Tag: Culled Culture

Weird: The Madonna Ciccone Story

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It should go without saying that any “biopic” about Weird Al Yankovic—especially one overseen by the parody-maker himself—is not to be taken seriously. And yet, in the hyper-literal climate of today, one sadly does have to emphasize that point. In addition to the fact that he and Madonna never dated (to quote M during her cameo in a “Wayne’s World” sketch, that might happen the same day “monkeys might fly out of my butt”). Indeed, Weird Al himself stated that the two only met backstage in 1985 for about forty-five seconds and “that’s the extent of the relationship.”

That is, apart from Weird Al technically inhabiting the same male-dominated music industry of the 80s that was made up of other easily-rattled-by-open-female-sexuality pussy boys (e.g., Michael Jackson and Prince—both of whom M would exchange fluids with) who had less machismo than Madonna herself. Which was always part of why she got so much flak, hence her infamous aphorism, “I’m tough, I’m ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay.”

And this is an image that Weird Al, too, is very okay with playing up in his “biopic.” Wherein Evan Rachel Wood clearly took all of her studying of Madonna’s character from Desperately Seeking Susan. This includes the gum-chewing, sexed-up, wise-cracking and pyramid-esque jacket-wearing details that persist for her entire, lengthy time onscreen. That’s right, Madonna has practically as much top billing as Weird Al himself. Who knows why Yankovic ended up so fixated on her as the “villain” of the narrative? Maybe, at one point, he wanted to bang her and knew he never could. Which is likely part of the reason he broke his own rule about never taking unsolicited “submissions” for parodies from the original artist.

But in Madonna’s case, who reportedly told a mutual acquaintance that it wouldn’t be long before Weird Al did “Like A Surgeon,” he made an exception. So yes, she did come up with the alternate title to her own single. And anyone who knows something about male psychology has an inkling that he probably wanted to get her attention by recording it. The same way he probably is now by spotlighting her as the conniving antagonist of Weird: The Al Yankovic Story—which should ultimately be called Weird: The Madonna Ciccone Story.

Based on a Funny or Die trailer Eric Appel directed in 2010 (with Aaron Paul as Weird Al and Olivia Wilde as Madonna), most of the scenes and dialogue from the original trailer re-material(girl)ize in this as well. Appel also co-wrote the new feature script with Yankovic, joking, “When Weird Al first sat me down against my will and told me his life story, I didn’t believe any of it, but I knew that we had to make a movie about it.” The real Al appears yet again as some variation of Tony Scotti, the president of the label (Scotti Brothers Records) that signed him. Granted, in the movie, Weird Al (Daniel Radcliffe) is made to have a much rougher go of being embraced by the label than in actuality. In fact, it’s almost as though Weird Al wanted to make a biopic about the version of the life he feels he should have endured in order to become so famous. Or at least “pretty famous for a Hawaiian shirt-wearing accordion player.”

For example, in lieu of an extremely supportive father who told him things like, “Do for a living whatever makes you happy,” he feels he should have had an oppressor father that was never pleased with or impressed by anything he did. Of course, that’s what “fans” and casually interested people alike want as well, with Weird Al also mocking the beloved sob stories of pre-fame singers before they used all that adversity as a means to channel it into becoming legendary. And then, obviously, they’re still going to want to see the inevitable drug addiction and other assorted excesses that end up driving everyone once close to them away. This played to further comedic perfection in Weird because Yankovic is known for having just one vice and one vice only: sweet treats. So to see him go on a guacamole-laced acid trip or proceed to binge drink only adds to the parodying nature of it all—The “Rock Star” Biopic.

The extent of Weird Al’s own pre-fame dramas seemed to basically include being an only child and later getting slapped with the name Weird Al by those in his college dorm who found him to be quite, well, you know, weird. Reappropriating the name that the cunts in his dormitory gave him in real life, the “Weird Al” of the movie is bequeathed the addendum moniker by Dr. Demento (Rainn Wilson, taking over for Patton Oswald from the trailer—though Oswald does make a cameo as one of the bikers in the biker bar where Weird Al performs “I Love Rocky Road”). Indeed, even Weird Al couldn’t bring himself to overstylize his biopic so much that it would exclude the importance of Dr. Demento to his career—he being the lone Pied Piper of the “novelty genre” as only Los Angeles radio could furnish. And Al’s shtick was nothing if not novel at the time. For, like Weird Al as his label president says, “Nobody wants to hear a parody song when they can hear the real thing for the same price.” Apparently, that was only because the market hadn’t been tapped yet.

Once we see Al ascend to the top (shown in a series of commingled time periods that flagrantly conflate the 80s and 90s), particularly after recording his own original composition, “Eat It” (again, a joke—for those who have no knowledge of their 80s history), it’s only a matter of time before Madonna shows up. And oh how prominently she does at around the forty-nine-minute mark of the film, under the pretense of seeing whether or not her “map to the stars’ homes” was accurate. And while some might have thought her appearance was going to be “brief,” her presence turns out to be a full-on running plotline for the rest of Weird as she connives to get him to return to recording parodies so that he’ll concede to doing “Like A Virgin” as “Like A Surgeon.”

From the moment Al opens his door to her, it’s clear there’s a certain contention-laden sexual attraction. Madonna likely getting wet when he asks, “Do I know you?” When he finally says, “Oh right. Madonna… Born in Michigan, Catholic schoolgirl, dropped out of college and moved to New York City with nothing but the clothes on your back and thirty-five dollars in your pocket. Maybe it was to become the Queen of Pop. Maybe it was to get back at Dad for marrying the housekeeper.” This last line in particular being the most savage—and something that no one has really dwelled on too much in terms of what might have driven Madonna to become famous (apart from the death of her mother when she was five years old). Though it’s no secret that “Daddy issues”/rebelling against her patriarch for his attention were a key part of it.

After some requisite repartee, filled with the kind of hokey lines Breathless Mahoney might offer up, the two quickly “consummate,” with Madonna using the same titillated exclamation she does in the Funny or Die trailer—“You’re so weird!” The pair is subsequently shown side by side in Al’s bed enjoying post-coital cigarettes in front of a mirror with the “Weird Al quote,” “If money can’t buy happiness, I guess I’ll have to rent it.”

Upon getting her to loosely agree that they’re boyfriend and girlfriend after “the romp,” he explains to her that, since he’s made it as a musician with original compositions, he’s not going to bother with the parody shit anymore. Thus, no “Yankovic bump” (apart from the sexual kind) for her “Like A Virgin” single. Madonna replies, “That’s what I love about you. You know what you want, and you know how to get it.” She adds ominously, “Just like me.”

Madonna then stares at him with a diabolical, wheels-turning look in her eye. Manipulation and “using” being what Madonna was known for throughout her rise to fame—climbing over people, particularly men, to get what she wanted. But again, this is behavior men engage in all the time without ever being called out for it or having it wielded against them, least of all in a parody movie. But perhaps what made M truly stand apart with regard to her ambition and drive was that she tended to be an equal-opportunity user, gender-wise, when it came to clawing her way to the top. As made evident by her first manager, Camille Barbone.

Knowing full-well Camille had a crush on her (worse still, was probably in love with her), Madonna made the most of that one-sided love to get whatever she could. Camille’s blind spot for her new “star” client (who had yet to become a star) caused her to practically bankrupt Gotham Management to keep her happy. In the end, though, Madonna wasn’t going to be “happy” until she was famous. And since that didn’t seem to be happening quickly enough on Camille’s watch, she moved in a new direction—real fast. Specifically, by shopping around a dance-ified version of a single she had already recorded, “Everybody.” Now known as the debut single that got her signed to Sire Records.

Before the betrayal was even complete, Camille would assess (but verbalize much later on), “Sex to her was really just a means to an end. It meant nothing more. I actually became a little afraid of her then [“then” being when she deliberately slept with a drummer Camille had hired so that she would have to fire him, per the “rules”]. I knew I had created a monster who would eventually turn on me.” It was with this spirit of Madonna’s merciless, cutthroat nature in mind that Appel and Yankovic portray her onscreen in Weird. So merciless and cutthroat, in fact, that she ends up taking over Pablo Escobar’s drug cartel (part of a series of escalatingly absurd plot points). And while it’s all meant to be “hilarious” and “in good fun,” something about it feels a little too real (read: insulting). A little too like a genuine attack on the character Madonna possessed before finding Kabbalah, or whatever.

Maybe it’s modest, in its way, to make so much of one’s own movie about another (true) star. Plus, the 1985 mockumentary The Compleat Al already served as an “original” iteration of this latest “biopic”—so perhaps Al figured he could take some of the focus off himself here.

As for those who might question what Madonna thinks of her “presentation” in this “tongue-in-cheek” version of herself, it should be known that she’s still of the old school belief that all publicity is good publicity. Better known as the Wildeism: “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” Besides, Madonna still has time to get back at Weird Al if she wants to in her own impending self-directed biopic. One that will hopefully not be interpreted as a parody.

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Genna Rivieccio

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November 6, 2022
Triangle of Sadness Announcement: Having Money Is Not Actually A “Skill” or “Talent” That Will Serve the Rich Outside of Their Bubble When It Bursts

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The “chic” emphasis of late on how much rich people fucking blow (see also: The White Lotus, Hellraiser, Bodies Bodies Bodies) has been crystallized at perhaps its finest in Ruben Östlund’s latest film, Triangle of Sadness (a lovely shape-oriented title to follow up The Square). Wasting no time in getting to the point, Östlund sets the stage in the world of fashion. Specifically, male modeling. Wherein, for once, it’s the men who are underpaid and harassed (by the largely gay male population that dominates this facet of the industry). Including Carl (Harris Dickinson), a rather standard-issue vacuous model who stands against the wall and subjects himself to a reporter making a mockery of high fashion’s elitism by telling Carl to pretend he’s modeling for an expensive brand by looking as serious as possible a.k.a. looking down on the consumer (which, yes, every ad campaign from a luxury brand seeks to do with its stoic, often famous models).

Carl appears like a fish out of water as the casting directors tell him things such as, to paraphrase, “Models are expected to have a personality now” (a load of bullshit designed to make the art of being thin and hot seem more “meaningful” than it actually is). Something Madonna’s daughter, Lola, knows all about. In addition to nepotism being a key to one’s success in the business (see also: Kaia Gerber). Carl, in contrast, comes across like he never left the 90s school of “thought” on modeling as he walks vacantly up and down the room, eventually resulting in him being told to get rid of that “triangle of sadness” he’s sporting… better known as the furrowing of one’s brow that makes such a formation at the top of their nose. So yeah, not the best audition (yet probably not the worst either).

Later on, it doesn’t look as though things are going much better for Carl in his personal life as he dines with fellow model and influencer, Yaya (Charlbi Dean, who tragically died just before Triangle of Sadness’ international release). As she stares at her phone (the scene many a dinner companion is familiar with), she absently thanks him for getting the check. To which he soon spotlights (after Yaya pries it out of him) that she never leaves him much choice with regard to paying the bill—even though she makes more money than he does. Yaya balks at his complaining as the argument continues in the car on the way to the hotel and then at the hotel as Carl insists that he wants them to be like best friends, prompting Yaya to reply that she doesn’t want to fuck her best friend (though we all know Joey Potter did). And also: talking about money isn’t “sexy”—which is part of why “poor people” are so grotesque to the rich, who never have to discuss or question the spending of every little nickel and dime.

In irritation, Carl says what he means by “best friends” is that he wants them to be like equals. Yaya, perhaps not so naïve about gender roles, regardless of the century, later confesses to him in the hotel (after he’s derided under his breath that women of the present are “bullshit feminists”) very bluntly: she needs to be with a man who can take care of her. Because what if, say, she gets pregnant and can’t model anymore? Carl admits she doesn’t seem like the type who could work in a supermarket. As it also becomes clear that both are only in this “relationship” to grow their social media following, Carl vows to make Yaya fall in love with him for real—none of this “trophy [wife] bullshit.” With the establishment of looks as about the only way to secure money (“beauty as currency,” as Östlund refers to it) if you’re not born into it already, Östlund takes us into a new phase of the movie.

Divided into three parts, “Carl & Yaya” ends so that we might enter “The Yacht” portion of the film. And oh, how pronounced class is during this second act, with the truth about Yaya and Carl managing to get onto this yacht filled with primarily middle-aged and elderly ilk being that Yaya used her “hotness” to assure plenty of pic posting to make the cruise look as (literally) attractive as possible. In short, to mislead people into believing that anyone youthful and beautiful actually goes on these types of excursions when, in fact, it’s mostly people such as Dimitry (Zlatko Burić), an aged Russian oligarch who likes to quip, “I sell shit” in reference to being the King of Fertilizer throughout Eastern Europe and beyond. In point of fact, any rich person can describe how they made their fortune as, “I sell shit.” A lot of fucking useless bric-a-brac no one really needs and that daily decimates the environment. The same goes for Winston (Oliver Ford Davies) and Clementine (Amanda Walker), an old British couple who informs Carl and Yaya that they finagled their wealth by “defending democracy”—better known as arms dealing.

While someone as gross as Dimitry has managed to secure companionship in Vera (Sunnyi Melles, a real-life princess of Wittgenstein), as well as a daughter (?), Ludmilla (Carolina Gynning), who comes off more like a mistress (think: the Ivanka to Dimitry’s Donald), app creator/tech “titan” Jarmo (Henrik Dorsin) is too socially awkward/incel-like to have much game with women. And what use is money to a man if it can’t be used to treat “the ladies” more freely as objects? This is why, when Yaya and Vera, who have taken a shine to one another in their social media-obsessed affinity, offer to pose with Jarmo to make another woman who didn’t come on the cruise with him jealous, he tells them how much it means to him. And then offers to buy them some expensive watches. Costly, shiny things being the only way to show gratitude among the rich and rich-coveting.

Behind the scenes of it all is Paula (Vicki Berlin), the head of staff doing her best to keep morale up by assuring her crew members that they might get a very big tip at the end of it all…so long as they agree to pander to every absurd demand from the guests. This prompts the crew to start chanting excitedly (and crudely), “Money, money, money, money!” reminding one of Molly Shannon as Kitty Patton chanting, “It’s all about the money, money, money” in The White Lotus. What it all proves is that even (and especially) the non-rich are motivated by money, despite it being the very thing that renders them so powerless in this life. By playing into its worship, the lower classes only end up further enslaving themselves to the rich. Meanwhile, even further down below, Abigail (Dolly de Leon), “Head of the Toilets,” is miffed by the bizarre shaking and rattling of the “middle-class” crew up above. In this particular scene, there is something very Parasite-esque about the filming, designed to accent that beneath every “low” class is still an even lower one doing far more grunt (read: bitch) work.

What’s more, in every instance of a rich motherfucker presented, none of these people actually “make” or “do” anything tangible to secure their bag. Yet somehow what they “do” is considered more “valuable” (based on bank account) in our society than those who actually buttress the entire operation of day-to-day existence. And this is where “The Island” segment of Triangle of Sadness comes in—to remind the rich assholes who end up stranded on it that they ain’t shit without “the help.”

Having arrived to this point through a series of “unfortunate” (a.k.a. entirely the fault of the wealthy’s whims in demanding that all the crew members take a swim for thirty minutes) events, the main escalating factor is the improper temperature of shellfish ultimately served at the captain’s dinner. The captain being a reclusive and drunken man named Thomas (Woody Harrelson) that Paula, with the help of Chief Officer Darius (Arvin Kananian), finally manages to coerce into coming out for this accursed obligation. Until this rare appearance, we only ever hear his voice from behind the door, just like Paula. But it’s clear Harrelson took the role so that he could shine during a very “this is the Titanic sinking” part of the movie, during which he goes mano a mano with Dimitry about capitalism versus socialism (Thomas being an American socialist and Dimitry being a Russian capitalist) by quoting a series of “thinkers” to one another and their stances on the subjects.

The idea that rich people truly believe their shit (and vomit) doesn’t stink quickly becomes manifest during the now iconic segment featuring the non-stop bodily “elimination” processes of the uber-affluent (most especially Vera). Still subject, in the end, to the limitations of their own bodies, no matter how much money they have. So sure, maybe “we’re all equal” at the basest level of “being human,” with this “we’re all equal” lie serving as a running phrase—whether written or spoken—throughout the film. Yet, obviously, it’s something the rich only wish to tell themselves as a means to shirk any sense of guilt about what they have (which, again, is why Vera demands that the entire crew takes a swim break). More precisely, the excesses of what they have.

This is a topic that arises heavily during the “quote competition” between Dimitry and Thomas as the boat devolves into total shit-and-vomit chaos. With Thomas reciting such Marx aphorisms as, “The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope.” Dimitry ripostes with quotes from the likes of Reagan and Thatcher, the latter having once said, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” As their warring ideologies play out in “good fun,” the passengers endure their own added element to the bodily fluid-filled hellscape in that most of the volleying is broadcast over the intercom.

As the absurdity of it all mounts, the only thing that was still missing was the arrival of pirates onto the scene. Which is how we come to find a select few of the passengers washed up on the aforementioned island. Where Abigail, the so-called lowest of the low out in the “real world” is suddenly Top Dog (or “Captain,” as she calls herself) in this setting. All because she has basic skills for survival that the rich never had to learn in their position of “power” that has now rendered them powerless. In spite of this reversal of circumstances, it’s apparent that Östlund wants to ask the question: is life without the social constructs of “civilization” any less savage? Not really, as Lord of the Flies already taught many high school students long ago. Indeed, in the end, Carl himself is the “bullshit feminist.” He doesn’t care about equality, he just wants his fucking meals fed to him in exchange for offering up his body. Beauty as currency, even here.

With regard to managing to keep the tone comedic amid the brutal subject matter/mirror held up to the audience, Östlund invoked the names of two very specific filmmakers past who also had the same ability as he commented, “I felt I wanted to make movies like [Luis] Buñuel and Lina Wertmüller in the 70s, where there was no contradiction between being entertaining and dealing with something that they thought was important.” And, now more than ever, nothing is more important than keeping the spotlight on the ceaselessly-increasing divide between the haves and have-nots. Particularly as we embark upon a new era of climate change apocalypse.

And, speaking of that, a tongue-in-cheek moment that addresses this very inevitability arrives during a fashion show that projects on a backdrop screen something to the effect of, “We’re entering an entirely new climate…” The viewer is briefly inclined to believe this is another attempt at greenwashing until the phrase concludes, “…in fashion.” In other words, the rich really don’t give a fuck if the world is burning so long as they can still “make” (i.e., siphon) money during the decline.

Despite Triangle of Sadness coming across as endlessly “cynical” (that word used to write people off who speak the truth), Östlund portrays all of this precisely because he still has some faint glimmer of hope for humanity. If he didn’t, he likely wouldn’t explore these “uncomfortable” topics in his films at all. And as for being deemed another “guilt-racked liberal” by wealthy conservatives that might happen upon the movie, Östlund remarked, “To call someone a hypocrite, it comes very often from the right-wing perspective: ‘You shouldn’t talk about a better society, because you’re a hypocrite. Look at yourself.’ We can’t separate ourselves from the culture that we live in.” And the culture we live in is the very symptom of our sickness—vomit and all. To which government and big business at large has said, “Lick it up, baby, lick it up.”

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Genna Rivieccio

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November 5, 2022
She-Hulk: Attorney-at-Law Bites Back at the Incel Demographic That Would Condemn It

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While many (men) were quick to dismiss She-Hulk: Attorney-at-Law as yet another attempt on Marvel’s part to “feminize” and “ethnify” everything, anyone willing to look past their inherent prejudices would see that series creator Jessica Gao has provided a gem in what is usually a pile of meaningless and/or repetitive schlock. Aiding in the delivery of She-Hulk’s inherently political nature (for whenever a woman steps into a “man’s role,” things always get political) is Tatiana Maslany in the part of Jennifer Walters a.k.a. She-Hulk.

And yes, one might say there is a “political” angle to Bruce Banner a.k.a. Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) “contaminating” his cousin with his Hulk blood (it feels like there’s an allegory here for when a woman gets knocked up through no choice of her own). Were it not for his careless masculinity—getting in a car crash with Jen and letting her help him out of the vehicle with an open wound—Jen might have remained a full-stop lawyer, instead of a lawyer-by-day/Hulk when the mood strikes or the situation warrants it. Just as it does at the end of the first episode, “A Normal Amount of Rage.” But before the denouement of it, we see Jennifer being held essentially against her will by Bruce so that he can now teach her the “trade” of Hulking. Of course, his fragile male ego is offended when she masters every aspect of being a “mutant” in hardly any time at all. Still, he insists that she stay and become “one of them” (read: the Avengers). If nothing else, to keep touting her theory, “Obviously, Captain America was a virgin.”

To Bruce’s dismay, Jennifer would do no such thing. After all, she just landed a gig at a firm and she didn’t spend all those years studying law only to throw it out the window for the “gift” of being a full-time Hulk. Unfortunately, when “superpower influencer” Titania (Jameela Jamil) bursts into her courtroom at the end of the episode, she gives into her newfound clout by “turning”—albeit at the urging of her best friend and paralegal, Nikki Ramos (Ginger Gonzaga). Much to Jennifer’s chagrin in the second episode, “Superhuman Law,” word spreads fast about her supernatural exploits in the courtroom as opposed to her intellectual ones.

Thus, reports featuring a man describing what happened are reduced to, “This chick turned into a chick-Hulk.” “A She-Hulk?” the newscaster offers. And so, a new identity is coined. That Jennifer didn’t get to come up with it herself is, naturally, one of the running jokes of the series in that, as a woman, she still has no agency whatsoever in this universe (or any other)—even when it comes to something as rightfully hers as getting to choose her own moniker.

Even so, Jennifer embraces her She-Hulk alter ego, setting up an account on a dating app to meet men in that guise. At least, after her corporate headshot does little to attract much “buzz.” Obviously, it’s Nikki who urges her to “use what she’s got” to lure them in—which is: being a green woman who looks like a hotter version of Shrek’s Fiona when she’s in ogre form.

At first, Jen is reluctant to do so, already irritated that she has to “play” She-Hulk all day at the new law firm she works at, Goodman, Lieber, Kurtzberg & Holliway, in their superhuman law division. And yet, when Nikki remarks, “Oof hetero life is grim,” as she looks through the “Matcher” app, it seems Jen is sold on the “marketing technique” of “putting herself out there” as She-Hulk. But hetero life turns out to be especially grim when you’re a She-Hulk who now apparently only appeals to fetishists who never really want to see the real Jen. Which is exactly what happens when she has what she feels is a great night with a “hot doctor” who only leaves her in the morning when Jen is no longer in She-Hulk form.

To add insult to injury, she’s served with court documents stating Jen has been “misusing” Titania’s so-called trademark: She-Hulk. Because, silly Jen, in all her contempt toward the name, she never thought to actually trademark it. “But that’s my name,” Jen says aloud in front of the server. He condescends, “Not if she trademarked it first.” “Oh is that how it works, Your Honor?” she jibes sarcastically as she closes the door, this just being one of countless belittling microaggressions she endures with men on a day-to-day basis.

But that doesn’t mean women can’t be her foes, too. Just like Titania in the following episode, “Mean, Green and Straight Poured Into These Jeans.” As is the signature of the series, a meta allusion (often including the breaking of the fourth wall) is made to Titania owning the trademark via the title card to the episode reading, “She-Hulk by Titania.” This, incidentally, being what she decides to call the line of beauty products she’s selling on the back of She-Hulk’s fame.

To combat this “frivolous lawsuit,” She-Hulk’s boss enlists the best (non-superhuman) lawyer at the firm, Mallory Book (Renée Elise Goldsberry), to represent Jen. And the first thing she asks her about is why she didn’t trademark her name. Jen has no good answer, saying she just didn’t think about it and, “Did Dr. Strange have to trademark his name? Did Thor?” Rather than “allowing” Jen to make this a “sexist thing,” she points out that, in those instances, that was actually the name of each man. But the inevitable sexism of what Jen has to go through rears its ugly (male) head in the courtroom, when she allows Mallory to sift back through all the dates she had on the Matcher app as She-Hulk to establish that Jen was using the name well before Titania trademarked it. With these men as witnesses, Jen is forced to sit through their testimonies of how they were specifically interested in her solely because she had advertised as She-Hulk.

This becomes a running theme of the nine-episode series: Jen constantly feeling as though “Just Jen” (the name of episode six) is never enough—where the hell is Mark Darcy when you need him?

Yet she’s still disappointed that she can’t appear as She-Hulk at an old “friend’s” wedding. For that would upstage Lulu’s (Patti Harrison) limelight. Thus, Jen must dim herself and settle for the comfort of drinking, never imagining that she could attract someone at the reception who might actually like her just for herself. The dude in question is plainly-named Josh Miller (Trevor Salter). A little too plainly, it turns out. For no one could be that “mild-mannered” without hiding an ulterior motive. Which is exactly what Josh does as he bides his time until Jen finally lets her guard down long enough to sleep with him, whereupon he extracts her blood and flees the scene.

Once again, Jen is ghosted. And because her self-esteem is so shot, it never even occurs to her that Josh might have done something shady as she stresses over her unanswered texts. Ending up at Emil Blonsky’s (Tim Roth) newly-founded retreat center for reforming villains, she finds herself confessing in group, “You know in high school, that friend you have that’s, like, way cooler than you are? Like more attractive and athletic, they get all the attention from everyone?” She then points to herself in her She-Hulk form and says, “Hello?” continuing, “You think, ‘Life would be so much easier if I were that person.’ And I can turn into that person anytime I want to. And everyone pays attention when I’m this… But it feels like cheating. Because would they like me if I didn’t have all of this?” It’s a question that Jen persists in grappling with as we learn that, as it happens, Josh is part of the 4chan-esque Intelligencia website, led by a man who has the gall to wield the user name HulkKing.

This setup in the penultimate episode leads to a finale rife with all the irreverent meta flavor the series paraded thus far. For example, meeting with the Marvel overlord called K.E.V.I.N. (a nod to Kevin Feige) to discuss the ostensibly undesirable conclusion to the series, Jen takes him to task with her legal prowess/knack for arguing. Advocating for a better ending than the one She-Hulk seems to be getting, Jen says that adding a bunch of “plot and flash” at the end, as MCU is known for, is not what Jen, nor her audience, wants. Something she explains to K.E.V.I.N. when she tells him, “It distracts from the story. Which is that my life fell apart. Right when I was learning to be both Jen and She-Hulk. Those are my stakes.”

When he demands what ending she would propose, at the top of the list is not having Bruce come down to save the day. Because, in case one needs it spelled out yet again, such a “convenient” plot point is completely sexist and degrading to Jen and her alter ego.

Despite how well the season (and series) wraps itself up, review sites would seem to indicate otherwise. Unsurprisingly, before She-Hulk had even aired more than one episode, it was review-bombed to the point where it presently has four or five stars out of ten on most websites. Needless to say, it’s evident that She-Hulk struck far too much of a cord with the anti-female, “Make Marvel Great Again” viewers that would seek to bury it so that MCU never does something like this again.

The recent fate of Warner Bros. kiboshing Batgirl is also telling on this front. So maybe that’s why it feels even more poetic that the crux of the final scene of She-Hulk speaks to taking accountability for one’s actions. Particularly their innately sexist ones that would inhibit the simple admission that a show is fly just because its focus is no longer on a man.

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Genna Rivieccio

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November 4, 2022
SZA & Clyde: The “Shirt” Video Offers a Variation on Bonnie and Clyde and Pulp Fiction With Far More Betrayal Involved

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Every time SZA comes out of the woodwork, it always seems to be worth the wait (case in point: “I Hate U”). And her latest single and video, “Shirt” (soon to be frequently misspelled as “Shit”), is no exception to that phenomenon. Directed by Dave Meyers, it’s clear from the outset that SZA is riffing on the Bonnie and Clyde dynamic that Quentin Tarantino re-popularized in 1994’s Pulp Fiction with Ringo a.k.a. Pumpkin (Tim Roth) and Yolanda a.k.a. Honey Bunny (Amanda Plummer) in the illustrious diner scene that serves as beginning and end points for the film.

Indeed, SZA’s own narrative for “Shirt” begins in a diner, with her “Clyde” played by LaKeith Stanfield (of Atlanta fame). As the two sit facing one another in a booth, close-up shots on their serene countenances present a kind of sexual tension. Or at least, a tension. Sounding a bit like Madonna talking about Kabbalah in the 00s, SZA proceeds to inform her boo, “Color is light, light is energy—energy’s everything.” “What about these salt shakers?” he asks (forgetting that it’s a set of salt and pepper shakers). She confirms, “Energy.” “This table?” “Energy.” He leans in and then inquires seductively, “You and me?” The seduction, however, is ruined by the sudden realization that there’s another “energy” at the table. Specifically, “Clyde’s” goonish friend, who shouts, “Yo, come on!” in disgust. “Shut up nigga, damn!” “Clyde” screams as he slaps him upside the happy-face-hair-design head. In irritation, “Clyde” adds, “You see we talkin’?” He turns back to SZA and says, “You were sayin’?” Without missing a beat, she concludes, “Energy.” With that, the indelible beat (courtesy of the amazing Rodney Jerkins a.k.a. Darkchild) commences as SZA casually shoots “Clyde’s” friend in the cabeza, which we see briefly from the perspective of the inside of his busted-ass mouth.

Meyers then cuts to a scene of the two dressed in nun attire as they enter a “church” that looks plucked straight out of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet. Inside, pregnant “nuns” hold neon blue crosses above their head with a cowboy hat-wearing “minister” in between them as other “nuns” in various states of undress and sexual poses also populate the scene. SZA and “Clyde” then open fire as a barrage of interspersed scenes featuring them generally causing mayhem ensue. This includes the sight of a dead, bloodied old lady in a trunk (covered in money, naturally), a dead clown in a stairwell and a dead construction worker on the ground. Just some average daily carnage, it would seem. But what else were we to expect with an opening verse like, “Kiss me dangerous/Been so lost without you all around me/Get anxious/Lead me, don’t look back/It’s all about you.” Such lyrics speaking of intertwined, “crazy love” coupledom could provide no other type of video concept. It’s almost a wonder SZA didn’t go the True Romance homage route instead, but then, Tove Lo sort of has the monopoly on that right now after writing a song of the same name about that very film for Dirt Femme.

The presence of the aforementioned “church” atmosphere also accents SZA giving in to darkness even in places of (supposed) light—this being further evident when she sings, “Broad day, sunshine/I’ll find a way to fuck it up still” and “In the dark right now/Feelin’ lost, but I like it/Comfort in my sins and all about me.” And “Clyde” is all about him, too, as he breaks the cardinal rule of “crazy love” by popping SZA in the stomach (hence, “Blood stain on my shirt”) and driving off in a car with a license plate that reads, “NOCTRL” (an overt nod to SZA’s debut album being named Ctrl). But “Clyde” didn’t seem to get the message SZA was sending about “energy” earlier—and now, even her ghost has become that as it floats up out of her body (with “Clyde’s” own face/energy flickering in and out of her visage) and ostensibly gets recycled back into the universe.

Maybe that’s how SZA is able to return and “haunt” “Clyde.” Not just when he looks in the rearview mirror and sees her reflection in it, but also when he ends up tied to a chair in a warehouse after crashing the car as a result of the shock that came with the vision of spectral SZA. After that crash, she reanimates into a new-but-same body in the warehouse as the fitting lyrics, “It’s what you say and how you do me/How I’m ‘posed to trust, baby?/‘Posed to love?/It ain’t supposed to hurt this way/All I need is the best of you/Baby, how I got to say it?/Give me all of you” play over the scene.

Since “Clyde” suddenly can’t, for whatever reason, give all of himself, SZA has no problem walking away from her erstwhile boyfriend as he’s left to the proverbial violent henchmen. In the next scene, she appears with a shorter haircut in front of a trashcan fire as she turns around to shoot and kill her own shadow (something Peter Pan probably wanted to do more than a few times). We then see still another “version” or “energy form” of SZA ride off into the sunset on a boat during the video’s conclusion, a moment that speaks to the lines in the forewarning chorus, “Still don’t know my worth/Still stressin’ perfection/Let you all in my mental/Got me lookin’ too desperate/Damn (You ain’t deserve).” So, yeah, she up and left.

Generously, SZA doesn’t leave her viewer entirely at the end of the video the way she does her man. For she provides us not only with a final iconic look (bombastic yellow eye makeup coordinated with a Dole shirt), but also with a snippet of her next single, “Blind.” This as we see her in the kitchen/dishwashing area of the same diner as before, standing next to the same “Butcher” (Isaak Adoyi) we glimpsed previously watching the now-dismantled couple at the table from his sequestered perch. Hopefully, a “Part 2” of this concept will follow. Just as Quentin offered a Vol. 2 for Kill Bill.

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Genna Rivieccio

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November 2, 2022
Billie Eilish Said “I’m the Problem” Before Taylor Swift and, Historically, That Tends to Track

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Perhaps because it’s so unusual to encounter a Gen Zer doing anything either original or “first” (not that anything really can be at this point), listeners have been quick to forget that, earlier this year, Billie Eilish already immortalized the lyrics, “I’m the problem” on her single, “TV,” released in July via her two-track EP, Guitar Songs. While Taylor Swift may have already written “Anti-Hero” at that juncture, the rule goes that whoever releases something before another musician tends to be the “owner” of that lyrical phrase. And yet, Eilish, despite her equitable popularity to Swift in such a short span of time (although the two seem vastly different from a stylistic perspective, the singer-songwriter shtick is prominent in both), has largely been forgotten for helming, “I’m the problem.” That is, ever since “Anti-Hero” inaugurated the barrage of singles that will inevitably be released from Midnights.

Maybe the effortless forgetting of Eilish as the OG “responsibility-taker” for being something of a “problematic” person (in addition to a jobist) stems from how she couldn’t be bothered to note, “Maybe I, maybe I, maybe I’m the problem” in a catchy pop song format the way Taylor has with the chirpier phrase, “It’s me, hi/I’m the problem/It’s me.” Perhaps just going to show that the millennial knows best when it comes to toeing the line between pandering to the generations they’re sandwiched in between. Whereas Gen Z seemingly just wants to burn the whole world to the ground (but is ultimately too apathetic to do so). All while claiming to be “much different” from the millennials they balk at while simultaneously grafting pretty much every pop cultural element from them (except in this anomalous case of Taylor grafting from Billie, unless, of course, the former has documentation [obviously, she does] of the exact date she initially started writing “Anti-Hero”). And yet, not so “different” as to avoid “covert narcissism disguised as altruism,” as Taylor words it. In Eilish’s case, that comes in the form of asking hopefully, “Did you see me on TV?”

The lack of divergence from previous generations of women on Eilish’s part has also been frequently revealed by the “pull” of older men—all while putting out the contradictory message of being “weird” a.k.a. anti-heteronormative. Yet Eilish is perhaps even more heteronormative (which, ironically, “wish you were gay” also corroborates) than Swift if her history of fetishizing “mature” dick is any hint.

And yes, she continues to be “the problem” after dressing up as a baby for Halloween while her older boyfriend, Jesse Rutherford (best known as the lead singer of The Neighbourhood), opted to show up as an old man. Although the two might have thought it was a “cute” way to “poke fun” at their almost eleven-year age gap, it only highlighted how little Eilish actually cares to cater to her own easily outraged generation (in addition to highlighting the retroactive ick factor of one of The Neighbourhood’s biggest songs being called “Daddy Issues”). Something she also made apparent when she appeared on the cover of British Vogue in what amounted to Marilyn drag (and actually, Billie Eilish might have been a better choice for Marilyn in Blonde than Ana de Armas—granted, nothing and no one could have saved that monstrosity). This after building her “brand” on championing the “offbeat”—as Wednesday Addams might in the twenty-first century.

As for Taylor, the extent of her own “experimentation” comes in the form of sampling the “dream pop”/electropop stylings of the 2012 era that the likes of Chvrches, M83 and Phantogram already perfected. But, as Taylor has shown us in ousting Billie with the “I’m the problem” adage, she’s capable of “erasing” anyone she wants to whenever she comes along to perform something with her own musical interpretation of what’s already been done before. Plus, Eilish is more reluctant to admit her wrongdoings/overall frailty on “TV,” only gradually coming to the conclusion at the very end of the song that, “Baby, I, baby, I, baby, I’m the problem.” Taylor, in contrast, is far quicker to take the blame for, well, everything. Especially when it comes to being “too big to hang out” with (just as Lorde noted of herself on “Liability”). And while “TV” is a song that focuses more on the general “sickness of the culture,” “Anti-Hero” is about being overcome by one’s own insecurities and giving in completely to that low self-esteem.

Eilish, instead, appears to have low esteem for everyone else when she offers lyrics like, “The internet’s gone wild watching movie stars on trial/While they’re overturning Roe v. Wade.” However, one notable similarity regarding insecurity that is present on both tracks pertains to weight—apparently a subject that transcends all generational divides in spite of Gen Z’s frequent touting of “body positivity.” While Eilish sings, “I’ll try not to starve myself/Just because you’re mad at me,” Taylor (formerly) showed that insecurity with a scale in the “Anti-Hero” video that reads, “FAT” when she steps onto it. Except, of course, she wasn’t allowed to have her own feelings displayed for long because of the scandalized Gen Z types that would accuse her of being fat-shaming to others.

As for Eilish and her own problematic nature, she’ll take a less direct approach in confronting it, as manifest in the “TV” lyrics, “I’ll be in denial for at least a little while.” The same way Swifties will be about Eilish sonically coining “I’m the problem” before Taylor.

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Genna Rivieccio

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November 1, 2022
Madonna’s Unwitting “Plastic Surgery Costume”: A Commentary on Class and Age

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Just when you thought Madonna might not have any sense of self-awareness, she goes and does something all too meta: puts scar makeup all over her face as part of her Halloween costume. It’s unclear just what, exactly, she was trying to “be” with this look, apart from Someone Who Just Left the Plastic Surgeon’s Office. Unless, of course, she wants to say she’s going for a “scarecrow” aesthetic (some ageist areseholes would jibe, “Ha! More like scarecrone!”). Others have posited she was trying her hand at being a “sexy zombie.” In any case, maybe she actually didn’t know that putting scars on her face like that would draw the obvious remark from viewers that it looks as though she just got another touch-up at the clinic and didn’t bother to wait to show it off “casually,” better known as: acting like it never happened at all.

Although making comments about people’s plastic surgery can be construed as a form of body shaming, the glaring spotlight on Madonna’s various procedures over the past decade have become difficult to ignore. Even in spite of the many filters she freely wields to make her face look somehow younger than it did when she was in her twenties (this being called “Madonna’s Face as Andy Warhol’s Philosophy”). And while some would say that her inability to “admit” her age by just “letting herself go” is part of the problem in terms of why women continue to remain obsessed with looking young by any means necessary (read: plastic surgery), what it really speaks to is the future of what “looking young at any age” will mean.

Many will already take note that, since even as recent a time as a show like Golden Girls, when Bea Arthur was sixty-three playing a woman in her fifties, those in the same age bracket now presently look much younger. While certain researchers tend to offer the idea that, for women, this has become a phenomenon because more females are having children later in life or not at all—which means the youth and beauty sucked from them while nurturing that child in their womb is bypassed—a key factor is the more widespread ability of various beauty “procedures” and products. Especially expensive ones that only celebrities like Madonna can afford.

Granted, Madonna likely wishes she hadn’t “needed” to start in the plastic surgery game until after the 90s, when even more modern advancements came along. Perhaps she would have preferred to wait for something less “invasive” like the vampire facial Kim Kardashian made notorious. Alas, Madonna received the pratfalls of being a baby boomer just as she received many of its benefits (e.g., the ease of climbing to the top without every pre-fame move being documented or, say, being positioned at a time in history when she could lay claim to doing everything “first”). And one of those cons, as it were, included subjecting herself to more “analog” beauty methods. Starting too soon, yet still seeking out nothing but the best money could buy (much like Elise Elliot [Goldie Hawn] in The First Wives Club, who famously stated, “It’s the 90s, plastic surgery is like good grooming”).

And it served her well for quite a while, save for a strange awkward phase in 2001 (for the entirety of the Drowned World Tour) that magically disappeared in 2002. As though she’d “switched surgeons” or something. In any event, Madonna’s ever-changing face has long been a topic of discussion, often heated. Indeed, M was perhaps more called out than ever when she graced the cover of New York Magazine in 2008 with “The New New Face” as an accompanying title meant to refer to a plastic surgery procedure that was all the rage among celebrities at the time. But by and large, the discussion about her face is rather minimal considering how overt the changes to it have been. Maybe that’s just another aspect of being in the upper echelon financially: no one questions what you do to your body that much for fear of getting slapped on the wrist in some unexpected way. In Britney Spears’ case, that partially resulted in an all-out revolt against recording new music.

While non-famous women have the advantage of looking younger for longer compared to their forebears thanks to a vastly increased quality of life (complete with regular dental care!), the fact remains that it is only celebrities and other assorted richies who will be able to truly buy their way out of the effects of time (and who knows, maybe even death at some point). Madonna might not be deemed the best example of this, but then, one can dredge up the insult-compliment, “You have to admit that she looks great…for her age.” And she certainly doesn’t look like Bea Arthur did in her sixties.

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Genna Rivieccio

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October 31, 2022
Halloween Ends, Evil Never Does

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A year after the events of 2018’s (rather lackluster) Halloween Kills, mild-mannered Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell) is asked to babysit a boy named Jeremy (Jaxon Goldenberg) on Halloween night. Usually employed by his parents, the Allens (played by Candice Rose and Jack William Marshall), to do yard work, Mr. Allen jokes that he hopes Corey’s a better babysitter than he is at yard maintenance. The joke turns out to be all too prescient as Jeremy starts to play a little game of hide and seek with Corey after warning him that Michael Meyers kills babysitters. Even “ugly-ass” ones like Corey. Panicked when he hears a series of doors opening and shutting after Jeremy goes missing from the living room, Corey follows the sound of Jeremy crying out for help into the attic. Once he’s lured there, Jeremy locks him in and starts taunting him about how, sooner or later, Michael is going to get him. As it turns out, Jeremy’s prediction will come true in ways he couldn’t have imagined. And will never be able to… for as Corey proceeds to kick the door repeatedly to open it, when it finally does, it causes Jeremy to fly over the staircase railing and plunge to his death just as the Allens arrive back home. Almost makes the sexist case for women being better caretakers, doesn’t it?

Although Corey had big plans to go to college, wanting to use some of that babysitting money toward the funds, three years later, we see he’s still stuck in Haddonfield, working at his father Ronald’s (Rick Moose) mechanic shop and living at home. Much to the schadenfreude-oriented delight of his mother, Joan (Joanne Baron). Having turned into something of a DC villain origin story (think: Joker) at this juncture, we can see that the main focus of Halloween Ends will be on Corey’s “transformation”—from innocent youth to jaded adult to full-tilt evil entity. For many, that’s the main beef with this particular “final” installment (at least, as far as this trilogy is concerned). That it doesn’t focus “enough” on Michael Meyers. And yet, the entire purpose of Paul Brad Logan, Chris Bernier, Danny McBride and David Gordon Green’s script is to emphasize that Meyers remains omnipresent. Not just in the sense that he’s a boogeyman feared whether he’s truly around or not, but in the sense that evil never dies—it just transfers and reanimates (e.g., Stalin to Putin).

This is something Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis, especially “on her game” throughout)—in all her wisdom about coming face to face with evil—can sense and recognize in Corey. But before she realizes this fact, it’s already too late. She’s quite literally dragged him into the doctor’s office where her granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak), works as a nurse. Now living together, Allyson and Laurie have grown even closer after the death of Karen (Judy Greer) a.k.a. Allyson’s mother and Laurie’s daughter. Having sacrificed herself to Michael to spare Allyson in Halloween Kills, it’s a guilt she lives with every day. Much like the guilt Corey lives with, albeit of an entirely different variety. From the second they see one another in the office, it’s a guilt and sadness that connects them right away. And from that moment on, their relationship becomes the stuff of Lana Del Rey songs.

At first, Laurie, who rescued him from the bullying torment of local high schoolers Terry (Michael Barbieri), Stacy (Destiny Mone), Billy (Marteen) and Margo (Joey Harris), is glad to see Allyson opening up to someone. That is, until she catches sight of Corey standing next to the bushes ominously outside her house the exact same way Michael did all those decades ago. In that instant, she understands that something evil has been born inside of Corey.

But by that time, it’s already too late, for Corey has come to apologize to Allyson about the night before, when he completely went off on her for bringing him to a public space (namely, Lindsey Wallace’s [Kyle Richards] bar) for a Halloween party. Because the second he took off his scarecrow mask (you’re seeing where that little detail is going, right?) to go order more drinks, he runs into Mrs. Allen, who berates him for daring to have a good time. To display joy of any kind while she suffers every day over her loss. It’s this reminder that sends Corey into what will become a permanently dark place… one, it can be argued, that was likely always there behind the “sweet disposition.”

Perhaps that’s why there’s a seemingly innocuous moment at the beginning of the movie when Corey grapples with the urge to pull a beer out of the refrigerator after Jeremy verbally abuses him or, instead, opt for the chocolate milk. At that point, when he’s still pure, he ends up choosing the chocolate milk—a very symbol of wholesomeness. Later on in the movie, at the convenience store, he buys some in a glass bottle that eventually shatters as he squeezes it in his hand, buckling under the rage of being bullied by the aforementioned quartet of high schoolers. Tired of his pariah status—seen by the entire town as a monster—it’s as though he decides to just fully embrace being one, since nobody will ever look past the myth of him being a kid killer anyway.

It’s a sudden “fuck it” attitude that an encounter with Michael Meyers in a sewer beneath a Haddonfield bridge solidifies that night after leaving Allyson at the Halloween party. Meyers, who ordinarily kills anyone that he manages to entrap in that lair, lets Corey go, for “whatever reason.” But, of course, the reason is clear: evil recognizes evil. And it’s obvious he’s found a conduit to transfer his own to, perhaps finally sensing the frailty of his old age and wanting to ensure there’s a “successor.” Except that little theory is negated when Michael shows up to one of Corey’s killings (by now, he’s embraced wearing the scarecrow mask to do so) and seems to be competing with him in the kill—this being the least credible aspect of the storyline and its “universe.” Though some disgruntled viewers would say the entire story is a load of hooey. Not so. For the message behind Halloween Ends is a timelessly resonant one, especially as we watch the frequent swapping of world leaders that result in no change, just a different mask (see: British prime ministers). Fittingly enough, Halloween III: Season of the Witch was also among the least well-received in the Halloween series for its lack of Michael Meyers appearances (which, again, Halloween Ends has plenty of).

In lieu of that, writer-director Tommy Lee Wallace put the focus on the idea of masks themselves, how people act when wearing them—and this time involving the ritual sacrifice of children. The special effects artist for the movie, Don Post, appropriately commented, “Every society in every time has had its masks that suited the mood of the society, from the masked ball to clowns to makeup. People want to act out a feeling inside themselves—angry, sad, happy, old. It may be a sad commentary on present-day America that horror masks are the best sellers.” And, undoubtedly, both Michael Meyers and Corey Cunningham (notice the alliteration in each name) are just another product of that commentary. The opening credits to Halloween Ends featuring a series of pumpkins with ever-changing faces of malevolence only further speaks to that motif: evil merely shifts from one husk to another, like an infection.

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Genna Rivieccio

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October 31, 2022
When a Relationship is Flatlining, Ellie Goulding Recommends: “Let It Die”

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Veering away from her more “DIY aesthetic” that took hold of most music videos circa 2020, Ellie Goulding is back with a new single to support the release of her upcoming fifth album, Higher Than Heaven (not to be conflated with Florence + the Machine’s High As Hope). Fitting in with the afterlife motif of such a title, her song is called, “Let It Die.” A far cry from the Paul McCartney philosophy of “Live and Let Die.” For, in Goulding’s estimation, it isn’t about moving on, per se, and letting the other person “do them,” so much as it is about her realizing she has to kill off a relationship in order to survive. Ergo, the opening verse, “Toxicity slippin’ to my bloodstream/I give too much, you suck the life out of me.”

In many regards, it echoes the theme conveyed by a fellow Briton (Welsh, to be more precise) MARINA, on 2019’s “No More Suckers.” With a double meaning that refers to being a sucker for getting bamboozled by other people’s faux “love” and the “suckage” that occurs from proverbial leeches, MARINA declares, “I was too open, I was too quick/To let other people in, took whatever they could get/Now I see a pattern, I’m getting rid of it/Yeah, I know I need a change ’cause I’m tired of feeling drained.” She then chirps happily in the chorus, “No more suckers in my life/All the drama gets them high/I’m just trying to draw the line/No more suckers in my life/They just keep bleeding me dry/Till there’s nothing left inside.”

It’s evident that Goulding feels the same way about one person in particular (though hopefully not her own husband, Caspar Jopling) as she traipses into the White Cube Gallery—the view showing us a perspective of her marching feet as though she’s the one holding the camera from above (which, surely, she must be). But ultimately, it’s director Carlota Guerrero calling the filmic shots as we then see two rows of dancers lined up on each side of the hallway in poses of either mounter or mountee. Goulding, the lone wolf among the pack, seems to be the only one with the knowledge that coupledom is bullshit as she turns the camera back to her face in selfie mode to sing, “I fill my cup to drink you into someone else/And I blame myself.” As Sky Ferreira once did on a song called the same.

Guerrero then cuts to Goulding at the center of four other bikini-clad dancers (in bikini tops meant to look like tits on certain portions of it) in front of a painting that appears as though it’s dripping gold (Goulding, gold—not a coincidence). Talk of the suburbs (like Olivia Rodrigo did on “drivers license”) as metaphor then arrives in the lyrics, “And I had a dream that we were a beautiful endeavor/Sunset driving through the suburbs/But we go no further.” The inevitable dance breakdown occurs when the musical one does with Goulding asking in earnest, “When did you lose the light behind your eyes?/Tell me why when there’s no more tears to cry [something Ariana knows all about]/And you’re holdin’ on to love for life/I think it’s timе to let it die.”

It’s a powerful philosophy that many still have trouble adhering to in this world of the monogamy-capitalism industrial complex. For a large majority finds it far easier to stay with someone while feeling a lingering sense of perpetual dissatisfaction (a topic Adele addresses on most of 30) than actually risk leaving and seeing what fate awaits them “out there.”

A cut to Goulding back in clothes and in front of a new painting finds her surrounded by dancers laid out on the floor before each couple permutation engages in a choreographed tussle, some in “freeze frame” position. In the midst of it all, Goulding urges, “If you lose yourself, let it die.” A mantra that few people in relationships are willing to adhere to as a result of the continued societal shunning of those who would willfully engage in something like sologamy over being “only” “semi”-miserable in a couple.

In the next scenes, Kazaky-type dancers (in terms of men wearing tights with heels), proceed to go wild with their moves as Goulding remains the calm eye in the center of the storm. It’s almost like an allegory for the person who has become immune to their partner’s verbal abuse, tuning it out and floating up somewhere else until it’s over. She continues to stand among the fray of violently moving dancers as the video comes to a close, some aspects reminding one of Madonna doing the same amid a crowd of pawing “fans” in the “Drowned World/Substitute for Love” video (which Olivia Rodrigo vaguely recreated for portions of Sour Prom).

For those who are already “strong enough” to have admitted that it was better to be alone than unhappy (as Whitney noted on “It’s Not Right, But It’s Okay”), perhaps it’s more useful to interpret “Let It Die” as an indirect anthem speaking from the point of view of Mother Earth herself with regard to her give-give-give dynamic with humans (as MARINA, once again, also did on “Purge the Poison”). Indeed, relationship status won’t much matter anyway when we’re all fighting for basic survival and things like “sexy time” feel more superfluous than usual.

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Genna Rivieccio

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October 30, 2022
Pearl Proves What Eminem Said Long Ago: “You Only Get One Shot”

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Of all the movies released in the past year to end up offering a prequel and a sequel, X seemed among the least likely. After all, one initially reads it as “just” another A24 horror special. Unique in its singular brand of fucked-upness. But Ti West and Mia Goth clearly thought, as Lestat (Tom Cruise) in Interview With the Vampire did of a certain dead old woman, “There’s still life in the old lady yet!” And the old lady in question here is Pearl (Goth), whose moniker the latest installment in the X “saga” is named after (complete with the subtitle: An X-traordinary Origin Story). Because, clearly, there was a root to what caused this evil, nymphomaniacal old woman to be that way. Starting with the curse of “daring” to have a noticeable sexual appetite in the year 1918, where the Pearl narrative unfolds on the very same farm in X.

It doesn’t take long to realize that, in addition to being burdened with sexual desires that a girl isn’t “supposed to” have, Pearl is also the daughter of German immigrants, living in rural Texas at a time of peak anti-German sentiment as the end of World War I came to a close (soon to set the stage for the Germans inciting World War II in retaliation for their raw deal in the Treaty of Versailles). Blaming the “krauts” for the entire war, discrimination ensued during this period, and Pearl’s parents are no exception. Plus, with Pearl’s father (Matthew Sunderland) paralyzed and incapable of speech or caring for himself, the responsibility has become even harder on her mother, Ruth (Tandi Wright), as a woman trying to “run things” without additional prejudice.

So it is that she’s harder on Pearl than perhaps she ought to be. Expecting her to pick up the slack despite knowing she’s a lazy dreamer of a girl. A characteristic we see from the first moments of the film, opening on a scene of Pearl playing dress up in her mother’s finer clothes and posing in the mirror—something about it very much reminding well-versed viewers of the deranged “Baby” Jane (Bette Davis) in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Indeed, Pearl feels like a spawn of that particular “psycho biddy” progenitor. And yes, just the same as Future Pearl, a large part of Jane’s bitter rage stemmed from no longer being seen as desirable by men. A quality that goes hand in hand with making it in show business. Even still, but most especially at the outset of cinema (and through the “Golden Age” of Hollywood). Which Pearl had the great misfortune of seeing unfold. One says “misfortune” because, perhaps if she had been born before the dawn of silent film, her head wouldn’t have been so filled with “big dreams” and her narcissism wouldn’t have had a place to be channeled. Perhaps she would’ve suppressed it like the rest of the masses.

But no, she is as taken with “the movies” as so many in America were, starting from the inception of phenomena like nickelodeons. Ironically, the upper classes were the ones who turned their noses up at newsreels and “actualities” shown to the public in such venues, viewing it as cheap and vulgar fare. Not for the “elite.” Of course, the so-called elite would go on to make their money off the hoi polloi’s love of cinema eventually. After working-class immigrants such as Adolph Zukor (who produced one of the U.S.’ first feature-length movies in 1913, The Prisoner of Zenda), Samuel Goldwyn and Carl Laemmle (himself a German like Pearl’s parents) already saw the opportunity to do so long before anyone else. That Pearl should exist at a moment in time like this, during the “excitement” and the “hustle and bustle” of an industry so new, was to her detriment rather than her advantage. For it gave her the false hope that she might be capable of having “more.”

Her obsessive delusions with escaping the drudgery of farm life are manifest in every little act she does. Even something as simple as feeding the animals in the barn. “Y’all see me for who I really am!” she shouts to the perplexed “audience” as she runs up to mount a pile of hay bales and conclude, “A star!” With a pitchfork over her head, the image is ominous, to say the least, and foreshadows the fate of the innocent goose that walks up to see what all that fanfare is in the barn. Needless to say, Pearl doesn’t care for such “interlopers.” And, in keeping with the pattern of most standard-issue serial killers, it’s no surprise that Pearl should start with animals and work her way up to humans.

Just as she plans to work her way up the show biz ladder, even if it’s by starting with something as middling as a touring church troupe (this is, after all, Texas). Plus, with the influenza pandemic “winding down” (though it wouldn’t really do so until 1920, it was assumed “safe” to start gallivanting again—even if most of the “background people” in Pearl are seen wearing masks, an all too eerie and resonant vision for the “COVID enduring” audience watching the familiar sight and dialogue. Including Pearl’s sister-in-law, Mitsy (Emma Jenkins-Purro), noting to Pearl, “All this isolation has been enough to make one mad.” This after she and her mother bring a pig to the farm as an offering of goodwill. Ruth only sees it as unwanted charity and leaves it on the porch. But before Howard’s (played by Stephen Ure in X and Alistair Sewell in Pearl) family departs, Mitsy gives Pearl the “hot tip” about a dance audition for the church’s Christmas chorus line “to bring merriment to folks throughout the state during the holidays.” Mitsy ought to have known better than to tell Pearl anything about it, for she instantly puts all her eggs in that basket, running up to the cow, Charlie, kissing him on the mouth and saying, “This could be it!”

Alas, because it’s supposed to be 1918, it wouldn’t be appropriate to use Eminem’s signature song from 8 Mile, “Lose Yourself,” as part of the soundtrack. And yet, that’s exactly what one can hear going on in Pearl’s mind as she refuses to let anything or anyone stand in her way as she prepares for her “big” audition. The thing she sees as her sole ticket—apart from living in her fantasy world—out of the homestead. Much as Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland) only had literal dreaming to escape from her own dreary, black-and-white location.

Although The Wizard of Oz was a demarcation of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Pearl, despite taking place in the heyday of chorus lines and silent movies, is awash in that “flavor.” Albeit with an extremely perverse, macabre slant—right down to “our Dorothy,” Pearl, dancing around with a scarecrow and then fucking it as she imagines it to be the projectionist (David Corenswet) she just met in town. The one who eventually shows her a notorious stag movie of the day (called A Free Ride) when she returns to the theater after-hours. This obviously being another nod to Maxine Minx’s (also played by Goth) own future in the porn industry, which we’ll soon see further unfold in MaXXXine.

The fact that Pearl herself isn’t scandalized by the images (which would have been extremely shocking to any garden-variety woman back in the day) is yet another testament to her “off” nature—as well as her parallel with Maxine. Hell, if Pearl could become a star based on these kinds of films, she would do it. But such a “genre” was still too much, too soon for a repressed America only just getting accustomed to normal “sinful” movies that eventually prompted the conservative “moral majority” to invoke the Hays code. A stifling barrage of film limitations that Pearl will never have to worry about, for she’ll never hit the big time. A revelation that slowly creeps into her mind as she states during what is sure to become ranked among one of cinema’s greatest monologues, “Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night and fear washes over me ‘cause what if this is it? What if this is right where I belong?”

Of course, she knows deep down that this is it, she’ll be condemned to the farm forever. And it has nothing to do with how she only tried at being in “show business” once and failed, and everything to do with the arcane awareness that those born into a certain family and class will never be able to escape the curse of that station.

As many stories before Pearl have proffered as a moral: all sources of pain and suffering can be traced to attempts at “reaching for the stars.” In other words, trying to extricate oneself from their circumstance of birth. Something that Ruth warns Pearl not to bother with when she says, “One day you’ll understand that getting what you want isn’t what’s important. Making the most of what you have is. Life rarely turns out how you expect. You need to be prepared for that if you ever want to be happy.”

But Pearl can’t be told such things. Like most, she’s inclined to learn the hard way. Building up the pressure in her mind with the internal mantra, “Look, if you had one shot/Or one opportunity/To seize everything you ever wanted/In one moment/Would you capture it/Or just let it slip?/You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow/This opportunity comes once in a lifetime.” For Pearl, the lifetime that follows after that “one opportunity” is an existence of bleak, vengeful despair. But clearly, she at least has Howard, who returns home from the war to find her with a plastered-on smile, to accept her for what she is: a monster. Turned that way as a lot of ordinary people are when they realize life just ain’t how it is in the movies.

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Genna Rivieccio

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October 29, 2022
Don’t Hate Taylor Because She’s Thin And Still Feels Fat: “Anti-Hero” and Its Cacomorphobia Interpretation

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For some reason, it was only about two or so seconds of the “Anti-Hero” video that stood out to many viewers. Particularly, let’s say, more zaftig viewers who took one look at the scale that read, “FAT” and said to themselves, “How could she?” Not only because Taylor Swift embodies one of those rather vexing skinny bitches who feigns having to worry about their weight like any other garden-variety fatso (read: most of America), but because, in the present climate, it seemed incredible that she thought she’d be able to get away with it unscathed, innocuous as it may have seemed to her. This perhaps being a product of both her foolishness in thinking that uncensored self-expression is part and parcel of what art is and being surrounded by too many cloying sycophants to be properly forewarned. One would sub out “cloying sychophants” with “skinny people” were it not for the fact that Lena Dunham is one of Swift’s “besties,” and she didn’t seem to take offense.

In the past, Swift has been known for “carousing” with fellow tall, thin people (often referred to as models), most of which were represented in the “Bad Blood” video, including Cara Delevingne, Gigi Hadid and Karlie Kloss. The backlash that her “girl squad” received, however, was also rooted in a public disdain for Swift parading a homogenous standard of beauty. Swift eventually responded to the reaction by remarking, “I never would have imagined that people would have thought, ‘This is a clique that wouldn’t have accepted me if I wanted to be in it.’ Holy shit, that hit me like a ton of bricks.” And yet, for someone whose songwriting is so frequently about being an “outsider,” one would think she could tend to imagine it. But that’s the thing: she’s the type of “outsider” frequently presented in rom-coms of a bygone era. You know, the sort of girl who is only “ugly” because she has glasses and her hair hasn’t yet gotten a blowout. Naturally, Swift wouldn’t and couldn’t see it that way, just recently singing things like, “No one wanted to play with me as a little kid/So I’ve been scheming like a criminal ever since/To make them love me and make it seem effortless” on Midnights.

And one aspect of the “effortlessness” of “making someone” “love” you, in this world of peddling brainwashing ads about how to be “beautiful,” is “keeping fit.” Something Taylor has been made hyper-aware of in her role as a monolithic celebrity, dissected and picked apart as much for her looks as she is for her personal life. Understandably, this would warp her perspective even more than the average self-hating girl. And for those who wish to seek a better, more tasteful insight into that than “Anti-Hero,” it can’t be emphasized enough to listen to and watch the video for Tove Lo’s “Grapefruit.” A track that speaks to the raging sense of body dysmorphia that exists inside so many women. Though, to be more “feminist,” Xtina’s “Beautiful” video also calls it out in men as well. So yes, there is an honesty to what Taylor is portraying on that scale. How, no matter what size we are, we’ve been conditioned to see it as being still too “FAT.” Regardless of simply being a healthy weight.

Alas, even Taylor Swift can no longer have her nice things, namely freedom to express her subjective thoughts and feelings without it being shat upon by people who are ultimately jealous of her figure and enraged by the fact that she doesn’t appreciate it. It’s ironic, of course, that in declaring in the very same video, “It’s me, hi/I’m the problem, it’s me,” Taylor should make good on that assertion by being the “problem” for many an “overweight” person whose own insecurities she tapped into with use of the word “fat,” in addition to conveying it as a source of ultimate fear. This playing into the inherently fatphobic (cacomorphobia, if you prefer) nature of society. One whose “values” Taylor is both a product and purveyor of. So why should she be muzzled when it comes to mentioning how she feels about that? Least of all held responsible for single-handedly eradicating the concept of body-shaming. Something that will never go away. And certainly not with the dominance social media, the premier conduit for comparison and self-loathing, here to stay for the foreseeable future.

Nonetheless, Swift was shamed for her purported body-shaming. To the extent that she actually altered the video almost right away (proving once again that most “artists” of the present are fucking pussies that won’t stand by what they’ve said or done when it’s poked at too much). To this end, in the current era of automatically “erasing” or “deleting” something that causes a backlash, it leaves one to wonder if art—in its undiluted form—can even exist anymore. Not to mention how it highlights that we live in a dystopian-level society that can and will censor at the drop of a hat.

To boot, “making people forget,” as though they’ve been exposed to the neuralyzer from Men in Black, doesn’t truly make the “problem” go away, it just buries it to the point where everyone becomes more passive aggressive in their expression of authentic internal feelings. And, by the way, it bears noting that Men in Black was released at a time when, evidently, the neuralyzer wasn’t as needed. For people are far more sensitive now than they were in 1997. Their delicate sensibilities constantly shot and rattled to the extent that, if they really were using the neuralyzer to have their memories of unwanted portrayals erased, they’d be operating with a practically lobotomized brain at this juncture. With Taylor now being yet another person to wield the ice pick by promptly removing the offending image. In turn, she’s effectively used it on herself as well, manifesting her ism, “I’m the problem, it’s me” by backing down on her own genuine emotions. And no, this not the same as Ye refusing to back down on his genuine “emotions” about Jewish people.

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Genna Rivieccio

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October 28, 2022
Rihanna’s “Lift Me Up” Is A Return to Some of Her Most Iconic Ballads

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Gradually getting the masses accustomed to her presence among us as a musician again (as opposed to just another beauty and fashion mogul), Rihanna has decided to “reintroduce” herself as only Rihanna could: by releasing a song for the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Soundtrack. It feels like a pointed initiation of her upcoming appearance at the Super Bowl Halftime Show. Arguably the most pressure-filled venue (and, for Ri, the most hypocritical one) a person could choose for a comeback. But it seems Rihanna also wants to remind people of her prowess not just as a performer, but as a vocalist before taking that stage. Thus, she’s given her listeners “Lift Me Up,” co-written by Ludwig Göransson, Ryan Coogler (who also directed both Black Panther movies) and Tems.

The song was penned as a tribute with Chadwick Boseman in mind, a fact that becomes quickly apparent a few verses in. So, of course, it could be nothing other than a ballad, even though many were likely hoping for Rihanna’s first comeback single to be one of her proverbial “bangers.” And yes, considering how “familiar” “Lift Me Up” sounds, it’s fitting that Ri’s last solo effort to chart was the belted-out ballad, “Love on the Brain.” Released as the final single from 2016’s Anti, it showcased Rihanna’s vocals at their rawest and most intense. Just as so many of her other indelible ballads have—including “Stay” (from Unapologetic), “We All Want Love” (from Talk That Talk), “California King Bed” (from Loud), “Cold Case Love” (from Rated R), “Cry” (from Good Girl Gone Bad), “Unfaithful” (from A Girl Like Me) and “The Last Time” (from Music of the Sun).

Building on her long history of nailing this particular style of song while making it all her own (hear also: “Higher”), the single’s album artwork perhaps deliberately harkens back to Ri’s earlier albums, Music of the Sun and A Girl Like Me, in that it’s a close-up shot of her face. Unlike the expressions in the aforementioned albums, however, there is an undeniable tone of somberness to this one, confirmed by the image being in black-and-white. And this is the first instance of one of her ballads being an “homage” track rather than a pining number that addresses love lost or otherwise tainted.

Because of Boseman’s role as King T’Challa, his influence on Black culture markedly escalated at the time of Black Panther’s release in 2018. Just two years later, he would die of colon cancer at the age of forty-three (adding to the general sentiment of, “Damn, this is a really shitty year for Black people” that occurred in 2020). In the span of his seventeen-year career (which began with a recurring role on All My Children), Boseman became an almost god-like figure when he stepped into the part of Black Panther, first appearing as King T’Challa in Captain America: Civil War, which, incidentally, came out the same year as Anti. The fact that Wakanda Forever pays so much of an homage to him with a song like this is yet another testament to what Boseman playing this part meant (and still means) to a great many people. And Rihanna does plenty of justice to the fallen king with her moving lyrics and delivery. Bittersweetly urging, “Burning in a hopeless dream/Hold me when you go to sleep/Keep me in the warmth of your love/When you depart, keep me safe/Safe and sound.” The subjects of Wakanda are surely asking the same of their erstwhile king.

In the second verse, Rihanna contrasts the previous imagery of “burning” with, “Drowning in an endless sea/Take some time and stay with me.” There’s that word she so loves to use in a ballad: “stay.” And yes, parting is such unwanted sorrow. With many who do it, like Boseman, not actually desiring to. The rest of the song’s lyrical composition is fairly simple, but then, that’s the point. For, to reiterate what so many have said in a varying form before her, including The Beatles and Madonna, simplicity is key. Which is why Rihanna insists straightforwardly, “We need light/We need love.” Delivered with a powerful earnestness, the song is even one to rival what Beyoncé did with “Be Alive” for the King Richard Soundtrack.

“Born Again” (which sounds like it could be the sequel to Lana Del Rey’s “Born to Die”), a pertinent title for Rihanna’s own imminent rebirth as a recording artist, will also be released from the soundtrack to further lay the groundwork for the singer-turned-entrepreneur’s musical return. And while most wouldn’t be able to live up to the pressure surrounding such a long hiatus, it seems the break has only sharpened Rihanna’s skills and refreshed her vigor for “the craft.” Given her time to pause and reflect… which should prove to the “Powers That Be” that “allowing” people time to recuperate from overworking isn’t a bane to capitalism, especially not in Rihanna’s case.

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Genna Rivieccio

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October 28, 2022
Adele and the Wine Factory: “I Drink Wine” Video Refreshes the Public’s Memory of There Being a Bigger Wine Enthusiast in the Music Business Than Taylor Swift

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Every time you think Adele might have disappeared yet again for good (Greta Garbo-style), she’s known to randomly reemerge and remind fans that she’s not totally out of album promotion mode. Even if she did just say she’s “taking a break” from music soon to pursue an English literature degree. Maybe she’d be taking that break even sooner were it not for that damned Vegas residency she committed to. And since she backed out of said residency for a spell before reinstating the dates for commencement this fall (starting from November 18th to March 25th at Caesar’s Palace), perhaps she wanted to serve up her booziest track from 30, “I Drink Wine,” in time to mark the occasion.

A single that possibly seeks to remind Taylor Swift, who constantly mentions drinking wine in her own songs, that Adele is a British dame who could drink Tay’s country ass under the table. And she has her own wine river to prove it. Or at least, one wants to believe it’s a river filled with wine, the same way viewers likely wanted believe it was actually chocolate in that river at Charlie’s factory (spoiler alert: it was just “stinky water,” “disgusting stuff that had been sitting there for three weeks”).

Nonetheless, thanks to the “magic of Hollywood” a.k.a. director Joe Talbot, we can make believe with Adele all we want to as she sloshes down the river atop a red inner tube, of sorts, whilst wearing a sequined gold evening gown (her running aesthetic for the 30 era)—by Valentino, no less. For, just because you like to get drunk, doesn’t mean you can’t keep it classy. That is, if you’re rich enough to make it come across that way. And, obviously, Adele is. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have her fair share of heartbreak to continue singing about with the misleadingly-titled 30 (for she was thirty-three when she released it), her “divorce album.”

“I Drink Wine” visualizes those heartbreaks like something of a trip down memory lane by glimpsing into the lives of others as she floats along the river (of life) and encounters various characters sitting on the bank, including a couple chatting happily as Adele looks at them somewhat resentfully and sings, “How can we both become a version of a person that we don’t even like?” She then pours the remainder of the bottle she’s holding into her glass and chucks it into the river (not exactly a PSA for being environmentally-friendly).

Another glance into a duo that seems more like her future than her past is a mother alone with her child. Trying to read in peace, the little girl interrupts her mother by wielding a sailboat in her direction and then heaving it obnoxiously into the water. As this happens, Adele recalls, “When I was a child, every single thing could blow my mind.” Apparently, this child is less wowed by the simple things, being a “seen it all…online” Gen Zer. Adele continues, “Soaking it all up for fun, but now I only soak up wine.” At this moment, a hand reaches out of the water to refill her glass, giving the video’s tone a comedic edge (or a horror one, depending on how you look at it). Adele’s intention being to accent the tragicomedy of life—you know, like her fellow Briton, William Shakespeare (and yes, the final shot does feature her in a poignant “Ophelia pose”).

That “tragicomedy” playing into the that trite line about how when one door closes, a window opens. In this video’s case, that window is opening to Rich Paul stand-in, Kendrick Sampson, best known for playing Issa’s boyfriend, Nathan, on Insecure. Having no issue with displaying her “flavor” for Black men (as certain white Brits might), Adele makes flirtatious lookie-loos the moment she sees him amid some other fishermen at the river. The allusion being that Adele is the fish in the sea about to be plucked out, for the moment he sees her, he does a double take, perhaps getting off on her challenge, “I don’t know anybody who’s truly satisfied.”

From there, Talbot gives us a slow pan-out of an overhead shot that allows us to take in the barrage of synchronized swimmers that are about to engage in some Busby Berkeley-inspired choreography. And as Adele and Kendrick’s own flirtatious “dance” ensues, the swimmers themselves lift Kendrick overhead and pass him along, which, of course, could easily be read as objectification of some sort. But Adele’s never been one for too much sensitivity (see: the Bantu knots).

Things take a slightly eerier, The Night of the Hunter turn when darkness falls and Adele is still riding down the river as shadowy figures dance along the bank next to her. But she seems comforted by the presence of a blue bird staring back at her on a branch, a creature that has long been believed to symbolize hope and the arrival of good news. Which, for Adele, was the arrival of Rich Paul after her divorce. A deeper meaning of the blue bird is its representation of being a conduit between the living and the dead. In that sense, it can be read as Adele remaining connected to her old, “deceased” self—the one that would have stayed mostly unhappy in a so-so marriage—and knowing that this new, more alive version of who she is has set her on the right path in life. Indeed, “I Drink Wine” is a video all about taking a path, even if it’s in a watery format.

As the video starts to wine down, the camera pans back over to the piano player we saw on the bridge at the beginning of this meandering little jaunt. Creating a fanciful, idyllic effect like something out of Michel Gondry’s Mood Indigo. And yes, since she felt “I Drink Wine” has a 70s-era Elton flair, it was only natural to include a piano man somewhere in the narrative. One that seems to allude to a kind of disillusionment with drinking as a coping mechanism, with a memorable scene of Adele pushing a flurry of wine glass-offering arms away from her as they jut out of the water. By the end, she takes a final swig and tosses the glass aside (again, no regard for Mother Nature). Maybe learning to get over wine is part of learning to “get over herself,” as she says in the song. But, then again, no. Adele will always drink.

Admitting that this was the first video she shot for 30, before “Easy On Me” or “Oh My God,” it’s clear that there’s a level of perfectionism in it that comes from wanting to instantly establish the “right” tone for a record. And, like Taylor Swift’s recently released Midnights, 30 is very much a concept album. Indeed, the frequent parallels between the two songstresses are manifest not only in the mention of wine reliance, but also even in specific lyrics (most of them generally pertaining to being burned by love). For example, on “I Drink Wine,” Adele croons, “Everybody wants something from me/You just want me.” This echoes the same sentiments Taylor put forth on “Sweet Nothing” with, “All that you ever wanted from me was sweet nothin’.” Ah, the curse of being famous and wary of trusting people’s intentions.

And, talking of fame, Adele has been particularly fond of playing up the Old Hollywood aesthetic for this record, with the glamorousness (conveyed by cinematography from Adam Newport-Berra) of it all ironically punctuated by the video concluding with the camera pulling back all the way to unveil the set in its entirety—revealing that Adele is merely floating in a giant manufactured vat of water with a huge screen in front of it projecting different images. The metaphor is clear: behind the scenes of any seemingly “soft-focus lens” romance is the grit and grime of what it takes to cast that illusion. Not just to others, but even to oneself. With 30, and “I Drink Wine,” Adele has become determined never to give in to such illusions again, tempting though it is to get “pie-eyed” and not see things as clearly as they are.

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Genna Rivieccio

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October 27, 2022
The Video for Joel Corry’s Remix of “Hold Me Closer” Pointedly Only Includes Nods to Brit’s Pre-Conservatorship Looks

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As Britney Spears continues to show us that she has something of a fetish for repetition (as evidenced by her constantly twirling around to the same French song—Indila’s “S.O.S.”—in that elusive Hawaiian dance studio), she’s sanctioned, along with Elton John, another remix of “Hold Me Closer.” On the heels of the Purple Disco Machine Remix that provided, what else, a purple-ified version of the original “Hold Me Closer” video filmed in Mexico City, Elton and Brit have also provided fans with an entirely new visual for the Joel Corry remix of the single.

Alas, Brit still doesn’t opt to appear in this one either, skittish as she rightly is about the public eye and its according scrutiny. Though she does concede to “appearing” in a roundabout way by sanctioning the use of three of her most iconic looks from previous music videos and a tour. Tellingly, none of these looks are from the “era” in which she was forced to live her life in a conservatorship. So it is that we go “back to the start,” as it were, by opening on a dancer, Iara Raiane, wearing a riff on the “…Baby One More Time” schoolgirl uniform.

Directed by Rebekah Creative, the video was shot in London on a sound stage with an all-white backdrop. Because, with sartorial looks like these, the focus is drawn to said callbacks to the past anyway. One of which also includes a still-too-underrated look from Britney’s first tour, named after her hit album and single as well. It was on that tour that Brit’s “millennium” style was solidified with her white track pants (rounded out by adidas sneakers) featuring metallic pink “knee pads” that were complemented by a, in true Britney fashion, ultra-short metallic pink crop top. Dancer Gemma Nicholas is the one with the privilege to sport this ensemble, “updating” it with pink hair to color coordinate with the top and knee patches.

Then there’s Lia Hammond-Williams, who gets to wear the, at this point, all-too-played “Oops!…I Did It Again” catsuit, which has been shilled by Urban Outfitters for many a Halloween. And yes, there are three coordinating Elton “impersonators” as well, but they simply don’t stand out as much as the Britneys, who seek to remind viewers that, long ago, before she was shackled by her own family, she was just a carefree youth enjoying the frivolity that came with suddenly having a mound of disposable income.

As one of the few “relatable queen” celebrities (apart from her constantly taking a private jet, yet not being called out for it), she’s someone who would rather spend hundreds—nay, thousands—of dollars at Target on clothes and home goods than bother with haute couture (unless, of course, it’s for her custom-made Versace wedding dress). That’s why she resonated with so many tweens and teens at the height of her stardom; she was someone they could see themselves in (paving the way, ultimately, for the current queens of the teens, Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo). Before she was mutated into this “thing” to be dissected and pulled apart by tabloid media outlets, including the then-new phenomenon of internet gossip rags like Perez Hilton and TMZ.

Perhaps not able to forget what that feels like, Brit has no intention of “serving” herself up anymore, preferring that other people emulate her instead as a substitute. The least Elton-looking dancer (and not just because he’s a Black man), wearing head-to-toe white with angel wings, is also perhaps how Elton wants to see himself. With Britney still being far closer to the age she was when she first started than Mr. John. And, as Taylor Swift once reminded in Miss Americana, one tends to get stuck in the age they were when they initially became famous. It’s clear that Britney exhibits more than just flickers of that in her frequently-displayed state of arrested development. At the same time, who wouldn’t want to stay ensconced in a period before everything got so tainted by greed and betrayal? A.k.a. her own parents colluding to entrap her in what amounted to slavery.

As Joel Corry and his DJ booth show up in the center of it all, the jubilance of the song crescendos as the dancers do Britney proud with their choreo behind him. The two sets of three then go head-to-head in what comes across like one of those illustrious dance-offs that always seemed to be happening in 00s movies. And, according to tabloid myth, between Britney and Justin themselves at a club in Hollywood just after their breakup in 2002. The stuff of lore that managed to end up in the Lifetime movie, Britney Ever After.

As the white backdrop remains stagnant while the camera moves the dancers past us in a sideways motion, another icon of the 90s comes to mind: the “Macarena” video. But then, “Macarena” didn’t have all the bells and whistles of bothering with alternating colored lights as the dancers do their breakdown (complete with bubbles floating in the air to emphasize to us that Corry is very much an “Ibiza DJ”). And it’s one that Britney, who has always treated dancing like something close to religion, surely appreciates from her safe perch in Thousand Oaks. Maybe she’ll even show us her own rendition of it on Instagram someday.

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Genna Rivieccio

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October 27, 2022
And By the Way, Taylorella Is Going Out Tonight: “Bejeweled” Riffs On Cinderella With Cameos Galore

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As Taylor Swift continues her Midnights blitzkrieg, a steady release of music videos for the album is par for the promotional course. And after only freshly releasing the Honey, I Blew Up the Kid meets Alice in Wonderland “Anti-Hero,” Swift has wasted no time (“midnights” speaking to the tick of the clock and all) in gracing her audience with yet another visual accompaniment—this time for “Bejeweled.” Which she also wrote and directed… yet again.

Riffing on Cinderella because it’s a tale that automatically gets associated with midnight, Taylor fancies herself the cleaning “house wench” of the narrative, scrubbing the floor as her three stepsisters a.k.a. the Haim sisters, Lady Danielle (wants the ring), Lady Este (wants the title) and Lady Alana (wants the d***), traipse in discussing the impending ball. But Lady Danielle laments that, instead of just showing up and being able to look hot, a talent competition has been incorporated into this year’s festivities.

Taylor, literally down at heel scrubbing puke off the floor, then overhears that the winner gets the keys to her own castle. “Taylorella” perks right up as her descriptive caption reads, “House Wench Taylor (wants the castle).” And we all know Swift loves a good castle reference. For example, on “New Romantics,” she sang, “I could build a castle out of all the bricks they threw at me.” Later, on “Call It What You Want,” she lamented, “My castle crumbled overnight” and “They took the crown, but it’s alright.” Then there was the “kingdom” allusion on the Kanye-shading “Look What You Made Me Do,” wherein she says, “I don’t like your kingdom keys, they once belonged to me.”

It’s clear in “Bejeweled” that she’s determined to take them back, along with her independence, even if being tied to Joe Alwyn with an invisible string somewhat detracts from that. And yes, many believe one of the engagement-oriented Easter eggs (that odious term) Swift has planted in the video comes from the mouth of Laura Dern, who plays her stepmother, saying, “I simply adore a proposal. It’s the single-most defining thing a lady could hope to achieve in her lifetime.”

After her stepmother and stepsisters continue to prattle on about how she can’t go to the ball, dropping in other Swiftian keywords like “exile” and “snake,” Taylorella waits for them to leave before breaking the fourth wall and smiling at the audience. A knowing smirk that infers the “Bejeweled” lyric, “And by the way, I’m goin’ out tonight.” That she is, as Taylorella enters a magically-appearing elevator (of the ilk that reminds the viewer of the one featured in Dua Lipa’s “Levitating” video with DaBaby… before he was briefly cancelled for making homophobic comments) after a stopwatch descends into her hand ticking off seconds beneath the words “exile ends.”

All at once in a bejeweled cape, Taylorella happily enters the elevator and hits the number three button, just one of many hints that have prompted fans to determine she next plans to re-record her third album, Speak Now (not to be confused with Lindsay Lohan’s far more culturally impactful Speak). Taken to a room that looks like something out of a Yayoi Kusama exhibit, it’s filled with nothing but jewels (both on the floor as a pathway and suspended in mid-air) as Taylorella walks across them like Jesus walking on water (and yes, many do view Swift with his level of worship).

Back on the art deco elevator, Taylorella then heads to the fifth floor, where, of all people, Dita Von Teese awaits. Citing her as one of the most iconic performers in an interview with Jimmy Fallon, Swift accordingly lists her as the “Fairy Goddess” in the credits, taking lessons on how to execute her signature “The Martini Glass” performance in a scene that is peak “women supporting women.” Once she apprehends the arcane knowledge of burlesque, Taylorella takes the elevator to the thirteenth floor (yet another number rife with meaning for the chanteuse). This is where the ball awaits, and where she will showcase her newfound talent for the Queen and the Prince.

Against a backdrop of cogs and wheels, Taylorella herself sits on a clock in bejeweled burlesque attire, taking the spotlight at the fête—much to the dismay of her stepsisters. Watching from the sidelines is Pat McGrath as “Queen Pat,” with the caption, “Queen Pat was impressed. Prince Jack [of course, played by none other than Swift’s bitch, Jack Antonoff] was forced to propose to House Wench Taylor.”

Posing next to Prince Jack with her giant key to her very own castle, Taylorella then goes poof as the additional caption needlessly explains, “She ghosted. But kept the castle.” This written as Taylorella, looking more Bridgerton than Cinderella, walks out on the balcony of her new “pad” to witness the sight of dragons breathing fire at the towers. The implication being that the outside world is still trying to tear down her perfect kingdom—or is it that they’re now “on her side” and protecting it? Only time will tell, but knowing the “pratfalls” of being a celebrity, it’s likely the former.

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Genna Rivieccio

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October 26, 2022
Smile, Though Your Trauma Is Radiating

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In numerous manners, Smile is rife with meaning about a certain karmic retribution against “the shrink.” The one who, like Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon, that’s right, Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick’s nepotism baby), says things such as, “I’m sure what you think you’re experiencing feels real. But it’s not.” And while she watches her patients’ pain with something that more closely resembles pity rather than empathy, she assures them that whatever they’re “imagining” will soon pass, as she usually deals with the kind of “crazy” (to use the ableist term) that falls under the umbrella of paranoid schizophrenic types. Like a patient of Rose’s named Carl (Jack Sochet), who frequently chants things like, “I’m going to die, Mom’s going to die, we’re all going to die” and “nobody matters.”

At the seemingly state-funded hospital Rose works at, such encounters are merely par for the course. Except that with Laura Weaver (Caitlin Stasey), a PhD student who recently witnessed the suicide of her professor, it becomes rapidly apparent that she isn’t fucking around when she says something’s after her. And that Rose is about to know exactly what it feels like for someone’s “visions” to be dismissed as nothing more than a “psychotic episode.”

When Rose subsequently witnesses Laura cower to the ground and crawl backwards in terror from an invisible presence, it’s obvious that an “entity” is possessing her, entering her. Running for the phone on the wall, Rose calls for help, turning around to find that it’s already too late. The very thing Laura described to her, people smiling at her—but not in a pleasant way—has taken over on her own face. Or what used to be her own face. For it now belongs to the evil being that slits her throat.

As for writer-director Parker Finn capitalizing on smiling as a source of terror, it’s true that when one thinks about “the smile” as a concept, everything about it really is quite sinister, creepy. The baring of teeth, the seeming stoicism of the eyes. And, of course, don’t even get one started on the inexplicable phenomenon of laughter, which can cause some to suffer from gelotophobia as a result of the often malicious intent associated with this highly human expression. In any event, the eeriness of a human smile is played up when, at a toy store that Rose enters to buy a train set for her nephew, the camera pans down to a 50s-style rendering of a white family grinning. The truth belying such smiles as these being the rampant racism “required” in the U.S. for the whites of the country to be so prosperous in the post-war years and beyond. So yes, Smile itself makes a searing observation on how, commonly, something sinister and menacing is beneath it—those “innocent” bared teeth, waiting to sink into one’s trauma in the case of Smile.

Just as Rose seemed almost to get off on trauma herself, much like the demon antagonist in the film, using it as a life force to keep her going. Running on fumes through eighty-hour weeks to the point that her boss, Dr. Morgan Desai (Kal Penn), insists that she leave for the day. And maybe, if she had been able to resist answering the phone that she hears ringing in her office after already departing, she wouldn’t have taken Laura on as a patient, therefore not been a victim of this curse (talk about an undercutting cautionary tale about not becoming a workaholic). One that allows a chain to go unbroken as the “Smile demon” hops from person to person after entering them and puppeteering their body to kill themselves in whatever grotesque fashion the demon sees fit. Perpetuating and propagating the cycle through getting the person watching to feel traumatized, thereby marking said person as the demon’s next target. A demon who, to add to one’s overall feelings of “being crazy,” can take on any human form of anybody that the target might know, even those from their past who have already died. And yes, the entire reason Rose became a psychiatrist was because, at the age of ten, she witnessed her own mother commit suicide. In fact, this is the moment that commences the movie, giving us plenty of insight into why Rose does what she does, as well as her level of trauma.

Her older sister, Holly (Gillian Zinser), had already fled the scene by the time Mother punched her own ticket, leaving Rose to discover their matriarch in such an indelible state. In the present, it’s clear the relationship is still strained between the sisters, as self-involved Holly talks of nothing but her son and his activities—and how it takes up all of her personal time—or how Rose ought to sell the house they grew up in so they can split the profits. But, for whatever reason, Rose needs to hold on to that piece of the trauma. Already on edge after seeing Laura slit her throat, this dinner conversation leads Rose to yell at Holly to just fuck off about it. And at least before her ostensible “breakdown,” she had the excuse of needing to be at work as a reason to avoid going to her nephew’s seventh birthday party. Alas, after Dr. Desai orders her to take a week off for her mental health, her Saturday is suddenly free.

And so, looking like a combination of Marcia Gay Harden and her own mother, Kyra Sedgwick, Rose applies some concealer beneath her dark circles and heads to the fête, foolishly thinking it might be a good distraction rather than the demon’s next hunting ground. Complete with a dead animal moment the likes of which has not been as memorable since Fatal Attraction. No matter to the demon, who can’t be concerned with the lengths it will go to damage not only Rose’s credibility, but her personal relationships. Including the one with her fiancé, Trevor (Jessie T. Usher), who quickly shows his ass, so to speak, when it comes to reneging on that “in sickness and in health” caveat. Even stooping so low as to throw back in her face that mental illness runs in the family. Thus, can it be any wonder that Rose turns to her ex, Joel (Kyle Gallner), for some “comfort”? But really, because she needs his police officer access to case files for Laura and Laura’s professor, which leads her to understand that, yes, this is very much the epitome of a vicious circle. Wherein one person kills themselves in front of another each and every time.

What Rose hadn’t bargained for was the “hallucinations” that Laura had also talked about. Seeing the demon in different guises and scenarios that we’re never totally sure are real until we get an “afterward” confirmation that the demon did, in fact, grab hold of her mind, noting very disturbingly toward the end, “Your mind is so inviting.” And that’s, of course, because it’s laden with trauma.

A lead that Joel gives her as he does his own digging into the pattern (from a place of still being in love with her, obviously) prompts Rose to seek out a man named Robert Talley (Rob Morgan), presently in prison for killing his neighbor in front of someone else, so that the witness to the murder would get the curse instead. Not exactly fair, but that’s self-preservation for you. And clearly, the unspoken solution throughout Smile is that Rose ought to just kill herself (or rather, “let” herself be killed)—the same suggestion also present in An American Werewolf in London—in a remote location so that the cycle will break without a witness to see it. But no, Rose is evidently too vain to kill herself and too pure of heart to kill someone else. This is what one could call the embodiment of being caught between a rock and a hard place.

Territory Rose is all too familiar with after what happened with her mother, and having to make a particular decision on that front as well. One that stems from ultimately doing nothing at all, for inaction is a type of decision, too. As Finn’s first feature film (based on a short called Laura Never Sleeps), it’s very palpable that he’s been building toward this movie his entire life, not only because he attended the same high school in Bath, Ohio as gruesome serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, but because he has studied the horror genre since he was a preadolescent, influenced by every great from John Carpenter to Wes Craven.

For Smile in particular, Finn called out being inspired by Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (in terms of “not being believed” and increasingly “gaslit”) and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure (for its “nightmarish atmosphere”). What’s more, it goes without saying that It Follows and The Ring are very much present in the narrative. To boot, Todd Haynes’ Safe was another key influence with regard to imbuing the audience with the same level of anxiety as the main character. To that end, the sound editing throughout Smile is absolutely paramount (no reference to the company that distributed Smile intended) to the sense of dread experienced throughout.

Talking of “sound,” perhaps the only major critique of the movie, really, is that Finn didn’t manage to employ the sardonic use of either Lily Allen’s “Smile” or Nat King Cole’s “Smile” during the credits (but definitely not Katy Perry’s “Smile”). Giving either one of the songs the “Jordan Peele treatment” (e.g., “Say My Name” or “I Got 5 On It”). However, as Mia Farrow once said in The Purple Rose of Cairo, “You can’t have everything.”

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Genna Rivieccio

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October 24, 2022
Honey, I Blew Up the Taylor in Wonderland: “Anti-Hero” Video Shows Swift Being Too Big For This World

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After directing the aggressively white and heteronormative “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version),” Taylor Swift made it clear that she had plenty of other future directorial (and screenwriting) intentions in mind. Whether that will ultimately lead to a feature-length movie remains to be seen, but, for the time being, continuing to direct her own music videos is a good way to “flex the muscle” in the directing field. And perhaps she was watching a lot of Michel Gondry films—followed by Honey, I Blew Up the Kid and Alice in Wonderland—when she came up with the visual concepts behind her first single from Midnights, “Anti-hero.” For there is a calculatedly surreal quality to the narrative.

One that opens on Swift’s back to the camera as the caption beneath “Anti-Hero” is sure to announce, “Written & Directed by Taylor Swift.” As she sits at the kitchen table (presumably around the midnight hour—since “midnights become [her] afternoons”), she proceeds to cut open one of the sunny-side up eggs on her plate that suddenly leaks glitter. And, to be honest, such a visual is patently ripped off from the Kesha playbook. Only slightly unnerved by the vision, it is the appearance of several “ghosts” in sheets (think: A Ghost Story) that causes her to truly freak out as she tries to call for help from her landline (this just being part of the many 70s aesthetics from the Midnights era), only to find the cord is cut. Much like the thin thread of her sanity as she runs into another corner of her house to hide from the “specters” that won’t leave her alone.

Indeed, ghost imagery is mentioned a few times on Midnights, with one notable instance being on “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” when she sings, “And now that I’m grown, I’m scared of ghosts.” Even sheet-covered ones that wouldn’t make Lydia Deetz so much as flinch. Another standout lyric that opens the track is, “I have this thing where I get older/But just never wiser.” Which could be part of the reason why she refuses to branch out from collaborating with Jack Antonoff.

When she finally goes to open the front door as a means to run out and escape, she sees the “vampier” version of herself standing before her with the greeting, “It’s me.” The Insomniac Taylor sings the “hi” part before “Devious” Taylor continues, “I’m the problem, it’s me.” Letting this version of her “worst” self in, Insomniac Taylor starts to let Devious Taylor influence all her thoughts and feelings as they do shots together and Insomniac Taylor takes down notes from the lesson plan Devious Taylor wants to impart: “Everyone Will Betray You.” This being, of course, a philosophy that feeds Insomniac Taylor’s trust issues.

The next scene is where things really meld the plot points of Honey, I Blew Up the Kid and Alice in Wonderland as a giant Swift peers in on a dinner party of “friends” looking like she just consumed one of the same “Eat Me” cakes as Alice. Despite the incongruity of her oversized appearance, she tries to “act naturally” while the lyrics, “Too big to hang out [here, one is reminded of Lorde’s own fame-lamenting lyrics on “Liability”], slowly lurching toward your favorite city/Pierced through the heart, but never killed” play in the background. She then, quelle surprise, gets shot in the chest with an arrow (for she loves that “The Archer” imagery). As is to be expected, her wound bleeds glitter (as Kesha’s would). Then, as though fully surrendering to her bad reputation, she pulls the tablecloth off in one sweep and sends everyone running in fear, left by herself to eat and imbibe tiny food and drinks.

Continuing to hang out with Devious Taylor (the “true” anti-hero within) doesn’t do much to help her self-esteem either as she’s pushed off the bed they’re jumping on together and judged harshly by Devious Tay when the scale that Insomniac Tay steps on informs her simply, “FAT.” Because, yes, even thin girls like Taylor have body image issues (but for something more authentic on that matter, one is best turning to Tove Lo’s “Grapefruit” and its accompanying video).

Wanting to convey to viewers the full weight (no body image pun intended) of her directorial cachet, Swift is then certain to include a dialogue-laden segment that ties into her Knives Out-grafting plot in the lyrics, “I have this dream my daughter-in-law kills me for the money/She thinks I left them in the will/The family gathers ’round and reads it/And then someone screams out/‘She’s laughing up at us from hell.’” This, in its own way, is one of the most candid statements about fame, and the highly specific fear that many celebrities must “secretly” have when entering into the unbreakable contract of becoming a parent. For can a child of such a person ever “love” their money-bags progenitor for pure reasons? Maybe that’s part of why Taylor has yet to commit to having one.

It would certainly seem like a nightmare based on the will-reading scenario Taylor has come up with, featuring John Early as Chad, Mary Elizabeth Ellis as Kimber and Mike Birbiglia as Preston a.k.a. her money-grubbing children who get up in arms that she’s instructed her beach house should be turned into a cat sanctuary (a large portrait of “Old Taylor” with a gaggle of cats serving as the “in memoriam” photo next to the flower display). Chad refuses to believe that, in contrast, she’s bequeathed only thirteen cents each to her progeny, insisting she’s doing what she always does: leaving a secret hidden message in the will that would give them something more. But the asterisk added from Swift herself is, “P.S. There is no secret encoded message that means something else. Love, Taylor.”

Accusing Chad of being responsible for this lack of inheritance after “trading in on Mom’s name” for most of his life (e.g., a book called Growing Up Swift and a podcast called Life Comes At You Swiftly), he bites back that Preston is constantly using Mom’s name at the country club and that Kimber is wearing her clothes right now. Kimber tries to say, “No I’m not,” but Preston backs up Chad with the citation, “That’s from Fearless Tour 2009.”

As the bickering goes on, we transition back to “reality”—back to that house where Insomniac Taylor must dwell with all of her insecurities and paranoias. And with Devious Taylor… who pops up all giant to look at Insomniac Taylor from below as she’s drinking wine on the rooftop. As the two then sit side by side (now scaled to the same size), a third, even more giant Taylor than before proceeds to walk down the street toward them.

The other two appear welcoming to this ramped-up grandiose spectacle version of themselves, offering their tiny-in-ultra-giant-Taylor’s-hands bottle of wine to her. Because, if anything is taken away from this video, it’s the suggestion that there’s a reason why so many musicians end up with a drinking problem. The “too big for this world” aspect of her persona that’s being played up ultimately speaking to how Swift often grapples with not being seen as a real person, but rather, as an “entity.” And surely, “entities” are immune to such regular people things as cirrhosis.

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Genna Rivieccio

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October 22, 2022
Innovation Stalls on Midnights As Taylor Swift Does A Lot of 2012-Era Musical Recycling While Joe Alwyn Remains Her Eternal Muse

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While most insomniacs would settle for watching TV all night, Taylor Swift has shown us yet again just how “Type A” she can be by using some of her many sleepless nights for productivity purposes. Resulting in what is now her tenth album, Midnights. And yes, ten studio albums put out over the course of sixteen years is very impressive indeed (not to mention the work put into her re-recordings thus far). It puts Swift closely behind Madonna, who started all the way back in 1983, yet “only” has fourteen studio albums (fifteen, for those who want to include I’m Breathless). Rihanna might have one-upped Swift if she had kept up the pace of releasing an album a year (skipping a release just once in 2008 and then waiting four years in between Unapologetic and Anti), but, no, she had to gravitate toward the fashion and beauty industry instead. Lana Del Rey is the only who comes close to Swift’s prolificness, having almost the same number of records out despite having gotten her first official record release (Born to Die) six years after Swift’s.

Maybe that’s part of why Swift felt the necessity to include her most comparable contemporary on this record, the only feature on the entire thing. But before we get to that, Swift starts us off with a very Harry Styles-esque tone and tempo (they did date, after all) called “Lavender Haze.” This being a title Swift grabbed when she heard it in a line from Mad Men and then confirmed that it was a popular turn of phrase in the 50s and early 60s. As a song that explores wanting to avoid having to deal with any of the media blitzkrieg that comes with someone of her fame level being in a relationship, she insists upon remaining in the lavender haze of a new love and its honeymoon period at all costs. Saying, “Get it off your chest/Get it off my desk” in that tone that reminds one of her saying, “Call it what you want, yeah,” Taylor indicates that she doesn’t care about the media’s bid for virality in dissecting her life. All she wants is to stay in her bliss. It’s therefore a song that proves you can be any age and get caught up in the googly-eyed version romance paraded in films and books, but the problems of adulthood infecting that kind of youthful outlook always tend to get in the way sooner or later.

“Maroon” subsequently continues the color palette motif (something Lana Del Rey is also fond of). Musically disparate from anything she’s ever done, it’s a sound that itself has been done by many before her. Which brings us to the fact that Midnights has somewhat stalled Swift’s thirst for something like innovation. Just as Del Rey, she’s started to get too comfortable in the familiar formulas provided by Jack Antonoff, who himself reached a peak with the sound on Midnights via his own band Fun’s 2012 record, Some Nights (which not only reminds one of the title Midnights, but also has a similar album cover involving a lighter), featuring the seminal single, “We Are Young.”

Musical genres come in cycles, that’s no secret. And the only person who was ever usually ahead of the curve on bringing those trends to the masses was Madonna (except starting in 2008, when she enlisted Timbaland, Pharrell and Justin Timberlake as producers on Hard Candy). Taylor herself has followed musical trends of the moment for most of her career, going the standard route of being a country star transitioning to pop (as Shania Twain and Faith Hill did). Even folklore and evermore were albums that tapped into a moment, speaking to the “stay home” laze of the pandemic era that Swift interpreted as “cottagecore.” Midnights seeks to not only shatter that era with 70s-inspired “going out” aesthetics, but also delves further back into the period when Swift was having her original success with Red in 2012. At that time, other acts like M83, Chvrches, Sleigh Bells and Phantogram were suffusing the landscape with the electropop/synth electronic sound that Swift eschewed for her careful treading along the line between country and pop.

Nonetheless, Swift lends her signature songwriting style involving lament to what has already been a well-established musical trope from ten years ago. As a requisite “what might have been” song about a former lover, “Maroon” addresses one of the five themes Swift said inspired the record: self-hatred, revenge fantasies, “wondering what might have been,” falling in love and “falling apart.”

In “Maroon,” a little bit of all five categories are embodied as she describes, “I wake with your memory over me/That’s a real fucking legacy, legacy (it was maroon)/And I wake with your memory over me/That’s a real fucking legacy to leave.” Luckily for the man she’s railing against in this song, the only person she hates more than him is herself, it would seem. At least, if the self-deprecating “Anti-Hero” is something to go by. This track, too, remains up-tempo and 80s-tinged as Swift rues, “It’s me/I’m the problem, it’s me.” Declaring, “It’s me” in that way she once said, “It’s you” on Lover’s “Cruel Summer.”

She provides one of her most evocative verses of the record when she adds, “Sometimes, I feel like everybody is a sexy baby/And I’m a monster on the hill/Too big to hang out, slowly lurching toward your favorite city/Pierced through the heart, but never killed.” Lana Del Rey doesn’t seem to mind, willingly collaborating on the next song, “Snow on the Beach.” Alas, it is rather underwhelming as a musical marriage, with Taylor monopolizing all the vocals and Lana disappearing into the background (she got far more play in her collab with two other major pop stars, Ariana Grande and Miley Cyrus). And, considering all the sexual tension between the two in terms of how much they orbit one another and echo each other’s songwriting style, maybe it was to be expected that this track would be an anticlimax.

Even the lyrics are somewhat reaching in terms of a “trying too hard” to be poetic bent, with Swift and Del Rey noting, “And it’s like snow at the beach/Weird, but fucking beautiful/Flying in a dream/Stars by the pocketful/You wanting me.” At the very least, Swift offers her best analogy since, “I come back stronger than a 90s trend,” with, “Now I’m all for you, like Janet.”

Going back to her more country twang (think: the Fearless era), “You’re on Your Own, Kid” shows us that Swift still has the Lana songwriting technique on her mind as she wields Del Rey’s favorite season to reference in the intro line, “Summer went away, still the yearning stays.” With a “tis the damn season” aura in its storytelling, Swift recounts, “I gave my blood, sweat, and tears for this/I hosted parties and starved my body/Like I’d be saved by a perfect kiss/The jokes weren’t funny, I took the money/My friends from home don’t know what to say/I looked around in a blood-soaked gown.” That latter image being an undeniable allusion to Carrie. A character that even tall, blonde and thin Swift could relate to as she was ostracized by the people in her school. Sort of like everyone walking off the dance floor at Christina Aguilera’s prom when the DJ played “Genie in a Bottle.”

Realizing that she never should have looked to someone else for salvation or validation anyway, she comes to the conclusion, “You’re on your own, kid/Yeah, you can face this/You’re on your own, kid/You always have been.” The “kid” part coming across like it was condescending inspiration from Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca.

Using a vocoder to introduce the lyrics on “Midnight Rain” (because this record obviously needs to have a song with the album’s title somewhere in it), it’s the only sonic moment that doesn’t seem entirely generic as Swift proceeds to revert to her folklore/evermore narrative vibe (think: “The Last American Dynasty”). And, as was the case during “You’re On Your Own, Kid,” Swift reflects on small-town life and ultimately escaping it, this being a rumination, yet again, on the “what might have been” theme. So it is that Swift states, “My town was a wasteland/Full of cages, full of fences/Pageant queens and big pretenders/But for some, it was paradise.” “Some” like the boy she has “no choice” but to leave in order to pursue her big dreams in the big city. And yet, once she’s achieved her fame goals, she can’t help but “peer through a window/A deep portal, time travel/All the love we unravel/And the life I gave away/‘Cause he was sunshine, I was midnight rain.” But surely Swift would have thought the opposite if she had given up her career ambitions to play the little wife. Even so, in her late-night hours, she has to admit, “I guess sometimes we all get/Some kind of haunted, some kind of haunted/And I never think of him/Except on midnights like this.”

Commencing with a somewhat paltry imitation of Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8r Boi”-style “portrait-painting,” “Question…?” describes, “Good girl/Sad boy/Big city/Wrong choices.” The intro has a brief tinge of “Blank Space” with the same light instrumentation that also uses “I remember” from “Out of the Woods.” A track about humiliation and ill communication, it’s one of the most deviating from a lyrical perspective. So, too, is “Vigilante Shit,” which continues her wannabe Lana angle (this time from an Ultraviolence era perspective, which, to re-emphasize the time period Swift is mirroring sonically, was released in 2013). Most notably when Swift wields the line, “Draw the cat eye, sharp enough to kill a man.” It glistens among all the rest of the tracks, with a moodier, more visceral backdrop than most of the other upbeat electro rhythms.

Almost as “glistening” but not quite is a song about a girl who loses her shine by putting all her self-worth into the hands of a man. And yes, “Bejeweled” provides some of Tay’s most “poetic” lyrics on Midnights. Including isms like, “Didn’t notice you walkin’ all over my peace of mind/In the shoes I gave you as a present” and “Familiarity breeds contempt/So put me in the basement/When I want the penthouse of your heart.” In the end, she decides, “What’s a girl gonna do? A diamond’s gotta shine.” That it does—which she already made vaguely clear on “mirrorball.”

Despite now contributing to the cultural lexicon with her own “Labyrinth,” it is the movie of the same name that will forever reign supreme. Plus, it’s a bit douchey to pre-quote oneself. Regardless, Taylor did just that with “Labyrinth” by incorporating the lyrics, “Breathe in, breathe through, breathe deep, breathe out” into her commencement speech earlier this year at NYU. And even though such words might sound like part of a self-help book, the song is actually yet another ode to Joe Alwyn saving her from the sour taste (something Olivia Rodrigo knows about) that had lingered in her mouth from romances past. Accordingly, she sings, “Uh-oh, I’m fallin’ in love/Oh no, I’m fallin’ in love again/Oh, I’m fallin’ in love/I thought the plane was goin’ down/How’d you turn it right around?” Taylor will likely find that this metaphor is going to come back to bite her in the ass the next time there’s a major plane crash. Plus, being such a “New Yorker” nowadays, you’d think she’d know it’s still “too soon” after 9/11 to talk about plane crashes so casually.

Gears shift on the maudlin love theme with “Karma.” Never mind that MARINA already had an untouchable song called “Karma” from 2019’s Love + Fear, Taylor has decided to create her own edition. Where MARINA’s was inspired by the #MeToo movement, and particularly Harvey Weinstein, Swift opts, as usual, to make things more specifically about herself and go for Scooter Braun’s jugular. What’s more, she borrows from another electropop band that had a moment in the 00s, CSS, by saying, “Karma is my boyfriend.” CSS already used that metaphor to greater perfection with the lyric, “Music is my boyfriend” (which is how Taylor sounds when she replaces “music” with “karma”) on the single, “Music Is My Hot Hot Sex.”

Elsewhere, she uses highly specific details to allude to the fact that she’s talking about Braun as she accuses, “Spider boy, king of thieves/Weave your little webs of opacity/My pennies made your crown/Trick me once, trick me twice/Don’t you know that cash ain’t the only price?/It’s coming back around.” At the same time, this song also applies more than ever to Swift’s beef with Ye (formerly Kanye) that started all those years ago in 2009. And yes, Swift has definitely won that war as we watch Ye daily fall further from “grace.”

On the next track, again one must say: never mind that Florence + the Machine already had an untouchable song called “Sweet Nothing” with Calvin Harris (in, quelle coincidence, 2012), Swift wants to have one too. Hers being more slowed down and stripped back. All for the purposes of, what a shock, providing a bathetic homage to Alwyn as she croons, “I found myself a-running home to your sweet nothings/Outside they’re push and shoving/You’re in the kitchen humming/All that you ever wanted from me was nothing.”

Swift ramps up her Alwyn prose a notch on “Mastermind,” which allows her to spotlight her inner creep as she freely admits things like, “I laid the groundwork, and then/Just like clockwork/The dominoes cascaded in the line/What if I told you I’m a mastermind?/And now you’re minе/It was all by design.” Well, if one were Alwyn, maybe they would quote Taylor back to her by saying, “You need to calm down.”

In another verse, Swift plays up her “loser” days as an unknown youth, lamenting, “No one wanted to play with me as a little kid/So I’ve been scheming like a criminal ever since/To make them love me and make it seem effortless.” Naturally, it’s anything but—and this is part of why Swift has been called “calculated” so many times throughout her career. But maybe it was all worth it for Swift to be able to come up with a riposte like, “This is the first time I’ve felt the need to confess/And I swear I’m only cryptic and Machiavellian/‘Cause I care.” The ultimate curse, but one that many a Sagittarian is burdened with while pretending not to be.

While the standard edition of the album stops here, the “3am Edition” persists with “The Great War.” Once upon a time, that was what World War I was called, with the assumption that there wouldn’t be a second one. Now, Swift seems to be putting out this record at a moment when WWIII feels like an inevitability. Hence, the war metaphor being only too real despite most people of the millennial and Gen Z set only “experiencing” anything like battle in their video games. As she did on Lover’s “Afterglow,” Swift speaks of a great peace that will come after a great (relationship) war, assuring, “All that bloodshed, crimson clover/Uh-huh, the bombs were close and/My hand was the one you reached for/All throughout the Great War/Always remember/Uh-huh, the burning embers/I vowed not to fight anymore/If we survived the Great War.”

“Bigger Than the Whole Sky” continues the theme of “The Great War,” indicating a brutal, destitute aftermath as Swift sings softly, “No words appear before me in the aftermath/Salt streams out my eyes and into my ears/Every single thing I touch becomes sick with sadness/‘Cause it’s all over now, all out to sea.” A line like that is ripe with the “we could have had it all” sorrow that pervades so much of Midnights.

And, again ruminating on that theme, she inserts into the chorus, “What could’ve been, would’ve been/What should’ve been you/What could’ve been, would’ve been you.” Such lyrics also set things up for a later song called “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve.”

But not before “Paris.” Indeed, not one to shy away from cliches, perhaps it was overdue for Swift to have a song named after the “City of Love” (though it’s really the City of Light). But Edith Piaf-flavored this number is not as the up-tempo rhythms of earlier on the record return for Swift to croon, “Drew a map on your bedroom ceiling/No, I didn’t see the news/‘Cause we were somewhere else/Stumbled down pretend alleyways, cheap wine/Make believe it’s champagne I was taken by the view/Like we were in Paris, oh.”

Here it’s clear she’s using the city as an imaginary escape hatch (even though she could definitely just take her overused private jet there if she wanted to). Far from the scrutiny and as a place where people—even famous ones—assume they can remain in the “lavender haze” previously mentioned on the first track. So it is that Swift insists her and Alwyn’s love can stay protected if they just “fly over bullshit (as Beyoncé phrases it on “Alien Superstar”). If they just keep pretending “like we were somewhere else/Like we were in Paris.” The power of “pure imagination” also applies when interpreting the flashing lights of paparazzi cameras as nothing more that the shimmering lights of the Eiffel Tower (dimmed much earlier in the night now as a result of the energy crisis that won’t affect Swift). Thus, the lyric, “Let the only flashing lights/Be the tower at midnight.”

As one of only three tracks on Midnights produced by Aaron Dessner, “High Infidelity” possesses a different tincture than the others crafted by Antonoff. Yet not different in the sense of Swift bringing up still another relationship past, this time likely referring to her transition from Calvin Harris to Tom Hiddleston circa 2016. With a retro video game-esque sound faintly punctuating the music in the background, Swift speaks directly to someone “like” Harris when she says, “You know there’s many different ways/That you can kill the one you love/The slowest way is never loving them enough.” The mention of the date April 29th also happens to be when “This Is What You Came For” was released. A.k.a. the single that prompted Harris to snap at his ex on Twitter with such venoms as, “I know you’re off tour and you need someone new to try and bury like Katy ETC but I’m not that guy, sorry.” This being a result of the real songwriter behind “This Is What You Came For”—Swift—being unveiled.

Call it just another relationship malfunction. Or “Glitch”—a song that refers to Tay’s enduring romance with Alwyn as a “glitch in the matrix” that the system never thought was possible or would last. As the briefest little ditty on Midnights at two minutes and twenty-eight seconds, Swift makes it count with “sweet nothings” like, “But it’s been two-thousand one-hundred and ninety days of our love blackout (our love is blacking out)/The system’s breaking down.” That number of days adding up to, you guessed it, the six years Swift and Alwyn have been together.

And, having been together that long, it’s no wonder Swift has to keep dipping back into her arsenal of exes for additional inspiration. As is the case on “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve,” which further hits us over the head with Swift’s preferred motif of the record: regret about a relationship. In this instance, she doesn’t wonder what might have been, but only wishes it had never been. The likely inspiration being John Mayer, as she mentions her age during this dalliance as nineteen (Lana, too, calls out being nineteen in “White Dress”—must be something affecting about that age). And, just as Jessica Simpson, Taylor would end up ruing the day she ever got into Mayer’s clutches, bemoaning, “God rest my soul I miss who I used to be/The tomb won’t close/Stained glass windows in my mind/I regret you all the time/I can’t let this go, I fight with you in my sleep” (this last line harkening back to the midnights/insomniac theme). That other beloved topic, revenge, is also peppered in with the lines, “Living for the thrill of hitting you where it hurts/Give me back my girlhood, it was mine first.” So it looks like Jake Gyllenhaal is only a runner-up to Mayer’s supreme level of dickishness.

Sounding slightly like a romantic 80s ballad, the true closer of Midnights is “Dear Reader”—though, of course, what she really means is “Dear Listener.” Seeming to have enjoyed her life advice-giving status as a commencement speaker, she clearly had such a speech in mind when she wrote this track. For it offers “counsel” on how to live one’s life, mostly by staying true to oneself—yet also “bending” when necessary. As Jane Eyre did. And maybe that’s why Swift opted to reference Charlotte Brontë’s literary opus with the song’s title, famously taken from the mouth of the eponymous character when she announces, “Dear reader, I married him” (perhaps foreshadowing her own marriage to Alwyn). Even after the “him” in question goes blind in the fire, placing Eyre in the role of caretaker (but isn’t that what all women end up becoming when they consent to the part of “wife”?).

Painting herself as a potentially unreliable narrator when she says, “Never take advice from someone who’s falling apart,” Swift still does her best to sound cocksure when she adds, “And if you don’t recognize yourself/That means you did it right.” Even though, just a moment ago in the song that preceded this, she asserts, “I miss who I used to be.” This dichotomy, this push-and-pull between wanting to “remain as one is” while also wanting to burst out of the proverbial chrysalis is what invades Midnights. For we can hear Swift grappling with attempts at being “avant-garde” sonically (you know, for someone who still “has to be” commercial), while staying as true as she can be to the girl she’s always been, therefore the musical and lyrical style (lovelorn, vengeful, regretful, etc.) she’s always relied upon. Which is something of a shame in that someone at her height could release anything at this point without worry of losing her devotees.

To put it this way, Midnights is not Swift turning her back on the mainstream in any way remotely like what, say, Madonna did with Erotica thirty years ago (this particular album being released almost exactly the same day as Midnights, on October 20th). And if Swift is the artist she seems to want to be, more risk-taking is needed for future records. Something that goes beyond just another “solid win.”

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Genna Rivieccio

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October 21, 2022
“Beautiful” 2.0 and What’s Changed Since Xtina’s Original “Beautiful” Video

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To commemorate the twentieth anniversary of Stripped—the album that Christina Aguilera carved out for herself to assure the masses she wasn’t just another “cookie-cutter” pop star—Xtina has released an updated music video, if you will, for “Beautiful.” As one of the most popular and enduring singles from Stripped (apart from, obviously, “Dirrty”), it makes sense that she would choose to “revamp” it for this reason alone. And yet, because society has become more “beauty”-obsessed in the past two decades (despite claims of being more “body positive” and “all-embracing” than ever), “Beautiful” is an undeniably pointed choice on Aguilera’s part.

At the time of Stripped’s release in 2002, critics were less than kind to it, with many claiming its lack of cohesion in terms of musical themes was part of the “problem.” And yet, if Stripped sounds like a sonic “hodge-podge,” maybe it was because Aguilera was still becoming a fully-formed adult (twenty-one going on twenty-two when Stripped was “unleashed”). And with its re-issuing today, it’s also funny to note how appropriate the news clips played in “Stripped Intro” remain, with sound bites like, “Christina Britney rivalry” and “We’re gonna let Christina tell her side of the story.” Obviously, Brit has been the one stoking that rivalry of late, which finally prompted Aguilera to unfollow her on Instagram (before Spears yet again deleted the account) after some ostensible body-shaming about her dancers was made. That particular feud still being relevant—“evergreen,” as Lady Gaga would say—also plays into how “Beautiful” itself is. And will remain forever so (or at least until humanity’s collapse).

In 2002, the pervasiveness of glossy print magazines ranging from YM to Seventeen to Glamour might have felt dangerous to a young woman’s body image, along with tabloid-esque rags like Us Weekly and Life & Style. But that would turn out to be nothing compared to what social media could wreak upon the psyche. For while it gave celebrities far more agency in terms of “setting the record straight” about their personal lives, it also allowed them a platform to promote the same tropes about what a body “should be.” This has included Kim Kardashian’s carefully-curated hourglass figure that’s still not “fat” at all compared to, say, “average American fat” (you know, driving three feet to get to the McDonald’s and such). A look that has caused many to want the same surgical procedure required to “achieve” this particular “aesthetic” (that is to say, a plucked turkey). And with the advent of more celebrities peddling their wares in the beauty industry via brands like Kylie Cosmetics, Fenty and R.E.M., fans and acolytes have found even more ways to attempt “perfection.” A.k.a. trying to emulate the celebrity they worship physically.

It was Lindsay Lohan as Cady Heron who said in 2004’s Mean Girls, “Apparently, there’s a lot of things that can be wrong on your body.” This is what she internally remarks upon after her new “friends,” Regina (Rachel McAdams), Gretchen (Lacey Chabert) and Karen (Amanda Seyfried), all stare at the mirror to point out their flaws. “My hips are huge,” Gretchen complains. Karen rebuffs, “Oh please, I hate my calves.” “At least you guys can wear halters, I’ve got man shoulders,” Regina adds. Gretchen continues, “My hairline is so weird,” followed by Regina noting, “My pores are huge” and Karen chiming in, “My nail beds suck.” This, however, would be nothing compared to the minutiae one could grasp at to find “wrong” with their appearance once the likes of Instagram arrived onto the scene.

Thanks to filters and other modifications made through apps (see: Madonna), anyone can look “perfect” on such a medium. Then, of course, TikTok came along to add numerous DIY beauty “hacks” into the mix that are far more dangerous than helpful (e.g., pore vacuuming, mole scraping, sunscreen contouring [meaning one applies sunscreen to only certain parts of the face to create a contouring effect after tanning] and “DIY” lip fillers—what could possibly go wrong?). So yes, despite 2002 being a more problematic time in certain ways, it was actually a safer time in many others.

Noticeably missing from the “reboot” edition of “Beautiful” is Aguilera herself, along with the famous opening whisper, “Don’t look at me” (which Damian [Daniel Franzese] in Mean Girls—for it all goes back to that movie—made all his own at the talent show). What’s more, there’s far less “grit” to the 2022 version, perhaps because ’02 was more oppressive, especially in terms of people still needing to feel as though they should hide their sexuality. Which is precisely why Xtina received a GLAAD award for featuring, among other marginalized people, two gay men kissing as onlookers watch in disgust in the original video—all while she declares, “I am beautiful no matter what they say.” Beauty expanding into many different definitions in terms of what certain people (*cough cough* conservatives) see as “ugly.”

Elsewhere, director Jonas Åkerlund (perhaps most famed for Madonna’s “Ray of Light”) gives us a scene of tangible bullying—which has since moved into the online space—as a girl with braces is knocked to the ground by her peers. To create a parallel thread from past to present, we’re also given a similar scene to one we’ll see in “Beautiful (2022).” Relating back to the teen boy in 02’s edition who has images of bodybuilders plastered all over his wall, and then proceeds to feebly try lifting a giant weight.

In another “vignette” from the original, a Black girl ripping up magazine images (because, again, magazines were the thing at the time—the ultimate tastemakers of beauty) of all the, you guessed it, white ladies being shown to her as the gold standard is also a powerful moment. And, at the very least, that’s one element that has noticeably changed in the past twenty years: representation. Granted, the media at large is still a long way away from fully mirroring reality in terms of our non-dominated-by-whites world.

Another cut in the original “Beautiful” reveals a goth guy sitting down on the bus, prompting everyone in the seats near him to scatter. In the present context, maybe that would stem from an inherent fear of him being an incel likely to go on a shooting rampage.

As the song reaches its crescendo of a bridge, everyone who has been featured in the video suddenly seems to be at peace with who they really are, as the anorexic girl smashes the mirror she’s been studying herself in, the girl with braces proceeds to smile through her tears, the girl who was ripping up magazines lies down on the couch with an aura of satisfaction and acceptance, the gay couple keeps kissing, the transgender woman keeps putting on her accoutrements of femininity, the goth guy sits on the bus unbothered and the thin guy flexes his muscle in defiance.

Perhaps the most glaring difference between what Xtina sought to highlight then and now is the fact that the obsession with beauty is hitting one’s consciousness even earlier on in life. This time around directed by Fiona Jane Burgess, the video opens with two shots of different boys staring at their glowing phones, followed by a girl doing the same. The latter hearing, “Because life for a man is harder than life for a woman.” We then cut to another girl applying makeup in front of her phone with a signature selfie light illuminating her face for just the right “halo” glow. Aguilera also calls out how it’s not a coincidence that there’s been a major increase on the dependency of antidepressants (on full display in a vending machine) and other pharmaceuticals that purport to put a “fixed it” stamp on people’s issues rather than addressing what’s at the core of the mental health crisis to begin with (hint hint: capitalism).

And yet, she “keeps it classic” in other ways by featuring a girl on her bed (cot, rather) with a barrage of images parading quintessential “hot girls” in bikinis marking up most of her wall. Another “analog” form of self-hatred is revealed by a boy in a similar room (except it’s a hospital) staring at a razor on his desk, as though trying not to cut himself with it.

The bodybuilding motif appears again as well, with a crowd of P.E. class-looking teens filming a Black man lifting weights (which somehow comes across as fetishistic). This is intercut with scenes of girls in matching blue vinyl skirts and crop tops (as though they raided Romy and Michele’s closet) sitting at their own individual “work stations” applying makeup in front of their phones with a selfie light like that first girl we saw. Xtina then transitions into a Nip/Tuck-esque series of scenes that emphasizes how much more pervasive and “normalized” plastic surgery has become in the culture. This montage also being shown as a circle of people stoically film the one they’re “studying” but not actually “seeing.”

Being more literal at times than she was in the original, Xtina sanctions the image of the girl with the collaged wall putting a puzzle together as the lyrics, “Trying hard to fill the emptiness/The pieces gone, left the puzzle undone” play over it. And, eventually, Burgess relies on the same storytelling device as Åkerlund: offering us the barrage of triumphant smiles through the pain, with a concluding scene featuring a group of girls climbing a tree together harmoniously (this being decidedly 2002, in that it seems children scarcely engage in such tactile behavior anymore). It’s a moment that speaks to how Xtina wanted to remind us of the importance of the song’s message for the sake of her own children growing up in this even more fucked-up time period (again, despite cries of how much “better” it is now). Which is why she stated, “Today, it’s harder than ever to hear our own voice amongst so many others infiltrating our feeds and minds with mixed messaging…ultimately leading us to tune-out our own truth and self-worth. The original ‘Beautiful’ video set out to bring awareness and a sense of compassion in the face of judgment, criticism and outside opinions. It still carries an important message to remember our core values outside of what’s being fed to us…to find a sense of balance and accepting ourselves for who we are.”

The tag to “Beautiful (2022)” then provides the visual of a turned-off phone bleeding like a body would, with the caption, “In the last twenty years, since Stripped was first released, social media has transformed our relationship with our bodies, and in turn, our mental health. Research suggests that time spent on social networking sites is associated with body image issues, self-harm and disordered eating in children and teens. This needs to change.” Of course, whether it actually will or not appears unlikely. What’s more worrisome is the potential contrast between this edition of the video and the one that might be created for another anniversary twenty years on from now. At which point, the environment might have finally forced people to pull their head out of their own ass with regard to vanity.

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Genna Rivieccio

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October 20, 2022
“Sunset” Video: Caroline Polachek Lives Her Best Life in Barcelona While Channeling Beth Orton and “La Isla Bonita”

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When one is as well-traveled as Caroline Polachek, it’s probably hard to be “impressed” by much of any milieu. After all, this is the girl who lived in Tokyo during her early years—an influence that was perhaps obfuscated by then being relegated to Greenwich, CT. But, as those in the know are aware, all the faux rebellious girls live in Greenwich, dipping into NYC (where, like Lizzy Grant, Polachek was born—the day before her, in fact) to unleash some of that pent-up repression on the weekend and then go back to being a docile ducky when Monday arrives.

Which is exactly what Polachek did when she went to concerts and got a taste of the “rock n’ roll” lifestyle long enough to know that she wanted to be part of it (hence, Chairlift). And yes, Polachek was obviously a rich girl, which is why she can talk about (with a straight face) things like how horseback riding taught her a lot about rhythm with regard to understanding music. Clearly, it must be true—for “Sunset” is yet another shining addition to her list of recently released singles (including “Bunny Is A Rider,” “Billions” and “Last Days: Non Voglio Mai Vedere Il Sole Tramontare”), all of which will likely comprise some of what turns out to be her second solo record (or fourth, if you want to count her work as Ramona Lisa and CEP, which many do).

Unlike “Billions” and “Non Voglio Mai Vedere Il Sole Tramontare,” “Sunset” is filled with much more palpable levity—and, incidentally, acknowledges ultimately surrendering to what that Italian song title translates to: “I Never Want to See the Sun Set.” But, of course, it must. And what better time to release such a single than fall, when the sun starts to set ever earlier? Yet there is nothing “bleak” or “unhappy” about “Sunset,” with its up-tempo, jubilant notes accented by a Spanish flavor that automatically makes one think of “La Isla Bonita” (for Madonna is apparently not the only white girl with appropriative machinations when it comes to Spanish culture).

And, as a Spanish-influenced track, Polachek, who co-directed the video with Matt Copson, favors a collage-oriented aesthetic that overlaps scenes and images mostly involving her walking through the streets of an ultra color-saturated Barcelona—evidently one of the cities that can still “charm” her despite what is sure to be an expected veneer of New York jadedness after having “seen the world, done it all.” Singing lyrics like, “So no regrets/‘Cause you’re my sunset, fiery red/Forever fearless/And in your arms a warm horizon/Don’t look back/Let’s ride away, let’s ride away [Bunny is, after all, a rider],” one can’t help but hear, in the same intonation, “Tropical the island breeze/All of nature wild and free/This is where I long to be/La isla bonita.” And that’s clearly where Polachek longs to be as well, also spending part of the day among the sandy beach (complete with a scene of a sand sculpture being perfected into a face). Just another perk of a rare breed of city like Barcelona, offering the beach life in addition to its metropolitan life.

And while Polachek roams around it in a white crocheted beanie looking like an Amy Winehouse-ified (because Polachek’s heavy eyeliner is more manicured in precision) version of Beth Orton, we can automatically feel the transfer of her affinity for this place. As for the Orton comparison, it’s not just that Polachek looks so much like her, but that her acoustic vibe in this song harkens back to Orton’s 1999 hit, “Stolen Car.” And that’s how Polachek drives her own in the video—like it was stolen. Her elfin ears peeping out from behind her hair like she’s Grimes or some shit, Polachek barrels down the road as though she’s got nothing left to lose, Thelma and Louise-style. Bumper stickers also pay homage to certain of her song titles (e.g., Bunny Is A Driver), while other stickers are just an insight into her personality (e.g., I’d Rather Be Playing Magic the Gathering and Welcome to My Island—possibly also a future song title hint).

Reminiscent in its own way of Giulia Y Los Tellarini’s “Barcelona” (which, alas, is best known for being constantly played in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona), the upbeat and repetitive string instrumentations of her thin-body acoustic guitar are ironically contrasted against the depiction of a languid day that concludes with her tanning topless on her rooftop as she draws serenely in her notebook. For, you see, in a place like Spain, art is not deemed a “frivolous” “hobby” as it is in the U.S.

At another point in the song, the exuberant flow is contrasted by a lyric like, “I’m wearing black to mourn the sudden loss of innocence.” This being perhaps a loose reference to the death of her father in 2020 from COVID-19. But where Polachek really cuts to the emotional core is with her series of repeated, high-pitched “ooo-ooo-ooo-ooos” toward the middle (and end) of the song as we see her walking amongst the street crowd as just another face in it. By the end of the video, however, it’s apparent she’s found her tribe, putting her clothes back on to join some revelers dancing as the sun sets.

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Genna Rivieccio

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October 19, 2022
Not Cute: Meet Cute

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Like Gary (Pete Davidson), we already have some vague level of understanding about what we’re getting into when we first encounter Sheila (Kaley Cuoco) at the bar. She’s the proverbial “messy” girl that New York so loves to promote in any media that centers on the city as its backdrop. Maybe that’s why another of Cuoco’s New York-based characters, Cassie Bowden on The Flight Attendant, so resembles this Sheila one. Except that, at least in Cassie’s case, the writers are given an entire season to slowly unveil the reasons why she is the way she is and why her life is “shit” (as many a “hot white girl” likes to declare).

With Sheila, we’re just supposed to take her at face value when she repeatedly says things like, “I’m just such a fucking loser. I’m such a fucking sad sack,” “No matter what, my life is shit, okay?” and “Time travel? Why would I wanna do that? Why would I wanna go back to yesterday? Yesterday was shit too.” Except that, when she does go back to “yesterday,” she perchance stumbles upon Gary in the aforementioned bar setting. The man she claims “saved” her—being that she was planning to kill herself before her nail tech, June (Deborah S. Craig), offered her access to a tanning bed time machine that allows one to go back just twenty-four hours. This being presented in a way that filmmakers Alex Lehmann and Noga Pnueli would like to believe is coming across as charmingly “madcap,” but instead only serves as one of many sources of incongruity and annoyance about this narrative.

In any event, as all people are able to do on their “first date” with someone, Sheila can project the belief that maybe this time it will be different. This person can be the one to give her a raison d’être. Of course, placing that much responsibility on another human being who can barely deal with their own neuroses is a recipe for disappointment. Which Sheila eventually encounters despite her best efforts to keep the initial spark alive. To her, however, this date has grown stale. Even though, to Gary, it feels like the first time every time. Save for little hints dropped about how the repetition of the night is starting to seep into his consciousness via various unexpectedly-remembered details. At some points, we even think he’s going to say he’s known all along that she’s been restarting the night and that’s he’s only continued to do so because he loves her so much. But that’s not the scenario presented by screenwriter Pnueli, in her debut feature. And perhaps as a debut effort, the film struggles to bother with much in the way of playing by its own faintly-established rules, constantly changing them through convenient “oh by the ways” (a.k.a. the over-usage of the term “I gotta come clean with you”) that Sheila decides to inform Gary of when she feels “the time is right.” Or rather, when it serves the “progression” of the plot, already stumbling to stay afloat at a clipped one hour and twenty-nine minutes (with credits included).

But, of course, the time is always wrong in that she’s cornered them both into a loop for the purpose of constantly reliving the same night (a Groundhog Day trend in film that’s been on the upswing since the pandemic—see also: Palm Springs). Obsessed with wanting to relive and recreate it so that it can be more perfect every time, Sheila only becomes increasingly disenchanted with Gary as the nights wear on—more specifically, three hundred and sixty-five nights. And even we, as the viewer, grow disinterested with the same conversation topics repurposed in different ways, all covering the subjects of how they both have dead dads, they’re both fucked up, etc., etc. Garden-variety normals posing as “New York eccentrics” shit.

Sheila being so normal, in fact, that she’s running around in a dress that looks like a picnic basket interior as she wishes to make Gary her “lobster.” Which is why she confesses to him during one of the nights, “This is the first time I’ve been this happy in a very, very long time.” We never quite know what’s been getting her down for so long, apart from the standard-issue potential cause: a traumatizing childhood. Which, undeniably, Gary has had as well—but you don’t see him trying to control another human being with Elmyra-level obsessiveness. And, ultimately, that’s the trope Meet Cute (sardonically named as it is) seeks to emphasize: women get clingy (as Pete’s ex, Ariana, said, “I can be needy/Way too damn needy”), seek all the answers to their “sad little lives” in men. The very creatures they also despise at the same time that they expect the world from them. Yet Sheila becomes convinced that if she could just “tweak” some small aspects of Gary’s past, he would be an even better, more perfect boyfriend (even if a single-serving one, based on her refusal to “exit out of” the night they meet). Needless to say, she’s not one for the “if you love someone, set them free” platitude.

Unfortunately, Sheila doesn’t take into account that Gary’s raging insecurities are part of what makes him such a “nice guy” (this clearly being the reason why Davidson was attracted to the role). For when she goes back further into the past (since, suddenly, that’s a new part of the “rules” of the time machine—previously believed to only be capable of going back twenty-four hours) to change key moments she views as “where things went wrong for Gary,” it turns him into a bit of an arrogant dick. And as she confesses what she did to this “new” Gary, he’s absolutely horrified by her entire being, assuring her that no matter what she does to change him, “I’ll still never wanna be with you,” subsequently writing “Sheila sucks balls” on his hand with a Sharpie.

Among the ways Sheila wanted to boost Gary’s overall confidence in himself as a youth was by playing catch with him in the yard (being that his father wasn’t in the picture to do so), dissuading him from losing himself in books like the one he’s holding when she knocks on his door (looking like a bad drag king), The Right Hand of Lightness by Ursula LeGrin (a spoof of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness). She as “Uncle Charlie” also tells him that “people don’t like mimes” and so he ought to stop miming.

Watching all this unraveling of Gary’s core personality and essence is June, who keeps allowing Sheila to use her tanning bed time machine in the back room (ostensibly because she knows it’s the only thing that will keep Sheila from killing herself). But she finally has to speak out in some way against what her “client” is doing by telling her, “If you erase the pain, you erase the person.” Which she achieved with the “Old Gary” by “deleting a few people” from his formative years, like his middle school bully, Patrick, his math teacher, Mrs. Kaiser, and his ex just before he and Sheila met, Amber. Oh yeah, and she also “added” Tatiana, the hot pizza delivery girl who Gary loses his virginity to.

As the would-be couple get into a heated argument over the nefariousness of what Sheila has done, one of the two old ladies sitting on a bench nearby comments of the fight they’ve just witnessed, “Personally, I think he should feel touched that somebody cares so deeply to take away all the pain of his life.” The other old lady agrees, “Oh that is a really romantic gesture.” But, like most romantic gestures in rom-coms (i.e., showing up to someone’s door uninvited with a bunch of signs professing unwavering devotion or appearing outside someone’s room with a boom box blasting “In Your Eyes”), it’s objectively creepy and stalker-ish. Luckily for Sheila, she’s a woman, therefore can eke by a little more easily with her “dogged persistence” (not quite bordering on Swimfan territory).

To mildly offset Sheila’s mania about Gary, June serves as the only outlet for something like a “conscience” in the story. Because when Sheila offers to go back in time for her and make her parents love her (instead of seeing her as a “mistake” for being a girl), June claps back, “Don’t fuck with my trauma, Sheila. If I didn’t have these occasional moments of complete and total worthlessness, I wouldn’t have this sparkling sense of humor.” Perhaps Davidson would say the same.

As for his decision to pick this role, it’s obvious that he, like the filmmakers, wants so badly for Meet Cute to join the annals of those classic “walking and talking” movies (most overtly, the blueprint for all such types: Before Sunset). Especially walking and talking in New York. Unfortunately, the scenes of them walking along the Manhattan Bridge (where Sheila had planned to plummet to her death) recall the actually iconic walking scene shared by Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams) in Blue Valentine. Furthermore, and likely to any modern filmmaker’s dismay, the walking and talking paired with making NYC look “dreamy” also harkens back to Alvy (Woody Allen) and Annie (Diane Keaton) and Isaac (Allen) and Mary (Keaton) in Annie Hall and Manhattan, respectively. Except, rather than the (Ed Koch) Queensboro Bridge displayed in the latter, Alex Lehmann uses the far “chicer” Williamsburg Bridge as his source for romanticizing the city (before homing in on the Brooklyn Bridge, along with Jane’s Carousel next to it), and the idea that “anything” can happen in this town when it comes to love. Even half-cooked time travel-related encounters. Or “meet-cutes,” if you will.

Alas, there’s nothing cute about Sheila’s amplifying displays of desperation as she shouts at Gary, “You don’t understand. You saved me. This whole night saved me… It could be the only thing that ever makes me happy.” Hence, her unwillingness to risk allowing the relationship to be further explored in the next day—indicating the progression of time, ergo the inevitability of their dissatisfaction with each other (or, more likely, Gary’s dissatisfaction with her).

As we finally get to the drawn-out conclusion, it’s impossible not to note that just as the beginning of the movie tongue-in-cheekly wielded Lauren Spencer-Smith’s rendition of “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” so, too, does the end of Meet Cute offer a tailored-to-the-situation song: Damien Jurado’s “The Shape of a Storm.” And while the lyrics, “Strange as it seems, I have known you before” play heavy-handedly, the two walk against the backdrop of the bridge, as so many couples before them, both onscreen and off, have done. So in the end, “unique” meeting story or not, they’ve become just another bad cliché.

Incidentally, Pnueli’s next film, Deborah, is also centered around a time loop premise, albeit with what seems like a somewhat more Lord of the Flies meets Bodies Bodies Bodies type of slant. One can only hope she’s learned from the mistakes made in Meet Cute, which serves as but a botched attempt at contributing to the New York Is Purgatory genre recently jump-started by Russian Doll.

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Genna Rivieccio

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October 17, 2022