,” for that matter) when it comes to accenting the perverse thrill men get from watching a woman (androgynous or not) from afar rather than actively pursuing her. And if there is eventually a pursuit involved, he’ll also tend to prefer her strutting over to him.

    And yet, for as “erotic” as it should be to watch Petras bounce around on a ball and spout her cliché phrases pandering to the hetero male fantasy, the looming man in the video tries to change the channel before direction from Arrad (who recently brought us Anitta and Missy Elliott’s “Lobby” video) leads us down into the center button of the “clicker.” Alas, rather than showing us something new, the camera briefly focuses in on two people doing yoga poses as the frame moves circularly before transitioning back to Petras in her drum major ensemble. The set then changes to something out of the TLC FanMail era as Petras subsequently appears in an all-black vinyl outfit that hardly compares to the ones Michael and Janet wore in the video for “Scream.” All of which brings us back to the main problem with this song in general: it relies solely on nostalgia for the past without actually doing anything to improve upon it in the present. At least another recent case in point of that—David Guetta, Anne-Marie and Coi Leray’s “Baby Don’t Hurt Me”—builds on what the original did as opposed to merely sampling the backing track the way Petras does.

    Although Petras assumed Minaj’s appearance on the single would offset any “weak points,” all her presence really does is take the song even further away from the integrity and sense of pure emotion that existed on the original. Dressed in her own dominatrix-y getup upon materializing at the one-minute, forty-eight-second mark, it doesn’t take Minaj long to acquiesce to the white ideal of the Barbie mold by matching Petras with a blonde high ponytail and a form-fitting black vinyl dress with pink heels as she babbles, among other verses, “I send shots, get ready, they may sting/I-I-It’s Barbie and it’s Kim Petras/Main character syndrome, they extras/We-we-we ain’t answerin’ questions/Click on a bitch ‘fore she finish her sentence.” Not exactly words that connote yearning or longing after a breakup. As was the case on “Better Off Alone.”

    As more of the same scenes are interspersed toward the end, Petras saves her most cliché costume for last: a “sexy” nurse. Finally “breaking the fourth wall” by somehow transporting herself through the TV screen to approach the man who has been watching all along, she leans in toward his ear and repeats the part of the chorus that goes, “I’ve been tryna give it to you all night/What’s it gonna take to get you all alone?” Well, for Dr. Luke, who co-produced this abomination, what it took to get Kesha all alone was a “sober pill” to make her “feel better” one night. As it turned out, that pill was GHB, a date rape drug. Hopefully, Petras won’t have to resort to the same (with the syringe she’s probably packing) should the male lead in her video have second thoughts about playing “patient.”

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Don’t Be Afraid of Beau Is Afraid—Unless the Overbearing Jewish Mother Trope Is Your Worst Nightmare

    Don’t Be Afraid of Beau Is Afraid—Unless the Overbearing Jewish Mother Trope Is Your Worst Nightmare

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    As one of those movies that has so much psychological buildup surrounding it before one even goes into the theater (or rather, if one goes into the theater at all to watch movies), Beau Is Afraid has as many things working against garnering audience attention as it does attracting it. In the latter column, of course, is that it’s directed by Ari Aster, the writer-director slowly but steadily being groomed into a modern auteur by A24. Then there is the cast, an impressive coterie of actors, including Patti LuPone, Nathan Lane, Amy Ryan and Parker Posey, led by Joaquin Phoenix. But there in the “repelling” column is that the movie comes across as “weird”—deliberately “off-putting.” Especially to the layperson. This, of course, is compounded by the two hour and fifty-nine-minute runtime of the film. In effect, Aster is saying, “This movie is not about people-pleasing.” Some would be hard-pressed to see it as being about anything at all. Those people have perhaps never suffered from the crippling anxiety and paranoia involved in simply leaving the (semi-)safety of their abode. In that sense, one can look at the first portion of Beau Is Afraid as being like What About Bob? on steroids, complete with Bob’s (Bill Murray) extreme phobia of leaving the apartment. Except that, in Beau’s case, that fear is entirely merited.

    Living in the fictional city of Corrina, CR, it reads visually like a combination of New York and San Francisco (and yes, SF gets far more flak for its violent, erratic homeless population than NY—though perhaps NY simply has a greater number of ass-kissers at its PR disposal). Beau’s apartment building is situated next to a sex shop called Erectus Ejectus and across the street from the Cheapo Depot, a bodega run by a take-no-prisoners proprietor who isn’t liable to give you any kind of discount when you happen to be short on the amount just because you’re a regular. After all, he can’t afford such niceties in a hostile climate like this. One that, in the end, seems entirely manufactured by Mona Wasserman (Patti LuPone), Beau’s corporate maven of a mother. The type of woman who far exceeds a cutesy, demeaning term like “girlboss.” This is a woman who puts all previous known masterminds and manipulators to shame. To this end, Aster, born into a Jewish family, can now easily be characterized by this film as the proverbial self-hating Jew. No longer a title that Woody Allen alone can claim as a result of his affirmed cancellation in the film industry (essentially capitulating to that cancellation by admitting his next movie would be his last…until backpedaling on that statement soon after).

    As such, Aster’s presentation of a Jewish mother as so overbearing and controlling that she would go to such lengths to hyper-manage her only son’s life definitely one-ups any self-hating depictions Allen ever offered (see: Annie Hall, Deconstructing Harry). Or Allen’s nemesis, for that matter: Philip Roth. And yes, there are plenty of Portnoy’s Complaint elements in the mix here (chief among them the giant penis locked in the attic intended to represent Beau’s father).

    It would also make one remiss in their cinephilic tendencies to overlook The Truman Show as a major influence on this particular work. With that “I’m being watched” kind of revelation occurring in Part Two of the movie, as Beau finds himself in the “care” of a sinister couple of means named Grace (Amy Ryan) and Roger (Nathan Lane) after being mowed down by their truck while in the midst of running through the street outside his apartment naked. This occurring as a result of the homeless population outside finding their way in as a roundabout result of Beau’s keys being stolen from his door. After they party all night with Beau watching from some scaffolding outside, he awakens the next morning to find his apartment empty. Or so he thinks. However, upon taking a bath after learning of his mother’s death from a UPS guy (voiced and briefly cameo’d by Bill Hader), the sight of another crazed “unhoused” person clinging to the ceiling above him ultimately sends him running outside in his birthday suit. Oh yes, and there’s also an errant serial killer in the neighborhood called Birthday Boy Stab Man, likely dubbed as such because he “operates” in his birthday suit. And, of course, he ends up stabbing Beau a few times after he’s rendered immobile and barely conscious due to the truck hitting him. Therefore, all of Beau’s worst fears and anxieties are realized—and then some.

    It’s not a coincidence that all those fears and anxieties start to reach a crescendo after Beau has “rejected” his mother by telling her he’s not going to make it to the airport in time for their scheduled visit because someone stole his keys and he doesn’t feel comfortable heading out until the locks have been changed. But Mona has her ways and her machinations for coaxing Beau into an Odyssean journey to make it back as soon as possible so that her funeral can proceed. Because, that’s right, she’s faked her own death to inflict the amount of guilt she thinks he feels deserving of (and here, the trope of a Jewish mother’s guilt is on full blast). Per Mona’s lawyer, “Dr.” Cohen, she’s stipulated in her will that the ceremony cannot take place without him. Unfortunately for Beau’s guilt quotient, it gets upped by the fact that Jewish law dictates that a body must be buried right away. So it is that Beau is both a bad son and a bad Jew. A fate that seems irreversible to all male Jews, if we’re to go by literature and film. Grace and Roger, the epitome of a white-bread Christian couple, could never know Beau’s torment, even as they conspire to be a part of it. It’s not as clear whether their surviving teenage daughter, Toni (Kylie Rogers), is as “in on it” as her parents, who have been trying to fill the void left in the absence of their dead son, Nathan, a soldier that died in combat. Caring for his fellow battalion member, Jeeves (Denis Ménochet), an unhinged man requiring many meds, is the obvious way for them to “make up” for the loss of Nathan. But with the arrival of Beau comes a new opportunity to “nurture.” Even if it’s as smothering and oppressive as Mona’s version of “nurturing.”

    Early on in the movie, some would immediately say the world Beau inhabits is cartoonish and absurdist—at one point literally becoming animated as he imagines himself as the protagonist of a play he’s watching. Or that all of his fears are a result of the kind of hyper-neurotic nature that Jews are frequently stereotyped as having (of course, who can blame them with anti-Semitism alive and well even after the extermination of six million of their kind?). But, in the end, the one fear he doesn’t think to have is actually not so far-fetched: being monitored constantly. For it’s not hard to believe that someone (especially someone with enough money) could track, record and/or film your every move, and then use it against you when they finally want to render you totally paralyzed by the paranoia you thought you had overcome. Worse still, use it to play into all your worst senses of guilt. After all, it’s no coincidence that the billboard outside Beau’s building bears the Big Brother-y tagline, “Jesus Sees Your Abominations.” More like Mona does.

    And, talking of taglines, Beau has been part of Mona’s advertising campaigns for most of his life. She being the head of a multi-faceted conglomerate that has its hand in everything from pharmaceuticals to film production. With Mona’s company name for the latter being Mommy Knows Best. An eerie assertion from a woman who has her eye in every possible surveillance pie. This going hand in hand with “security,” for which MW (which stands for Mona Wasserman) also has a tagline: “Your security has been our priority for forty years.” Beau’s own age is forty-eight (same as Joaquin Phoenix’s) as we come to find at the end, when a god-like voice (Dr. Cohen’s) announces his date of birth as May 10, 1975. So perhaps the key root of all Beau’s issues is that he’s a Taurus. But no, it’s being born to a Jewish mother, if Aster would have us convinced of anything. It’s also a very deliberate word choice for Mona to use the phrase “claw your way out of me” to Beau during their ultimate showdown in what can be called Part Four of the film. For it is with that “clawing” out of her womb that Beau Is Afraid begins, with the audience seeing his birth from Beau’s perspective.

    From the first moments of his existence, anxiety permeates everything as his mother frantically demands to know about the state and health of her child, who appears not to be breathing normally. But with a requisite slap on the ass, Beau is prompted to cry. This slapping cue turning more metaphorical as his repressed life wears on. For every time he is lashed in one way or another by his mother’s various cues, Beau snaps to attention and grudgingly “performs.” His life is not his own—it belongs to his mother. And this is made no more apparent than in her financial control over him. Indeed, Beau’s credit card is “mysteriously” deactivated after he tells Mona he can’t make his flight. Whether or not Beau was as willing a participant in his own infantilization as Mona is up to the viewer to decide. However, those with parents who have infantilized them are likely aware that being irrevocably handicapped by the crushing weight of “safety and security” eventually feels like an unavoidable fate rather than something that can be fought against. Surrender Dorothy, as it is said. Or, in this case, Surrender Beau. That’s what Mona, in the Wicked Witch of the West’s stead is undeniably saying. And she’s saying it because she knows she has all the resources necessary to take him down and debilitate him.

    In this regard, Jacobin’s take on Mona as a cold capitalist machine that it would be impossible to receive any unconditional or pure love from is right on the money (no pun intended). Jacobin, too, points out certain similarities between Citizen Kane and Beau Is Afraid in that it’s “a character study of a boy whose ‘parents were a bank.’” Or, for Beau, “parent.” And what kind of love can really be received from someone who has to be clinical and cold enough to be able to make millions (or billions) of dollars? It bears noting that Jacobin’s critique of the film isn’t favorable, writing Beau off as the product of a writer who gets off on “trauma tourism”—but if he had really suffered from that much genuine trauma, Beau/Aster wouldn’t have the luxury of portraying it at all. Maybe, to a certain extent, this is a fair assessment. The people given a megaphone to talk about trauma still tend to be people who grew up middle-class, white and male. Read: Aster. And yet, as Bob Dylan said, “I’m helpless, like a rich man’s child.” This simile is not without its value in considering a being such as Beau, given a surfeit of tangible tools as a result of having a rich progenitor, but no real ones he could actually use to cope in a life outside of “the nest.”

    And what could “real life” possibly be to a boy who ostensibly grew up in a fishbowl town called Wasserton (named after his mother), anyway? This, again, channels The Truman Show vibes, when it’s not also smacking of something pulled from the mind of fellow Jewish auteur Charlie Kaufman (think: Synecdoche, New York). And, like Kaufman, Aster is concerned with the futility of attempting to alter one’s preordained fate. Because no matter how we try to fight it or “rewrite” it (as the artist so often does in their work), in the end, “it is written.” That much is made obvious when we see Beau fast-forward through the surveillance footage of himself at Grace and Roger’s to the final scene in the movie. The final scene is his life. One that will be quite full-circle in terms of comparing it to the opening scene: his birth.  

    As for the mother-son dynamic that serves as the central anchor of the narrative, the classic Oedipus story is also constantly in motion, with Mona clearly wanting to keep her son’s love and desire all to herself—hence, the urban legend she scares him into believing about his father that keeps Beau as well beyond a forty-year-old virgin. With the epididymitis to prove it. That means huge, swollen balls, to the unmedically trained. Ironically, of course, Beau’s “big balls” don’t translate to the idiomatic version of that phrase inferring bravery and “chutzpah.” Quite the opposite as he spends most of the movie quivering and cowering in fear (the movie title is there for a reason). Not just of what could happen, but what has happened already. Which is where Aster’s knack for horror melds seamlessly with the psychological trauma of memory, and remembering. That’s all Beau does, as we seem to see him existing in multiple planes of time via perpetual reflection (such is the luxury of not having a job apart from existence itself).

    In this way, viewers will be allowed to question how much of what happens is “just in his head” versus how much is “reality.” Which, as most know, is totally subjective. This being a large part of why Mona can manipulate Beau’s “reality” for her own controlling ends. Ends that appear to be more sadistic than altruistic, as she would like to tell herself. For example, when he’s born and arrives out of the womb in silence, her demand is: “Why isn’t he crying?” In other words, doesn’t he know how painful it is to exist (nay, for Mona to bring him into existence) and what the according reaction should be? This later translates to another question she asks of Beau: “Is he afraid enough of the world?” No? Well then Mona—rich Mona—will make it so. With this in mind, although Beau is firmly Gen X, we have an undeniable commentary on millennial-baby boomer relations contained in Beau Is Afraid as well. For was it not the boomers who wanted to give their millennial spawn the pristine, protected childhood that they never got? Resulting in the manufacture of a generation consisting mostly of scared, confused man-children just like Beau.

    Initially billed by Aster as a “nightmare comedy” (like something in the spirit of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours in which all the protagonist wants to do is go home, but his prewritten destiny has other tortures in mind), how the genre of Beau Is Afraid comes across is more about how the viewer themselves sees life: as a comedy or tragedy. Here, too, it’s hard not to think of “Jewish representative” Woody Allen, who based an entire movie on this premise—the subpar Melinda and Melinda.

    For the seasoned neurotic and those accustomed to even the most basic of tasks in life being herculean to achieve without incident, the accurate takeaway is that it’s an absurdist tragicomedy. And so it goes without saying that any Marvel-loving gentile normies likely won’t bother with wandering into this film at all. And if they do, the criticism and balking is to be expected.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Love Is Like A Drug-Addled Rollercoaster on Ellie Goulding’s Higher Than Heaven

    Love Is Like A Drug-Addled Rollercoaster on Ellie Goulding’s Higher Than Heaven

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    Like so many musicians forced into seclusion during the pandemic, Ellie Goulding was “inspired” (for lack of a better word) by COVID-19. Or, to put it more delicately, Higher Than Heaven is “a response” to Miss Rona. And a defiant one. For, also like many other musicians, Goulding decided the world needed something “uplifting” after going through that collective trauma. One that most have conveniently tried to block out of their minds (though that could also unwittingly be in preparation for the next invariable pandemic).

    The arrival of her fifth record was announced at the end of 2022, with multiple pushbacks from its originally intended release date (February 3rd) until finally coming out on April 7th. The exuberant album proved itself to be worth the wait. And, although Goulding cited Higher Than Heaven as being her least personal music to date, she still felt obliged to add, “[The record is] about being passionately in love. But it’s a hyper form of love, almost like a drug-induced feeling. It feels almost artificial and there’s the potential for a crash.” How very Charli XCX. Or Taylor, for that matter. To that end, Goulding kicks off the auditory odyssey with “Midnight Dreams,” a mid-tempo dance track that finds Goulding jubilantly admitting, “[You’re] all I think about/You’re my energy/Feel you all around/Electricity/Take me, let’s fly away/Midnight dreams/Every time you’re next to me.” Whatever is actually meant by “midnight dreams” as a phrase is ultimately left to the listener’s discretion, but maybe, like Swift, Goulding senses something magic in the potential of midnight—that strange and brief in-between point betwixt day and night…before a directional shift in tone is made permanent.

    Having fallen down the rabbit hole of love on “Midnight Dreams,” it’s only natural that Goulding would wish for a “Cure for Love” on the second track. And yes, it’s here that we can definitely see the pandemic’s influence on the record as she engages in the language of sicknesses and antidotes to declare her strength and independence (not unlike Bebe Rexha on “Call On Me” from Bebe, albeit without the illness metaphor). As though she just got off a fresh bout with corona, Goulding sings, “I can’t fight the fever in my veins/The weakness in me always calls your name/Quiet, but my heart beats like a drum/Here’s to bein’ lonely.” Loneliness being another sentiment that was felt pervasively throughout the pandemic, but then eventually embraced, for better or worse—lest one succumb to total madness. Because, among other stark realizations forced by the lockdown measures of COVID, the most pronounced was the idea that people need to learn to be okay being on their own, even when society assures, “We’re in this together.” So it is that Goulding relishes her own self-sufficiency as she says with upbeat fervor, “I don’t need a cure for love, I’m movin’ on/Given too much, didn’t get enough/Sick, but not broken-hearted tonight/I don’t need a cure for love, yeah, I’m the one/Given too much, didn’t get enough/Sick, but I’m gettin’ started tonight.”

    She’s also just getting started on the record’s danceable rhythms as she segues into “By the End of the Night,” a song dripping with nostalgia as a result of its 80s-esque tincture. Produced by Stephen “Koz” Kozmeniuk, something about it echoes the vibe and feeling of Don Henley’s “The Boys of Summer,” except not quite so colored in bittersweetness. Goulding also speaks to that aforementioned “hyper form of love, almost like a drug-induced feeling” as she croons on the chorus, “By the end of the night, I wanna feel like the sky is drippin’ on every part of me/And by the end of the night, I wanna look at the lights [Goulding loves lights, as we know]/Chasin’ the shape of you next to me/And by the end of the night I wanna be the only onе in the world [so does Rihanna]/When I look in your eyеs I see you’re mine.” The drug-addled sensation of this initial phase of falling in love is further played on by Goulding when she adds, “Is it love?/Call it chemical/The way you touch, so unforgettable/Feel the rush, I don’t wanna sleep/With fever dreams when I’m with you.” There’s that word again: “fever.” Surely on the brain constantly while starting to work on this album amid corona restrictions.

    Perhaps this, in addition to seeking a “savior” (or “saviour,” as the British like to say), couldn’t help but be dominant forces amid the conditions of the pandemic. As such, “Like A Saviour” (such a Madonna-esque title) serves as the fourth song on Higher Than Heaven. The Joe Connor-directed video opens on a scene of seemingly nude bodies (but no, ‘tis nothing more than the illusion of flesh-colored bodysuits) as they proceed to writhe in rhythmic unison, as though collectively being born. Set against the backdrop of an abyssal desert, Goulding’s lyrics, “You’re leadin’ me out of the dark/Like a saviour/Shinin’ in my soul, oh-woah, oh-woah,” feel like yet another sign of the times as people search for anything or anyone they can turn to for “salvation.” Tinged once more with 80s-inspired beats, the co-production from Koz and Andrew Wells perfectly complements Goulding’s earnest vocals as she gratefully announces to her savior, “Suddenly, I feel I can let go/Of all the insecurities weighin’ me down/Now I’m ready to drown in you.” Throughout the video, alternating scenes of day versus night accent the notion of being led out of the dark, with the final frame revealing a sky that appears caught between day and night, perhaps another loose allusion to that “in-between time” of “Midnight Dreams.”

    Whether or not darkness comes her way in a relationship, Goulding insists that “Love Goes On.” A song that once more uses color as an analogy that only a drug enthusiast (or a synesthete) can fully appreciate. Commencing ambiently before the beat picks up, Goulding reveals, “Seein’ colors all around me/I don’t recognize the palette/Suddenly, I feel a change in me.” Although she might have stated this isn’t a “personal” album, the lyrics here seem decidedly geared toward her husband, Caspar Jopling. A man who, luckily, Goulding was already married to just before the lockdown happened so that she could enjoy the benefits of “quarantine partner.” Perhaps it was during this period in particular that she realized, “My love goes on and on/And on and on and on.” Devotion, loyalty, tout ça.

    So naturally, these sentiments transition easily into a single like “Easy Lover” featuring Big Sean. The track that started it all, in terms of inaugurating Goulding’s Higher Than Heaven era. Except that “Easy Lover” is more about the “bad” kind of devotion to a lover. One who will never really reciprocate emotions the way you need them to…yet you still keep going back to them regardless. This, of course, is what’s colloquially known as a “fuckboy.” Released back in July of ’22, Goulding commented of the song, “I wrote ‘Easy Lover’ about five years ago in Los Angeles. I was with Greg Kurstin, one of my favorite producers of all time, and Julia Michaels, who’s an amazing songwriter. I think one of us was dealing with a known fuckboy at the time, but we ended up with a song about going back to the same person who’s hurt you and you think you can change them. We always say we can change someone, and we can’t.”

    Ergo Goulding’s lament, “It was never easy, lover/When you’ve given all you’ve got to each other/And then every time, it’s harder to recover.” Nonetheless, something within the human condition (read: frailty) keeps people repeating the same patterns in the naïve hope that it might be different another time around. The accompanying video for the single finds Goulding in a glass encasement, “on display,” as it were. Another one of her characters is a teacher turning to the drink for comfort during school hours—that school being in Bulgaria, where the video was shot by Sophia Ray. As for the premise, it involves the Goulding-portrayed characters attempting to take down a creature in some parallel universe…the undeniable representation of the creature that is: the fuckboy.

    The album’s title track, “Higher Than Heaven” (which Florence + the Machine gets close to with High As Hope), is perhaps the most emblematic of the record’s theme, with Goulding herself remarking, “No other title could’ve been better to use for the album to describe what’s going on here—which is just high-as-a-kite feelings of love and infatuation and you’re not coming back down anytime soon. I really like this song because it’s bloody high to sing but it just feels so sensual and so passionate.” That much comes across in the vocally layered repetition of “high” toward the end of the song, as well as Goulding’s pronouncement, “You take me higher than heaven above/Heaven above/You take me higher, blinded by your sun/Blinded by your sun/Oh, it hurts so amazing/My body, ablaze from this heat we’re creatin’ tonight.” The fact that Goulding constantly mentions night on this album, however, presumes that, perhaps in the light of day, feelings might not seem as intense as before.

    What’s more, as most know, the higher the feeling, the worse the comedown. Which is why the placement of “Let It Die” after “Higher Than Heaven” is so brilliant. Dissecting that point in a relationship when it’s become tantamount to beating a dead horse in the hope that it will miraculously start working again, Goulding gives the sound advice, “If you lose yourself, you can walk away.” She also adds to that logic, “…when there’s no more tears to cry/And you’re holdin’ onto love for life/I think it’s timе to let it die.” Production-wise, the backing music stands apart from other songs on the record as a result of the frenetic, frantic pace Lostboy gives to it. One that abruptly comes to a close as Goulding urges one final time, “I think it’s time to let it die.”

    From here Goulding shifts gears, going back to favoring the more “lavender haze” portion of a relationship. Or rather, the sex haze portion. As she talks about having waited for it and then finally getting it, we can deduce she’s referring to both “love” and “hot, hot sex.” The hotel-oriented motif of the latter is manifested in lyrics such as, “Bottles and mirrors/Don’t know where we both end/And were we begin/Original sin/Only linen and liquor.” The latter two making it easy to feel “drunk on love.” But again, one can’t help but ask how much of this love and its intensity is spurred by being closed off from reality, with Goulding referring to a dream state once more as she sings, “I want it again/In a sepia dream/In and out of your focus/Keep your vintage champagne/I’m only drunk on you.” Until, of course, the hangover arrives.

    The 80s influence reemerges anew on “Just For You,” courtesy of Greg Kurstin producing. On this particular number, Goulding returns to the sweeter side of love, announcing, “Yeah, I’ve got a heartbeat just for you/Just for you, just for you/I’ve got a real thing just for you.” In contrast to other tracks on Higher Than Heaven, this one alludes to Goulding’s inability to move on from an old lover, suddenly understanding that, “It took somebody else to really, really know.” Or, as Goulding summed it up, “It took somebody else to make me realize how much my heart only beats for you.” Goulding conceded that, while it might come across as somewhat self-indulgent, to be fair, she was inspired by Drake’s stylings for it.

    The closing track on the standard edition of the record, “How Long,” continues the themes of both “Easy Lover” and “Just For You.” At least in the sense that Goulding expresses yearning and hopefulness for returning to a relationship that the other person doesn’t necessarily seem quite as interested in revisiting. Or, if he is, he’s far more “take it or leave it” about the affair than Goulding. Of course, like so many women addicted to toxic men, Goulding insists that his actions surely can’t mirror his “true feelings” as she sings, “You’re makin’ it look easy/In the morning when you leave me/But we both know you rеally need me/Making excuses just to see mе.” To this point, Goulding admitted of the lyrical composition, “I’m singing about somebody who I think is probably missing me. Quite presumptuous.” Elsewhere, she speaks to the on-again, off-again nature of toxic relationships (so often a symptom of young love), describing, “To last time, to the next time/We can’t let it go/Feels right, but it ain’t right/We just can’t say no/Last time’s like the first time/We can’t let it go tonight.” Giving in to the “Temptation”—this, incidentally, being the track that commences the deluxe version of Higher Than Heaven.

    Suffused in 80s electro beats (meets a dash of power ballad), Goulding wields the analogies of drugs and dreams all over again to describe the high she’s on from love. So it is that she paints the picture, “LSD and lemonade/Your sweetness makes my body ache/You’re in the car, I’m drivin’, someone cut the brakes/Got that California dreamin’/Never wanted someone like I want you, babe/And I don’t know if I can take this.” But of course she will. She wants that love high no matter what the price to pay might be later.

    In full-tilt 80s mode and not apologizing anymore, “Intuition” continues the sonic landscape of “Temptation,” but with a more overt incorporation of Janet Jackson and The Weeknd influences. Her repetition of previous words and phrases from the album puts her firmly in the territory of Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey, the songwriting experts on such techniques for “world-building.” Thus, Goulding keeps bringing dreams, fantasies (helped along by drugs when the opportunity arises) and the midnight hour into the equation with, “I’ve got an intuition/Flashin’ like a diamond in a dream/Livin’ in a full-time fantasy/I’m into you instinctively/I’ve got an intuition/I can see your outline in the dark/Lookin’ like a midnight work of art.” This last line, too, leaves room for listener interpretation. For a work of art being glimpsed at midnight presumes that one is probably trying to steal it…only to end up dealing with the likely fallout of such an act.

    The suggestively titled “Tastes Like You”—not as tailored to a Hannibal Lecter dining experience as you might think—explores the idea that, although you know you’re going to be happier in the long run without someone, the pain of losing them in the present is almost unbearable. Tame Impala also explored the concept on 2015’s “Eventually,” with Kevin Parker warbling, “If only there could be another way to do this/‘Cause it feels like murder to put your heart through this…/But I know that I’ll be happier/And I know you will too…/Eventually.”

    Goulding promises herself something similar via the lines, “‘Cause I’m over your touch/But I know it’s never enough/I let go, but I still got caught up/This drink will always be bittersweet/So I’m gonna raise one more glass to the times that we had/I know that we’re both happier, it’s true/But the heartache still tastes like you.” So yes, as overtly foreshadowed during the highs of Higher Than Heaven, the lows feel just as strong, if not worse by the end of the album (perhaps that’s why the cover features her sinking toward an ocean bottom, rather than being raised up into the sky).

    Maybe she’ll even find a “Better Man.” Except that, despite this song’s potentially misleading title, it’s actually about Goulding being the better man. And certainly better than any man who might try to underestimate her worth. It’s here that the fantasy and illusion she reveled in from earlier are shattered as she asserts, “Rose-tintеd glasses, but trust me, I’m seeing red.” Written in the wake of #MeToo, Goulding’s fresh anger and simultaneous sense of empowerment is made apparent as she accuses, “Took the confidence I had/You can watch me take it back/I’m the future and the past/That’s a perfect hourglass/Tried to make me lose my cool/Hold my karma in my hands/Every time I get a chance/Baby, I’m a better man.”

    Hence, from the codependency of the beginning of the record, we find ourselves at “All By Myself” by the finale. And, although it’s hard not to think of Celine Dion as a result of that title, it’s actually Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence” that Goulding samples. Quite a coup considering the band has never previously given permission to use one of their songs to anyone else. Proof that Goulding has earned every right to say, “I’m doin’ it, doin’ it all by myself/I’m movin’ it, movin’ it all by myself/I’ll be my own motivation/I’ll listen to nothin’ they’re sayin’/I’m lovin’ me, lovin’ me all by myself.” Which is, as the old trope goes, the first step in being loved by someone else, with self-love and romantic love being yin and yang concepts examined throughout Higher Than Heaven.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Karl: The Last to Get the “Separate the Art from the Artist” Sanction

    Karl: The Last to Get the “Separate the Art from the Artist” Sanction

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    Among the many pop culturally-attuned industries that have been oh so careful to shore up their displays of wokeness post-#MeToo is the fashion biz. Some would call the Met Gala the true Oscars of that particular business, despite no awards actually being given out. Nonetheless, it’s a time for A-listers in fashion, film, music and “influencing” to gather in their best, most over-the-top homage to whatever the theme might be. This year, it was, oddly enough: Karl Lagerfeld. Anna Wintour, who has co-chaired and organized the event for almost three decades, was obviously a friend of the man best known for resuscitating Chanel’s cachet during his long reign as creative director…that is, when he wasn’t best known for doling out some major verbal lashings. And, being that there’s a book and movie based on working for Wintour called The Devil Wears Prada, the editor-in-chief of Vogue is no stranger to being deemed polarizing and controversial herself. Though not nearly to the extent that Lagerfeld was…and is.

    Evidently, however, some of his more problematic views and comments weren’t enough to get him onto the “cancellation” list in this climate. Which perhaps only goes to show that, in death, everything is forgiven (just look at Michael Jackson, whose music is still played freely as though he didn’t have any pedophilic proclivities whatsoever). At the same time, not everyone has embraced this year’s theme—specifically named Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty (not to be confused with the 2011 theme: Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty). This includes the High Fashion Met Gala Twitter account. Although not associated with the Met Costume Institute or the Met Gala, their commentary on the event over the years has garnered forty thousand followers. Followers they were sure to declare their views about the theme to: “…we will not be celebrating this year’s Met Gala as our values don’t align with the selection of Karl Lagerfeld as the theme. We hope to celebrate with our community again soon.”

    In the meantime, they, like many others, will simply have to “deal with it”—as most orbiting the fashion industry had to whenever Lagerfeld engaged in one of his notorious outbursts. Usually aimed at critiquing body types that didn’t “fit the mold” (literally). To those who would complain about not seeing more inclusivity in the industry, Karl would provide such ripostes as, “You’ve got fat mothers with their bags of chips sitting in front of the television and saying that thin models are ugly. The world of beautiful clothing is about ‘dreams and illusions.’” Having also declared fashion as “the healthiest motivation for losing weight,” Lagerfeld himself dropped ninety-two pounds in the early 00s and released a cunty diet book inspired by that rapid physical transformation. This, too, seemed to give him further license to make generally unchecked comments about women’s bodies before a gag order had been placed on such forms of free speech. And some, of course, still secretly couldn’t agree more with Lagerfeld’s takes on the grotesquerie of being fat, and how it has no place in the world of high fashion.

    Embodying blatant tropes of gay male misogyny, Lagerfeld lived long enough to be able to add to his problematic list of female-aimed comments when asked what his thoughts were on making amendments to previously accepted comportment as a result #MeToo. To which he replied, “If you don’t want to have your pants pulled about, don’t become a model! Join a nunnery, there’ll always be a place for you in the convent. They’re recruiting even!” Lagerfeld’s sanctioning of sexually predatory behavior as par for the course to those who want to “succeed” is exactly the kind of thinking that has allowed it to flourish for so long without consequence.

    Naturally, Karl provides plenty of Psych 101 analysis in terms of being hateful toward others because he likely hated those qualities in himself (see also: Death Becomes Her and Beef). His continued assertions of being “working-class” as he rose through the ranks of high fashion, therefore the ranks of class, also likely stemmed from simultaneously loving and hating the vapidity of such an alternate realm. Wanting to cling to some semblance of “reality.” And yet, as his staunch views became increasingly antiquated in a world where Kim Kardashian’s curves were embraced and emulated (though Karl notoriously said in 2009 that no one wants to see curvy women on the runway), he seemed to want to have no grasp on the concept of “reality” anymore. As for Kardashian, who has no issue with problematic people or things (herself being a Blackfishing fiend, for a start), she was quick to re-emphasize her connection to Karl by posting photos of herself visiting Choupette ahead of the Met Gala.

    Indeed, Karl’s beloved Birman cat inspired the costumes of Lil Nas X, Jared Leto and Doja Cat for the night in question. Because perhaps focusing on his cat is easier than focusing on some of the more unseemly aspects of his personal life and personality. Thus, both Wintour and curator Andrew Bolton have reiterated in multiple interviews about the exhibition that its focus is on “the work.” It’s the phrase that keeps being repeated in an era during which few are actually still capable of separating “the work” from the person who created it. And yet, Karl appears to be getting that rare pass as he’s fêted by one of the premier institutions in fashion.

    To further mitigate the barrage of horrible things Lagerfeld had no trouble verbalizing, Bolton goes back to that Psych 101 theory by noting “…did he mean it? Or was it a deflection? I don’t know, it’s hard to know.” And, of course, for the sake of promoting this event, he likely really doesn’t want to know. Even the title of the theme, however, brings up an unpleasant subject matter: Karl’s myopic, often patriarchal vision of what constitutes beauty.

    By way of defense of the gala’s theme, Wintour additionally offered, “Karl was provocative, and he was full of paradoxes. And I think sometimes he would say things to shock, and not necessarily things that he believed in. Karl was a complicated man.” That word, “complicated,” having no place in a world of such black-and-white views at this point in time. Not to mention it does happen to be a word that serves as a pass to anyone who does or says unforgivable things. One could also call Kanye West a “complicated man.” Does that mean his work can still be celebrated and enjoyed after all the pain he’s caused? More and more, we can see that the answer, surprisingly, is yes. Because for all the posturing about wanting to stamp out anything or anyone problematic, it seems as though people are realizing how little that would actually leave behind. As for those groups Karl often maligned (e.g., non-thin people, Black people, Jewish people, etc.) who showed up to the event, well, perhaps it just proves that one’s principles can be easily bought off by visions of media coverage and clout increase. And with fashion being a tenuous network of interconnected tentacles, when one person—even if dead—gets cancelled, it can have far-reaching effects on multiple people’s money bag.

    What’s more, Karl being able to eke by with an honor like this is more telling of the fashion industry at large, and what it still ultimately represents, than anything else. And that is: exclusivity. Whether through sizeist or classist attitudes, there are so many ways to exclude people. To keep them from getting their greasy, overworked hands on the couture. Fashion tending to attract racist designers is no coincidence either (see also: John Galliano, miraculously forgiven for his sins). For it still behooves the industry’s bottom line to sell high fashion as something “aspirational” and “just out of reach.” While it might be an epoch of “democratization” for all mediums, fashion gatekeeping is what allows a magazine like Vogue to still even exist. And a man like Karl to be lauded even despite claims that it’s just about “the work.” But “the work” is always an extension of its creator.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Be(be) Aggressive…With Your 70s Influence: Bebe Rexha Relies on a Go-To Pop Formula for Her Third Album

    Be(be) Aggressive…With Your 70s Influence: Bebe Rexha Relies on a Go-To Pop Formula for Her Third Album

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    For whatever reason, Bebe Rexha’s nonstop bop of a sophomore album, Better Mistakes, landed with a thud on the Billboard 200 when it was released back in May of 2021, debuting at #140 and fizzling out from there. Almost a full two years later, evidently taking that album name to heart, Rexha has decided to keep making “better mistakes” with her third record, Bebe (a self-titled record in the tradition of Whitney or janet. or even Britney Jean). As if her pop hits of the past were ever really “mistakes.” Nonetheless, the point is, she’s willing to keep “plugging away” and experimenting to see what works and what doesn’t with audiences. Except that there’s not much in the way of “experimentation” on this particular record, as it’s somewhat apparent she wasn’t feeling quite as “adventurous” with regard to the concept behind it. For, as so many before her, she was “inspired” by “70s retro style.” To hit listeners over the head with that trope, Rexha doesn’t just rely on the sounds of the decade, but the visuals as well. Hence, an album cover that sees her in full feathered hair mode à la Farrah Fawcett. Of course, Madonna was already resuscitating that look/70s sonic trend in 2005 with Confessions on a Dance Floor. But sure, everything old can always be made “new” again. Kylie Minogue also recently made a similar maneuver with Disco in 2020, albeit with a less favorable outcome than what Rexha pulls off on Bebe.

    Kicking off with the first single, “Heart Wants What It Wants” (and, speaking of Selena Gomez songs, Rexha actually did write a song for her—2013’s “Like A Champion”), the tone of the album is immediately established as “sassy” and “playful.” The video to accompany it also finds Rexha making no apologies for emulating Madonna’s aforementioned Confessions on a Dance Floor era by styling Rexha’s hair with what M would call the perfect “weenie roll” curls and leotard. Opening in a way that reminds one of Ti West’s X as Rexha hops into the back of an ultra molester-y 70s van with a film crew, the Madonna correlation further manifests in the fact that the video is directed by Michael Haussman, known for his work on Madonna’s companion videos, “Take A Bow” and “You’ll See.” It’s clearly not a coincidence, as Rexha gushed openly about Madonna on the red carpet at the Grammys on February 5th, citing “Hung Up” as her favorite track of all-time from the Queen of Pop. Two weeks later, the release of the video for “Heart Wants What It Wants” made that all the more obvious as she re-creates M’s leotard and heels look (rounded out by a pair of purple tights) inside the living room of a house with a lodge-like aesthetic (the aesthetic of houses in the 70s, for some arbitrary reason). The difference is, Rexha has the film crew capturing her entire dance (not to say that Madonna doesn’t have the same thing happening in “Hung Up,” it’s simply that we’re not supposed to know it; there’s no “meta” element at play in her dance studio—it’s just her against the mirror…and the music, as Brit would say).

    Rexha’s filmed choreography segues into what we eventually come to see as a rehearsal for a more elaborately-staged (and costumed) performance later on. The crew’s errant signs of titillation make it seem as though they’re filming a porno (again, very X) rather than a fully-clothed dance session. Or maybe there’s just something about 70s aesthetics and camera crews that make everything seem porn-y. In any event, as Rexha shrugs, “My heart only wants what it wants, what it wants, what it wants/‘Til it doesn’t I can’t promise you love it was love, it was love, it was love/‘Til it wasn’t.” So despite her “vintage stylings,” Rexha conveys a very modern take on “love.” And yes, Rexha additionally appears to want to further align herself with Selena Gomez by not only naming this song similarly, but also channeling the 70s spirit of Gomez’s 2017 video for “Bad Liar,” complete with her own “modern” take on the decade (a.k.a. a lesbian tryst).

    The following song on the album, “Miracle Man,” finds Rexha adopting a tone that makes her sounds all too familiar. By the time the chorus rolls around—“I need a miracle man to make me believe in love again/Who can make me believe in lovе again/Say amen (yeah), amen (yеah)/‘Cause a woman like me ain’t easy to please”—one finally understands that said “familiarity” stems from how much she sounds like Ellie Goulding (and maybe she partially learned how to emulate Goulding while opening for her on 2016’s Delirium World Tour). Making for yet another pop star lending herself to the strong undercurrent of influences on Bebe. But, of course, mainly Madonna. And as Madonna would, Rexha wields religious analogies throughout this song, with her unlikely Miracle Man being akin to something in the vein of achieving “spiritual ecstasy.” Thus, comparing this man to a being as mythic as God when she demands, “Gimme faith, gimme faith, gimme faith, gimme faith in you/‘Cause I’d rather be lonely than the wrong one, hold me, baby.” Kali Uchis says pretty much the same thing on “Loner” (“That’s why I’d rather be a loner/Yeah, I’d rather be alone/I don’t even want to know ya/I don’t want to be known”). For it’s becoming an evermore common declaration among women who would prefer not to settle for less merely for the sake of “settling down” (hear also: Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers”). Rexha further drenches us in sexual-religious innuendo when she urges, “Push me up against the wall and make me glow/Drink your holy water, sip it slow/I can feel you drippin’ down my soul.” Madonna would surely approve of such lyrical content, with the sentiments matching her own on a track like 2015’s “Holy Water.”

    “Satellite,” the third official single from Bebe, was fittingly released on 4/20. After all, not only does the song feature Snoop Dogg, but it’s also an ode to being “high as a satellite.” Granted, probably not as high as one of Elon’s. Produced by Joe Janiak (who, yes, has worked with Ellie Goulding), the uptempo rhythm of the song is not exactly in keeping with “stoner pace,” but to honor “the lifestyle,” Rexha was sure to make the accompanying video as trippily animated as possible. Think Dua Lipa’s “Hallucinate” (which itself owes an aesthetic debt to Madonna’s “Dear Jessie”). But also The Jetsons…and Rexha’s animated form does certainly look very much like Jane Jetson with feathered blonde hair. Beamed up into a spaceship thanks to some help from Snoop (who knows all about interplanetary travel), Rexha finds herself in a bong-shaped vessel with little bud-shaped crew members who sometimes more closely resemble turds than nugs. But what do such details matter when you’re “high as a satellite”? And, since David Bowie is the original “Spaceman,” it’s only right that Rexha should give a nod to “Space Oddity” by saying, “Ground control, do you copy?” And so, weed gets another loving homage placed into the annals of pop culture—though “Satellite” still has nothing on Smiley Face.

    Rexha switches gears back to obsessing over love (or at least lust) with a human rather than an inanimate drug on “When It Rains.” Considering Rexha’s sexual-spiritual innuendos on “Miracle Man,” it should come as no surprise that this particular track is merely an analogy for orgasming. Hence, the chorus: “When it rains/I’m a tidal wave on a midnight train to you/When it rains/You’re like God to me, we found heaven in a hotel room.” Sounds similar to finding love in a hopeless place. Elsewhere, Rexha pulls from the Peaches playbook by announcing, “I just wanna go off in the backseat/You love makin’ me scream/Let’s fuck all the pain we’ve been through/When it rains, only when it rains/I come right back to you.” Translation: when she gets conned into forgetting about all his other bad behavior thanks to his ability to make her cum, she can’t help but keep returning for more. ‘Cause when it “rains” for a woman, it pours good fortune for a man. The fortune of all his other shortcomings being excused thanks to his dick-maneuvering abilities. As Madonna once phrased it in her own rain-drenched insinuation, “I’m glad you brought your raincoat/I think it’s beginning to rain.” Capisci? ‘Cause, like Bebe, she’s about to cum.

    However, when a man inevitably fails to deliver (usually both sexually and emotionally), Rexha is more likely to “call on herself” for “self-satisfaction.” Again promoting the sologamist philosophy “trend” that kicked off around the time when Ariana Grande released “thank u, next,” Rexha insists throughout “Call On Me,” “If I need a lover/Someone to hold me/Satisfy all my needs/If I need a lover/Someone to save me/Someone to set me free I call on me.” As Kali Uchis puts it on “After the Storm,” “So if you need a hero/Just look in the mirror/No one’s gonna save you now/So you better save yourself.” That applies to self-pleasure as much as anything else. With production from Burns (who previously worked with Rexha on 2021’s “Sacrifice,” in addition to providing some of the best offerings on Lady Gaga’s Chromatica), the danceable beats add to the celebration of self-sufficiency that dominates the second single of the album (though no video was released to go with it). As an added dig, Rexha informs the person she ditched in favor of herself, “You never made me feel like heaven/Never made me feel this high.” For just as much as one can “break their heart themselves” (as Bebe would say), they can also boost their own mood and ego better than most others can.

    Rexha keeps the party vibe going with “I’m Good (Blue)” featuring David Guetta—the song that brought her out of hibernation at the end of summer 2022. Sampling from Eiffel 65’s 1998 hit “Blue (Da Ba Dee),” Rexha continues the trend (unfortunately also embraced by Kim Petras and Nicki Minaj on “Alone”) of repurposing 90s dance music for the next century. And yet, something about the message and delivery of the song reminds one of a ditty Black Eyed Peas would come up with (think “I Gotta Feeling” but less embarrassing) as she asserts, “I’m good, yeah, I’m feelin’ alright/Baby, I’ma have the best fuckin’ night of my life/And wherever it takes me, I’m down for the ride.” Even if that ride leads her to do a one-eighty with regard to the sentiments she expressed on “Call On Me,” which is exactly what happens on “Visions (Don’t Go)”—revealing Rexha at her neediest. Unapologetically begging, “Baby, please, baby, please, baby, please don’t go/Stay with me, stay with me ‘cause I need you close/Every second you’re gone, my whole world turns cold.” At least Camila Cabello made this sentiment sound slightly “cuter” on “Don’t Go Yet” from Familia (and apparently it was cute enough to eventually lure Sam Mendes back in), urging, “Oye, don’t go yet, don’t go yet/What you leavin’ for when my night is yours?/Just a little more, don’t go yet.”

    The theme of “Visions (Don’t Go)” (the title driving the Camila connection further home) transitions easily into “I’m Not High, I’m In Love,” a song that starts out with a symphonic timbre that echoes the one on Dua Lipa’s (yet another Albanian pop princess) “Love Again” (which samples White Town’s “Your Woman”). In fact, one could argue that Bebe is Rexha’s attempt at her own version of Future Nostalgia. The 70s-infused dance tracks and Madonna inspiration also being part of the latter’s “mood board.” As for “I’m Not High, I’m In Love,” like Tove Lo before her insisting, “Baby listen please, I’m not on drugs/I’m just in love,” Rexha, too, wants to make sure people know, “I’m not high, I’m in love/I’m on fire, you’re my drug…/Now I see the colors dancing all around the room/Kaleidoscope of lovers and it led me back to you.” Layered with instrumental breaks that make it perfect for dancing (while probably on drugs) beneath the disco ball, Rexha, with the help of producer Ido Zmishlany, re-creates the feeling of being in love through the complement of the lyrics and sound. And yes, love (whether reciprocated or unrequited) often feels like a drug-addled (or drug withdrawal) sensation that perhaps only Tove Lo knows how best to reproduce in a song medium (hear also: “Habits [Stay High]”).

    The disco tinge persists on “Blue Moon” as Rexha keeps waxing poetic on the topic of, what else, being in love (good dick evidently wipes the sologamy entirely out of a girl’s mind). But instead of remaining entirely disco, an array of guitar stabs toward the end vary up the sound more than anywhere else on the record. Titled “Blue Moon” in honor of that beloved expression, “Once in a blue moon…” Rexha sings, “Tell me how I could live without you/When a love like this only comes once/So tell mе how I could breathe without you.” For those wondering at this point in the record, after so many effusive love songs, if Rexha actually is in love, the answer is an emphatic yes. As she told Rolling Stone, “I’m in love. That’s all you’re gonna get to know.” But modern life being what it is, those who want to know are aware that the person she’s referring to is Keyan Safyari, a cinematographer she’s been dating since 2020, and who also directed the video for “Satellite.”

    Perhaps the reason such details fly under the radar, however, is because Rexha suffers from what is little known as Rita Ora Syndrome (and, funnily enough, the two did collaborate together on 2018’s ill-advised “Girls”). Meaning that despite constantly putting out a steady stream of hit singles, she’s still not considered very “mainstream.” As though that strange phenomenon didn’t connect Ora and Rexha enough, both were born to Albanian parents (though Rexha’s mother was born in the United States). Rexha’s “lack of fame” is among the subjects she’s publicly acknowledged of late, along with the commentary about her weight gain. Which came on the heels of Ariana Grande’s anti-body shaming video (despite the celebrity-industrial complex—and capitalism itself—thriving on the shaming of bodies, whatever the current trends in shape might be). Indeed, Rexha even said seeing that video moved her to tears, especially the part where Grande mentions that you never know what someone is going through that might make their body look a certain way that’s deemed “unhealthy” by the public. It struck a chord with Rexha, whose own weight gain has stemmed in part from being on meds to treat her polycystic ovary syndrome.

    That and her newfound love of weed is surely at least part of what has her in such a reflective mood, particularly when the pace slows its roll on “Born Again.” An apropos title considering Bebe is her bid for a Billboard success do-over after Better Mistakes. More of a cheesy 90s power ballad than anything resembling a song from the 70s, Rexha opts to take some of Lana Del Rey’s key phrases for this particular song—such as, “We were all born to die” and “You should come meet me on the flipside.” For those unversed in Lana, the first lyric smacks of “Born to Die” and the second of a lesser-known song from Ultraviolence called “Flipside” (wherein she says, “Maybe on the flipside I could catch you again”). Even her talk of “Heaven” (“Forget the afterlife/Who needs Heaven when you’re here tonight?”) is out of the Lana playbook, what with LDR often crooning sweet nothings like, “Heaven is a place on Earth with you” and “Say yes to Heaven/Say yes to me.” In any event, Rexha’s bottom line in this song is: “Every time you kiss me, I’m born again.”

    But every time Rexha veers too far over on the codependency side of things, she reins it back in—as she did with “Call On Me.” To return to that defiant sort of independence, Rexha provides “I Am” as the penultimate track on Bebe. Just as Miley Cyrus with “Wonder Woman” or Halsey with “I Am Not A Woman, I’m A God” or Dua Lipa with “Boys Will Be Boys,” Rexha affirms the complexity and overall superiority of the “fairer” sex as she proclaims, “But I am a woman, I am a rebel, I am a god/I danced with the devil/I am a lover, I am a legend/If I am everything, why am I not everything to you?” The message of empowerment geared toward women is obvious—and was, unsurprisingly, incited by the overturning of Roe v. Wade. A totally out-of-left-field Supreme Court decision that got women everywhere thinking. About their rights, their continued status as second-class citizens and how things could potentially become so much worse as a result. The ripple effects of misogyny that might be allowed to thrive anew within this context. Ironically, it was in the 70s—the decade so many female pop stars like to turn to for sonic salvation on their own modern-day records—that Roe v. Wade granted women abortion rights in the first place. As for Rexha, the overturning of the case prompted her to take a scrutinizing look at her Albanian background, a culture, she admits, where “the men eat first. The men speak. It’s all about the men, and then the women come in.” If there’s still any oxygen left to breathe.

    So it is that she derides of the invisible male she’s addressing on “I Am,” “Don’t wanna go all in/But too afraid to let me go/I guess devourin’ all the power is all you’ve ever known/You’re sittin’ on an empty throne.” One throne that has never remained empty, however, is the country-pop one—reigned over long-standingly by the adored Dolly Parton. And, despite “Seasons” being more influenced by Stevie Nicks, it is Parton who joins Rexha on it (so yeah, Rexha achieved a few collab dreams on Bebe).

    An appropriate choice for closing the record, “Seasons” is a melancholic lamentation on the passage of time. To be sure, there is something “Dolly-esque” about Rexha’s vocal intonations (particularly on this single), so it’s not totally astounding for her to collaborate with the country icon for “Seasons.” To boost the single, Rexha shot a black and white video with Dolly, directed by Natalie Simmons, during which the pair stands side by side singing into their microphones. The shots alternate between scenes of the duo dressed in black or white ensembles (you know, to match the black and white film) as they croon, “I lie awake inside a dream/And I run, run, run away from me/The seasons change right under my feet/I’m still the same, same, same, same old me.” The reflection on time, in addition to the cadence of the vocals, also reminds one of Stevie Nicks as she sings on Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide,” “Time makes you bolder/Even children get older/I’m gettin’ older, too.” Except that Rexha wanted to explore a concept where, in spite of getting older and “knowing that you need to change… you’re not changing.” Ergo that “same old me” line. One that very much fits in with the current discourse on the disappearance of middle age. While generations technically get older, but keep embodying this sort of Peter Pan syndrome that baby boomers never had the luxury of implementing, is it really as bittersweet as it once was to watch “seasons change”? Or more fucked-up and Black Mirror-y than anything else?

    However Rexha truly feels about it, she might never truly let on. For the entire name of the game on Bebe is to be just generically accessible enough while never revealing too many specifics. It is in this way as well that Rexha synthesizes a hodgepodge of styles and even looks for this record (somehow managing to appear facially similar to Britney Spears on the cover, and facially similar to Lily Allen in the “Seasons” video), all while never totally losing her own distinct personality in the process. At the same time, she’s studied the industry long enough to hedge all her bets on following every pop formula by the book to resuscitate her clout after Better Mistakes.

    Already a chameleonic force in the pop arena just three albums into her career, it will be interesting to see what avenues Rexha swerves toward next—though one can only hope it maintains its EDM slant (for that’s what “going 70s” really means in the present musical landscape).

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • The (Zen) Take No Prisoners Return of Kesha

    The (Zen) Take No Prisoners Return of Kesha

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    After the release of High Road in 2020, just before the lockdowns of the pandemic would start to pop off, it’s safe to say that Kesha probably felt pretty defeated—beaten back into submission after hoping to get out on the road and tour the new record. As she explained to Nylon, “…after my last album was released right before the pandemic hit, I went into quarantine feeling very lost. There was no tour, so the album that I had just made kind of felt like it hit a wall as soon as it entered the world. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? If an artist creates a piece that no one knows exists, are they still an artist? Or am I just talking to myself? The foot on the gas had been halted. The world seemed to stop spinning. My head hit the dash.”

    And yet, like many musicians who whipped into a flurry of artistic productivity as a result of touring and “being a celebrity” getting ripped away from them, Kesha started “receiving” the early seeds of inspiration for what was to become her sixth album, Gag Order (not to be confused with Gaga Order just because she’s mentioned a desire to work with Lady Gaga). The provocative title, needless to say, is a direct hit at the likes of Dr. Luke and the slew of lawyers and judges that have been involved in the Kesha v. Dr. Luke case since it first officially began in 2014. Appropriately, the term “gag order” isn’t found in the glossary of physical torture, but rather, it’s a legal phrase meaning: “a judge’s directive forbidding the public disclosure of information on a particular matter.” That matter obviously being her ongoing legal entanglements with Dr. Luke, who came back at Kesha’s civil suit with a defamation lawsuit that has another court date set for this summer.

    For someone like Kesha, known for being outspoken and candid, a gag order is an especial form of cruelty. Nonetheless, she’s found a way to “talk about it” without saying anything truly specific—cloaking her pain in such arcane lyrics as, “Don’t fuckin’ call me a fighter, don’t fuckin’ call me a joke/You have no fuckin’ idea, trust me, you’ll never know.” But we can sense the agony she’s endured in evocative descriptions like, “The years keep on draggin’, I’m at the end of my rope/The noose gets tighter and tighter, I’m tastin’ blood in my throat.” Both of these lyrical sets appear on “Fine Line,” one of the two singles Kesha has opted to unleash in preparation for the May 19th release date of Gag Order. With its album cover featuring Kesha being suffocated by the presence of a plastic bag over her head (as Katy Perry—also circuitously involved in Kesha’s case—once asked, “Do you ever feel like a plastic bag?” The answer for Kesha is clearly an emphatic yes).

    Along with “Fine Line,” Kesha has also provided us with “Eat the Acid,” the first track she started to write for this record. One that she’s forewarned listeners about in terms of it not being the “happy, upbeat” music she’s generally known for (e.g., the legendary “Tik Tok”). This being part of why she’s nervous about the reception of the album, exposing herself emotionally in a way that she never has before. And at least some of the reason she’s long been afraid to is because of a quote she has in her mind that goes, “There’s nothing more unattractive than an angry woman.” Whether she made the quote up in her head thanks to living in a misogynistic society for so long or not, Kesha elaborated to Nylon, “Whenever an ugly emotion would announce itself, I would silence it. Dance it away, drink it away, shop it away, fuck it away, or just shut up and vibrate violently on the inside. Anger, sadness, frustration—whatever it was, that’s not what I was here for. It was a burden to be anything but fun and grateful. Which I am. Thus the internal battle rages.”

    But for the first time, we can’t hear that battle so palpably as we did on an album like Rainbow, where Kesha bared her soul for the first time on tracks like “Praying” and “Rainbow,” but also still felt obliged to mitigate her pain with bangers such as “Woman” and “Learn to Let Go.” Gag Order promises to be much more emotionally no holds barred. That much is made clear by the eerie, surreal tones of “Eat the Acid,” a song inspired by Pebe Sebert, Kesha’s mother, warning her daughter at an early age never to take acid, because she would see things that couldn’t be unseen (which is probably why the song should be called “Don’t Eat the Acid,” to be slightly clearer).

    As it turned out, becoming part of the music industry would have a similar effect, but to this day, Kesha has still never actually done acid (she assures). Even so, she repurposes her mother’s warning into the ominous chant that weaves its way in and out of the song: “You don’t wanna be changed like it changed me.” For Kesha’s mother, that phrase might have been about a particular drug, but for Kesha, it’s clearly about the abuse she’s endured from her oppressor, continuing to work freely as a producer and getting his songs on the top of the charts like he never did anything wrong (and yes, someone like Kim Petras is complicit in normalizing Dr. Luke’s “inculpability”). Regardless of Gag Order being the last record Kesha is contractually obligated to fulfill for Dr. Luke’s label, Kemosabe, she will unfortunately be forever linked to him. But with this coup de grâce, she’s not going quietly or gently into that good night. She’s speaking up about her pain without any “danceable ditty” veneers or posturing as a “party girl character.”

    That much is made evident by the visualizer that accompanies “Eat the Acid.” Opening on a close-up shot of Kesha’s makeup-free face, a barrage of hands proceeds to “attack” her, with fingers entering her mouth as she lies practically frozen in something like a state of resigned paralysis. It seems to be an undeniable metaphor for what she’s gone through in the almost decade since her legal battle with Dr. Luke began. And yet, thanks to her “epiphany” moment in the early hours of the morning during the summer of 2020, Kesha has realized, per her lyrics, “I searched for answers all my life/Dead in the dark, I saw a light/I am the one that I’ve been fighting the whole time/Hate has no place in the divine.” In which case, perhaps she’s no longer hoping that Dr. Luke is somewhere “praying,” at last fully absorbing a Kabbalist message that Madonna once summed up by saying, “It’s the hardest thing in the world to do. I mean, can you imagine forgiving people that, you know, fuck you over, for lack of a better word?”

    Kesha has been imagining and alluding to that kind of forgiveness since Rainbow, but it appears to have come to its full fruition in “Eat the Acid.” For, despite all she’s been through, Kesha can still declare, “…the universe is magic/Just open up your eyes, the signs are waiting.”

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • “Love Is A Battlefield” As Forerunner to “Papa Don’t Preach”

    “Love Is A Battlefield” As Forerunner to “Papa Don’t Preach”

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    It’s slightly uncanny that, in the early pre-fame days of Madonna’s career, her first manager, Camille Barbone, was grooming her to look and sound more like Pat Benatar rather than the “disco dolly” she would get accused of being once her first record came out. But while Barbone was sinking all of her cash into the manufacturing of this “rocker chick” persona for Madonna, the latter was instead perfecting her recording of a club-oriented dance track called “Everybody” with Stephen Bray. Never mind that Bray would soon after be betrayed by Madonna when she instead handed the track over to Mark Kamins for a producer credit, as he was the one who got the demo into the hands of Sire Records’ Seymour Stein. So it was that Madonna’s musical path was officially set apart from Benatar’s, with “Everybody” released as a single in October of 1982. A year later, Benatar would come out with “Love Is A Battlefield.”

    Although the song bears no auditory similarities to “Papa Don’t Preach” (a 1986 single of Madonna’s that would prove to be one of her most controversial, therefore best-selling), the video concept behind it certainly does. Commencing with intercut shots of Benatar on a bus traveling from Clinton, New Jersey to New York City with shots of her roaming the then big, bad streets of Times Square, the motif established is that she feels somehow safer in the dangerous wilds of NY than she does amid the judgments thrust upon her at home. Singing, “We are young/Heartache to heartache we stand/No promises, no demands,” Benatar means what she says—and aims to stand by it no matter the cost. Even getting kicked out of her father’s house as her mother and brother watch it happen in helpless silence.

    Directed by Bob Giraldi, the video was also known for being among the first to use dialogue, even if minimally. It starts as Benatar sings her lyrics, “We are strong!” to which her father warns, “You leave this house now…” Benatar keeps singing, “No one can tell us we’re wrong.” But her father concludes, “…you can just forget about comin’ back!” Thus, Benatar flees the white-picket prison in favor of seedier pastures, landing a job as a taxi dancer at one of the dance halls she happens upon (presumably during her nighttime street wanderings). The defiance in Benatar’s actions is reminiscent not only of Madonna’s real-life rebellion against her own father, Silvio “Tony” Ciccone, but the one that occurs in “Papa Don’t Preach,” with Danny Aiello portraying her stern Italian-American patriarch. Like “Love Is A Battlefield,” “Papa Don’t Preach” was also shot in New York, specifically Staten Island (which many consider to be a separate entity from NYC, but anyway…). Addressing the Electra complex nature of father-daughter relationships more glaringly, the crux of the conflict in “Papa Don’t Preach” isn’t just that Madonna has gotten knocked up by her hot mechanic boyfriend (played by Alex McArthur), but that she’s moved away entirely from seeing her father as “the world,” instead gravitating toward another man. One of many who will try to take his place as the years go by and “teenage” Madonna continues to grow up. In Benatar’s scenario, the rebellion is less about breaking away to bone some guy, and more about leaning into the identity she wants to carve out for herself, independent of paternal input.

    As part of that independence, Benatar sees fit to spread her message of defiance to the other taxi dancers she befriends at the club. This isn’t done so much with words, but rather, standing up with a death stare to the club’s owner (played by Philip Cruise), which then, naturally, leads into a one-sided dance-off from Benatar and her allegiant followers. In true unapologetic 80s fashion. Apparently, the moves are so disarming that the owner decides to back off, clutching to the bar in terror. For what could be scarier than women declaring their autonomy through bodily movement? Their escalating choreo bombast sends the owner into submission, except for that moment when Benatar screams, “We are young!” and he appears especially disgusted by the statement. Chalk it up to “youth panic” perhaps, as he feels himself outnumbered by all these unruly “children.” And although he briefly tries to surrender by joining in with their dance, Benatar isn’t having it, dousing his face with a glass of water and liberating the dancers all the more by leading them outside. Into the light.

    In contrast, Madonna’s character in “Papa Don’t Preach” is more quietly uncontrollable, her upbringing decidedly more repressed (if you can believe it) than Benatar’s in “Love Is A Battlefield.” Which is why it takes her so long to build up the courage to confess her pregnancy to “Papa,” wandering the dilapidated environs of Staten Island (captured with “working-class fetish” brilliance by director James Foley) before finally returning home to tell him she’s “with child.” When she does, the reaction is just as she feared: hostile silent treatment. Better known as: a Catholic father superpower. After an unspecified amount of time has passed, with father and daughter retreating to their respective “corners of the ring” (emphasized by them being on opposite sides of a dividing wall), her dad finally accepts the news and embraces her both literally and figuratively.

    Benatar, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be as lucky. For, at the end of “Love Is A Battlefield,” although she’s on a bus again, it’s not necessarily certain that she’s capitulated to returning home, but rather, she’s probably headed to another place where she can disappear into the crowd, free of her disapproving father, who told her not to ever come back anyway. In this regard, the video’s premise is also reminiscent of Bronski Beat’s “Smalltown Boy,” which was released in 1984. So something was definitely in the air with disappointed, disavowing fathers during this decade.

    While the connection between Madonna and Benatar isn’t always acknowledged via these two videos, it’s undeniably there. And, considering Madonna had spent plenty of time practicing how to “be” Benatar under Gotham Management, maybe the influence kept lingering subtly in her 80s-era subconscious. To further tie the two together, Madonna’s erstwhile boyfriend, Jellybean Benitez, even produced a dance mix version of “Love Is A Battlefield.” By the time “Papa Don’t Preach” was released, however, he would no longer be Madonna’s “boy toy”—for she decided not to keep his particular baby.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • When Legacies Are Slightly Obfuscated by White Girls Dancing: Harry Belafonte and Beetlejuice

    When Legacies Are Slightly Obfuscated by White Girls Dancing: Harry Belafonte and Beetlejuice

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    In the wake of Harry Belafonte’s death on April 25th, there’s no doubt that an embarrassing number of people likely had to be reminded of who he was via the nudge, “Remember that scene from Beetlejuice?” And yes, a great many probably only know Belafonte’s work as a result of that iconic scene of Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) levitating to the tune of “Jump in the Line” (falsely known to some as “Shake Shake Shake Señora”) at the end of Beetlejuice. So yes, in one respect, Tim Burton and Ryder did Belafonte “a solid” by reinvigorating his music for a new generation (and lily-white race). Yet, in another, they subjected Belafonte to what could have later been referred to as the Madonna/Vogue phenomenon.

    The latter occurred two years after the release of Beetlejuice (1988). And yes, it involved a white girl dancing as a means to subsequently “get the message out” about a so-called subculture—this word being a dig in many respects to those who “can’t” fit in with the “dominant” (read: oppressor) culture. But it was Belafonte’s songs in Beetlejuice that predated what Madonna would end up doing in a far more noticeable manner. The debate about whether or not Madonna’s spotlighting of voguing was appropriation or appreciation rages on to this day, with one camp (including her very own backup dancers from Blond Ambition Tour) insisting that what she did was a boon for the queer community and another insisting that it’s another prime example of white folks pillaging and plundering whatever they want from the marginalized and claiming it as their own. And, although Madonna never made any declaration about, like, “inventing” vogue, most listeners weren’t liable to do much digging into the background of where it came from; content instead to mimic Madonna’s dance moves from the video…such moves being grafted from the likes of her backup dancers Luis Camacho and Jose Gutierez.

    Similarly, upon viewing Lydia beg her ghost besties, Adam (Alec Baldwin) and Barbara (Geena Davis) Maitland, “Can I?” after she receives the promised good grade on her math test that they wanted, all one thinks of is Lydia then levitating to “Jump in the Line” as her reward. They don’t much care to investigate further into who’s actually singing or the fact that Belafonte was so much more than a man forever associated with a Tim Burton movie. He was an activist and freedom fighter going back to the outset of the civil rights movement. And he brought music and politics together as few artists of his time did (Bob Dylan has nothing on Belafonte). Alas, as Lydia lip syncs to the “Jump in the Line” lyrics in addition to dance-levitating, an added layer of “grafting” occurs. Surprisingly, the song originally intended for this scene was Percy Sledge’s “When A Man Loves A Woman.” Not exactly “the vibe” one can imagine going with this particular moment. And it wasn’t just Belafonte’s “Jump in the Line” that was used either—viewers will also recall “Day-O” being “played” during Delia’s (Catherine O’Hara) dinner party for her agent, Bernard (Dick Cavett), and the art world “glitterati” he’s brought along to humor her attempt at leaving New York. Because, yes, people living in New York can’t seem to fathom that art is actually made (to better effect) outside their precious city.

    In terms of “hauntings,” possessing people to lip sync and dance along to Belafonte is on a Scooby-Doo level of “scaring.” Delia and her guests tend to agree as they turn out to be absolutely delighted by the possession. For, rather than terrifying them (the Maitlands’ intended outcome to avoid resorting to summoning Betelgeuse [Michael Keaton]), they see it as an opportunity to commodify the presence of these “supernatural beings.” A sign of the uber-neoliberal times under Reagan, one supposes. And, in some regards, viewers can even see the seed of Nope coming from this movie in terms of OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Em (Keke Palmer) being more concerned with getting the “Oprah shot” of the UFO on their ranch than running away from it in horror. Maybe Delia and her cabal actually would have if the song selected had been the Ink Spots’ “If I Didn’t Care,” as originally suggested in the script by writer Warren Skaaren (who had also suggested “R&B music” for the sonic leitmotif as opposed to Belafonte).

    As for the origins of “Day-O” being a call-and-response song stemming from the torment of Jamaican workers loading bananas onto ships (at one point, Jamaica’s leading export), well, that adds something of an icky coating to the scene as well (much in the way it undoubtedly did when Justin Trudeau wore blackface while singing it in high school). For Delia and her friends are all rich capitalists who’ve never worked a job as grueling as the ones that truly working-class people are forced to. And yet, one could argue that was part of the point—with the Deetzes representing gentrification in every way. Not just any gentrification, though…gentrifying their own “kind” right out of town. The scariest thing of all to middle-class white people: being ousted by richer white people.

    Incidentally, when Belafonte was asked if he was surprised by the scenes in the film that employed his music, he quipped that he was too old for surprises. And yes, when you’re a Black man who came of age in pre-civil rights era America, it seems a silly question indeed. Perhaps what some viewers would be “surprised” by is the fact that a large motivation for using Belafonte’s songs resulted from their affordable licensing price points. And it was O’Hara who allegedly advocated for calypso music, with co-star Jeffrey Jones further elaborating on the genre by throwing “Day-O” into the hat. And the rest is appropriation history. Complete with Betelgeuse wielding AAVE as part of his “natural” speech.

    Yet just as Madonna “taking” “Vogue” can’t be called full-tilt appropriation (Madonna sporting cornrows in the “Human Nature” video, however, can), nor can the Beetlejuice-Belafonte marriage. And it is a marriage—there is no Beetlejuice without Belafonte (with the soundtrack being deemed “the key reason the movie works” on what marks its thirty-fifth anniversary this year). After all, Belafonte was not “used and abused” in any way re: the incorporation of his songs. Indeed, he happily gave his consent for the music to be played as a leitmotif throughout the film, perhaps never imagining it would become so iconic. As did the “Vogue” dancers effectively give their sanction to Madonna to make the dance and language her own by joining her in the video and on tour. Even so, and despite the “green light” given for these two particular white girls to dance to music that didn’t “belong” to them, one must still ask the question: is it worth it when a white girl makes something more “mainstream”? That is to say, co-opts it under the guise of simply “spreading the gospel.”

    Belafonte might reply with a shrugging yes. Whatever gets the job done for “awareness,” above all. And, lest anyone forget, Belafonte was the one responsible for organizing “We Are the World.” A charity single that ultimately seemed to have a less uniting effect than the one on audiences seeing Lydia Deetz levitate to “Jump in the Line” or Delia Deetz lead her dinner party in an eccentric jig to “Day-O.”

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Kim and Nicki’s “Alone” Isn’t Worthy of the “Better Off Alone” Sample

    Kim and Nicki’s “Alone” Isn’t Worthy of the “Better Off Alone” Sample

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    “I don’t know how you did it, Kim. You took a classic and actually made it better!” Zane Lowe exclaims obsequiously in an interview with Kim Petras about her latest single, “Alone.” Reality check: she did not make it better at all, but that’s interviewer pandering for you. If anything, she took something exceptional and turned it into a par, TikTok-ready number. One that features Nicki Minaj and dares to frivolously repurpose Alice Deejay’s “Better Off Alone,” released in the summer of 1999. At that time, Petras would have been a pre-op seven-year-old boy named Tim, living in Germany—one of the many European countries where the song was an instant hit. Undoubtedly, the earworm infected Tim Petras’ brain, sinking in somewhere deep within the recesses of his mind and getting filed away for some later date. That date, unfortunately, arrived on April 21, 2023, with the official release of the single.

    The song wastes no time in bastardizing “Better Off Alone” as Minaj babbles, “It’s Barbie and it’s Kim Petras” while the signature notes to the sample are then forever ruined. Not just because when one decides to use a dance floor classic such as this, they better damn well come up with something mind-blowing as opposed to flaccid, but because the lyrics completely negate the sologamist defiance of the subject in the original track. One in which vocalist Judith Pronk repeatedly demands of said subject, “Do you think you’re better off alone?” Clearly, the person in question, who initiated the breakup implicit in this track, must—in contrast to the needy, codependent tone displayed in Petras and Minaj’s rendition. A tone that reinforces the capitalist message (relationship milestones make up billions of dollars in various industries, not the least of which is weddings) that no one is better off alone. You should always find somebody. Anybody. Even when you’re committed to the “single lifestyle” but still pursue the last remaining dregs on the dance floor after two a.m., rather than “endure” going home alone.

    So it is that a lonely Petras sings, “I just want you here by my side/I don’t wanna be here, baby, on my own.” Overly attached at an erotomaniac level much? Because whereas Alice Deejay’s version seems to infer that the “narrator” was in a deeply-connected long-term relationship with someone, Petras’ pivots to making it about a “physical attraction” sort of vibe—that moment when you see someone at the club and immediately you know you have to bang them tonight (even if such a phenomenon smacks of a bygone era wherein hookup apps didn’t yet exist).

    Elsewhere, the rapey quality of the repetitive lyrics (songs are all chorus now) commences right away with Petras announcing, “I been tryna give it to ya all night/What’s it gonna take to get ya all alone.” If you’re wondering why it sounds especially rapey, look no further than the co-writing and co-production credits, once again going to Dr. Luke—a man Petras has remained staunchly committed to in the face of every outcry explaining to her why this is problematic and downright disrespectful to other women (not just Kesha). But no matter, she seems to think his “sick beats” are well-worth the flak (even when said beats are actually taken from someone else in this instance).

    At the thirty-five second mark, the rhythm changes to accommodate a more “hip hop-oriented” sound as Petras varies up her lyrics. Ones that prove Alice Deejay’s ostensible belief that sometimes saying less is more. Petras is not an adherent of that philosophy as she commands, “Oh, look at me/Like what you see?/I’ve been feelin’ lonely/Baby, you got what I need/Give me what I like/Tryna, uh, tonight/Got an appetite that only you can satisfy/I could ride it, ride it, ride it, ride it all night/Watch me ride it, ride it, ride it, ride it all night.” Pandering to the male fantasy of sycophantic sluttery combined with undying devotion that doesn’t befit a one-night stand conquest, Petras strips the original “Better Off Alone” of all its yearning purity. And when she says, “I just want you here by my side,” even Gigi D’Agostino’s “L’Amour Toujours” might not be inclined to respond with, “Baby, I’ll always be here by your side.”

    Things don’t much improve when Nicki jumps on to sing her non sequitur verse, obviously bearing no sense of “Better Off Alone”-esque romance or unrequited love as she raps such lines as, “I-i-it’s Barbie and it’s Kim Petras/Main character syndrome, they extras.” But no, in this case, they’re the extras in Alice Deejay’s sonic world, who themselves can perhaps be blamed more than anyone for conceding to letting their song be sampled. At one point, Nicki also cautions, “I send shots, get ready, they may sting”—but if she has any faith in the intelligence of music listeners and “Better Off Alone” purists, she ought to know that the only stinging shots about to be taken are at her and “Kim Petty.”

    In the 2000 edition of Alice Deejay’s music video for the single, Judith Pronk and Alice Deejay members Mila Levesque and Angelique Versnel appear in a room bedecked with Oriental rugs (with Pronk also inexplicably dressing in varying Indian-inspired garb) to dance to the beat as crosscuts of the footage from director Olaf van Gerwen’s original video are wielded by Michael Alperowitz, the “2.0” director for the updated visual. Pronk keeps repeating her question as we’re shown the object of her desire (or sense of vindication, depending on how you look at it) getting stuck with car trouble in the middle of the desert. Yes, it’s a pointed situation in which one is definitely not better off alone.

    As he wanders through that desert frustrated and aimless, Alperowitz cuts to scenes of Pronk dancing with a huge smile on her face (almost as though relishing his misfortune from afar) as she urges, “Talk to me/Oooo, talk to me.” This itself a testament to the average male’s notoriously bad skills when it comes to open communication, instead choosing to repress all emotions until they boil to the surface in a fit of rage. By the end of the video, it seems the intended takeaway is that a man will end up dead—buried in the sand by his own pride—because he refuses to heed the simple instruction, “Talk to me” (indeed, in the original, he keeps having heat-induced hallucinations of the lover he refused to talk to…apparently, regretting it now). His fate is an answer to the question repeated throughout the song. What’s more, the track’s misleadingly upbeat sound is betrayed by the melancholic intonation of Pronk’s lyrics, sparse though they may be.

    Per Junkee’s Jared Richards (who deems the single as “the best of all-time”), a song like “Better Off Alone” “[repeats] lyrics or arpeggiator loops to express an emotion so severe it can’t actually be expressed. It can only be repeated and mindlessly gestured towards in our attempt to move past it—which we will, eventually…maybe once we’ve danced it out.” In contrast, “Alone,” despite its repetitiveness (albeit to a lesser extent), conveys none of that strained emotion that struggles to be expressed in words as opposed to “feelings” (i.e., musical rhythms). Wanting to burst forth to the surface in a way that “Better Off Alone” encapsulates sublimely.

    In another article for MTV that touts the brilliance of “Better Off Alone,” Meaghan Garvey notes that “the thing that tied these [90s Eurodance] songs together—and that made them resonate so deeply in my lonesome preteen heart—wasn’t really their gratuitous rave stabs… All of them were desperately preoccupied with something just out of reach, and presented with an irrational optimism that twisted the knife even deeper.”

    Petras follows the trend of pulling these sounds out of their place and time (hear also: Black Eyed Peas and J Balvin’s “Ritmo,” David Guetta and Bebe Rexha’s “I’m Good [Blue],” Charli XCX and Rina Sawayama’s “Beg For You,” Charli XCX’s “Used to Know Me” or Beyoncé’s “Break My Soul” [which uses the same sample as “Used to Know Me” via Robin S’ “Show Me Love”]). Alas, like everything people have tried to co-opt and remake in the present, it lacks that sort of genuineness and earnestness referred to by Garvey. “Alone” is yet another pinnacle of such artifice, the attempt to “manufacture” something that can’t be. And yet, it would appear that “TikTokers” (a euphemism for Gen Z) are none the wiser to the offensiveness of the ersatz imitations they embrace without question. From their perspective, they are better off alone—independent of minds that know with every fiber of their being that the original song is unparalleled.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Death Becomes Her and Beef: On Being Attracted to the Energy of a Person You Despise

    Death Becomes Her and Beef: On Being Attracted to the Energy of a Person You Despise

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    In 1992’s Death Becomes Her, the long-standing “friendship” between Madeline Ashton (Meryl Streep) and Helen Sharp (Goldie Hawn) quickly reveals itself to be a frenemyship fueled by jealousies and residual beef stemming from their many years of knowing one another, all the way back to being teens in New Jersey. With the film opening on Madeline’s ill-advised performance in a Broadway adaptation of Sweet Bird of Youth called Songbird!, it gives Helen the chance to see if her fiancé, Ernest Menville (Bruce Willis), can “pass the Madeline Ashton test.” In other words, is he immune to her charms and seductions the way so many of Helen’s previous boyfriends were not? For it’s clear that Madeline makes a sport of “winning” in an unspoken competition with Helen. Using her looks and wiles to outshine Helen’s “bookishness” and “class.” To this end, the yin and yang qualities in each woman speaks to their inevitable “attraction” to one another. Seeking something in the other person that she herself does not possess.

    In Helen’s case, the obvious characteristics she yearns for in Madeline are cliché blonde beauty and the artful wielding of coquettishness. In contrast, Madeline, although less overt about it, secretly resents Helen for being from a more “pedigreed” social class and her intelligence level. Of the variety that leads her to become an author. Though this doesn’t happen until many years after her fateful meeting with Madeline backstage in 1978.

    And it is in ’78 when Madeline is informed by her lackey, Rose (Nancy Fish), that Helen has arrived with her fiancé to greet her. She immediately asks, “How’s she look?” The intense desire to hear her underling respond with something like, “Terrible” is ruined when she instead says, “I don’t know. Smart, I guess. Sorta classy.” Madeline balks, “Classy? Really? Compared to who?” This bristling over Helen’s characterization as somehow superior because she’s not “cheap” like Madeline is something that comes up over and over again throughout Death Becomes Her. And yet, because all Madeline’s got are her trashy, smarmy tactics, she sticks to them—augmenting her sleaze tenfold by deciding to steal Ernest when she realizes he’s a renowned plastic surgeon she’s read about.

    But before that, when Helen does eventually come into the dressing room with Ernest, Madeline is all “pre-posed” for her (cleavage strategically exposed), under the guise of “acting naturally.” After the encounter, it doesn’t take long before she’s “stopping by” Ernest’s operating room and inviting him out for dinner. Upon hearing about this back at home, Helen proceeds to pull viciously at the tissue she’s holding (an ongoing anger tic that she uses to cope). She then tells Ernest, “You don’t know Madeline the way I do. She wants you. She wants you because you’re mine. I’ve lost men to her before… That’s why I wanted you to meet her before we got married, because I just had to see if you could pass the Madeline Ashton test.”

    Ernest insists, “Darling, I have absolutely no interest in Madeline Ashton.” Cut to Ernest and Madeline getting married instead of Ernest and Helen. Seven years later, in 1985, we see Helen holed up alone in her apartment, having gained ample weight and residing with a number of cats—as though she’s decided to surrender fully to her enemy by admitting that she’s no match for her, and she might as well just lean into all of her weaknesses…eating included. As the door is broken down to her apartment due to not paying rent, she could care less if the walls are crumbling around her, because there’s a scene of Madeline being strangled on TV that she is practically orgasming over as it happens.

    Six months later, at the psych ward, her therapist urges, “For you to have a life—for any of us to have a life—you have got to forget about her. You have to erase her from your mind. You need to eliminate—” That’s where Helen cuts her off and decides to take the “eliminate” advice only. Someone would likely tell Beef’s Amy Lau (Ali Wong) and Danny Cho (Steven Yeun) the same thing and they, too, would abide by the selective advice Helen opted to heed instead. For Amy and Danny, their beef begins later in life than the one between Madeline and Helen. Namely, after they proceed to engage in an ongoing feud sparked by a road rage incident started in the parking lot of Forster’s, a Home Depot-type store owned by Jordan Forster (Maria Bello). Jordan also happens to be the billionaire dangling the promise of buying Amy’s successful plant “boutique,” Kōyōhaus, and absorbing it under the “Forster’s umbrella.” Toying with her psychologically in such a way as to make Amy particularly irritable.

    Danny just so happens to back out of his parking spot unthinkingly (/in a glazed-over state of depression) right at the instant when Amy’s looking for someone to take her misplaced rage out on. But, unluckily for her, she has no idea that Danny, too, is filled with rage he’s looking to unleash on an unsuspecting victim—having unintentionally tapped into “unlocking” her nemesis. As for that word, which comes from the Greek goddess of the same name, it bears noting that said goddess was in control of vengeance, “distributing” (the loose translation of “nemesis”) retribution and justice. Except her modus operandi was not to do so right away, perhaps being the inspiration for the old chestnut, “Revenge is a dish best served cold” (the riffing tagline for Beef is, “Revenge is a dish best served raw”). A.k.a. when the person deserving of it (or who one believes is deserving of it) least expects it because so much time has gone by and, surely, somebody couldn’t possibly hold on to a grudge for that long…right? Dead wrong.

    Both sets of characters, Madeline and Helen/Amy and Danny, are testaments to that notion. That “letting go” is not an option. Not just because it serves as fuel/a raison d’être, but because there’s an underlying attraction beneath the all-out contempt. Dare one say “love”—thus, the oft-recited phrase, “There’s a fine line between love and hate.” And clearly each character pair sees something of themselves reflected back in the other. Some similar wound that calls to them. In Amy and Danny’s case that wound is feeling totally placeless in a world that prizes people who “belong.” Despite Amy’s financial success, her personal life is constantly strained, as she admits to Danny in the final episode, “Figures of Light,” that she can never really tell her husband, George (Joseph Lee), much of anything. When Danny asks, “Why not?” she replies thoughtfully, “I think when nowhere feels like home, you just retreat into yourself.” Or you make a home in your nemesis, oddly enough. Being that Danny and Amy are the only ones who can really understand one another because they can speak freely without judgment or the fear of “conditions,” their attraction in “Figures of Light” transitions from one of hate to pure love, with both admitting that they’ve never been able to talk to anyone the way they can talk to each other.

    The same ultimately goes for Madeline and Helen. Even after another seven years go by in Death Becomes Her, bringing us to then-present day 1992. This time, the shoe has shifted to the other foot in terms of Madeline reposing in bed as she struggles with her own weight gain state, all Norma Desmond-ed out in various facial bandages designed to help make her look young(er). When Rose hands her an invitation to Helen’s book party, she learns that, ironically enough, the title of Helen’s novel is Forever Young. Feeling personally attacked, she goes to her med spa to get some touch-ups. But they won’t give her what she wants, forcing her to attend the party looking like herself. A big mistake, she realizes, when she sees how good and thin Helen looks at the same age as her: fifty.

    Hot with envy after the party, Madeline decides to go to Lisle von Rhuman’s (Isabella Rossellini), whose address was given to her by the spa owner, Mr. Franklin (William Frankfather), mysteriously appearing out of nowhere at the spa when Madeline declared money was no object with regard to getting her youth and beauty back. Not yet aware that Helen is already a beneficiary of what Lisle has to offer—eternal youth via a potion—she doesn’t understand that her unwitting “power play” is another form of competition as well. One that will undo Helen’s plans to “eliminate” (per the word her therapist used) Madeline for good. Because the thing about the potion that Lisle fails to mention is that it not only supplies one with eternal youth, but also eternal life. Which means that Madeline and Helen will now be adversaries forever. Just a pair of Beverly Hills ghouls haunting the streets with their immortality.

    Nonetheless, the appeal of being hated by a committed enemy is that there is no fear of losing “unconditional” love. For the conditions of burning hate dictate that you must always hate that person no matter what. So any “outrageous” or “immoral” thing they might tell you is actually a boon to that cause. In this regard, Amy has effectively found what she’s looking for in Danny, because one of the running themes in Beef is that she knows no one can love her unconditionally—not even her daughter, June (Remy Holt)—for who she truly is. Not without her plastering on that smiling veneer and providing a sugar-coated “lite” edition of her personality. Danny feels the same, though it comes across to a lesser degree. Granted, his form of securing “unconditional” love is extracted through the master manipulation of his brother, Paul (Young Mazino).

    The one-upping lengths that Amy and Danny go to in order to make the other’s life hell is similar to what Madeline and Helen do, expending all their energy on keeping the other down, and plotting her destruction. “You should learn not to compete with me, I always win!” Madeline screams after they both get over the reality that each of them is dead and forever young, equalizing the playing field a little too much for both women’s taste. Helen is the one who starts the fight (featuring that illustrious hole in her stomach) with the shovels as they proceed to go at it in yet another fierce competition, this time more literally. Helen ripostes to Madeline’s claim, “You may have always won, but you never played fair!” This is something Danny could easily say to Amy, who has the financial means and security to get at Danny with far more ease.

    Finally fathoming it’s mostly pointless to keep fighting, Madeline reminds Helen, “We can’t even inflict pain.” Helen snaps back, “I’ll tell ya about pain! Bobby O’Brien! Scott Hunter! Ernest Menville! That’s pain! I loved every one of them and they loved me… They were all I had and you took them away from me. Not because you loved them, not because you cared. But just to hurt me on purpose.” As the two delve deeper into their long-marinating beef, Madeline counters to Helen playing the sole victim, “Do you think I was blind, deaf? I couldn’t hear what you and your snotty friends were saying about me? You thought I was cheap.” Helen rebuffs, “Oh, please. You’re insane.” Madeline demands, “Then how come you never invited me to one of those parties at your parents’?” Helen shrugs, “Because we didn’t think you’d feel comfortable. It wasn’t usual for… It wasn’t usual for us to have…” “Trash in the house!” Madeline cuts in. Helen redirects, “You’re avoiding the issue. You stole my boyfriends to hurt me on purpose!” “I did not!” “Admit it!” Madeline insists, “No, you admit it. You look me in the eye and you admit you thought I was cheap.” Helen gives in, ceding, “Okay, I thought you were cheap.” As a reward for her honesty, Madeline confirms, “Well, I hurt you on purpose.” And so, like Danny with Amy, Madeline kept using the one thing she had—her “trashy wiles”—to get back at someone “classier” such as Helen.

    Having buried the hatchet with one another after an ultimate fight (which is what happens in Beef when Amy and Danny run each other off a cliff in their cars), the two now join forces to get Ernest to do their bidding and ensure that their youthful corpse bodies are kept looking fresh (Ernest is an expert in this after being forced to become a reconstructive mortician)—generally by spray-painting their skin in a flesh-colored tone. Unfortunately, their shared enthusiasm for making Ernest “one of them” so that he can be around forever to deliver the needed “maintenance” on their bodies backfires when Ernest comes to understand that living forever sounds like a nightmare. Managing to escape from their clutches after they knock him out and take him to Lisle’s house, Madeline and Helen are forced to reconcile the fact that despite being sworn enemies for all these decades, they’re the only two people on the planet who can truly understand one another. But that’s as horrifying as it is comforting, with Helen noting, “Who could have imagined? You and me…together.” Madeline returns, “Yeah, I know.” Helen continues, “Depending on each other. Painting each other’s asses. Day and night.” Madeline laughs along nervously, “Oh, yeah. Forever.” Helen repeats, “Forever” as their forced jovial laughter turns to near tears.

    Cut to thirty-seven years later in 2029, and the duo’s skin is peeling at Ernest’s funeral. Regardless of their misery, they still obviously get off on their bickering—it’s like a life-force they can use to funnel into remaining “sharp” and “with purpose.” That much can also be said for Amy and Danny as they let their feud steer both their lives completely off course…but at least they can tell they’re still alive as a result (unlike Madeline and Helen).

    In the poster for Beef, Amy and Danny are shown staring at each other with an intensity that looks as much like hate as it does love. Ergo, the aforementioned aphorism: “There’s a fine line between love and hate.” And there is something to being attracted to the energy of a person you seemingly despise, seeing a quality in them that you can relate to…or a quality you perhaps despise in yourself. No matter how outwardly “different” your nemesis might come across in relation to your own persona.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • That Littering Scene in Mad Men Cuts to the Core of How Corporations Would End Up Pulling A Fast One on Their Consumers

    That Littering Scene in Mad Men Cuts to the Core of How Corporations Would End Up Pulling A Fast One on Their Consumers

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    Amid the many scenes from Mad Men that still linger in one’s mind, one of the oddest (at least to modern eyes) is the moment where the Drapers, on a rare family outing together, happily discard all their trash after a picnic. Taking place in season two, episode seven—entitled “The Gold Violin”—the year of this particular nonchalant act on the part of the Drapers is meant to be in 1962. A different world from the “Don’t Be A Litterbug” one that we know today. Considering that popular discourse loves to place all responsibility for the current climate crisis on baby boomers, this scene is especially topical. And yet, being that the chemicals and technologies we’ve come to know as categorically detrimental (e.g., pesticides, nuclear power, Teflon, etc.) were still new and deemed beacons of “progress” rather than implements of destruction that only corporations would benefit from in the long-run, maybe it’s unfair to blame boomer consumers who didn’t know any better at the outset.

    In fact, so “uncouth” were they with regard to environmental etiquette that they needed a campaign to tell them not to litter. Thus, people such as Don (Jon Hamm), Betty (January Jones), Sally (Kiernan Shipka) and Bobby (played by Aaron Hart in the second season) tossing their trash onto the ground like it was nothing would not be out of the ordinary for the (lack of) social mores of the day. Complete with Don chucking his beer can into the distance like a football and Betty shaking out their trash-filled picnic blanket onto the grass without a second thought. It’s not as though there was a nearby garbage can handily available, after all. For these were in the days before there was much initiative on the part of the government to regulate its population “correctly” disposing of waste, with fines for littering coming later. While, on the one hand, it can be taken as a sign of “barbaric” Silent Generation and boomer comportment, on the other, it’s apparent they couldn’t see the full weight of the mounting effects of “modern convenience,” including the Santa Barbara oil spill (which would ultimately bring about the first Earth Day in 1970), until the end of the 1960s. According to environmental historian Adam Rome, “I think [the oil spill] was one of the ultimately most important in a series of accidents or problems that made people realize that a lot of the modern technologies that seemed miraculous…posed unprecedented risks to the health of the environment and ultimately to ourselves.”

    These were risks that the corporation never wanted the average American consumer to take note of. Indeed, the real reason the Keep America Beautiful campaign was even started served as part of a deflection from the real issue: corporations needing the consumer to keep buying shit over and over again by building it not to last. Ergo, more waste from manufacturing and packaging. So of course there was bound to be more potential for littering.

    Per Mother Jones’ Bradford Plumer, “Keep America Beautiful managed to shift the entire debate about America’s garbage problem. No longer was the focus on regulating production—for instance, requiring can and bottle makers to use refillable containers, which are vastly less profitable. Instead, the ‘litterbug’ became the real villain, and KAB supported fines and jail time for people who carelessly tossed out their trash, despite the fact that, clearly, ‘littering’ is a relatively tiny part of the garbage problem in this country (not to mention the resource damage and pollution that comes with manufacturing ever more junk in the first place). Environmental groups that worked with KAB early on didn’t realize what was happening until years later.” When the indoctrination had already taken hold anyway. Americans held themselves accountable for being pieces of shit while corporations and their head honchos kept laughing all the way to the bank as a result of the misdirection.

    As for Mad Men’s creator, Matthew Weiner, born in 1965, he likely would have still been witnessing casual, cavalier littering in his own childhood. For it wasn’t until 1971 that the first vehemently guilt-tripping Keep America Beautiful ad came out—the one with the famous “crying Indian.” Preying on the germinal phenomenon of white guilt, the ad has been described as one of the greatest ever made. We’re talking Don Draper-level shit. Focused on a Native American (played by an Italian, obviously) canoeing through trash in what turns out to be oil rig-filled waters, a narrator says, “Some people have a deep, abiding respect for the natural beauty that was once this country.” At this instant, the Native American finds himself at the side of a highway as someone throws a bag of trash out their window that explodes open as it lands at his feet. Here the narrator concludes, “And some people don’t.” Read: and some oblivious white yuppie cunts like the Drapers don’t. To that point, it’s appropriate that Sally, in this particular picnic scene, asks her parents if they’re rich. Betty, ever the avoider of real topics, replies, “It’s not polite to talk about money.” Nor is it polite to throw trash wherever one pleases, but Betty and Don hadn’t yet gotten the literal (litter-al?) message. Along with the rest of their generation and the one that they had just begat.

    At the end of the “crying Indian” PSA, it’s declared, “People start pollution. People can stop it.” Ironically, the “people” who actually could stop it—corporations (legally deemed people, in case you forgot)—are not held accountable in any way in such ads that place all responsibility on the individual a.k.a. consumer to “do their part.” And yet, trying to put all the onus on the consumer to “self-regulate” feels like a small drop in an oil spill-filled ocean of what could actually be done if corporations weren’t a bottomless pit of profit-seeking.

    While this moment of littering in “The Gold Violin” is an accurate re-creation of what would have gone down in 1962 after a picnic, it’s also a larger statement from Weiner (who co-wrote the episode) about the false veneer of perfection that existed in those days in general and in the lives of Mad Men’s characters in particular. Because, beneath the surface, it was all a steaming garbage heap waiting to spew forth. For example, although Don has just bought a shiny new convertible to match his shiny new success at the agency, the bubbling up of consequences resulting from his latest affair with Bobbie Barrett (Melinda McGraw) is about to explode his marriage as he once knew it. Elsewhere, Sal (Bryan Batt) invites Ken (Aaron Staton) over to his apartment for dinner, where his wife, Kitty (Sarah Drew), is made to feel like the third wheel—giving her that evermore uneasy sense about Sal that doesn’t crystallize until episode two of season three, when he does his Ann-Margaret in Bye Bye Birdie impression for her. Then there’s Bert Cooper’s (Robert Morse) acquisition of one of Rothko’s signature “red square” paintings. Prompting Ken, Jane (Peyton List), Harry (Rich Sommer) and Sal to enter his office without permission while he’s away so that they can view it. Although Sal, as “an artist,” claims that it “has to” mean something, Ken counters, “I don’t think it’s supposed to be explained… Maybe you’re just supposed to experience it.”

    This idea that existence is dominated by total chaos as opposed to some “deeper meaning” would come to define the 1960s and beyond. Even as corporations did their best to insist that all chaos—especially of the environmentally-related variety—was simply the result of poor individual “manners” and “self-control.”

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Florence + the Machine Takes Inspiration from The Lure and English Girl Drunkenness for “Mermaids”

    Florence + the Machine Takes Inspiration from The Lure and English Girl Drunkenness for “Mermaids”

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    Calling it the latest addition to the “Dance Fever universe” (and yes, it’s lovely that albums can be billed as universes now, too), “Mermaids” is a track that was originally slated to be on Florence + the Machine’s fifth album before being cut. Clearly, that decision was weighing on Florence Welch as she decided to give fans her second single of the year, following her cover of No Doubt’s “Just A Girl” for Yellowjackets. And why shouldn’t she? For the moody, atmospheric tone of “Mermaids” fits right in with the rest of the songs on Dance Fever, now out as an album with said single on it called Dance Fever (Complete Edition).

    For those hoping the song was inspired by the 1990 film of the same name starring Cher, Winona Ryder and (Yellowjacket) Christina Ricci, one might be disappointed. The song instead takes blatant inspiration from Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s 2015 Polish film, The Lure (called Córki dancingu in its original language), itself based on the more brutal version of The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen. The mermaid sisters in The Lure also happen to be vampires. Because, in this day and age, one has to mix mythologies to keep audiences interested. Named Silver (Marta Mazurek) and Golden (Michalina Olszańska), they pop out of the ocean in the Warsaw of the 1980s to find themselves becoming stripper stars at an “adult entertainment” nightclub. Billed as “The Lure,” they conduct their act in a giant water-filled glass (à la Dita Von Teese)—as they should. Although Golden has her eyes on the prize of ultimately swimming to America, Silver has been distracted by Mietek (Jakub Gierszal), one of the band members who performs at the club. Golden, however, hasn’t got hearts in her eyes by any means, staying true to her cannibal nature by eating one of the patrons of the club from the get-go. So it is that Florence + the Machine not only opens “Mermaids” with a siren-like cry, but commences the first verse with, “I thought that I was hungry for love/Maybe I was just hungry for blood.”

    Alluding to Andersen and Smoczyńska’s take on mermaid life, Florence + the Machine also mentions how “all the mermaids have sharp teeth/Razor blades all in your feet.” Silver certainly knows something about that level of pain, swapping out her tail for legs as she endures a shoddy surgical procedure to remove her true essence so that Mietek might take her more seriously as a love interest. Rather than what he actually sees her as: a novelty fuck.

    Co-produced with Glass Animals’ Dave Bayley, the overarching beat of “Mermaids” drops after “in your feet” to reveal a dramatic, all-consuming sonic landscape. One in which Florence + the Machine then lays out a certain parallel between the drunken British girl (“And the world is so much wilder than you think/You haven’t seen nothing till you seen an English girl drink”) and the fresh-from-the-sea mermaid. As she describes trying to find her own “sea legs” whilst walking through the rain-soaked abyss of night, Florence sings, “I remember falling through these streets/Somewhat out of place, if not for the drunkenness.” A mermaid, too, might be mistaken for a drunk girl, looking out of place as a result of her awkward, unsteady gait. Making her all the more vulnerable to predatory male behavior seeking to take advantage of a woman in a “compromised” state.

    What he couldn’t know, of course, is that he’s in for a rude awakening should he actually choose to approach. As Florence phrases it, “And with your mermaid hair and your teeth so sharp/You crawled from the sea to break that sailor’s heart.” Not just break it, but devour it (“They come to drink, they come to dance/To sacrifice a human heart”). At least in Golden’s case, who isn’t foolish enough to actually fall in love with a mortal the way Silver is. So enamored of someone as undeserving and deadbeat as Mietek that she can’t see the carnage that’s brewing. Indeed, one can imagine the lyric, “And the dance floor is filling up with blood/But, oh, Lord, you’ve never been so in love” fitting in quite seamlessly into a scene of Silver dancing with Mietek.

    More than just an homage to the villainous (read: complex) mermaid of Danish and Polish lore, Florence engages in her usual knack for recalling moments of her “drunk era.” Not all of which were so bad as she rehashes, “It was not all pain and pavements slick with rain/And shining under lights from shitty clubs and doing shitty drugs/And hugging girls that smelt like Britney Spears and coconuts.” That Britney Spears nod being a moment of pure Proustian lyrical genius (comparable to when she’s also name-checked in MARINA’s “Purge the Poison”). For few apart from millennials can understand the power of Britney in the 00s being so pervasive that her manifold perfume lines were scenting every acolyte of the pop star. Seducing or repelling, depending on the “receiver” of the scent. Just as is the case with a mermaid in pursuit of her “love object.” Like Silver with Mietek, the pursuit isn’t always going to prove successful, with the worst of fates for any mermaid being unrequited love.

    But until realizing the love isn’t actually returned (though the lust is), a mermaid like Silver can remain in her “cheerful oblivion.” A term that gets appropriately repeated throughout “Mermaids.” And it also applies to the vibe exuded by an English drunk girl (or any drunk girl, for that matter)—living blithely for the night until the stark sobriety of the morning comes.

    Considering all of the Dance Fever “mood boards” Florence + the Machine has revealed to fans on her social media, it’s no surprise that The Lure should also enter into the visuals and conversations of this universe. After all, the original title for the movie was going to be Daughters of the Dance. Now, it might as well be Daughters of Dance Fever. Such is the power of homage.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Ciara’s “Da Girls”: An Update on “Independent Women Part I” (But Is That Really A Good Thing?)

    Ciara’s “Da Girls”: An Update on “Independent Women Part I” (But Is That Really A Good Thing?)

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    In 2000, Destiny’s Child heralded the dawning of the new century by unveiling “Independent Women Part I.” On the heels of TLC’s “No Scrubs,” released the year before in 1999, “Independent Women Part I” built on an increasingly beloved notion: women being financially independent of men (who were effectively useless anyway without finances of their own to offer). Although the 1980s and 1990s had seen a glimmer of this in the “working mom” trope or the shoulder pad-packed skirt suit that Melanie Griffith immortalized in Working Girl, the “novelty” of “sisters doing it for themselves” had worn off by 2000, and it seemed time to make more robust strides than merely being a woman “allowed” to contribute to the capitalist machine. Now, women wanted to be truly “independent”—no man, no shared bank account, just her and her bag.

    The tie-in of the song to a movie reboot of Charlie’s Angels starring Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu was key to not only highlighting the independent women gains made by said gender since the 1970s, when Charlie’s Angels initially aired on TV, but also the fact that women are everyday superheroes. Their ever-changing “costumes” (read: drag) all being part of the many disguises and personas they wear to appeal and cater to a cadre of different people (usually fragile men). And, speaking of “catering,” it seems antithetical that another Destiny’s Child song, “Cater 2 U,” was released as a single five years after “Independent Women Part I”—and expressed a much different message that fundamentally negates Beyoncé’s brand as a “feminist.” But anyway, in 2000, “Independent Women Part I” was a beacon of light. A surge of hope, a boost of confidence. Especially to women who were afraid that the twentieth century might never let them go (and yet, lo and behold, here we are in the twenty-first and things seem much less progressive than they were in the twentieth thanks to, oh, the repeal of Roe v. Wade for a start). Here to help remind women of that pivotal instant (while simultaneously bolstering an unsustainable system called capitalism) is Ciara. Wont to emulate Janet Jackson in the past (see: “Jump”), this time, she’s going for straight-up 2000-era Destiny’s Child as she gets Lola Brooke and Lady London to join her on the “Girls Mix” of “Da Girls,” likely to appear on her eighth studio album along with “Jump” and “Better Thangs” featuring Summer Walker.

    In case there was any question about whether or not this was Ciara’s update to “Independent Women Part I,” she commences the song with the chorus, “This is for the girls gettin’ money/This is for the girls that don’t need no man/This is for the girls that’s in love with theyself/This for all the girls that done did it by theyself/This for all the girls that’s I-N-D-E-P-E-N-D-E-N-T.” Really driving the point home by literally spelling out the connection. And, considering that 2023 already started out with a sologamy bang via Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers,” it’s no surprise that other women in music should keep emphasizing the “trend.” As though independence is a “monetizable moment.” But then, of course it is—just as monogamy has been for centuries (and still is despite “falling out of fashion”). To bring it all back to the current “I can buy myself flowers” perk/emblem of being an independent woman, Ciara even sings at one point, “I wanted some flowers/Mr. Wilson pulled up in a Rolls (skrrt).” “Mr. Wilson” alluding to her husband presumably pulling up with the flowers she wanted—which makes it slightly less independent-sounding. One would have preferred to think of “Mr. Wilson” as a flower delivery service (or even a reference to Mr. Wilson’s flower in Dennis the Menace). That would have at least entailed she can not only buy herself flowers, but have them show up to her house without lifting a finger, too.

    As for the accompanying video, the original favors a certain Billie Eilish in “Lost Cause” vibe (itself a riff on “34+35 Remix” visuals) as her girls come over to hang out, dance around, eat, drink and generally frolic. This is what it is meant when Cyndi Lauper says, “Girls just wanna have fun.” In the “Girls Mix” version, the concept isn’t much changed, swapping out the “rando” women at Ciara’s house in favor of just Lola Brooke and Lady London—helping Ciara (the “Beyoncé” of the outfit) to complete a trio à la Destiny’s Child (or Charlie’s Angels). And for their version of “Independent Women Part I,” Brooke is sure to give a direct nod to Beyoncé by saying, “Gonna rock these pants like a freakum dress,” after which Lady London declares, “This is for the girls on the grind/This is for the girls that done worked full-time/This is for the self-made girls, yeah, the self-paid girls.” It’s all certainly enough to make someone like Betty Draper blush with embarrassment, as though her “reliance” on a man (read: a monogamous situation that reinforces capitalism) is shameful, her invisible labor within the domestic sphere meaningless. But anyway, such women are supposed to be “relics,” right? Nonexistent in the climate of the present.

    Meanwhile, on “Independent Women Part I,” Kelly Rowland (in conjunction with ex-DC member Farrah Franklin, not Fawcett) sings, “The shoes on my feet, I bought ’em/The clothes I’m wearing, I bought ’em/The rock I’m rocking, I bought it/‘Cause I depend on me if I want it/The watch I’m wearing, I bought it/The house I live in, I bought it/The car I’m driving, I bought it.” One can tell how this would also presage Ariana Grande declaring, “I see it, I like it/I want it, I got it” on “7 Rings,” yet another anthem championing female-centric materialism (diamonds, hair extensions, clothes, etc.) as a form of independence. And while, sure, she might be financially independent, she still leans on/plays into the oppressive system that men/patriarchy wield to keep most people in check. Women included. The idea that becoming “independent” means fully embracing capitalism (as any male industrialist would), however, is both naïve and reductive. And it’s hardly tantamount to “equality.” All it serves to do is bolster neoliberal practices by making women think they’re “free” because they have purchasing power. And by fortifying that illusion to other women in a song format, what it really amounts to is more propaganda for capitalism under the guise of “progress.”

    From Grande saying, “My receipts be lookin’ like phone numbers/If it ain’t money, then wrong number” to Ciara repurposing the same flex with, “Bank account look like phone numbers/All of our checks got four commas,” the message is clear: be like a man. Make money. Rely on “yourself.” All while simultaneously relying on the very system that allows oppression to flourish. It’s not exactly “feministic” in the spirit that many women would like to believe. But since the end of capitalism feels unimaginable, perhaps women are just doing their best to work within it while there’s still money to be made before all resources are plundered and life veers into Mad Max territory.

    Ironically, Beyoncé herself had no agency in getting “Independent Women Part I” onto the Charlie’s Angels Soundtrack. It was actually her “dadager,” Matthew Knowles, who submitted the track without her permission/knowledge. So much for, “Try to control me, boy/You get dismissed.” But apparently, being “independent” is overrated when it works to your bank account’s advantage. What’s more, “donating” the single (which was originally supposed to be “Independent Women Part II” released on their ’01 album, Survivor) to Charlie’s Angels isn’t quite indicative of promoting “independent” women, per se. After all, the three women in question aren’t just Angels, are they? They’re Charlie’s Angels. They “belong” to Charlie. And the trio seems to have no problem with that, nor any desire to truly break out on their own, independent of their invisible Daddy figure.

    At one point in the song, Beyoncé sings, “Do what I want, live how I wanna live/I worked hard and sacrificed to get what I get/Ladies, it ain’t easy being independent.” No, it’s certainly not. Especially since “independence” still comes at the cost of fucking Mother Earth up the asshole and acting little better than a man with a burgeoning bank account.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • SZA’s “Kill Bill” Remix With Doja Cat Opts to Further Elaborate on (Literally) Attacking “The Other Woman”

    SZA’s “Kill Bill” Remix With Doja Cat Opts to Further Elaborate on (Literally) Attacking “The Other Woman”

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    In these la-di-da times, it’s increasingly less “kosher” to “come for” “the other woman” in a cheating scenario. Or a scenario in which one is left for another woman before the infidelity occurs (as if). But Doja Cat seems determined to remind women, including SZA, that it takes two to tango, and, regardless of feminism (“or whatever”), the puta involved can very much be held accountable…in addition to being a source of piled-on contempt. While this mode of behavior has been out of fashion for a while as a result of something like “obligatory female solidarity” (i.e., “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women”), Doja Cat bringing it back may very well be a sign of society’s overall regressive attitude toward women at this moment in history. At the same time, who amongst “the women” hasn’t fallen prey to the incensed flames of jealousy that burn eternal whenever thinking of “that bitch” who took “their” man? As though anyone can truly be owned like so much property. But that’s a story (/anti-capitalist rant) for another assessment.

    The latest example of such a case of “the catfight” making a comeback was the flare-up between Hailey “Bieber” (but really Baldwin) and Selena Gomez. One that was initiated by Kylie Jenner and Bieber as a result of the former posting a screenshot of her and Bieber’s eyebrows from a FaceTime call three hours after Gomez announced to TikTok that she felt her own eyebrows looked too laminated. In terms of “gauntlets thrown,” it’s utterly innocuous, and also passive-aggressive child’s play compared to the shit that Joan and Bette used to get into. But such is the way of our repressed present, where feigning politeness is firmly billed under the category and as an offshoot of wokeness. But it is not woke at all anymore to exhibit hostile behavior toward “the little bitch” whose pussy redirected your man’s attention away from you. Except in the instance of “Kill Bill,” during which SZA casually mentions by the end, “I just killed my ex/Not the best idea/Killed his girlfriend next, how’d I get here?”

    Doja Cat, re-teaming with SZA after 2021’s runaway hit, “Kiss Me More,” chooses to elaborate in more detail on the murder of that new girlfriend via the remix. Which explores the idea of killing said woman in front of her ex for optimal sadism cachet (even though Doja claims it was unintentional to do it in such a manner). Markedly different from the start for wielding Doja Cat’s new verses instead of doling them out in the middle, as is usually the norm for remixes, what truly sets the song apart is Doja’s chipper rehashing of how she ended up killing her ex’s new girl prior to the ex himself. Told over the course of about fifty-five seconds before SZA enters the song to sing her usual chorus, Doja begins, “I know it’s not a really good occasion to be bargin’ in/I couldn’t help but watch you kiss her by the kitchen sink/I swung the door farther open, tippy-toed farther in…” From there, things escalate rather quickly as, per Doja, the other woman turns out to be an uppity bitch about the whole thing, instantly freaking out instead of trying to talk to Doja rationally. And, evidently, the ex stepped out of the room for a moment to add to the other woman’s fear quotient. So it is that Doja continues to describe, “She saw me standin’ by the TV and she wouldn’t stop screamin’/So I tried to be discreet and told her, ‘Calm your tits.’”

    Of course, that’s the last thing the emotionally dainty other woman feels like doing, with Doja elaborating, “She grabbed the kitchen knife so I pulled out the blick/Ain’t got it all the time, so thank god I did for this/‘Cause she was seein’ red, and all I saw was you/It happened in a flash when she charged at me/Y’all crisscrossed, saw her fall to the floor/Then you paused there in horror/But that shot wasn’t for her (was it?).” That parenthetical “was it?” arrives as SZA starts to sing, “I might…” This “subtle” question serving to intimate that yes, maybe all along, the shot was as much meant for the new bia as it was her ex. Because, in her mind, it is this other woman who drove the wedge between them. She’s the one who is really keeping them apart. After all, by naively believing this, a girl like Doja or SZA can go on insisting that there’s still hope for her and her ex to be together again.

    By blame-shifting most of the responsibility onto the other woman, the Doja or SZA of the equation can therefore conserve some semblance of their “loving feeling” for the philandering cad in question. Even if those feelings of murderous rage tend to linger when an “armistice” is reached after he “acts up” (a.k.a. egregiously betrays her). And yes, we all know Beyoncé still has them despite “forgiving” Jay-Z. Unfortunately for her freedom of expression, such a “beacon of feminism” can’t take it out too overtly on “the other woman,” save for thinly-veiled digs like, “He better call Becky with the good hair.”

    Even when fellow “feminist light” Taylor Swift was ultimately denigrating the other woman in 2008’s “You Belong With Me,” it was cloaked behind self-deprecation—talking shit about herself by seeing an apparent lack in what she had (physically) compared to the other girl. Hence, lyrics like, “She wears high heels I wear sneakers/She’s cheer captain, and I’m on the bleachers.” So it was that Taylor played up the vacuous mean girl trope (*cough cough* Hailey Bieber) for her own benefit as well, but through an obfuscated lens.

    On “Kill Bill,” both the original and remix editions, SZA and Doja Cat refuse to play that game. Openly maligning the other woman and unleashing a torrent of rage upon her (“casually delivered” though it may be). Some might call that regressive, while others might be relieved that the floodgate has been reopened to hate on the proverbial other woman. Even if both Selena Gomez and Hailey Bieber were too chicken shit to fully capitalize on that “sanction” when the opportunity presented itself.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • The Super Mario Bros. Movie: Why Is This Damaging Italian Stereotype Still “Okay” in 2023?

    The Super Mario Bros. Movie: Why Is This Damaging Italian Stereotype Still “Okay” in 2023?

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    Despite the phenomenon of so-called woke culture coming for everything under the sun with regard to accusations of being offensive, the one glaring ethnicity that remains a free-for-all in terms of still somehow remaining up for grabs for mockery in the mainstream is Italians. Nothing has made that more apparent in 2023 than not only the release of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, but its raging success at the box office (and at a time when box office success is decidedly few and far between). Because, it’s true, no one seems to view Italians as worthy of adequate representation, least of all in the U.S., where the long-standing tropes pertaining to Italian culture have typically stemmed from bastardized Italian-American culture. Tropes that, of course, persist because they are so easily commodifiable. This is why entities like the Olive Garden and the Mob Museum—both of which are grotesque in their representations of Italians—exist and are able to thrive without anyone apparently getting offended enough to say, “This is a shameful reduction of my culture.”

    Arriving into the American lexicon after the mob stereotype was proliferated by The Godfather trilogy in the 70s and after the advent of the Olive Garden in 1982 (started in, where else, Florida), Super Mario Bros. was released in 1985 as a platform game for the Nintendo Entertainment System. But, of course, from the start, Super Mario Bros. was never concerned about “accuracy” or “cultural sensitivity” or “fair representation.” And all because Mario’s creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, “arbitrarily” saw fit to make him “Italian” because of the pipes that were going to be involved in the landscape, therefore “plumbing” seemed like a natural fit to be incorporated into the video game. Per Miyamoto, “…with Mario Bros. we had a setting of course that was underground, so I just decided Mario is a plumber. Let’s put him in New York and he can be Italian. There was really no other deep thought other than that.” And so, thanks to Miyamoto’s so-called lack of “deep thought,” Italians as a culture have continued to pay the price for decades, with a reductive stereotype that just won’t fucking die. Worse still, the “It’s-a me, Mario!” delivered in that garish, false Italian accent is being disseminated anew to a subsequent generation of children who will now think that this is a perfectly acceptable “rendering” of Italians and those with Italian heritage as they parrot the phrase freely.

    The Super Mario Bros. Movie, written by Matthew Fogel and directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, wastes no time in getting right to the offensive meat of it all, with Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) appearing in a commercial for their new plumbing business and laying on thick the caricaturized version of an Italian accent. We’re talking as thick as nasty, American-sanctioned “ragù” (think: the Prego brand). The van shown in the commercial reads “Super Mario Bros. Plomería.” Emphasis on plomería, which is a fucking Spanish word. If they wanted to be “Italian” about it, they could have at least used the correct word, piombatura (and don’t try to say Spanish was used for the sake of the Dominicans or the Puerto Ricans living in Brooklyn). Alas, mélanging Spanish words with Italian ones is among the most minimal offenses delivered like so many blows to the head throughout the movie.

    After seeing the commercial on TV together at the Punch-Out Pizzeria, Mario asks his brother in a “normal” voice, “What are the accents? Is it too much?” the original Jumpman version of Mario appears next to them while playing a Donkey Kong-esque arcade game to insist, “Too much? It’s a-perfect!” The voice of this man, Giuseppe, is portrayed by none other than Charles Martinet, the long-time voice of Mario. And, in case one needed the obvious confirmation, Martinet is far from Italian, born in California with French descent. Of course, it’s no secret that the French are among the many who relish mocking Italians with a parodied accent and overzealous love of pizza (see: the highly offensive coronavirus-era sketch on Groland), so maybe that’s part of Martinet’s inherent animosity toward the character. For why else would he not only suggest doing the voice in that pitch (apart from claiming children would be too scared of a “deep-voiced” “Italian”) and false cliché, but also chime in that Mario should dream of pasta whenever a player leaves him alone (Sims-style). In Super Mario 64, this would translate into Mario murmuring between snores, “Ahhh spaghetti, ahhh ravioli, ahhh mamma mia.” Because, again, all Italians appear to be to Americans are jolly, lobotomized pizza and pasta fiends. So what else would he possibly have to say in one of his first opportunities for video game dialogue?

    Another person who weighs in on the brothers’ caricaturized commercial is their former boss, Spike (Sebastian Maniscalco), who happens to be sitting in the pizzeria as well, and takes the chance to mimic them by saying, “Yeah, it’s a-me!” when they confront him. Wearing a trucker hat that says “Wrecking Crew” (a nod to the 1985 video game of the same name, in which Foreman Spike is Mario and Luigi’s opponent) on it, Spike proceeds to make fun of them with as much delight as any person getting off on perpetuating an Italian stereotype. Spike ends their interaction with the assurance, “You’re a joke, and you always will be.” Well, he has that right…when taking into account that Mario continuing to be a “viable” representation of an Italian-American will ostensibly persevere. Because this franchise money is just too good to be bothered with or by any “moral objections” to such increasingly antiquated, out-of-touch, belittling portrayals. We’re talking Blackface-level shit. A “controversial” comparison for many, to be sure, however, one fails to see the difference between slapping Italians with a dumb plumber stereotype, “bequeathing” them with stocky, hirsute bodies and huge noses and hideous accents versus, say, making a Black person into “the help” speaking with a “yes massa” voice in either sambo or mammy stereotype form. The fact that companies like Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben’s and Mrs. Butterworth’s all replaced their racist “mascots” in the wake of the BLM movement that flared up after George Floyd was murdered is yet another testament to how caricatures of races that were invented in the past are no longer allowed to endure in the present. Except, of course, in the case of Mario and Luigi.

    In terms of “Oppression Olympics” (to borrow a term from Ginny and Georgia), no one would argue that Black and Asian people haven’t had it the worst of any race. And yet, Italians, white or not (but still not the “right” kind of white), are not without their own history of oppression and being viewed as “lesser than” by the “pure” white race. From the 1891 New Orleans lynchings to the Sacco and Vanzetti case to “all” Italian-Americans being branded as “labor agitators” amid certain anarchist and socialist movements in the U.S., there is a long history of anti-Italian sentiment. One that seems, ultimately, to extend to reducing a culture so rich to something as derogatory as Mario and Luigi. And though Italians, better than most, can take a “joke,” there’s a difference between “poking fun” “in good taste” and being an outright asshole about perpetuating damaging stereotypes (as one Italian put it on The Gamer, “This vague pseudo-Italian identity is something I’m not happy about, because if it’s just a joke then it’s time to rein it in”). While Italians themselves tend to take teasing in stride (perhaps so that they, in turn, can keep dishing it out), there should be a limit, at this point, to how much “It’s-a me” bullshit someone can take. Even if that person is “merely” a descendant of the Italy-born.

    Perhaps as a way to protect from the accusation of “racism,” both The Super Mario Bros. Movie and 1993’s live-action Super Mario Bros. play up the element of Mario and Luigi being “Brooklyn Italians”—an entirely different animal from Italian Italians. In the latest version, Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” is cued as the duo rushes to make it to their first official plumbing job. The constant mention and backdrop of Brooklyn is, however, one-upped by Super Mario Bros, wherein mobster types like Anthony Scapelli (Gianni Russo, a quintessential New York Italian exploiting his heritage for pay) are part of the “natural milieu” of being a Brooklyn Italian for Mario and Luigi (inexplicably played by Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo). This includes eating spaghetti with meatballs (with the sauce not even mixed in atop the white pasta) as accordion music plays in the background. A scene that goes on during Luigi’s date with Daisy (Samantha Mathis), a double with Mario and his own girl, Daniella (Dana Kaminski). But at least Super Mario Bros. doesn’t try to show any scenes of Mario and Luigi with an affronting Italian stereotype of a family as well. Unlike The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which grafts the core plotline (re: an interdimensional glitch) of the 1993 version, written by Parker Bennett, Terry Runté and Ed Solomonm, and co-directed by husband-and-wife team Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel. Just as it is in Super Mario Bros., The Super Mario Bros. Movie also finds Mario and Luigi transported to an alternate realm (the Mushroom Kingdom for Mario and the Dark Lands for Luigi) via a sewer system beneath Brooklyn. In the original, this happens just before Daisy (the Princess Peach stand-in) is warned by Scapelli, “I know a lotta girls who been goin’ missin’ in Brooklyn lately.” In other words, a mafioso threat that indicates she can be “erased,” just as anyone else has who’s dared to get in the way of his construction plans. Because, yes, of course Scapelli is “in construction.” A long-standing “career front” for mafiosi of the Eastern Seaboard.

    When Luigi and Mario follow her into the alternate realm that’s been brewing ever since a meteorite hit Brooklyn sixty-five million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs, Luigi is sure to tell Mario, in Dorothy fashion, “I gotta feelin’ we’re not in Brooklyn no more.” And, whilst watching The Super Mario Bros. Movie, one might say, “We’re not in 2023 no more.” Surely we can’t be, if woke culture had gone the whole nine yards and spared Italians of any further denigration from a video game that wields characters called goombas (among the weakest enemies in any Mario fight). A direct reference to the pejorative word “goombah” that Americans would use to refer to Italian immigrants and their supposed inherent association with organized crime. And yet, one should note that, per American Minority Relations, “the rate of criminal convictions among Italian immigrants was less than that among American-born whites” in the mid-twentieth century—this being the height of mafia fear. Nonetheless, the stereotype prevailed, and became profitable to many people. Particularly increasingly diluted generations of bona fide Italians who had transformed into something entirely different: a New York Italian (or, worse still, a New Jersey one). And the name of that game was: capitalize, capitalize, capitalize. No matter how self-exploiting it was. This being why Little Italy is some Disneyfied presentation of “Italian culture” complete with red-and-white checked tablecloths, Chianti bottle décor and nothing but plates of pasta doused in the grossest, saltiest sauces imaginable. Surely, no self-respecting person can truly believe this is “authentic,” and yet, they go for “the ambience” regardless.

    In contrast to this breed of Italian (i.e., the Italian-American that has further perpetuated the false, negative stereotypes of actual Italians), those who hail from the boot take pride in their culture, one that is rich with so many other things beyond what Americans in particular cling to as the “complete” (read: two-dimensional) formation of their national identity. Included in that is Super Mario Bros., which the Japanese can be thanked for (and defenders of Mario’s existence constantly like to throw out that he’s “technically Japanese,” so it’s fine). But if it weren’t for the Americans glomming onto this brother duo so enthusiastically, Super Mario Bros. might never have been successful enough to become such a pervasive reminder that this is the Italian version of a sambo. To emphasize that analogy, imagine if you will a “superhero” Black person portrayed as a housekeeper who eats nothing but watermelon and fried chicken and speaks with a drawl. How is this divergent from depicting an Italian as a “superhero” plumber who relishes eating only pizza and pasta and wielding an accent with an “a” said between every word? It’s fucking foul and should no longer be tolerated. In fact, not since House of Gucci has there been such a pop cultural affront to Italians. To this end, it has to be said that the group doing the most damage to “the brand” is, ironically, Italian-Americans (which Lady Gaga is certain to remind she is whenever possible). But it’s the American part that gets the better of them every time, wanting to be “enterprising” about the culture rather than portray it with something like grace and realism.

    Time and time again, it might be asked, who is the stereotype “really” hurting if Italians “of all stripes” can keep cashing in on it by pandering to the caricature people apparently want to see? Some could say there’s no harm in Super Mario Bros. if the Italians themselves don’t complain and that “fellow Europeans” make fun of each other all the time. But it’s simply not true. For one thing, Italians are parodied more than most “sects” of Europeans and, for another, Italians likely don’t complain because Super Mario, to them, is viewed as a strictly American piece of ephemera (despite being Japanese-created). What’s more, such content as this is usually viewed in a dubbed format, which means Italians often don’t get to hear the full effect of how bad they’re being made to sound. A “sound,” as it were, that keeps contributing to how Mario and Luigi remain a “benchmark” to Americans for how all Italians ought to be “categorized.” No matter how “woke” Americans think they’ve gotten.  

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    Genna Rivieccio

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